"Reviews [more] Important"
Customer reviews are always important, but they are even more important for doctors and other healthcare providers.
Google takes into account your overall [ranking], the number of [reviews] you have, and the number of [reviews] that mention a particular keyword (hopefully the one you're trying to [rank] for).
GBP review
Your Money, Your Life
Additionally, Google is increasingly tightening france telemarketing database its grip on YMYL businesses.
In Google's more recent algorithm updates , organizations in the “ Your money or Your life ” (YMYL) search space are most often affected in search rankings.
“ Your Money or Your Life ” (YMYL) pages is a Google term that refers to pages that Google deems could impact a user’s “future happiness, health, financial stability, or safety.” And any type of direct medical service falls into that category.
YMYL infographic
YMYL pages are held to a higher Page Quality standard because the information they provide can have a proportionally higher impact on an individual's health and finances, and therefore a greater impact on a person's life.
There is an increased focus on EEAT (the “Expertise”, “Experience”, “Authority”, “Trust Factor” we discussed above) as a ranking factor for Google, and their Google search quality guidelines make it clear that EEAT is very important when deciding how to rank YMYL pages.
EEAT framework
Health Care Package
When people are looking for doctors and medical services, their health care plan or insurance is a big factor. They don't want to end up at the doctor's office only to find out later that their insurance doesn't cover it.
Plus, many insurance companies have a “find a doctor” search tool on their sites, so you don’t want to miss out on that as an option.
Health care plan
This means it's important to optimize and include what plans your medical practice accepts on your website. You can do this by listing the name of the healthcare plan provider, their acronym, and the names of any specialties they cover.
Doctor's Specialization
When new clients search for a doctor or healthcare provider, they often search for the specific doctor they are looking for, such as “a therapist who can help with [anxiety]” or “emergency services near me for [broken wrist].”
This means you need to optimize specifically for your specialty. We'll discuss this in more detail for specific specialties later in this post, but it's important to keep in mind as you go through the five steps to SEO as a doctor.
Local SEO
When most people look for a doctor, they look for someone nearby.
While telemedicine is on the rise, and you can work with a therapist through an app, most individuals want to be able to access their doctor in person.
This leads to a very important aspect of SEO for doctors: local SEO.
What is "Local SEO"?
Some SEO statistics for you: 90% of consumers use the internet to [find] local businesses.
And Google captures 92% of the search engine market. So, Google is where you definitely want to focus your local SEO efforts.
In fact, Google is increasingly emphasizing local search results, as more than 85% of Google's daily search traffic comes from local searches.
Google understands that local queries have local intent—if you're in Buffalo, New York, and you search for "[coffee] near me," it knows you want [coffee] in Buffalo, New York, not San Francisco. That certainly won't help!