Much is talked about search engine optimization (SEO), and there’s a good reason for that. SEO is the practice of optimizing your website’s ranking in search engines such as Google, so that your site appears near the top of results based on certain keywords.
The better your business’s SEO is for the keywords you want to target, the more likely your business is to appear at the top of search results. And those results that are near the top are the ones that are most likely to get clicked.
This is why having a solid veterinary SEO strategy is so important for businesses such as veterinary practices, which are in a highly-competitive industry and need to constantly figure out ways to stay ahead of the competition.
If you’re new to SEO, or need to improve your search engine rankings, follow our SEO tips that we detail below.
Veterinary SEO refers to improving your clinic’s online presence. The goal through this process is to ensure that you rank high in search engine results for the keywords that matter most to your business, which in turn makes it easier for pet owners to find your services.
For instance, if a person searches “veterinary clinic near me,” you want to ensure that your clinic appears near the top of those search results.
SEO has been around for a while now, but it’s becoming more vital every day in the ever-evolving digital landscape. Most prospective customers turn to online searches to find everything under the sun — and that includes veterinary services for their pets.
SEO is a complex process that involves navigating more than 200 ranking factors search sites take into consideration when they develop results pages. This can make it very complicated and confusing for business owners who aren’t familiar with the inner workings of SEO.
That being said, the overall process can be boiled down to three basic principles, which we’ll discuss individually below.
Technical SEO is how your website is structured. Websites that aren’t built well, are hard to navigate, and that load slowly deter visitors from viewing the content you’ve posted about your veterinary practice.
Search sites will rank your website lower if your site experiences issues such as duplicate content, pages that are not optimized for mobile devices, slow loading speeds or broken links. So, it’s important to ensure that you thoroughly test your website before going live with it to ensure you aren’t experiencing any of these problems.
On-page SEO refers to the content that’s on your website and how it is optimized. This is one of the most important aspects of whether your content appears on the first page of search results.
To do this, you need to ensure that your content is targeting the right keywords, that you’re creating proper HTML structures, that you’re building meta details, linking all content together correctly and much more.
As a veterinary practice, you need to focus on optimizing the visibility of your website in local search results. This means using careful content creation and on-page SEO strategies so that you can effectively reach pet owners who live in your area.
Off-page SEO refers to all optimization strategies that don’t involve your website. This includes your strategy for building links with external websites, online reviews, marketing on social media platforms, and more.
Off-page SEO helps more pet owners discover your business, since your content will be linked out to various other sites, which gives your content more credibility in the eyes of search engine optimization.
Websites that appear on the first page of search results are more likely to get clicks. Not only that, but the higher your website ranks, the more likely it is to get those clicks.
Many studies have found that the website that appears in the first spot of search results is 10 times more likely to get clicked than the website that appears in the 10th spot.
For your veterinary business, clicks mean chances that your business has of educating potential customers about your clinic and the services you provide. Regardless of how well-designed your website is, if you’re not getting clicks, people are never going to find out about you.
In other words, if you want pet owners to bring their pets to your clinic after searching online, you have to rank well for the main keywords that they’ll likely use when they search. Once you’re able to rank highly for those keywords, you’ll have a better chance of attracting visitors who are most interested in learning about your veterinary practices and the services you provide.
SEO isn’t a one-and-done task. It is an ongoing process that involves constantly improving your site and building authority for your business online. While it can be very time-intensive, it’s well worth it when you see the results.
Now that you understand what veterinarian SEO is and its importance, how can you improve the SEO of your business’s online presence? Follow these tips below, and you’ll be well on your way.
The first step of any SEO plan is fully understanding who your target audience is. The reason why this is important is because this will determine the type of online content that you produce.
If you want to attract your target audience, you need to generate content that will resonate with them.
Most veterinary businesses attract customers within a relatively small geographical area. While your business’s reach could vary depending on where you’re located in the country, it’s highly unlikely you’ll have customers from hundreds of miles away, for example.
This means that local SEO is going to be the most effective and productive strategy for your veterinary practice. As such, you need to optimize your content and your overall site for local search.
This will help you attract pet owners who live physically near your practice, since those are the people most likely to become your customers.
Not all keywords are created equal. That’s why you need to target high-intent keywords, as they are the ones that should be the focus of your technical SEO efforts.
High-intent keywords are those that strongly signal that a person is ready to take a particular action. This could include making a purchase or, in the case of your veterinary business, scheduling an appointment.
These keywords are important to target because they’re the most likely to result in visits to your website, and they’re also the most likely to result in conversions for your business.
A great way to improve your organic SEO ranking is to get visitors to remain on your site for longer once they’ve gotten there. The longer people spend on your site, the more relevant that search engines think your site is for those keywords.
There are a few different ways you can do this. First, ensure that your website is easy to navigate, as this allows users to find the information they’re looking for — and other useful information on your site — quickly and easily.
Next, create a lot of content that’s very relevant and useful to them. Make sure that you have a lot of images and even videos to break up long sections of text, which not only makes it easier to consume but also more enjoyable.
When your website is well organized, it helps search engines to index all the pages on it more effectively. This, in turn, makes it easier for pet owners to find your business.
This involves organizing the content you produce on your website into logical sections. You can create different categories of content so that visitors can easily browse by whatever they’re interested in if they want to learn more.
Doing so makes it easier for visitors and engines to find exactly the information they’re searching for. Once you have created the structure, use descriptions and titles for your pages that are keyword-rich to boost your SEO even more.
Meta titles are the text that appear at the top of web pages. They help search engines accurately identify the content that appears on the page.
If you’re looking to optimize your veterinary practice website, you need to include relevant keywords in the meta titles.
Titles are also very important. Not only do they inform people about the content they’re going to read, but they also entice people to want to know more. This is why it’s so important to write titles that are both informative and interesting at the same time.
Your title should draw readers in but also accurately reflect the rest of the content. You don’t want to be too “click-baity,” as that could lead to visitors bouncing off your site quickly, which could hurt your SEO.
Once you learn how to write great titles, you’ll learn how to make a better impression on visitors, since that is the first thing they will see.
The great part about SEO is that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Learning the skyscraper technique can help you, and your practice’s search results, immensely.
This involves finding content that is popular that relates to your specific niche, and then creating content around those topics that is even better than what you’ve found.
Luckily, there are a lot of great free web tools that can help you optimize your content and provide feedback about your work before you publish it.
One example is a readability analysis tool. This can help you identify the phrases and words in your content that are most difficult for your audience to understand and read. Once you can identify that, you can then adjust your wording accordingly, using language that is simpler, which then makes your content more accessible to your readers.
Search engines love websites that load fast, and visitors do, too. When a website has a fast load time, it results in a positive user experience, which can lead to higher levels of conversions and engagement.
Speed is one major consideration search engines factor in when determining rankings, so make sure that your website loads fast if you want it to appear higher on lists.
When you link to other pages on your website, you not only help Google and other search engines index your pages more effectively, you also provide a better experience to users. This is because you are providing them with more relevant information that they might be interested in.
When you’re building your internal links, make sure to use anchor text phrases that are keyword-rich. This also helps to improve your site’s ranking for those particular keywords.
A great goal of SEO is to build backlinks. These are links that other people place on their websites that link to your web content.
To do this, you need to publish high-quality and informative digital content, such as infographics, blog posts, and videos. When you are providing useful and valuable content, other websites are more likely to want to link to you as an authority on the topic, which then improves your veterinary SEO ranking.
You don’t have to fly by the seat of your pants with veterinary SEO. You can use tools such as the Google Search Console to measure the results of your efforts.
This tool will allow you to see how often your website appears in Google results, as well as what keywords people use to find you. You can use this information to tweak your SEO strategy and ensure that you’re targeting the right veterinary SEO terms for your veterinary practice.
While a lot of this discussion has been around text, images are extremely important for veterinary SEO, too. When you optimize your images, make sure that you include relevant keywords in both the file name and alternate text so that search engines have an easier time indexing them.
In addition, make sure that they are of the right format and size, according to Google’s suggestions.
If you want to have a successful veterinary SEO strategy, you need to avoid some of the most common mistakes that businesses make.
This includes neglecting mobile optimization, ignoring local SEO, using too much medical jargon, keyword stuffing, not updating your content regularly, not optimizing for local searches, overlooking the intent of your users, and not considering the specific needs of local pet owners when you create your content.
These are all very important aspects of local SEO that you need to avoid.
Ranking high in search engine results is vital for any business to attract new customers, but especially for businesses such as veterinary clinics that are in a highly-competitive industry and rely so heavily on local customers.
Investing time and energy into a local SEO strategy is essential to ensure your veterinary clinic appears near the top of search results, which in turn will help you attract new customers.
1. GrowthMap™ Acquisition System: If you're looking to get more customers, you need the right strategy and the right tools specific to YOUR business. Sign up for a GrowthMap™ account and get my 17 years of business expertise, proven methods, and actionable strategies to copy, paste and install in your business. Get everything you need to build & grow your Acquisition System all in one place. Join this week during launch for nearly 50% off!
2. Endorsed Partners (COMING SOON): Getting leads and customers is top priority for any growth-minded business owner. But marketing alone isn't enough to build a business that scales. Which is why I'm currently working on narrowing down a curated list of the best tools & service providers that handle everything else you need to grow your company.
3. Get a personalized marketing plan by booking a free 20-minute strategy call.