SEO is essential for any type of business, but it is especially helpful for veterinarians looking to reach more local patients. SEO helps you stand out from the competition with a user-friendly website that leads to higher search rankings. At New Wine Digital, we help veterinarians across the country improve their online presence with a strong SEO strategy. Continue reading to learn how SEO can help benefit your veterinary clinic.
What Is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a digital marketing strategy that helps boost your website’s ranking on Google and other search engines. The process of SEO involves optimizing your website with easy-to-read content, keyword targeting, and relevant links. All of these factors help search engines better understand your website and how it helps web users. The more beneficial Google deems your clinic’s website, the higher it will rank for relevant search results. Ranking higher on Google is also a good way to improve your vet clinic’s online reputation.
Why Do Veterinarians Need SEO?
1: To Reach Local Pet Owners
Around 63,000 Google searches are processed per second, and 46% of them lead to local businesses. That’s a lot of web traffic that could be directed to your clinic’s website! Standard SEO helps improve your Google ranking for relevant results, but you can directly target local search results using local SEO.
A local SEO strategy involves combining industry keywords with location keywords related to your practice. When pet owners in your area need veterinary services, they will typically search something as simple as “vet near me.”
But even if the web user doesn’t use “near me” or a location keyword in their search, Google will still offer local results based on the location of the device they’re using. Targeting a primary keyword like “vet clinic in (your location)” for your website will help you reach more pet owners in your area.
Web users often turn to Google Maps to find local businesses as well. Improving your local SEO and optimizing your Google Business Profile will help your vet clinic rank higher in Google Maps results.
2: To Stand Out from the Competition
Optimizing your website gives your vet clinic the credibility and authority that help you stand out from other local clinics. For instance, writing blog posts about veterinary topics and optimizing them for related keywords allows your website to rank for a wider range of search results.
By providing detailed information that answers the pet owner’s query, you establish your clinic as an authority in the industry. Links to other relevant content on your website as well as to other reliable sources also show Google (and web users) that you know what you’re talking about.
Since people mostly stick to the first page of Google search results, SEO is crucial for increasing your website’s visibility and standing out from your competitors. In order to keep a high ranking, you need to be constantly updating and optimizing your vet clinic’s website. The algorithm that determines your ranking is always evolving, which is why SEO is an important ongoing strategy.
3: To Improve Your Website’s Performance
Another important aspect of SEO is creating an attractive, user-friendly website. No matter how much traffic your website gets, it’s worthless if the web users don’t engage with your vet clinic online.
Fonts and content that are difficult to read, confusing navigation, and irrelevant or dead links can all easily turn pet owners away from your website. And if search engines have a difficult time crawling your website, then they will give it lower rankings.
A few ways to optimize your web design for search engines and web users include:
- Making your website mobile-friendly
- Ensuring your website loads quickly
- Avoiding keyword stuffing (overloading your content with obvious keywords)
- Organizing your content with headings and subheadings
- Creating detailed meta descriptions for each web page
Professional SEO Services for Veterinary Clinics
A good SEO strategy requires constantly monitoring and updating your website. At New Wine Digital, we understand that veterinarians are often too busy taking care of their patients to maintain the health of their website. That’s why we offer a wide range of digital marketing services for veterinarians. We’ll help you design a clean, modern website and improve your Google ranking. Call us at 480-516-1819 today to get started.
Images used under creative commons license – commercial use (5/31/2022). Photo by Meruyert Gonullu on Pexels