Everyone knows when you rank higher on search engine results pages, your business is seen as more trusted and is discovered more easily. Ultimately, ranking higher drives more traffic to your website and results in more calls.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most effective tools to improve your ranking. Without an SEO strategy, your website can be utterly invisible on the internet even if you have fantastic content.
In this article, we’ll explain five proven methods to improve your local SEO to help you earn more links and higher rankings that can give you an edge over your competitors.
There are many ways to generate traffic to your website, but most online traffic is driven by search engines. To make sure your website is showing up in those searches, you need to have a solid SEO strategy. Below are five things you can do to help you increase your rankings.
1. Make Sure Your Website is Healthy
To help your website rank in search engines, it should be designed to give visitors a good experience. That means you should be sure your website is:
- Safe & Secure: Be sure your website has an SSL certificate. The certificate shows search engines and site visitors that your website is encrypted and can be trusted. Without an SSL certificate, your website can show up to visitors as “not secure” and can impact your Google ranking.
- Fast: A one-second delay in load time can cause conversion rates to drop by 70%.* Investing in a good host for your website means that your site will load faster, which leads to more conversions.
- Made to Convert: In order to provide the best experience for visitors, your site must be responsive with easily readable text, calls to action, and customer reviews.
- Free of Technical Issues: Make sure to fix broken pages or links (404 errors), sitemap or robot issues, and site structure or content issues. Also, make sure there’s no duplicate content.
2. Collect And Utilize Online Reviews
Today’s consumers are relying more and more on reviews to make choices about the goods and services they buy. More than 90% of customers trust online reviews as much as a suggestion from someone they know personally. Reviews signal trustworthiness and are a ranking factor. In addition, online reviews are key to turning interested parties into paying patients. For more reviews, be sure to do the following:
- Remember to make your customer service worthy of a good review
- Claim your business on all the major review platforms (Google is most important)
- Ask for reviews from patients
- Reply to your reviews
- Encourage customers to contact you if they have a complaint
- Get a review system
3. Fix Directory Citations
Accurately listing your practice’s name, address, and phone number across the web can make or break your local search engine rankings. The number of citations that a business accumulates and the reliability of the information within the citations all influence search rankings. Citations can attract or detract consumers from finding you as well. Accurate information about your practice helps people find you easily. This can lead to increased web, phone, and foot traffic.
4. Build Backlinks
Backlinks to your page are votes of confidence. If a website links to you, the quality of your material or company is seen as higher. Also important is the relevance of the website linking to yours. It makes no sense, for example, for an automotive dealership to link to your page. Some examples of good link partners would be your local chamber of commerce, industry websites, and partner sites.
5. Track Your Results
Tracking your web performance allows you to check in on your efforts to see what works and what doesn’t for your practice. At AuDSEO, we use tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and other SEO monitoring tools to track your web performance and analyze user behavior.
The proper use of local search engine optimization tactics as described above can have a huge impact on your website’s visibility and ranking. We know these tactics can be time-consuming for business owners. If you are considering hiring a professional to help you with your SEO, we hope you’ll consider AuDSEO. We are marketing experts in the audiology industry and understand the impact solid SEO and digital marketing strategies can make on the success of your hearing healthcare practice.
* (2017, April 19). Akamai Online Retail Performance Report. Retrieved from https://www.akamai.com/uk/en/about/news/press/2017-press/akamai-releases-spring-2017-state-of-online-retail-performance-report.jspKee