6 Healthcare SEO Trends to Follow in 2022

As we are only get­ting start­ed with 2022, it’s prob­a­bly a good idea to go over our mar­ket­ing strate­gies and tweak a few things to get up-to-date with the lat­est trends.

Like most aspects of online mar­ket­ing, the area of SEO is also con­stant­ly chang­ing. Try­ing to spear­head the lat­est algo­rithm updates across the board may often seem like a dif­fi­cult task, espe­cial­ly when we’re talk­ing about such niche fields as med­ical SEO. Even then, with a few well-placed health­care SEO adjust­ments and with the help of a reli­able med­ical SEO expert, you can remain essen­tial and valu­able for your cur­rent and future patients.

Medical Website SEO Checklist

Let’s get start­ed with the lat­est SEO trends that health­care pro­fes­sion­als need to keep in mind if they want to stay ahead of the curve.

Keep a Close Eye on User Experience and Technical SEO

Sev­er­al expert sources state that Google’s Core Web Vitals will play a huge role in SEO across the board in the upcom­ing years.

These core vitals encom­pass a vari­ety of fac­tors that mea­sure a visitor’s over­all expe­ri­ence on the page.

More specif­i­cal­ly, these met­rics measure: 

• Page speed (load­ing times)
• Con­tent sta­bil­i­ty dur­ing load­ing (Does it shift while loading?)
• Inter­ac­tiv­i­ty (Is the site respon­sive to user interaction?)

Of course, mobile-friend­li­ness and oth­er rank­ing fac­tors will also be impor­tant for prop­er med­ical web­site SEO.

Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, a good page expe­ri­ence means that your future patients are able to find every­thing they need on your site intu­itive­ly, with­out any has­sle. Sure, key­words for health and well­ness will still play a mas­sive role in improv­ing your rank­ing. How­ev­er, you also need to put more effort into improv­ing the tech­ni­cal side of your web­site to sig­nal Google that you real­ly want your patients to have a delight­ful expe­ri­ence with you, both online and offline. 

Optimizing Content for Search Intent

Google likes rel­e­vant con­tent. That being said, try­ing to cater to user search intent can be quite reward­ing in a sol­id health­care SEO strategy.

Google has been refin­ing the way it search­es and ranks con­tent to pro­vide more pre­cise results for vis­i­tors, and the more you try to answer your user ques­tions, the bet­ter you will per­form in the SERPs.

As such, try to cater to all four types of search intent. This is espe­cial­ly impor­tant when you are eval­u­at­ing your key­words for health and wellness.

• Infor­ma­tion­al: Answer­ing a sim­ple ques­tion your patients want to learn about.
• Trans­ac­tion­al: Give more info about a health­care ser­vice or a prod­uct peo­ple want to know about.
• Nav­i­ga­tion­al: When the user wants to find a loca­tion, web­site, or spe­cif­ic brand.
• Com­mer­cial: When the user is look­ing for health­care options and look­ing for more info to make a decision.

Focus on Long-Form Content

The truth is that long-form writ­ten con­tent takes a lot of ener­gy and time to write. How­ev­er, if you want your health­care web­site SEO to shine, you should focus on more elab­o­rate and longer blog post arti­cles to incor­po­rate more niche key­words. Robust pieces of con­tent can be a valu­able asset over time as it also has a high­er chance of earn­ing both links and shares, improv­ing site author­i­ty and over­all opti­miza­tion efforts.

Don’t Use Just Your Primary Keywords

Don’t be afraid to use a wider range of key­words for health and well­ness when research­ing your key­words. Google also focus­es on seman­tics, which means that you can use more key­words than just a few.

Sure, the main tar­get­ing words should still be there to give the over­all direc­tion for a page, but it’s also vital to incor­po­rate a few relat­ed key­words as well that go well with the over­all con­cept of the content.

For exam­ple, if you have a page that focus­es on knee replace­ment, you can also incor­po­rate a few oth­er tar­get­ing words such as:

• Phys­i­cal therapy
• Wear and tear
• Recov­ery time
• Ortho­pe­dic surgeon

Don’t Neglect EAT Factors

Even though Google’s Core Web Vitals focus more on the tech­ni­cal side of things, high-qual­i­ty con­tent is still cru­cial for stel­lar med­ical SEO.

EAT is a short acronym for “Expe­ri­ence,” “Author­i­ty,” and “Trust.” The high­er these fac­tors are on your con­tent, the bet­ter Google ranks its qual­i­ty. And the high­er-qual­i­ty the con­tent; the more like­ly to improve your over­all posi­tion in the SERPs.

In terms of health­care SEO, these fac­tors become even more impor­tant since Google looks at this niche with even more scruti­ny. Health­care con­tent will often have infor­ma­tion that can impact the read­er’s safe­ty, health, and finances. 

To improve your EAT fac­tors, focus on the following: 

• Struc­ture your con­tent in a way that makes it easy to nav­i­gate. This way, you can weave in a few key­words for health and well­ness in your head­ing tags, and your read­ers can find the info they’re look­ing for easier.
• Keep an eye on con­tent order. Make sure that the most vital ques­tions are answered in the upper area of your page, and dis­cuss the “details” below.
• Stay away from jar­gon. Make sure that your con­tent is writ­ten in a way that the aver­age patient will be able to understand.
• Focus on unique content.

• Make sure that every­thing is accu­rate. Don’t for­get to link rep­utable sources when shar­ing research information.

Optimize Your Videos

If you have been fol­low­ing the lat­est dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing trends, you already know that video con­tent is also vital to a sol­id strategy.

Video con­tent is one of the most pre­cious con­tent assets that can also help you great­ly with your SEO efforts. By opti­miz­ing them and incor­po­rat­ing more key­words into the title of the video and the descrip­tion (both on YouTube and your web­site) you can dri­ve more traf­fic to your chan­nels and website.

Keep up With the Latest Trends

Apart from this, you should also focus on site respon­sive­ness, voice search, and a myr­i­ad of oth­er aspects to make your efforts pay off. SEO isn’t an easy task, so hir­ing reli­able experts to help grow your busi­ness should be high on your pri­or­i­ty list.

If you entrust us with your opti­miza­tion tasks, you will have more time to focus on your care ser­vices and patients, which are, at the end of the day, the most valu­able to your business.

Leave build­ing a strong online pres­ence to us. That’s our expertise.