SEO is the process of making a website easier for Search Engines (such as Google) to find. SEO for Urgent Care Centers is exactly the same process, but specifically for urgent care center websites. The end goal is to increase the website traffic, subsequently increasing the number of new patients.
So, if your urgent care center is to succeed in the modern healthcare arena, then it needs to position its website to come top of Google’s search results for relevant keywords, such as “urgent care + your city” and “urgent care center + your city”.
SEO is especially important for the specialty of urgent care and emergency medicine, because – due to the nature of urgent care – patients do not have time to call their Managed Care Organization, but instead use Google to locate an urgent care center nearby to them.
In order to answer this question, let us just clarify the difference between Organic SEO and Adwords. Adwords is when you pay Google for your practice’s website to appear as one of the four advertisements at the top of the Google search results page.
By contrast, Organic SEO is positioning your website to appear in the real search results (as one of the 10 search results below the ads). Now to answer the question: The short answer is that both of them have their advantages. Adwords allows your practice to immediately be at the top of the page, however it comes at a cost.
First, it can be very expensive – especially if the keywords you are targeting have high levels of competition. Second, as soon as you stop paying Google, your ads will stop appearing.
Organic SEO, on the other hand, is a more affordable and more long term strategy. Your urgent care website can be positioned to be top of the real search results on Google, so that patients are genuinely finding the most relevant practice for their needs.
Furthermore, organic SEO is longer lasting than Adwords. Once at the top of Google, it will likely stay there for several months (and if SEO services are continued then it can stay there indefinitely).
Plus – best of all – it is more affordable. Red Castle’s Urgent Care SEO package is very affordable and has proven to be very cost effective in terms of providing many more patients than the monthly cost of services. If you are interested in strategically positioning your practice for the long term trend (that more and more patients will find their next doctor online), then organic SEO is something you should seriously consider.
Private pay patients are not restricted by their Managed Care Organization (MCO). They are free to choose whichever doctor they want. This is why – instead of going to their MCO’s website to choose a doctor, they will likely use Google instead. If you want your urgent care center to get a share of this private pay business in today’s competitive marketing environment – and definitely in tomorrow’s – then you need to position your practice’s website to appear on the first page of Google results.
Red Castle typically includes 10 keywords in our Urgent Care SEO campaigns. But how do we decide which 10 keywords to select?
First, we make sure that the keywords are actually being used. After all, there is no point being top of Google for keywords which patients are not searching for! Typically, patients will search for their specialty they need, plus the location they need it, as shown in the clip below.
Second, we select keywords which correctly identify the urgent care services you offer. For example, if you offer occupational medicine services, then we may include keywords for services such as “DOT physicals” and “drug screening”.
Plus, to avoid competing with urgent care centers across the world, we recommend that keywords include your geographical area (usually the nearest city and/or county). Here is a set of example keywords below:
Red Castle provides monthly reports, so that our urgent care centers can clearly track the performance of the SEO campaign. Most importantly, the reports include the position of the keywords and the position change over time.
For example, perhaps at the beginning your keyword “urgent care Miami’ was in 89th position on Google, but 3 months later it is in 2nd place.
Plus, we also include other useful data, such as website traffic and the source of this traffic. Tracking the traffic source is important, as it allows us to see where prospective patients are finding your website. Is it via social media? Or Google? Or from other sources?
By closely monitoring this we can demonstrate how positioning your practice on the first page of Google greatly increases traffic to your website via Google.
The average sales conversion rate for website visits to buying customers was 2.95% in 2017. Assuming this to be also true of healthcare, an increase of website traffic of 1,000 would lead to an increase of almost 30 new patients. There are several ways to generate more web traffic, but organic SEO is one of the best.
SEO can cost urgent care centers thousands of dollars. Red Castle Services, however, believes in charging a modest monthly fee, because we believe in helping our clients in the long term. Plus, we always want our services to cost less than the money they generate.
We know that our monthly fee has an excellent Return On Investment, which we can backup with monthly reports. View our SEO Pricing and Packages.
Contact Us Today to find out how your urgent care center can start increasing its number of online patient referrals via our SEO for Urgent Care campaigns.
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