Get Your Eye Care Website to the Top of Google

Google will continue its search dominance in 2022 and into the foreseeable future. We've compiled a list of 10 best practices to help your eyecare practice crack the code on how to rank higher on Google. These best practices are not going anywhere.  What better time to dominate your local Google results than now?  Schedule a huddle with your team and make SEO and a higher Google rank a priority.  You and your digital marketing team might have already implemented some of these best practices.   Get your team on the phone to make sure. Raise the SEO discussion at your next staff meeting.  Let’s make it one of your goals in the second half of 2022 to dominate our local search. 

Start with technical SEO

Technical SEO ensures that search engines can quickly crawl and index your website. Even though content is still king, if search engines can't find, crawl, and index your pages, you’re wasting your time and losing new patients. 

Make internal hyperlinks

While you’ve heard a lot about the value of backlinks, you should also pay attention to internal links. An internal link is a link that takes you to another page within the same domain. Simply put, they assist Google in discovering and indexing your web pages.

Make use of LSI keywords

LSI keywords (also known as latent semantic indexing) are similar phrases that a search engine such as Google can use to better understand the content of a page.

They aren't exact synonyms, but they are phrases and words that are strongly related to your primary keyword.

If your core keyword is “influencer marketing”, for example, LSI keywords could include terms like social media, marketing campaigns, brands, Instagram, marketers, endorsements, and so on. 

Concentrate on on-page SEO

In 2022, on-page optimization will still be one of the simplest strategies to improve your Google rankings. What is on-page SEO?  In a nutshell, it refers to all the aspects on your website's pages that you may optimize, such as headlines, page names, and graphics. It takes little time to optimize these elements, and the yield can be significant. 

Off-page SEO, on the other hand (which is just as important), is concerned with increasing relevance for search engines by, for example, obtaining more backlinks. More on this below…

"E-A-T" a little bit more

While SEO is one of the most commonly used terms when it comes to Google rankings, Google E-A-T is another three-letter acronym that can assist you in the coming months. It stands for expertise, authority, and trust.

These are the three factors that Google considers when determining your website's ranking potential. If your website focused on so-called YMYL (Your Money, Your Life) issues, it's much more critical. However, Google won’t likely penalize an optometrist or ophthalmologist from breaking down the latest dry eye treatment protocols in their website’s blog or video.  The change might impact the blogger with dry eye experience, who doesn’t have that credentialed expertise. Whether it's a good or bad move, it’s Google’s house–their rules.

In a post-Covid world where science and truth are put to test daily, Google and other search engines will most likely sustain this YMYL stance for many years to come. 

The Google algorithm has always factored some authoritativeness largely determined by your online reputation and the amount of attention you receive or how many highly ranked, authoritative sites link back to your site.

You want to hammer on press releases in 2022. If your press releases are picked up and you’re incorporated into more press, Google gives more weight to those mentions. 

Google’s primary objective is to produce high-quality, search results from trustworthy and credible sources. It’s no easy proposition with hundreds of thousands of websites published daily! Your team is supremely qualified to create content in eyecare, healthcare, medicine, wellness, lifestyle, science, tech, and other relevant topics.

If you've shown that you're qualified to write on your subject and that other sources appreciate what you have to offer, Google will regard you as trustworthy. Freshen up that bio, headshot, and show off those hard-earned credentials! Those little Google bots crawling your site will love them.   

Do not accept low-quality stuff (ever)

Backlinks (links to your website from a third-party website) are extremely important in Google's algorithm. As a result, one of your primary objectives should be to encourage people to share your content on social media. And visitors will only do so if you post high-quality content on a regular basis. A backlink from Quora would be amazing! A backlink from your local newspaper would be fantastic.  A backlink from a garbage forum that’s been flagged by Google. Bad. Very bad. Google will hammer your site with penalties if they detect spammy backlinks.
As tempting as it may be, don’t hire these SEO companies that promise all these easy to obtain backlinks. It will end up costing you in the long run.

Create a lower bounce rate

It will affect your search rankings if users land on your site, glance at one of your pages, and then return to the search page in a matter of seconds. This indicates to Google that users aren't impressed with your website. In other words, a lower bounce rate indicates that visitors like their time on your site. Plus, more time on your site means prospective patients will be more familiar with your practice and offerings

Distribute statistical information or infographics

You might develop a powerful infographic, using important statistics in eyecare, that other blogs or media organizations can use on their website. Find the publisher, editor, staff, anyone, and send out an email with the file and just ask for the backlink. This is pure gold. 

Adding these infographics might also help your bounce rate, increasing the time and attention one of your users may spend perusing your material or resources.  

Match the objective of the search

What are patients asking you in the office? Guess what? Chances are typing variations of those same questions on Google before their exam. Your team should develop a content strategy to cover these topics on your website. Sign up for a Google Adwords account so you have  access to their free tool–Google Keyword Planner

You might believe they already know everything there is to know about a topic like eyecare, but you’d be surprised at how the patient will phrase the topics, keywords, or questions on a search engine.  Google Keyword planner will help you drill into the actual search keywords and phrases. 

To get started, examine the type of content that makes the top three search results on some relevant keywords for your practice. Does your website’s content include this type of information? If not, take advantage of the opportunity to repurpose some of your earlier content to make it more relevant to what your target audience is looking for online right now.

Make use of video

There has been a lot written about keywords and content. This is usually connected with written material like blog entries, white papers, state of the industry reports, etc. Video content, on the other hand, should be a 2022 goal if your practice is not already producing videos.

Just like your blog posts, you can adjust the title and meta description to optimize your videos for Google search. Craft engaging video titles and descriptions. Ideally, you’ve analyzed your keyword selection using Google keyword planner or an enhanced tool like BuzzSumo.  You can analyze your competitor keywords and go deep down the rabbit hole.  Bottom line, do your keyword research for videos to ensure you're targeting keywords that people are actually searching for.

Putting the Pieces Together

If you've been afraid of SEO in the past, don't bring those anxieties into the new quarter. Sure, we've presented a large list of things to do and modify, but many of them are interconnected. 

High-quality content, for example, results in more backlinks, which improves your credibility and page performance. This helps reduce your bounce rate, which signals to Google that your site is trusted. You get the idea.

So, while SEO may appear to be too much work or something to pass immediately to a SEO or marketing company, your practice should understand the basic mechanics to help develop quality content and hold your SEO and/or creative company accountable.