Trying to market your optometry business is a difficult task. You need to work on your patients and ensure that you deliver the best possible care, so focusing on your marketing efforts isn’t always a top priority. However, it’s hard to get patients in the door if they don’t know that your optometry business exists. Learning how to take advantage of digital marketing techniques and tactics can help you capture the audience you need in order to grow your business.
One of the best strategies is optimizing for organic search. Organic search is a great way to get discovered by people in your local area who are searching for an optometry office. In this article, we’ll help you learn all you need to know with organic search best practices for optometrists that you can start implementing today.
What is Organic Search and Local SEO?
Organic search, also referred to as local SEO, is the process of taking steps to improve your visibility on search engines for local businesses. While all businesses can use organic local search, it tends to be the easiest to implement for businesses that have a brick-and-mortar location. By implementing these different strategies for local search, you can get discovered by people in your area who can then be turned into patients.
Think about what a page looks like when you search for a business in your area. You will get a list of links and results that display the most relevant businesses that fall within your identified geographical location. By using different signals such as locally-branded content, social media pages, and links, you can start ranking higher and higher on results pages. That helps you get discovered by a wider audience.
What Factors Determine Your Visibility in Local Organic Search Results?
When ranking your business, there are a few different factors that search engine algorithms will consider. The most significant of these is where the majority of your effort should be focused on in order to improve your organic rankings.
- Google Business Profile: Your Google Business Profile is the most important directory listing that your business can have. It’s the profile that will show up with a map search or at the top of search results pages for local searches. Keeping this profile updated and accurate is a major step towards success with organic search.
- Business Directories: In addition to Google, there are other online business directories that you need to claim. That might include profiles on Bing, Yahoo, Yelp, or other local business directories for optometrists.
- Social Media Profiles: Search engines aren’t the only place where your profiles need to be. Social media is an important part of your online presence, so having information on your profiles and making sure that you are posting consistently is an important part of organic search.
- Website Design: Your website is the final element that contributes to your organic search rankings. The more helpful, informative, and accessible your website is, the more highly ranked it will be on Google and other search engines. Improving your content and focusing on UX will help you create a great website.
Benefits of Appearing in Organic Search Results
There are many important benefits to appearing at the top of organic search results for local searches. They can help you achieve your marketing growth goals so that you can succeed in your efforts and get new patients into your optometry business.
Greater Online Visibility
The first major benefit of organic search is the greater online visibility you can achieve. When you have a strong online presence, you can find new patientsx easier. You’ll appear higher on search results for relevant keywords and local searches. That will help you stand out and be showcased as the best optometry option in the area.
Outrank Your Competitors
Not every business, particularly in the medical field, spends a lot of time working on marketing tactics. That can give you an advantage over your competitors in the local area. If you claim your online real estate before anyone else, you can enjoy a comfy advantage over other optometrists in your area by ranking above them for local searches.
Drive More Traffic to Your Website
Another key benefit of organic search is the leads you can get from traffic being driven to your website. When you appear in the top search results, you are going to get more clicks than people who are lower in the results. That can create a stream of traffic that flows into your website, where you can then work on converting them into patients.
Educate Your Patients
Another great benefit of ranking high on search results is the ability to educate your patients. When you provide helpful information, like explanations on procedures, or answer common questions about eye care, you can create relationships with your patients and provide value to them that lasts for years. That helps prove your worth and makes you their top choice when they need to visit an optometrist.
Local SEO Tips
Now that you know why SEO matters, let’s take some time to consider a few tips and tricks that you can implement. These best practices are going to help you find new patients and create practices that will help you get all the benefits of organic search success.
1. Improve Your Google Business Profile
The first key tip is to improve and update your Google Business Profile. Because this profile is what will display for local searches, you need to put time and effort into making it great. Uploading photos, adding relevant social posts, and replying to reviews and comments all help improve your Google Business Profile.
2. Be Active on Social Media
Social media is one of the key factors that influences your positioning on search results. By being active and having a consistent posting schedule, you can prove to algorithms that you are actively working on your online presence. You can also post those social media updates to your Google Business Profile.
3. Maintain Consistency
You’ll need to have several channels for our online presence in order to successfully optimize your organic search results. That means that you’ll likely have several profiles that all need updating. You need to maintain consistency when it comes to brand information, your business name, address, and phone number.
4. Claim Your Business on Local Directories
If you don’t claim your business on local directories, there is always a chance that someone else will. You can optimize your presence there with photos, reviews, and information about the business that help organic search results.
5. Optimize Your Information
Your information isn’t just about what is publicly available. There are behind the scenes tactics that also impact your rankings. Things like your urls, title tags, headers, meta descriptions, and content on the website all can be optimized for SEO. Each time you update your website, check on your metadata to make sure it is filled in and consistent.
6. Create Location Pages
Another great way to make sure you are found for local search results is to create location pages. If you have different offices or serve different locations in your area, you should create an individual page for each location. That helps you rank high in multiple locations, expanding your potential audience.
7. Create Local Content
In addition to local pages, you can also create local content. That’s things like social posts, photos, or blogs that reference where you are located or tag the location if possible. This will also help you prove your location to search algorithms and help you appear for more “near me” style local searches.
8. Focus on Mobile-Friendly Web Design
Most people will access your website on their mobile device. If your website is only designed for a desktop view, you can detract people from the information you provide with a bad user experience. Focusing on mobile-friendly design will help you deliver a great experience to patients who are searching for you on their smartphones or tablets, not just on their computers.
9. Engage Your Local Community
A final tip that can help your optometry business is to engage and work with your local community. If you can get links from other businesses in your area or your local community members and chamber of commerce, it helps improve your relevancy and authorizes key search signals for search engines to use.
Attend a Surefire Local Marketing Platform Demo
In order to ensure that you get the best results possible for your optometry business, you need to work with the right tools. Surefire Local is a marketing platform and business intelligence tool that helps you take control of all aspects of your business marketing, including your organic search and local SEO efforts. Surefire Local can help you monitor your rankings, publish new content, and track performance on your website pages.
To learn more about Surefire Local and what it can do for your optometry business, get a demo of the platform today.