Optimizing voice search for your medical, health or wellness website
As technology advances, we need to keep up with best practices. More and more, people are using voice search from their smart devices to look for local businesses. In the past these searches pertained mainly to restaurants and brick and mortar stores. Increasingly, we are seeing voice search impacting how medical, health and wellness practices will be found. For practitioners to have a significant edge over their competitors, it is necessary that they apply best practices to optimizing their websites for both web and voice searches.Â
Which factors go into optimizing your website in the first place?
- A responsive website. That means the pages will adjust to whichever device is being used. Your responsive website will look and function well across all devices and all browsers.Â
- Speed. Your website needs to load quickly. Search engines prefer the fastest loading sites. They will rank the fastest competing websites higher on the page.Â
- SSL certificates. Having an SSL certificate means that your website is secure and that user data is protected. When you see https in front of the site address, it means the website has a security certificate. Most decent hosting companies will include a https certificate in the hosting plan.Â
- Long articles or blog posts that provide valuable information. Google is requiring 1000-18000 words in blog posts in order to determine ranking. New studies indicate that 2300-2400 word posts rank highest. However, most people want instant results so be sure to use headings to delineate sections and lead them to the information that they are seeking.Â
- Your patients or clients will be looking for answers so include a patient/ client frequently asked questions page where you introduce the basics such as insurance questions or how you address certain problems. Don’t be afraid to answer the most basic questions about your specialty, what it is that you do, and what you can do to help the user.
- Big contact buttons that can be pressed easily from a phone.
50% OF ALL SEARCHES WILL BE VOICE SEARCHES BY 2020
How should you optimize your website for voice searches?
We are increasingly using our smartphones to conduct searches. Because of that fact and that keyboards on phones are tiny and difficult to type into, voice search has become more commonplace.
Talking and typing are two different animals.Typing uses certain keywords and is short and to the point.
Conversational speech, on the other hand is much different. It does use long tail keywords but it mostly uses a question format.Â
For example: Oncologic massage therapist Chicago v.s. Who is the best rated oncologic massage therapist near (my suburb or neighborhood).
How does your audience think in terms of your specialty or practice?
Digital marketer, Neil Patel, recommends using the free tool Answer the Public to get natural results in determining how a question might be phrased. When you enter a keyword, it generates questions pertaining to that keyword.Â
Additionally, you can upgrade the service to get results for your specific location.
Possible results when you enter a search term
Patel also says that you can gain traction by incorporating words that refer to your particular location, the words near me,or landmarks. For example:
- Oncologic massage therapist near Northwestern Hospital.
- Oncologic massage therapist in Streeterville.
- Oncologic massage therapist near me.
Groups using voice search at least once daily
Voice search is increasing among all age groups.Â
Make sure your business is listed on Google
To improve your local results, it is critically important for you to claim your business on Google.
- There you will post photos representative of your business
- You will also add business hours.
- Your location
- Your phone number
- A link to your website
- And most importantly, KEEP YOUR INFORMATION UP TO DATE
Begin here:
Your reviews will also be located there. Ask your clients for reviews. After you meet with them, send a thank you follow up email and ask for a review. Provide a link to Google reviews and instructions.
It is also important to respond to reviews once you get them.
Near me searches are rising exponentially
To read more about how Google voice searches are being used:
Searches are getting more sophisticated
Clients will be asking questions such as, ‘Who is the best massage therapist for a cancer patient in Chicago?Â
OR
Where can I find the best oncologic massage therapist ?
We can address that by knowing that those searches have local intent and optimize for them that way.
We can also optimize for voice search by using a conversational tone in our writing, particularly in the FAQ section of our websites.
‘BEST’ WILL BE DETERMINED BY YOUR GOOGLE AND YELP REVIEWS
VOICE SEARCHES ARE CRITICALLY IMPORTANT TO PEOPLE WHO ARE DISABLED OR INJURED
For patients who are elderly, disabled or injured, voice searches can be a helpful tool.
Additionally, voice searches will have applications moving forward that impact patient and client care from scheduling appointments to outsourcing medical advice to Amazon devices like Alexa. Amazon has already partnered with the National Health Service in the UK to give informational health advice, such as –How do I treat a cold?
In the USA, Cigna has partnered with Amazon / Alexa to provide voice access to certain services.Â
To read more:
Web Search is still relevant
In light of what is developing, medical, health and wellness practitioners would be wise to have their websites optimized for both voice and web search.Â
Many clients or patients will still want to visit your website to read about you and your services before making a decision based on voice search alone.Â
We began our practice writing content and we can match your voice in creating blog posts, page content, FAQ pages. We would like to help in not only creating your website but updating your content to reflect the important changes that will affect our future. Please call us or click the button to get in touch.Â
