SEO Basics For GP’s: A Complete Guide
A GP practice website is a hub for your patient community to go to for advice, support and to discover how to keep in touch with you. More and more GP’s are understanding the benefit of having a high performing website. It keeps people off the phone, helps them manage their own healthcare and takes away some of the admin tasks for your team. All of these aspects together deliver better outcomes. But one of the most overlooked aspects of a GP website is the SEO. Why would a GP practice need to have great SEO? What results would it bring? Let’s take a look at what it is and what it means.
What Is SEO?
Let’s start with the basics – SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It is the set of practices designed to give searchers the best results when they key a term into Google, Bing, Yahoo or one of the other search engines. The search engines live and die by giving people the most accurate results for their searches. And they do this by measuring aspects of your website for accuracy. Examples include –
- How long people stay on your website.
- Whether they can find what they want there.
- If your website offers a good experience while they are there.
And there are many other metrics – some acknowledged by the search engines, others not. There aren’t a published set of rules. Just a set of guidelines and experiences that indicate what will deliver great SEO results.
What Does This Mean For My GP Practice?
Well, there are a few aspects here that can affect how effective your website is. If you have spent good money on developing a website, then you need it to do what you want it to do. If you are in an area where patients have a choice of practices (and widening GP choice will be more common with virtual healthcare) then you want your practice to be the one chosen. If you want to be chosen, then you first need to be found. And this is where the SEO comes in. Our complete guide to SEO for GP’s shows you just what that means for you below.
What Are The Principles?
On the most basic level, you need to tell Google and the other search engines just what it is you are. So, if you’re a GP in Southampton then your website should mention the words –
“GP Southampton”
And a few other varieties, such as –
“healthcare Southampton”
“Southampton GP”
“GP Services Southampton”
You get the idea. Google wants you to tell them what it is your website does. And if that matches what people are looking for then they push you higher up the search engine results, meaning more people see your website. And when they stay for longer, Google and the others have more confidence in you, and you stay higher on their results – a virtuous circle.
How Do I Apply Them?
And this is both the easiest and most difficult part of SEO. In some ways it is simple – look at your website and work out what it is telling the search engines. In terms of SEO, there are two things happening here –
- What you are telling the search engines
- What you are telling your patients (or other visitors to the site)
What you are telling Google is that you are a GP in Southampton, as in our example. You should mention this multiple times (but not too many) on the relevant page. Remember though that this is the page people will land on when they click through from a search engine. So, it needs to look great and offer an amazing customer experience. So, what you tell Google and what you tell your website visitors align. And you win.
What Results Can I Expect?
This all depends on what results you want. The best SEO starts with a set of goals. Do you want to be the most found GP in Southampton? Do you want your website to drive more people to your practice? Tailoring your approach is part and parcel of what we do here at iatro, allowing you to get the website you need – and one that delivers the results you identify.
SEO For GP’s
This guide to SEO for GP’s has hopefully covered some of the basics for you. Effective SEO can transform the success of any business. GP practices are the same. If you have any questions about how effective SEO can work for you then please get in touch today.
