SEO for Allied Health: Our First Year of Learning

1. What services are you offering?

Before you can actually think about a company name and create a logo, you would always start with “what?“. What services can you and would you like to offer to potential clients. For us, we decided that we would focus on local SEO for allied health clinic specifically. This was because there were already many companies out there doing general SEO, but not too many focused solely on the allied health space.

By narrowing down our focus, it helped us later to come up with our company name and logo. If you can’t think of anything yet, that’s okay! Just keep brainstorming and you’ll come to something eventually.

2. Identify who is your target market

Identifying your “what” goes hand in hand with “who“. You wouldn’t want to offer a service that doesn’t cater to anyone, would you?

In order to identify our target market, we did some research on allied health clinics. We looked at things such as their location, clinic size and the services they offered. This gave us a good idea of who our ideal client was.

Once you’ve identified your target market, it becomes a lot easier to create marketing materials that appeal specifically to them.

For example, if you’re targeting small allied health clinics in the suburbs, you’ll want to make sure your website and marketing materials are geared towards that demographic.

3. Secure your brand properties

Now that you’ve identified your “what” and “who“, we can say that you should pretty much have an idea what you would like to call your company. This is a crucial step and should not be taken lightly.

Why? Because your company name will be associated with all of the services you offer, so it’s important to make sure that you like it and more importantly, that it accurately represents what you do.

Let’s say you’ve settled with a company name, it’s time to secure all of your brand properties. This includes things like your domain name, social media handles and any other online assets that you can think of.

If you’re not sure where to start, we recommend doing a quick Google search for “branding checklist” or something similar. This will give you a good idea of the things you need to do in order to protect your brand.

As our allied health marketing skillset grows, we’ve also started to experiment with other SEO tools and tactics. Here are some allied health SEO tools that we’ve found to be helpful:

• Google Search Console: This is a free tool from Google that allows you to track your website’s performance in the search results. It’s a valuable resource for seeing things like which keywords your website is ranking for, how much traffic you’re getting from Google and more.
  
• Bright Local: This is a paid tool that we use for tracking our local SEO performance. It’s been helpful for seeing things like how our website is ranking in the local search results, as well as getting insights into our competitors. If you’re just starting out with allied health marketing, we recommend doing some research and testing to see what works best for you and your business. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution, so experimentation is key!
  
• Screaming Frog: This is a free tool that helps you to audit your website for things like broken links, duplicate content and more. It’s a great way to find any potential issues with your website that may be preventing it from ranking higher in the search results.
  
• Asana: This is a free (also has a paid option) project management tool that we use for organising our allied health SEO tasks. It’s been really helpful for keeping track of what needs to be done and who is responsible for each task.

There are a number of allied health SEO strategies that you can implement on your website to help improve your ranking in the search results. Here are some of our favourites:

• Create / Update your GMB Details: Make sure your business details (name, address, phone number, etc.) are up-to-date and accurate on Google My Business. This is one of the most important factors for ranking in the local search results. You also want these business details in sync with what you have on your website.

• Optimize your Website: Make sure your website is properly optimized for SEO. This includes things like adding keywords to your titles tags, metatags and header tags, as well as making sure your website is mobile-friendly and loads quickly.

• Create Quality Content: One of the best ways to improve your ranking in the search results is to create high-quality, informative content that is relevant to your allied health business. This could be in the form of blog posts, infographics, videos, etc.

• Submit your Site to Directories: There are a number of online directories that you can submit your website to in order to increase your exposure and improve your ranking in the search results.