On-page optimization of your health and medical website is the first and probably most important factor to consider in the health and medical SEO (search engine optimization) from keyword rich and relevant content to heading and meta description tags. Good optimization can often carry your entire content on a well aged domain with little need for other SEO factors.
So what makes specialist medical SEO skills so important in on-page optimization?
Firstly, content is an essential factor. Content written by medical professionals with a firm grasp of the subject often adds greater SEO ‘weight’ than that written by non-medical content writers. Many content writers try their hand across all sectors of industry. A few hours of research and an article is churned out. This does not always make for a well referenced piece of content that not only has SEO value but carries authoritative weight with the reader.
Health & Medical SEO Metrics – User Time
Many readers are fairly well informed on medical subjects if it affects them personally and they are quick to identify incomplete content on the subject or that written by a non-medical writer. This will often lead them to click away or retry a new search query. At a time when other SEO metrics like average user time on site is a factor for rankings, comprehensive and well written medical content is essential in keeping your reader on site for the added SEO benefit.
Health & Medical Search Engine Queries
Medical writers are able to understand the topic at hand from both an academic perspective as well as that of a clinician who is dealing with patients (laypersons) daily. A good medical writer will be able to amalgamate both approaches into their content while still structuring keyword rich content for SEO purposes. Optimized content does not just mean excessive use of the medical condition or disease but will encompass a suitable density of signs, symptoms, causes and related information.
Search engine users do not always query the exact medical term or diagnosis. A combination of signs, symptoms and related causes or treatments are often added to their search query. The patient may not be able to spell the exact medical term and may instead opt to query their symptoms, the causes as explained by their medical practitioner or the drug name that they have been prescribed. If your medical content cannot rank for at least some of these terms, you will be losing essential search engine traffic.
This cannot be adequately understood or relayed by a non-medical content writer. Similarly, it will not be adequately utilized in heading tags, another important on-page SEO factor.
Health & Medical SEO – Meta Description and Keyword Research
Another essential factor in on-page optimization is your meta description tag. Without proper medical knowledge and an understanding of the patient or layperson’s psyche, meta description tags will not be optimized for both search engine relevance as well as reader interest. This is essential in stimulating further interest from the search engine user in order for them to click upon your link in the SERPs (search engine results page).
Lastly, the most important pre-content factor is keyword research. This goes beyond just using Wordtracker, Google Keyword or Suggest Keyword tool. Proper keyword research for competitive terms as well as long tail keyword optimization will ensure that your medical content catches the smaller but quality traffic from search engine users. However this often requires the input and knowledge of medically trained content writers. You title and URL can be equally beneficial in terms of SEO if structured accordingly.
Health & Medical Content Writers & SEO Consultants
At Corporate SEO Solutions, we put health and medical content back in the hands of the medical fraternity. Our independent medical consultants are either experienced medical content writers and practicing or retired medical practitioners or medical consultants specializing in SEO with appropriate certification. We find you the best in the business to ensure that your medical and health care content brings your website the maximum SEO value while ensuring reader interest.
For more information on health and medical content writing and SEO services by our specialist consultants, contact Corporate SEO Solutions.
April 28th, 2009 at 8:48 pm
[...] the freelance websites, you will find many freelance writers who claim to be well versed in health or medical content writing. It is generally believed that their few hours of reading and researching topics on Wikipedia and [...]