You’ve been telling yourself that your practice and your patients come first, so who has time to deal with this search engine optimization stuff? But in the interest of growing your practice and better service your community, search engine optimization, or SEO, can actually be advantageous and easy. Chances are that your practice already has a website that functions as a basic contact card. But it can be doing so much more for you.

Websites have become portals of information and interaction; web surfers are already searching for practices like yours but they might not be finding you. The following four points are easy to understand and easy to follow SEO tips that can give your website an instant boost and start bringing more patients your way.

Find Ways To Engage Your Patients
Keep in mind that nobody visits a website just for the sake of visiting it. When someone enters your website, they are looking for useful and relevant information that feels personalized to them. For a physician’s website, catering to your key demographic will be an important aspect of your SEO efforts. A blog is a great way to bring people in and to keep them coming back. Blogs can also raise brand awareness when they get Liked, shared, and emailed. But many doctors have been struggling with creating a successful blog and that’s can be attributed to primarily two reasons. First, the blogs are boring. Not everyone has a medical degree, nor do they wish to have one. Therefore, you should keep your blog in laymen’s terms that are easy to understand and relate to. Medical blogs also fail because even if you use plain English, your patients aren’t always willing to interact with you. A person’s medical issues are private so when they share your blog post about dietary supplements that can help with bowel movements, then they’ve kind of sold themselves out. Therefore, consider making your blog posts medical related but not too intrusive. Write about healthy lifestyles and how your practice is implementing certain activities to achieve those healthy lifestyles. Articles like that are much more likely to garner a response from patients.

Get Specific About Your Keywords
When somebody asks you what you do for a living, do you say, “I’m a doctor.” Or do you say, “I’m a radiologist.” More likely than not, you like to get specific about the type of medicine you practice. And why wouldn’t you? You’ve spent years studying your field, working in it, and making a name for yourself as a prominent radiologist. Your website should reflect that same mentality because people with specific needs aren’t just searching for “doctor,” they are searching for “best radiologist in Denver.” When you write the content for your website, keep specific keywords like that in mind. Google will rank you based on the keywords you display and how relevant they are, and that’s how patients will find you. However, don’t abuse the keywords. Writing “best radiologist in Denver” in every sentence on your website is called keyword stuffing and it will get you penalized by the search engines and deemed untrustworthy by your visitors.

Sign Up For Local Listings
Local search is becoming the new frontier on the Internet, and for healthcare providers, it can be your secret weapon. Take my example from the previous section. The search “best radiologist in Denver” is pretty specific about who they want and where. More and more searches are starting to look like this because people want localized results that fit their needs. And even if they forget to type in the location part, Google usually knows where that IP address is coming from and will display the top local results anyway. To take advantage of local search, sign up for Google+ and websites like Yelp! Your profiles, which will include your geographical location, will help more people find you, and the right kind of people, at that. Local search can be the next big thing for your practice; so don’t write it off just yet.

Have A Strong Call To Action
Your website might be the portal for interaction and information, but it’s not what gets people in the door. A call to action, on the other hand, is kind of like the homerun pitch for your website. Many people feel silly including a button that says “Call today for your free consultation!” because it seems too direct and borderline invasive. On the contrary, consumers have shown that they love forward companies that just tell them what they’re supposed to do. A simple “Call now!” button can be all it takes to convert a web surfer into a patient.

Don’t think of your website as a pesky nuisance that takes away from your time with patients. In fact, your website can be what gets you more patients on a daily basis. Invest some time implementing the above SEO tactics into your website and watch your practice’s reputation bloom and business thrive.

This article was writtten by Pete Wise, a Copywriter working for Carter Eye Center, a provider of Laser Eye Surgery in Dallas. Contact them to see if LASIK is right for you.