We’ve been making the most of the back-to-school season by going over the key parts of online veterinary marketing. Now, we’re almost done with your refresher course, so it’s time to go over one of the most important parts: SEO.
Today’s lesson is all about SEO.
Search engine optimization, or SEO, plays into many of the other factors of your strategy, including your overall online marketing, your content, and even your social media. It’s how search engines will index your website, which can have a huge impact on how many pet owners will find your website.
In fact, according to this study from Conductor, approximately 64% of web traffic comes from organic searches. This means that with a proper SEO strategy, which will help you rank highly on results pages, more than half of your potential clients will find your website using a search engine.
It’s not as scary as it sounds, though. Things are always changing in the world of SEO, and there are all kinds of techniques that you can use, but there are some basics that can help you keep up with it.
What’s the big deal about SEO?
Your website’s SEO, which is where most of your ranking will come from, is a straightforward way for your website to reach pet owners. By using the right words and phrases, you can lead pet owners directly to you, instead of getting tangled in the depths of search engine results.
So how can you get started with SEO?
1. Know your keywords.
Keywords, or keyword phrases, are very literally your key to search engines. These terms are what search engines will use to index your website, and using the right combinations of them in your veterinary content makes your website more accessible to local pet owners.
These words don’t just come out of thin air, though. Remember the research you did on your audience for your content and your buyer personas? You can use these to determine popular terms that—and this is important—are highly relevant to your clients and your practice.
2. Know the uses.
As much as it might seem like a good idea to pack in as many keywords as possible, this is a black hat technique that you should avoid. Be strategic, and pick the keywords that will lead people to the services that your practice actually offers.
3. Be ready to update things.
One of the trickiest parts about SEO is remembering that just because you’ve done it once doesn’t mean you’ve done it forever. Websites are always changing to attract the attention of search engines, and search engines are always evolving to filter results better.
You’ll need to be ready to update your content on a regular basis to ensure that your website shows as active, which encourages search engines to index it as a relevant and current website.
This doesn’t necessarily mean constantly uploading new pages; evergreen content, which continues to pull in traffic by being perpetually relevant, can be tweaked slightly every now and again to show that the pages are still active.
Knowing the vocabulary
SEO has all kinds of terms associated with it. Whether they’re new or freshly remembered, they’re certainly key words!
We’ve put together these handy flash cards to help you learn and remember what these terms mean.26266
Ready for your final quiz?
We’ll be posting the last quiz of this back-to-school season on all your newfound and freshly remembered knowledge on Thursday. Save this post and our social media cards for your study notes, and we’ll see you then!
Don’t worry, we aren’t keeping score. This is just for you and your veterinary clinic to practice.
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