As a former healthcare reporter, I truly believe that content is king. With PR and marketing, great content will amplify the overall message that you are trying to relay to the public. This is why strong SEO practices are critical for your healthcare tech PR and marketing approach for your clients.
Focusing on SEO is always important, but this is definitely true with healthcare. Even if “healthcare IT” is your client’s niche, you can’t always expect “Healthcare IT” to be a descriptive enough keyword when writing a blog post, for example. It’s important to be specific, but general enough to still capture the right audience.
Healthcare IT can encompass lots of other subcategories. Your client might focus on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, so you could write a blog post titled, “3 Big Ideas in Healthcare IT.” But that could draw in the wrong audience because it’s too generic. Instead you might want to try, “3 Big Ideas in Healthcare AI and Machine Learning.”
Keep these five tips in mind when creating online content. Strengthening your SEO writing will definitely apply to multiple industries, but I’ll just be focusing on healthcare-specific examples.
1. Focus on the keywords
Sean Combs might know it’s “all about the Benjamins,” but when doing SEO-focused writing, it’s all about the keywords. Picking the right keywords is critical to helping your client get on that first page in Google search. What does the company do? Where are they located? These are just two ways to narrow down the specifics in keyword options.
Let’s say that your client specializes in “healthcare cloud services,” which would definitely work as a keyword. But you can also try using “cloud services in healthcare” or even long-form keywords, such as “HIPAA compliant healthcare cloud services.”
Also make sure you are incorporating your keywords into four key spots in a blog: the title tag, headers and body, the URL, and the meta description.
2. Utilize your links
Having internal and external links will also make articles and blogs stronger. It’s good SEO practice to have internal links back to your own webpage, such as linking back to a product/program page when you first mention it in a blog. For external links, feel free to link to legitimate sources, such as government resources like the Department of Health and Human Services or the Centers for Disease Control.
It’s important to strike the right balance with linking. Too many links, and you could come off as spammy or as just advertising for others. Not enough links and the article might not seem credible.
3. Take advantage of analytics
Monitoring your websites with analytics measurement is another key step. This can help show you what stories or topics are doing well and hone in on what people are actually reading and searching for. Did that one article you thought would do well only keep viewers on the page for five seconds? See what keywords are bringing in those page views, and try to toss in more articles that focus on that topic.
Comparing to similar companies can also be beneficial. What sort of topics are your client’s top competitors writing about? Can you find a new and unique way to present the same issue?
Finally, remember the power of location-based searches. Do you have offices in multiple cities? Try writing an evergreen piece for “Minneapolis healthcare firms”, in addition to “Boston healthcare firms.”
4. The power of social media
Social media is your friend – be good to it! Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook all provide great options for communication. You can utilize all of them for posting links to blog posts or for when your client’s company has job openings. Or, try retweeting an article that discusses a topic that aligns with your client’s company. To that same effect, engage on social media channels when a story says the opposite of your client’s mission or values. Initiating a healthy discussion on topics can also help get your client’s name out there.
5. Tie in images
Finally, carefully consider all images that you use with any posts. This includes choosing images that actually relate to the article and being aware of your image alt text. Search engines don’t “see” the same way as humans, so providing accurate, descriptive text to what your image is will help tell what the image is about. For example, change the image title from “IMG123” to “woman jogging daytime.”
Overall, strengthening your SEO approach in your online writing will help your client. It keeps the content readable, searchable, and beneficial to current and future customers.
