How We Optimize Your Veterinary Site For More Traffic in 2022

HOW WE OPTIMIZE YOUR VETERINARY SITE FOR MORE TRAFFIC 

Veterinary practices often connect with new clients in a number of ways. Many clients may come to you through referral traffic, for example, after being recommended by someone they know or trust like a friend, dog rescue, or breeder. 

But what about the clients who are searching on Google to try to find a practice to take great care of their pets? These clients are why veterinary search engine optimization (SEO) is so important. 

By consistently taking the right steps on your site and overall online presence, we can increase the chance that your practice’s site will rank well for relevant searches. This can bring traffic to your site, and new clients through the door. 

While SEO does require ongoing effort, let’s take a look at 4 steps we take to optimize your veterinary site for increased SERP rankings and a boost in online traffic. 

What is Veterinary SEO?

Veterinary SEO, or veterinary search engine optimization, is a process of improving the visibility and ranking of a website in search engine results pages (SERPs). The higher a website appears in SERPs, the more likely it is to be clicked on by users. SEO can be achieved through a variety of techniques, such as optimizing site content, building backlinks, and improving site speed. When used properly, SEO can be an extremely effective tool for driving traffic to a website. Not only does it improve visibility and click-through rates, but it can also help to build brand awareness and create a positive association with the website. In other words, SEO can have a positive impact on all aspects of a website's performance.

However, Vet SEO is not a guaranteed or easy process. It takes time, effort, and determination to see results. Additionally, there is no guarantee that a website will maintain its position in SERPs indefinitely. The competition for visibility is constantly evolving, and new websites are constantly being created. As such, it is important to keep up with the latest trends and techniques in order to stay ahead of the curve. Some effective SEO strategies include optimizing site content, building backlinks, and avoiding common pitfalls, such as keyword stuffing or creating thin content. Ultimately, a successful SEO strategy requires continuous learning, experimentation, perseverance, and above all else, patience.

Now that we understand what vet search engine optimization is, let's find out how our team optimizes your site for more traffic.

Conduct Thorough Keyword Research

Keyword research is a crucial part of vet search engine optimization. It will allow us to identify low-competition, high-volume keywords that we can then optimize your content with to rank for.

Keywords like “Orlando vet,” for example, we see a list of relevant searches that shows us exactly what phrases people are using to search for services like yours. So we can optimize your website for those keywords.

Using location-based keywords with your city or region is typically a good call unless you offer telehealth services. The idea is simple, people who search for your service will usually put the location so the search results come back with vets who are nearby. 

We then prioritize each keyword group and prepare specific plans for each.

1. Low-Competition, High-Volume Keywords - These will be the first priority as ranking for these keywords will send positive signals to Google and other search engines.
2. Local Keywords - The whole point of SEO is for your business to be seen by people within your local area. They will be the second priority as they will bring in the people who will actually need your services.‍
3. High-Competition, High-Volume Keywords - For these types of keywords, the team will prepare a complete content plan that will take into consideration the competition, the needs of the readers, and the ultimate goal of your practice. While these keywords can bring in the most traffic, there’s no use trying to force yourself to rank for it quickly because your competition will be gunning for these keywords as well.

Preparing A Content Marketing Plan

Once we identify a list of strong keywords, customized to your practice, we can optimize your content by doing the following:

• Adding keywords to different site pages and mentioning it in the site copy. Use the same primary keyword on the page’s meta description. 
• Including keywords in alternative text for images.
• Adding keywords into your page titles and tags. 

Aside from improving your existing content, the team will also prepare a content marketing plan that will cover all the other keywords. The content marketing plan will detail what type of content the team will make, when it will be published, and what purpose it serves. 

With a content marketing plan in place, you will be assured that your website will experience and increase in both the rankings and organic keywords on the search engines.

Create Valuable Resources For Your Visitors

Content marketing is all about creating valuable resources that would bring your audience to your site and start to build a relationship with them. Content marketing can include writing blog posts, creating lead magnets like a checklist of what new pet owners need to purchase, and strong FAQ sections on your site to answer questions like “what age should I spay my dog?”

For best results, we keep the following in mind: 

• Content marketing should take long-tail keywords into consideration, like “why does my dog need a heartworm preventative” or “best brands of cat food.” These terms often have lower competition, making them easier to rank for. These are also actual questions that people ask on the search engines. By offering an “answer” you are already providing value to your readers.
• Your content should always match search intent. We don’t try to twist a keyword to mean something we want just because it’s got a high search volume; it won’t be useful to readers. This will just resort to people moving away from your page instead of reading more of your other work.
• Link to relevant pages on your site in your blog post to encourage potential clients to get in touch. This is called internal linking and it helps both human readers and robot crawlers.

In certain cases, the best kind of SEO is not thinking about SEO at all. When you focus more on the value your readers get from your work, it certainly trumps trying your best to fit in multiple keywords in one piece of work. 

Improve Your Google My Business Profile 

Your Google My Business (GMB) profile is a listing that we can create to appear in Google’s local directory. We’ll enter information like a description of your business, contact information, location and customize images of your business. This will help you appear in local searches, and can drive traffic to your site accordingly.

To get more visibility with GMB, we take the following steps:

• Add the best primary category for your business on Google to ensure you come up for the right searches with additional sub-categories.
• Include high-intent keywords in the “About” section of your brand.
• We provide the best practices on how to collect as many reviews as you can from existing clients. Listings with a larger number of higher ranking reviews will get priority with GMB, and it will also attract user attention, too. 

Other tips that can help improve your GMB include:

1. Getting more reviews - Reviews are the lifeblood of a GMB listing. Even if your business has an optimized GMB listing, people will still choose the competition if they have more reviews than you. So make sure you get all your clients to review your business on Google.
2. Having an active profile - GMB now allows businesses to post updates on GMB. This can be new promotions, changes in schedule, or just about any update you can give your possible customers. Google loves it if you keep your prospective customers in the know so don’t hesitate to use this feature.
3. Relevant pictures - One other thing that most businesses forget in their GMBs is putting relevant pictures. Aside from including images of your practice’s facade, add in images of your various rooms so people know how the inside looks like.

Monitor & Improve Traffic with Google Analytics Insights 

To drive more traffic to your veterinary website, it only makes sense that we know what traffic you already have and what’s bringing it to you.

Google Analytics is wildly helpful here. It’s a free analytics tool that we quickly install on your site with just a few clicks. It will show us how much traffic you’re getting, which channels are bringing in the traffic, and even what keywords are bringing you the largest share of your traffic. 

Paying close attention to your analytics we are able to optimize your traffic for the best possible results. For example, if you are only seeing traffic from a few keywords, it may mean that we need to re-optimize your site with new terms. It might also show that your GMB listing is driving more traffic than standard SERP clicks. Our team continually optimizes your veterinary SEO and monitors the results.

Looking to drive more traffic to your veterinary website with organic SEO traffic? Get in touch with us to learn more about how we can help.