10 Must-Dos to Optimize Your Healthcare Site for Voice Search
How often have you been multitasking only to need to search for something online and don’t have a free pair of hands? Thanks to voice search, now you can multitask and search – as can your patients.
According to reports, most people would prefer to use voice search to look up something, anyway, as opposed to typing in their queries.
If your practice is yet to include voice search functionality, it’s time to take notice. What’s important is that the difference between spoken and typed queries can lead to different SERP results. That means your competitor’s voice search optimized website could have a better chance of engaging your potential patients if your site is lacking this functionality.
Of course, you want your website to rank highly when it comes to finding and retaining patients, but what can you do to prepare your site for voice search and achieve better rankings?
Here are 10 must-dos.
1. Concentrate on Location
Localized search engine optimization (SEO) is important when it comes to voice search. Your practice or business’s location must be optimized since voice searches look for local results first.
2. Easy to Read Content
One of the greatest benefits of voice assistance is that it attempts to match questions and answers more directly. That’s why you should keep your content simple. Also, aim to give direct answers to your patients and prospect’s questions. Make it obvious that you have the answers.
That being said, avoid over-optimizing since algorithms are constantly evolving. Focus on providing quality content and let SEO be a bonus.
3. Carefully Research Keywords
Keep in mind that your patients are going to use voice search and not typed keywords. This means you need to deal with longer keywords – it’s just the nature of human communication.
For example, rather than targeting a keyword like “pediatrician near me,” you should focus on something along the lines of “where is there a pediatrician in or nearby Greenville?”
Voice isn’t so much about delivering you results options. Rather, it directs internet users to an action.
4. Page Speed
Page speed refers to how long it takes for your web page to load. This can influence whether or not your site appears in voice search results.
Picture a potential patient using voice search. Chances are, they’re in a hurry or using their mobile device on the go. To reach those searchers, optimizing your page speed should be a high priority.
Start by analyzing your current website speed. There are plenty of tools out there that’ll tell you whether or not your current loading time is fast or not and suggest how to speed it up.
It’s worth noting that mobile speed is far more important than desktop in terms of voice search optimization. The same goes for the overall design of your website. You need to ensure your website is mobile-friendly as that’s where most voice searches are happening.
5. Keep Content Local
I mentioned making your site local, and the same goes for your content. By providing content that’s locally relevant, you cater to the local needs of your customers or patients and it goes a long way to boosting your SEO for wearable tech and voice-search.
You don’t need your business or practice to be local to produce local content. But you can publish tons of local content that will bring more traffic to your business, no matter where you may be.
6. Make Use of Structured Formatting
Studies show that Google voice answers often come from a Google Featured Snippet. These are sometimes called quick answers, and they’re essentially summaries from certain websites. Often, they include a link to the information source.
To ensure your website is featured, you need to make sure that you’re providing concise answers to the questions your audience are asking the most.
7. It’s All About User Experience
Unlike with regular search results, voice search concentrates on your website for querying. So, it’s important to make sure that the voice assistant can access all the information needed, and quickly. It also means your site should be fast, mobile-friendly, and HTTPS secured.
8. Don’t Ditch Regular SEO
Keep concentrating on old-school SEO and producing high-quality content, and you’re likely to do well in voice search anyway. That’s exactly why websites with better rankings, high social engagement, and high domain authority just do better in voice search.
9. It’s Time to Use SSL
Besides speed, Google also prefers websites that are certified and secure. In other words, it favors websites that can be trusted, no matter what industry you’re in and whether you’re just running a blog or an entire eCommerce website.
The HTTPs protocol makes sure that visitors and the Google bots know your site can be trusted and complies with good online practices.
10. Don’t Be Afraid to Experiment
Finally, play around with conversational interfaces. They’re different from traditional web interfaces in that instead of searching for something like “doctors in Alabama,” you simply say, “find me a doctor in Helena, Alabama.” By doing this, users can skip the often multitude of steps involved in finding what they want, and actually find it faster.
Get Your Website Ready for Voice Search
More and more people are already using voice search, and there is no doubt that its popularity will grow significantly in the next few years. If you’re already taking voice search optimization into account, you may have already noticed an improvement in your content visibility. That’s because voice search results increasingly narrow results to the top pages.
It may all sound a bit ominous, but voice search really is the future, and if you’re not working towards preparing your site for this, you could just be missing out on the significant potential to grow your business and your bottom line.
With that in mind, isn’t it time you got your site ready for the future?
Image: Pexels
