Basic SEO for Vet Practices

If you've ever investigated what's involved in digital or online marketing you've probably come across the term "SEO" (or search engine optimisation) before.

But what exactly is SEO? And how can it benefit your vet practice?

This is the blog post for you!

What is SEO?

Basically, search engine optimisation is the process of increasing the visibility of a website to users of a search engine.

This is done in a variety of ways, from adding/editing HTML code and rewriting content to focus on specific keywords to increase the number of external websites that link to yours.

As opposed to PPC (pay-per-click), SEO is all about improving the organic, natural, unpaid search results. 

When Google (or other search engines) crawl your website, they pick up information everywhere, from the text and images on your pages to the meta descriptions and alt tags being used to describe your pages and images - optimising these elements is how you improve your ranking in the search results.

Why does my practice need SEO?

When was the last time you picked up a copy of the Yellow Pages to find a business?

You're probably more likely to search on the Yellow Pages website than the book itself.

Regardless, when people want to find something these days they search for it online - and even more specifically, they Google it.

Therefore, it's much more important for your practice to show up in Google search results than it is in the Yellow Pages (and cheaper, too). 

If someone is searching for "dog spay Gold Coast" and your practice is based on the Gold Coast and spays dogs, you're going to want your practice's website to appear in the results for this search - and on the first page, if possible (the majority of searchers never go past the first page).

This is where SEO comes in - you need to optimise your website to ensure it (or a webpage) focuses on spaying dogs in the Gold Coast so when Google crawls the website it knows its relevant result to display in this search.

However, an important warning: be careful of "keyword stuffing." Google knows when you're cramming as many keywords as possible on your website to try and manipulate the search results. Not only will this not work, but it will probably negatively affect you - your website will go down in the search results as punishment.

Conclusion

SEO can be a difficult thing to master - not only is technology and the internet always evolving, but the way both users and search engines browse the web and read websites is always changing too.

However, just a few simple strategies can often result in massive improvements to your website and therefore your business.

If you're interested in learning more about SEO, talk to Vet Marketing Services today.

Or keep reading here.