6 Tips for Enhancing SEO for Health Tech Marketers

6 Tips For Enhancing SEO for Health Tech Marketers

Oftentimes faced with a limited budget, healthcare marketers are constantly required to prioritize efforts. It can be difficult to find cost effective strategies that also make a strong impact. Many marketers find themselves cutting corners for the sake of costs, but with the implementation of inbound marketing there is no need. While inbound marketing can be labor intensive and can take time to build momentum, it can also be cost efficient and highly fruitful. We frequently recommend inbound marketing as a strategy for many of our health tech clients. Focused on using creative and useful content, inbound marketing is successfully able to attract leads more effectively than traditional methods.

One overarching priority of an inbound strategy is SEO. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization; it’s the process of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.

With an inbound strategy in mind, here are some key, free steps we recommend for increasing SEO for B2B health tech marketers.

1. Implement keywords (but not too many)
   

   Any new content uploaded to a website should feature keywords. When one enters information in a search engine, results featuring keywords in the search will appear. All new content posted to a company’s website--such as blogs or case studies--should use precise keywords. For us, that might be ensuring our content includes appropriate phrases like “healthcare marketing agency” or “health tech public relations firm.” We suggest coming up with a keyword list and making sure it’s easily accessible to the marketing team. Here’s a free tool we prefer and use in our own efforts. One note of caution: don’t try to include an entire list of keywords on one page. Focus on just a few, so the website is not dinged for “keyword stuffing.”

2. Update meta descriptions
   

   Many marketers know to write a meta description for any new pages they publish to the website. However, older pages in your company's archive may have old or missing meta descriptions. It’s worth a look back to see, and to update meta descriptions to increase click through rates in organic searches.

3. Name images
   

   In addition to including alt text for images, be sure to name the image itself, including a keyword. It’s an often-overlooked, but valuable best practice that affects SEO ranking in addition to keywords appearing in search results.

4. Expand your presence on social media
   

   One of the most powerful tools that increase SEO is social media. Posting consistent, high-quality content with keywords is a necessary part of any SEO strategy. A recent study revealed a correlation between social media activity of a company and SEO. Social media is just as important for healthcare B2B companies as other industries, it is whether B2B marketers use it to their advantage.

5. Refresh content
   

   Although labor intensive, one of the most critical aspects of inbound strategy is refreshing content. This is especially important in the world of Health IT due to the constant innovation. To offset that burden, consider refreshing older content with keywords and re-publishing.

6. Include contextual backlinks
   

   With Google frequently updating their algorithm, it is increasingly important to provide contextual backlinks. Often, the more backlinks a company provides, the more they will be viewed as an authority by Google and therefore placed higher in search results. Look for opportunities to share your content with other sites that are relevant to yours and swap high-quality backlinks--building domain authority along the way.