SEO Tips For Physical Therapists and Physios You Can Do Now

Many of the Physical Therapists and Physios we speak to and have worked with cite their love of physical activity, exercise, and sports as some of the main reasons they got into it in the first place.

Master’s degrees, Doctorates, clinical hours, NPTE and certifications from ABPTS in the US, PCE and CAPR competency exams in Canada. Not to mention all the continuing education courses and certifications. You are an expert in your field.

So you opened a practice, and like most businesses you understand the importance of a solid website, and you likely spent a lot to get one made. After all, a good website is the cornerstone of any sort of successful internet marketing effort.

Then, you start working with a marketer because your specialty is making people feel better, and theirs is driving traffic and leads from the internet. maybe you see results, maybe you don’t. And that’s the rub isn’t it. Since it’s not your specialty, it’s hard to know what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, and why it works.

Lot’s of times internet marketers and SEO’s take your money for a while, and when stuff doesn’t work out, they bolt. And since they know why the tactics work and you don’t, you’re just kind of left out to dry.

We did a lot of this and more for our client, Prairie Trail Physiotherapy. If you’re interested in getting an in-depth look, have a look at their case study here. 

This post was written to show you how to help yourself. These are 3 things you can do by yourself to help your own SEO and digital marketing efforts and take charge of your own destiny.

1.  Create a Google my business profile.

a. A Google My Business profile is your way of telling Google about your business so that Google can in turn tell anyone looking for a Physio about you, and where you are on the map. It contains your address, hours, contact info, a link to make appointments, company description, what category your business is in, areas you serve, what services you provide, images, and even shows how many times your profile and location were viewed in searches and in the maps.

b. It also is where receive and respond to reviews, so when you show up in a Google search, your reviews could appear as well.

Note: Make sure your address and contact info (known in the marketing industry as NAP Name Address Phone) are exactly as how you have it on your site, down to the way you abbreviate (or don’t) the word street or boulevard, including the period at the end. It should be the same everywhere you have an online profile, which we’ll get to in a second.

 

   2.  Create online citations.

a. Citations – These are online mentions of your business’ NAP. Google uses them when searching for information of your business. Could be social profiles, business directories, location-specific sites, and any other platforms like blogs, news sites, and others. Again, need to make sure your NAP is consistent across the board, as inaccurate citations can lead to misdirection and misunderstanding, giving you a negative reputation.

   3.  Optimize your most important web pages properly.

a. These are most likely the pages related to physical conditions and their treatments. Now Google doesn’t say what their algorithm is looking for when it comes to ranking, but the top 5 in a search tell you exactly what you need to know about how to shape your content.

b. So what are the most important elements to optimize? They are the address of the page in question, the headline text on the page, and the ratio of keywords to total text on the page.

c. When you create a page, make sure that your main keyword is in the web address. Whether it’s a condition or a treatment, the web address is the first thing that Google looks at when deciding what pages to show in a search.

Example: physiotherapy.ca/sports-injury-treatment

d. For the Headline text, put the same keyword that you have in the web address

Example: Manitoba’s Best Sports Injury Treatment Center

e. For keyword to text ratio, just search for the relevant keyword, check the top 5 practices that come up (don’t look at directories like Yelp or Facebook pages that come up), do a word count of those pages, take note of how many times your main keyword showed up on each of those pages, then take the average of the amount of text, and an average amount of time the keyword is mentioned, and take the ratio of how many times the keyword is mentioned. This will give you an approximate amount of words you need on your page, as well as the number of times the keyword should be dropped into the text.

 

So we told you there’d be three, but here’s a bonus. Since the above three tactics will help get traffic to your site, we’d be remiss if we didn’t give a tip on how to convert them into clients.

• You need a call to action placed prominently on the page, not just the header and footer contact us links.
• Make the schedule an appointment button pop out at the visitor, so when they have become impressed by your knowledge and treatments, it is super easy for them to take the next step to make that appointment.

To sum up, there are a bunch of things you can do to keep the destiny of your company in your own hands. These are only four. But they are four solid ones that will get and convert web traffic.

If you like what we wrote, and want some guidance on how to execute, just give us a call at 2048180877 or shoot us an email us at info@morehotleads.com and we’ll be happy to help.