As competition in healthcare heats up, drug rehabs should also consider conquering the search results. The question is how.
This post shares a five-step guide to building a scalable search engine optimization (SEO) strategy.
What Is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
SEO is tricky, so defining it should be first on our to-do list. What is it? How does it help your rehab facility?
To better understand SEO, let us talk about how search engines work. They have three key parts:
Crawling. Search engines “crawl” the Internet with bots or web spiders. These programs visit websites and read their code to understand the site’s content and structure. The goal is to add new pages to the search engine’s index.
Indexing. Once the search engine crawls a page, it “indexes” it. In other words, it becomes part of the results database. The indexing process also helps the search engine understand your page’s purpose and relevancy to certain keywords.
Serving. When a user types in a query and hits “enter,” the search engine “serves” the results. The engine retrieves the most relevant pages from its index and displays them, with the most relevant appearing first.
Your page’s ranking depends on search engine algorithms and signals. An algorithm is a set of rules that the search engine uses to determine what appears in the results.
Meanwhile, a signal is a quality metric the search engine looks for when crawling and indexing your pages. These include keyword relevancy, site structure, user experience (UX), and backlinks.
According to Digital Authority Partners (DAP), drug rehab SEO, therefore, is about:
Optimizing your pages so that they can appear on the search results, preferably on the first page or, even better, the first position
Using techniques that align with search engine ranking signals and algorithm updates
So you can meet your marketing goals, which range from brand awareness to lead generation and patient retention
5-Step Guide to Launching a Drug Rehab SEO
Now that you know the SEO basics let us get into the dirty work. Here are five steps to launch such a campaign from scratch:
1. Identify Your Marketing Objective
SEO is highly versatile; you can implement it to support your digital marketing goal. But you should be clear about what you want to achieve to give it direction, allocate resources more efficiently, and guide the rest of the steps below.
You can set whatever objectives you like. But we strongly suggest picking quantifiable, measurable, relevant, and specific ones. For example:
Increase click-through rate (CTR) by 5% and decrease bounce rate by 1% (consider industry benchmarks for these).
Boost the number of leads by 30% year-over-year (refer to your historical data).
Receive 200 phone calls from the website monthly.
Achieve a 5% conversion rate on the contact us page.
Get 20 more backlinks from authoritative websites in 45 days.
2. Define Your Sales Funnel
Done with setting your goal? The next step is to determine your sales funnel based on your objective.
Let us say you want to increase your conversion rate by 5%. What does a sales funnel then look like? It may be like this:
Awareness. The patient becomes aware of their addiction and realizes that they need help. They learn about the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse and the benefits of sobriety.
Interest. The patient becomes interested in your rehabilitation center. They may search for “rehab near me” or “best drug rehab centers.” They read reviews and compare you with other facilities.
Consideration. The patient evaluates their options and narrows them down to the best ones. They look at your website, social media channels, and third-party reviews. They compare your features with those of other rehabs.
Decision. The patient decides you are the best option. They contact you to inquire about your services, schedule an appointment, or sign up for detoxification or rehabilitation programs.
As you can see, SEO supports every stage of the sales funnel. It helps you appear in...