5 Proven SEO Tweaks That Transformed Our OT Client Referrals
According to a study from the Interactive Journal of Medical Research, 98% of parents search the internet for information about their child’s health condition. They try to gain information about the issue and connect with health professionals to find the best treatment option.
For a paediatric occupational therapy clinic, this is a golden opportunity to attract leads and convert them into patients. But you can only make the most of it with a remarkable online presence, such as a well-structured website.
However, having a website is just the first step. You need to optimise the site for your website visitors as well as the search engine bots so that Google ranks it higher in the search results. This is called search engine optimisation (SEO), and it’s the only way your website can gain visibility.
At Allied Health Website Designs, we follow expert SEO search optimisation strategies to design and boost websites for our clients. As an example, if we had a client that was a paediatric occupational therapy business, we not only would design a website, but also ensure it ranks at page 1 in their local area on Google search result pages (SERPs).
Wondering how? Let’s unravel our top website design and SEO secrets.
SEO Website Design Essentials to Get Started
Before you go on the internet and search “website designer near me,” here are some SEO web design essentials to give you an idea of what the process looks like. A paediatric occupational therapy clinic’s website must have the below 8 essential components:
- A clear step-by-step explanation of how a visitor can become a patient
- A visible call-to-action (CTA) button on every web page
- Customer testimonials featured on the home page (text and images)
- Helpful resources (blogs, articles, news) related to paediatric issues and their treatments
- Simple wordings used throughout the website, excluding any technical or medical jargon
- A user-friendly design that works on different devices, including mobile phones, tablets, and computers. Specifically this is known as User Experience (UE) and User Interface (UI)
- A review section that allows patients to give their feedback
- An online appointment button or alternative ways of contact, including phone, email & clinic address (geo-modifiers)
5 SEO Strategies To Boost Google Rankings for a Pediatric Occupational Therapy Practice
Google constantly updates its search engine optimisation ranking guidelines to ensure that only quality websites top the search result pages. Our professional web designers are well-versed in the latest Google search optimisation requirements, including keyword search, content marketing, backlinking, and more.
Here are 5 strategies we implemented to boost the clinic’s website to the first page of the Google results.
- Keyword Search and Incorporation
Using relevant and high-ranking keywords lays the foundation for SEO. These are the phrases or terms that your potential patients use to search for a paediatric occupational therapy clinic near them.
Search engine bots identify keywords in a website’s content to understand its relevance to a specific query. So, it’s important to choose the right keywords.
There are two main types of keywords: long-tail and short-tail. The former are the less competitive long phrases that people type in Google searches, and the latter are one- or two-word terms that are difficult to rank for.
We chose the most relevant combination of keywords in our client’s web copy, titles and headlines, and blog posts, including:
- Occupational therapy
- Paediatric therapy
- Paediatric occupational therapy clinic
- Paediatric occupational therapy Sunshine Coast
- Paediatric occupational therapy near me
- Paediatric occupational therapy resources
- Occupational therapy for children
The key is naturally incorporating an optimal number of keywords in the content. Google often considers too much keyword stuffing “bad” and doesn’t bother ranking the website. We kept that in mind when planning our Google search optimisation strategies.
- Content Creation
Content includes texts, images, infographics, videos, and newsletters that attract people’s eyes and convince them to interact with the website. Paediatric therapy clinics can create informative and valuable content that helps patients find answers to their concerns.
High-quality blogs and infographics also build your site’s credibility and allow you to showcase your expertise. Not to mention how much Google loves quality content.
We developed a comprehensive content creation plan for our client. We researched the most common problems/conditions among children, their causes, risk factors, and possible treatments and created infographics, videos, and blogs around them. Our main goal was to educate patients and improve the clinic’s Google ranking.
Our blog topics included:
- Does Your Child Struggle with Balance?
- How Paediatric Occupational Therapy Can Address Excessive Eating in Children
- Help Your Child Live a Better Life with Social Skill Group Therapy
- How Paediatric Occupational Therapy Can Treat Your Child’s Gait Disorders
- Assistive Augmentative Communication (AAC): Causes and Treatments
While creating blogs, we researched and developed content on our own. Google only values original content with a natural flow and downgrades robotic content, which is actually pretty easy to detect. So, we completely avoided it.
- Backlinks Acquisition
Backlinks are critical to search engine optimisation, as they help Google assess your site’s credibility. These links connect other websites to your website, showing Google that other websites like your content.
We adopted different backlink acquisition strategies to strengthen the position of our client’s website. One way was, of course, writing quality content with appropriate keywords. We developed excellent blogs/articles that convinced registered paediatricians to create a backlink to the clinic’s page from their websites.
Another way was to expand the website’s outreach with influencers and authoritative publications.
- Local SEO Strategies
Effective local SEO strategies make a website appear at the top when someone searches for their business in their local area. For instance, “website designer near me”, “paediatric clinic near me,” “OT clinic in Sunshine Coast,” and more.
For this, a website should be registered to local directories like Yelp, Google Business Profile (GBP), etc. That’s what we did with our client’s website. After registration, we used relevant and appropriate keywords in the client’s GBP listings.
We also gathered authentic local reviews and ratings from the patients who received treatment from our client’s clinic. This boosted their reputation in the market and improved their SEO search optimisation.
- Mobile-Friendliness
Lastly, our professional SEO engine optimisation team focused on making the clinic’s website mobile-friendly. With global mobile users expected to reach 1.5 billion by 2029, clinic owners must make their websites easily navigable on different devices.
We incorporated responsive design elements that adapt to different screen and text sizes and resolutions. These elements were also touchscreen-friendly with minimum loading times. This facilitated seamless navigation across the web pages, enhancing user experience and convincing them to engage with the site content for a long time.
Boost Your Paediatric Occupational Therapy Clinic Website to the First Page
At Allied Health Website Designs, our primary focus when designing or optimising a website is yielding maximum results with less effort and cost (spend less on advertising). That’s why our Google search optimisation strategies are all organic, modern, and results-driven.
If you’re located in Brisbane, The Sunshine Coast or The Gold Coast and you’re struggling to make your paediatric occupational therapy clinic website rank on the search engines, allow us to make it easy for you. Instead of searching “website designer near me,” contact our web design professionals to kickstart your SEO engine optimisation journey in a few minutes.
