Top 9 Reasons to Use SEO to Your Optometry Practice’s Advantage

If you are in the optometry business, you must have a stellar online presence. With many eye care specialists in the industry, having a good optometry marketing plan can help your practice stand out and land more potential patients.

You have to understand that the internet and social media have made the world more interconnected. Potential patients would rather do a quick Google search than drive around the neighborhood for a nearby optometric practice to visit. For your business to be considered by potential patients in your local area, you need to maximize your digital marketing efforts. 

Digital Marketing for Optometrists

There are a lot of digital marketing tools optometrists can use. Social media marketing can help you boost your online reputation by showing compelling content to your target audience. Email marketing can build relationships with your existing patients. It’s also important for optometry practices to invest in website development.

It’s not enough for an optometry practice to just have a website. It’s crucial you analyze the website’s search engine optimization (SEO) to make sure you’re making the most out of your website.  Here are the reasons why SEO should be considered when building an optometry website:

1. Optimized Websites Rank Better

SEO is the key to attracting organic traffic to your optometry practice’s website. Yielding organic traffic means you’re getting the attention of people with the intent of using your services.

The more traffic that comes to your website, the higher you will rank on search engines like Google and Bing. Think of it as a popularity contest.

You have to bear in mind that potential patients search online for services in their local area. New patients will see your optometry office as a trusted small business when you rank high on Google search results. Online reviews can make or break a company nowadays, while positive patient reviews can do wonders for your practice.

Most people usually look at the first page of optometry practice search results on Google. If your website isn’t optimized, it will not appear high in the results and therefore will not attract much organic traffic. 

2. SEO is a Free Tool

Pay-per-click (PPC) ads cost your optometry practice a fee, while its free counterpart, SEO, is a marketing tool any small business can use. With PPC ads, you have to pay every time a user clicks on your ads that appear at the top of search results. However, with SEO, you don’t have to pay when users visit your website.

A lot of small businesses don’t have the budget for fancy billboards or celebrity endorsements. SEO doesn’t cost you a thing. You just have to put some time and effort into using the right keywords on page titles, meta descriptions,  URLs, content, images, etc. 

That’s why you should focus on promoting the valuable content you have on your website, such as a popular blog post or patient experience. By marketing your practice’s strengths through the right target keywords, you have a better chance of attracting more patients to your website. In addition, this optometry marketing strategy can actively market your most popular products and services.

Learn More: Top Content Ideas for Optometry Blogs

3. SEO Can Work Alongside Paid Ads

If you’re running paid ads, you can utilize SEO to amplify your efforts. These tools do not oppose each other. Instead, they can help your practice achieve your goals faster. Alone, each strategy may be powerful, but these practical strategies can create better brand awareness when used simultaneously. 

You must understand that just because potential patients visit your website doesn’t mean you automatically gain new patients. Instead, SEO helps you attract the right kind of people that your practice is looking for, people with eye issues that you can help with.

By merging both marketing ideas, you increase your chances of converting website visitors into your new patient. 

This strategy is the same thing as having two horses in a race. In a way, your optometry practice would have more online business cards this way.

4. SEO Supports Your Optometry Content

Coming up with compelling content can be time-consuming. While social media is an effective online marketing tool to showcase your content, you can also use SEO to support your efforts. That’s why you should be strategic about the keywords you use in text, videos, and images.

The better you seamlessly include the right keywords in your content, the bigger chances are that the right audience will find your website through search engines. This is a subtle marketing strategy that can yield great results. The way that you insert your targeted keywords into the content matters. 

That’s why, when it comes to marketing, you need to make sure all elements complement one another to serve their purpose of getting new business for your practice. It would be best if you looked at the bigger picture.

Read On: Content Tips for Your Optometry Marketing Strategy

5. It Helps Potential Patients Find Your Optometry Practice

Nowadays, most people do everything on their mobile devices, including searching for medically related information. While there are still some who use their computers, it would benefit your business to consider making your marketing efforts more mobile-friendly to widen your patient base. 

Think of all the potential patients that live in your local area. There’s a huge chance that people living near your office who need new glasses, contact lenses, or eye exams would prefer going to a local business for logistical reasons. 

When your local business ranks well on search engines, there’s a bigger chance they would approach you for your services and products.

6. SEO Builds Trust and Credibility in the Optometry Industry

Your ultimate goal is for your optometry website to be among the first practices to come up when people look for eye health products and services. A good ranking on search engines is like a referral program.

Patients tend to trust practices that pop out first when they search for an eye exam and the like. So while this marketing strategy doesn’t automatically give you new business, your practice has a much bigger advantage compared to other local practices for patient conversion because of those rankings.

SEO is an effective reputation management tool. While some patients may defer to social media for patient reviews, they usually search online for contact information of the practice they’re eyeing. That’s why you should also regularly monitor the positive reviews and negative reviews your practice has online on listing websites like Google My Business and Yelp.

Learn More: Your SEO Guide to Optimizing Your Optometry Website

7. SEO Is a Long-Term Marketing Strategy

SEO is a long-term game. You don’t generate thousands of new patients by creating a catchy ad copy overnight. It takes some time and patience. So while it’s important to be timely on social media, you need to be consistent with your SEO management.

Attracting new patients may take longer than using social media platforms, but this is an effective tool to build up your online reputation in the long run. As an optometry practice, your goal is to build a loyal patient database and get more referrals.

Yes, social platforms are essential for short campaigns or timed marketing activities, but SEO is absolutely necessary for any marketing strategy. 

8. You Get Quantifiable Results in SEO

It’s easy to track the SEO performance of your site. There are many free and paid marketing tools you can use to analyze every page of your practice’s website. This helps you see if the blog post you worked hard on is attracting attention.

Platforms such as Google Analytics can also track drops or increases in your rankings, conversions, and how much traffic you are receiving. While it paints a picture of what your practice is currently doing online, it also gives you ideas on what you should do for better online optometry marketing ideas moving forward.

9. It Improves the User Experience on Your Optometry Website

You invest a lot of time and money for your site to be exciting and visually compelling. You work hard to ensure everything is presented appealingly, from the graphics used to market your free eye exam to the latest contact lenses you offer. Given all the effort you’ve put in, you don’t want it to go to waste.

SEO helps make sure site visitors find all the information they’re looking for without a problem. SEO enables you to focus on the correct elements for your practice to have better search engine results and user experience. However, even if you have all the right things on your site, people might not bother exploring your practice further if it’s not easy to navigate.

Through quality content, a responsive design, fast loading times, and reputable backlinks, you create a more convenient online experience for online users exploring your site.

Improve Digital Marketing Ideas for Your Optometry Practice with iMatrix

SEO is just one of the optometry marketing ideas you can utilize to boost your online presence and attract new patients. But, of course, you shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket. It would help if you also looked into investing in practical social media tools and follow-up email marketing. Strategically combining these tools can yield improved results.  

The world of online marketing can be tricky to navigate. That’s why you should entrust your digital marketing efforts, such as SEO, to a reputable healthcare marketing agency with vast experience in the industry. If you want your website optimized by experts, contact us at 888.792.8384 or click here for special pricing.