Patient surveys indicate that more than 93% of patients will use the internet to search for medical care. In fact, while looking for a doctor, patients most frequently utilize the websites of healthcare organizations, and general internet searches (e.g., via Google). Therefore, as a provider, your strategic healthcare marketing plans are fully contingent on patients being able to discover you wherever they are looking for care online.
You most likely have a website for your practice, and medical directories like WebMD and RateMDs may even contain your physician profile. However, it’s crucial that your clinic be included on regional business directories like Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Yelp, Facebook, and Angie’s List, to name a few, if you’re searching for medical marketing methods to boost your online visibility.
Continue reading to see why including a listing for your practice in well-known local business directories is essential to a comprehensive healthcare marketing plan.
Let’s review five advantages of listing your practice in business directories:
1. Expanding your web footprint by claiming and optimizing local business listings.
Since the vast majority of patients are looking online to select a provider, growing your online presence is a crucial objective of any healthcare marketing plan. This is a basic game of numbers. The more internet listings you have, the more patients are likely to find you.
Thus, local business directories are critical components of any local healthcare marketing strategy. The majority of your prospective clients will reside nearby. As a result, local search marketing for healthcare practices aims to give you the upper hand in local search results. Thanks to healthcare business listings, your web presence will grow as more people in your target market look for providers.
In order to dominate the search results for your name, having internet business listings containing your name or your practice’s name is also an efficient healthcare marketing strategy. The last thing you need is for a rival to appear in search results for your name or the name of your business, which happens frequently when practices fail to optimize their listings.
2. Local business directories are highly regarded by search engines like Google.
For any local search marketing plan, local business directories are essential. Crafting your listings on these websites increases your chances of appearing higher in search results because these business directory listings for your medical practice frequently rank higher than even your own practice website.
For instance, Google, the most popular search engine in the world, prioritizes its own directory, Google Business Profile, in search results. On desktop, a dedicated box on the right side of the page will display a Google Business Profile prominently. It will appear at the top of the results list on mobile devices. Consequently, a Google Business Profile highlights your practice and increases website traffic.
In fact, more than 80% of people who use search engines look for a doctor using terms like “near me” or “near/in town/city.” If, for example, a patient with hypertension living in Fairfax, Virginia was seeking a cardiologist, they would generally search online via terms such as “best cardiologist in Fairfax”, “cardiologists near me”, or perhaps search the defining surrounding region that their city is in, such as “cardiologist in Northern VA,” etc. Since listings prominently display business information like your business hours, location, and details on medical services and treatments provided, healthcare business listings aid in satisfying the most common search inputs and inquiries, thus facilitating notably greater prospective patient traffic to your website to generate new leads.
Directories frequently serve as your “first impressions” to patients online because they often rank higher than your medical website. Thus, it’s important that you take control of your directory listings quickly because it’s likely that your listings have been auto-populated (especially in popular localized business directories) with often inaccurate, even misleading, information.
In addition to assisting patients, claiming these listings on significant directories and ensuring that they provide accurate contact information assists search engines in understanding what to display in a given search. It’s possible that you won’t show up in the search results at all if Google can’t determine whether the information about your medical practice is accurate.
3. To locate doctors, patients use healthcare business directories.
More than half of all patients claim to base their decisions about a healthcare practitioner on information found on independent websites. Therefore, you must make sure to include comprehensive information about your healthcare practice in all of the relevant listings so that your practice stands out in medical directories.
Potential patients want to know what to expect from their appointment before choosing a provider. By including pictures of your office and waiting area in your business directory listings, you can improve your positioning strategy to make yourself relatable and attractive to prospective patients. You can also write a biography and other details about your practice, such as the medical services you provide, on some websites. By doing this, you can win over potential patients even before they make an appointment, so when a clinical need arises for them or their loved ones, you’re the first practice that comes to mind. By winning “mind share” and “heart share” via relatable content in your listings, you unlock the real-world reward of winning “market share.”
4. Reviews are frequently found in local business directories.
Your online reputation might be enhanced with the aid of business directories. Patients most frequently read and leave reviews on Google itself, and Yelp is the third most popular website for patients to read and publish reviews.
If your healthcare marketing approach fails to include online reputation management, it’s sorely lacking in presenting patients with the validation they need to move forward with your practice over others. And to get these reviews, patients can only share excellent experiences they’ve had with you if you’ve already claimed and/or created your online business directory listings.
Additionally, you can monitor any unfavorable comments and answer them in public. Over two-thirds of all patients feel that it’s important for a provider to respond to unfavorable evaluations in a professional manner, and close to 90% say they are satisfied or extremely satisfied when a provider responds to a negative comment.
5. Listing or claiming your practice is free.
The majority of online business directories often offer freely claimable listings, so the ROI for executing this step is monumental. The following is a list of 50 internet business directories you will want to use the next time you travel:
https://www.business.com/articles/50-free-websites-to-list-your-business-2
Going through all 50 can take a lot of time, so you might want to concentrate on the top 10 with the highest domain authority in your industry. The higher the domain authority of a site that you backlink to, the more valuable the “link juice” is for you to boost your own website’s search rankings.
By executing the most up-to-date search engine optimization techniques for our clients, Acquire Patients boosts the online presence of healthcare practices. One of these tactics entails Acquire Patients assisting practices with clear, consistent messaging. Contact us if you’d like for us to complete listings on all necessary directory websites so that you can maximize search visibility and attract leads from as many online channels as possible.
