The Chiropractic SEO Guide

How To Get Started With SEO For Your Chiropractic Practice

As a chiropractor, your main focus is on your patients and their care, which is a great thing, but the thought of adding digital marketing efforts on top of that can be overwhelming. Even though practices like SEO (search engine optimization) can often get put on the back burner, the truth is that a few simple changes can go a long way in helping your practice stand out.

Even though making SEO changes can be simple, it still needs to be highly strategic. There used to be ways to “game” the system and improve visibility, but now search engines are wary content that seems inauthentic. Search engines like Google are constantly evolving their methods to present stronger results to their searchers. It is up to practitioners and marketing professionals to track what works in order to discover the latest best practices.

Let’s take a look at some of the latest best practices that can help your practice rank higher and attract the patients you deserve.

Research and optimize keywords

When your future patients are looking for their next chiropractic practice, they tend to start with broad keywords like “chiropractor near me.” The positive thing about weaving in these kinds of keywords is that they get a lot of searches and visibility. On the other hand, because they are so broad, a lot of other practices will be competing to rank for the same terms.

One way to combat this is by doing research on more specific or niche keywords, which are also known as long-tail keywords. These will help your practice rank higher for terms with less visibility, but also less competition. Aiming for more specific keywords will help you attract future patients with higher intent, which will lead to higher quality leads.

For example, ranking for “spinal manipulation in Des Moines” rather than “chiropractor near me” might bring in both a higher quantity and quality of searchers who will be more likely to contact you in the future.

Create high quality content

When you have a strong idea of what your future patients will be searching for, create a list of the terms you would like to rank for. Include both general and specific terms and weave them throughout the content on your website and social media platforms. Blogging is one of the easiest ways to hit the ground running while you do this, but there is a wide variety of other ways, such as videos, ebooks, and podcasts.

Once you have your keywords listed, you’ll want to cater your content towards these topics and answer questions that your future patients might want to ask. This is the part of SEO strategy that should come quite naturally. Think about the most common questions and concerns that your patients have and address them. Work both empathetically and strategically, including your keywords in the title, first few sentences, meta descriptions, URL, and alt-text for images. Be sure to come across authentic and avoid weaving in so many keywords that it feels unnatural.

It is also important to avoid being pushy with your services. When it comes to chiropractic marketing, the goal is not to make a quick sale, but to establish a long-lasting relationship with patients who trust your expertise. Striving for this goal will not only help you improve your SEO, but it will ensure that your practice stays at the top of your patients’ minds when they need chiropractic care.

So how can you tell when you’ve created great content? When you look at your website analytics and see a high average time on each page, low bounce rate, and high click-through rate, it means that your users are engaging with your content and not just skimming through it. This also means they will be more likely to contact you in the future.

Localize your content and practice information

One key to establishing a niche with your content and keywords is to make them relevant to your local market. This is especially important for chiropractic care because most of your future patients will be looking for a practice close to their home. For this reason, you’ll want to include your city, neighborhood, zip codes, and other related names in your keywords.

Ranking highly on searches is a great goal to have in mind, but it should not be the only goal of your SEO strategy. Your practice can take advantage of other areas of SEO, such as the local 3-pack. The local SEO 3-pack is a map listing of three businesses that appears when people search for a local business near them or near a specific location.

Another important step is to claim your Google My Business profile. Making sure your practice’s name, address, and phone number is consistent not just on your website, but on review sites, directories, and listings will help your company’s visibility on these local SEO features.

Review technical SEO elements

SEO tactics are not something you can simply implement once and forget about. A good website with strong SEO requires maintenance and continuous updates. You might find it helpful to consult with a team of SEO experts who can track the technical aspects like page speed and redirects. This will be beneficial in the long run because if you have a slow website or a lot of pages that redirect to other URLs, it creates a negative experience for readers, which Google will pick up on as well.

A large majority of consumers are now spending most of their online time on their smartphones, so your website should be mobile responsive and easy to navigate on a smartphone. Putting yourself in the shoes of your customer and keeping track of how they interact with your practice online is a great way to see where you can improve your SEO and customer experience.

Track and measure results

Establishing your SEO strategies is only the beginning of the journey. It takes time to see results with organic SEO, so don’t get discouraged if you don’t see an immediate jump!

To track your progress, you should look at keyword rankings, organic traffic, your click-through rate, how visitors are engaging with your pages, which pages are most visited, and what channels are bringing in the most traffic. This will help you cater your efforts to your patients in the future, understand their needs, and serve them accordingly.