How are health searches different from other types of searches

Many of you listening are Health and Wellness businesses, so this one is for you. Ranking in Google for health terms isn't always easy, but it's worth it since it can change how your website and business attract clients who are already looking for what you have to offer.

Other podcast episodes you’ll enjoy:

• SEO Strategies + Tips for Therapists and Counselors

• SEO for Google or humans?

• Most important areas of your Therapy or Counseling

Listen to this episode below

Episode Shownotes:

• Google is smart when it comes to Health and Wellness searches. Focusing on just adding keywords to specific parts of the page isn’t going to make a huge difference - they want to understand why YOU are an expert on this topic and the value you provide to your audience.

• We talk about E-E-A-T talk (episode 181 goes in more detail https://digitalbloomiq.com/seo/e-a-t) . As a health professional, you need to demonstrate their qualifications and experience to be considered by Google for higher rankings.

• Adding case studies, testimonials and other “proof” can make a big difference on your website.

• What is authority building (previously backlinking) and how to get started.

• Check out the 90 day SEO plan to learn more about keyword research - https://digitalbloomiq.com/90dayseoplan

• Full Transcript

  Hey, welcome to another episode of the digitally overwhelmed podcast. I am so excited to have you here because today we're going to be talking about how health searches are different from other searches, which I know a lot of you are interested in because you're in the health and wellness space surprise.

  I am Cinthia. I'm your host and I run Digital Bloom IQ where I help all sorts of businesses, but especially health and wellness businesses grow their audience grow their sales grow to all their goals their fantastic goals through SEO.

  And so I wanted to touch on this topic because it's come up a lot with my clients where they're working on their SEO and my students as well.

  They are just wanting to be the best they can be in their SEO, right? So they know people are searching for them.

  The podcast discusses how health searches differ from other searches in SEO.

  They know people want to hire them, but they are struggling. to really, you know, make that progress and push it over the edge.

  And I know that that can be just tricky. So today's episode is really for those health and wellness businesses, but really for any type of business who is trying to figure out like how to hack or just like be the best they can be with their SEO.

  And so this tip is going to really, really help. Okay. So here's my like opening line.

  Google is smart. My people. So it used to be the case where you could just like write about anything.

  You could be just this random person, like not a doctor, not a health professional. Um, and you would be able to rank in things.

  HIGHLIGHT: Tips for improving SEO by targeting qualified professionals and avoiding spam. - WATCH

  And so there were a lot of spam artists, a lot of people that took advantage of this. And so over the years, Google got smarter and smarter at understanding, okay, who are the people who are really qualified?

  to talk about this who are the people that we want to rank and that is part of why the algorithm is what it is today is because there's factors that go beyond your keywords of what you're ranking in and what you're wanting to ranking.

  And so that's what I'm going to be talking about is like what are these factors that we can touch on when we want to say to Google hey, I'm an expert.

  I want to rank in this keyword and I know what I'm talking about whether you're a nutritionist, whether you're a therapist, whether you're a chiropractor.

  This episode is especially especially for you. The other little thing that I want to touch on is that health searches have a bit of a tendency to have just bigger websites that rank for them especially with the high volume keywords.

  So something like maybe nutrition for cancer, Google is going to probably take more pay more attention to like a website like WebMD, then maybe a smaller to medium size business.

  But that's okay because we're going to talk about that and we're going to talk about how to get around that.

  So this is part of your keyword strategy. This is part of what you are aware of as a health professional when you're working on your SEO and you're not blind to this, right?

  So you're taking advantage of this if anything and you're staying away maybe from targeting too many of these bigger keywords.

  I don't recommend completely throwing them out of your vision. But I do recommend just being cautious about where you're spending your time and energy because I know we're all busy.

  We have a lot of stuff going on. And if you're spending time writing beautiful blog posts that are helpful for people, you want to make sure that they're going to actually get to the right people.

  All right. So something that I talked about before. I've talked about before. or is called EAT. And I actually have a podcast episode on it.

  It's called, it's the episode 181. I don't talk about EAT, which is the new version, but EAT, which stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.

  So this is a factor when we are talking about health searches, whether it's mental health, physical health, any sort of health that will impact someone's life in a deep and meaningful way.

  We wanna look at how our site is touching on Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. So what Google wants to make sure is like, are we qualified to talk about this?

  Are we, do we have the experience, right? So if we're talking about, I don't know, this is kind of an extreme example, but let's say we're talking about like brain surgery, do we have the experience to talk about that?

  Aren't we a brain surgeon, or are we someone who's gone? through that experience, right? So this is these letters stand for these different points that Google looks at when they're ranking a website that is talking about health searches.

  And speaking of experience, the new version of EAT is EAT and that new E stands for experience. I actually have a mini training, a paid mini training about EAT and I go in depth about how to impact that.

  You can check that out by going to courses.digitalbloom IQ.com. I'll include it in the show notes for this episode as well.

  But I have an online workshop that's called Infusing EAT into your website and I go into specifically how to do this.

  But in this episode, we're going to get into a lot. So hopefully this will help as well. Okay, so like I said, how can you show that you're qualified to talk about this?

  So having a page on your website that talks about your qualifications. Great place to start, right? So we can look at, okay, you know, where did you study?

  What are your actual licensing and that sort of thing? Now, I wouldn't necessarily have this be on your about page, but maybe having a separate page that says qualifications, you know, you could have images of your certifications even, or having at the bottom.

  So most people, when they go to the about page, they want to get a connection with the other human on the other side.

  And so I don't recommend like I've seen people just like list all their like different things they've done. But most of your audience, if they're not other, like another medical professional, they're not going to understand what it is.

  It's still good to have that, but not having it right at the top, right? Unless again, you're targeting other medical professionals who will understand that.

  So having an about page where you talk to your story, you talk about why you're qualified in tech. And then maybe also listing like your actual qualifications.

  That can be really helpful or having like a qualification page. That's one way to start to tell people, hey, I'm qualified.

  We have this many years of experience. The other thing you can look at as a health professional is talking about your case studies, right?

  So having a goal per year or per quarter to feature different clients and people who come to you and talk about how you've helped them, like what has been the results of your work?

  Having video testimonials can be incredible. That's like a really powerful thing. And that's something that again, other people will look at.

  If you're the type of, if you're doing some sort of health, like aesthetic health, like dentist, you know, aesthetic sort of surgery, anything like that, having before and after great ways to show.

  Hey, we know what we're doing, right? So these are other things we can take advantage of to show our experience, to show our authoritativeness, and to show that we're trustworthy and we have the experience.

  And then the last thing that I think, again, doesn't get talked about a lot in the SEO space, but can be very, very powerful, is what I call authority building.

  I used to call it backlinking, but I really don't believe in backlinking anymore, and I actually, in my SEO course, I changed a whole module because I feel like things are shifting in how we are having other websites link back to us and talk about us.

  So I call it authority building. What does that mean? It means how are other businesses and other websites referring to us as specialists and as experts.

  So in your case, if you're, again, a health professional, maybe having other health professionals or a recognized publication, recognized website, mention you.

  So if you had something like WebMD mention, in your case study, wow, that would be incredible. Or having, again, yourself featured on a podcast, on a news website, these are great ways to work on your authority building.

  And this part of doing SEO is just as important as working on your in-house website stuff, so things that you do on your website.

  So some of you might be saying, oh, that sounds great Cynthia, but like, how can I get featured? You pitch yourself, you go out, so this is a whole task, right?

  So you find those opportunities, you research podcast episodes. Sometimes there's like other things you can do, like you could try and get featured on a Wikipedia page, for example, that maybe takes a little more technical knowledge.

  But starting with podcast episodes is great because you can email any podcast, you can build relationship with other medical professionals that have podcasts, build strategic alliances.

  And in that way, you can get featured and you can start to work on your authority building. And that way,

  will lead to backlinking. So if people hear about you through other podcasts and link back to you automatically through that podcast, that's going to build your authority, that's going to build your trust, that's going to build your expertise, right, and all that sort of thing.

  So these are a couple different ways that you can work on your health searches. And it's just important to note that the title of this podcast, like how our health search is different from other types of searches, is that Google pays extra attention because you're really impacting someone's life, right?

  So if you make a recommendation as like again, someone having cancer, you could really change someone's life with your with the information you share.

  And so it's really, really important to Google to make sure that the information that they're sharing through the service that they give is actually valuable and valid.

  And they want to cut down on spam and people taking advantage of maybe someone in a moment of their life that's difficult, right?

  So that's why these types of searches are different. In the SEO community, we call them YM, YL, all your money or your life, and because they really impact someone's life.

  So I want you to think about them differently because they are different. But the benefit is that you have an upper hand, right, and how you approach your SEO strategy.

  And I lastly want to touch on this idea of like, what happens if I want to target a search that has, you know, higher volume is more competitive and there's like a WebMD or there's psychology today or that sort of thing.

  So the strategy I like to recommend is that you don't need to stay away from the high volume keywords, but you don't want to make them your only focus.

  Because over time, you might actually rank for them. If you look at a Google search results, you'll see that Google tries to give us different.

  options, right? So Google wants to create a contrast between a WebMD and maybe someone who has hands-on experience or some different perspective, some different angle on the same topic.

  So if you're going to go after a higher volume keyword, you want to be really clear of like, who's your competition?

  How are you going to distinguish yourself from your competition? Because unless you're a bigger website, it's going to be hard for you to compete directly with WebMD.

  But can you show Google that you have different value that WebMD website can't show like on that specific article and how are you going to distinguish yourself?

  So that's one strategy you can look at and think about. But if you're a small to medium size business and you're starting out, I do recommend having a variety of keywords and most of them might be more medium to low competition, well, yeah, medium to low competition and medium to low volume with one or two higher volume keyword sprinkles.

  in there. And this is something I talk a lot about in my SEO crawlers, homegrown traffic. I give you just a whole methodology for finding keywords that you can rank in and that you can convert, right?

  You can get sales from. So I hope that those tips are helpful. And if you are just like, you know, really craving to have more of a keyword strategy to get started, I recommend checking out my 90-day SEO plan.

  I walk through my keyword process in there. I also talk about how to use your keywords in a way that's not just like spammy randomly putting them in random places on the site.

  I tell you how keyword, you know, just how to use your keywords more authentically and genuinely in a way that is going to help with your SEO and help with the humans that you want to help and heal online.

  So you can check out that webinar series by going to digitalbloomyq.com slash 90-day SEO plan. I will also include a link in the show notes.

  But that's just a great way to get started. And that's totally free. All right, my friends, thank you so much for listening.

  I hope you have a great day.