If you are a veterinarian, one of the most important things to do is market your business locally.
One of the best ways to do this is to use local SEO. In other words, you want your website to show up when people are trying to find a vet in your area. The internet gives you a lot of power to market yourself and get more eyeballs on your business, more so than on any other platform.
But what about global SEO? Would it make sense to have website visitors that are not specifically from your local area? Yes, 100%.
Stay around, my mission today is that you leave with veterinary SEO superpowers when you finish reading this blog post.
What is Local SEO for Veterinarians?
Local SEO is the process of optimizing a website to rank well in search results for local keywords. Local SEO is about optimizing the content on your site so that people in your area will find you first when they are searching for vets nearby.
There are five things you can optimize for local SEO that should help you rank better on Google:
– The business name, address, and phone number
– Business classification (e.g., Veterinarian)
– Geographical location (e.g., Devon, PA)
– A street map of your clinic
– Medical services offered (e.g., veterinary medicine, surgery)
What is Global SEO for Veterinarians?
If local SEO is all about focusing your marketing efforts to get people to find you in your local area, then global SEO is all about getting people from all over the world to find your business.
Why would I want to go global?
I can answer that question with one single word: Authority.
Let’s do a cool analogy
Imagine that you need to buy a new microwave and you have 2 brands to choose from.
Brand 1 is a small electronics brand that only has one store in town. There aren’t a lot of people talking about them and when someone mentions them you are not sure you know them.
On the other hand, Brand 2 is an established company with many microwave products worldwide. They are easily recognized and people are talking about them on the internet and on Social Media.
Now, imagine that you are walking around your local area ready to walk into a store and buy your new microwave.
You come across both “little Brand 1” and “global Brand 2”. Their shops are next to each other. Which shop are you going to choose first? You need to make a fast decision! In less than a fraction of a second.
Did you choose Brand 2? Yeah. Me too!
Your decision was based on the relevance and authority of Brand 2.
That is exactly what Google does!
Now imagine for a second that your veterinary website has visitors from the entire world. People love your articles and they share them on social media because they find them useful. You become relevant worldwide.
That means that when Google has to choose between you and another local vet, you’ll be the more relevant and authoritative player. Who do you think Google’s going to choose?
Use free tools to your advantage
If you’re just starting in the world of veterinary SEO, you need to take advantage of the free tools that the internet has for your business.
Let’s talk about the #1 tool that will make a huge impact on your business
Google My Business
This is a free service and should be on everyone’s list of things to do!
The idea behind this is that when someone searches for “vets near me” they can easily find you on the local map pack.
Something like this:
You must connect this listing with your website and tell them which location you want it to apply to.
You can also upload photos for your site, bios, hours of operation, and all your business’ relevant info.
If you want to create a Google My Business account, go to https://www.google.com/business.
Tips on optimizing SEO locally and show up on Google
To show up locally on Google, you need to optimize your website for local SEO.
The best way for optimizing SEO is to make sure that you add your business name, address, and phone number listed on your website and local directories too.
You can also list the classification of the business (e.g., veterinarian), a street map of your clinic, and the medical services that you offer (e.g., veterinary medicine, surgery).
Leave all the guesswork out of the equation so Google can clearly understand what your areas of expertise are. If you have multiple services, make sure that you have separate pages on your website for each service.
Local veterinary SEO: Keyword strategy
Keywords are also important. Think of the keywords that someone might type into Google when they are looking for a veterinarian in your area. If you don’t have these words on your site then search engines can’t know what you offer!
You don’t want to stuff your site full of keywords or it will look ugly and smell bad for Google! As a general rule of thumb, an ideal balance is 10% optimized content and 90% normal content.
Think about how people describe what they are searching for when they ask for a veterinarian service near them and include those words on your site. There are many tools out there that can help you figure out the best keywords, but one of the easiest ways to start researching keywords is by performing initial keyword research with Moz.com
You can use their free keyword explorer and start exploring keywords now.
Let’s say you are a vet in Tucson, AZ. Let’s see what the Moz keyword explorer says about that.
500 to 800 searches per month. That’s a huge market!
So basically what you want to do is to make sure that the keyword “vets in Tucson” is used both on your website and Google My Business listing.
FREE!
Get a free website & SEO video audit. We’ll analyze your website, your traffic and your competitors. We’ll get back to you with a basic action plan that will help you rank on Google!
Global Veterinary SEO: Keyword strategy
If you want to go global, you will need to write about global veterinary topics. The best strategy is to have a blog and write articles.
Having a blog gives you more opportunities to get links back to your site via other blogs and websites.
Links are very important because they help Google understand what’s going on at your site and how expert you are within your industry.
The idea here is to do successful reverse engineering! So instead of blindly writing blog posts, you want to see what people are often looking for.
The most powerful global keyword research strategy
One of my favorite ways of doing keyword research (it’s actually free) is to open Google and start typing anything that is relevant to my business.
When you do that Google will give you 10 suggestions and will change based on what you wrote and — super important — where your cursor is pointing.
Here’s a more graphical example for the vet industry:
Another cool thing that you can do is to add random letters at the end of the query! There’s no right or wrong here, just explore and go creative!
If there’s a word that makes more sense to you, keep typing and discover what Google has to say about it!
Take a look at the example below. I started my search query with “why is my dog” and then started to add random letters at the end to see what Google suggested.
Thousands of possibilities! With just a super basic and simple method.
Now let’s take “why is my dog leaving little poop balls” and see what Moz says about this.
There are around 200 searches per month. I want you to do some basic math with me.
Imagine writing 10 articles about certain topics that people are looking for.
Let’s say each article brings 200 people to your website.
That is 2000 visitors coming from those 10 articles only!
That means that you are on veterinary SEO boss mode because Google knows that you are a relevant site in your niche.
Do you know what that means too? Yes, we mentioned it already. You will win on local search too because you’ll be the big fish in the small pond.
Get started with veterinary SEO today!
SEO takes time. Even if you find easy keywords and write killer blog posts, that doesn’t mean that you’ll rank on Google overnight.
So, my advice is that you start right now. At least with something small, everything counts! It is important to just get started.
Remember that this is an investment. Either time or money.
If you don’t have time to invest in SEO, then hiring an SEO expert is a great idea.
I’d like to also tell you that I’m doing free website and SEO video audits.
That means that I’ll send you a customized video showing what it’d take for your business to rank #1 on Google.
On these videos, I also run a deep analysis on your main competitors’ websites so we can see the exact veterinary SEO strategy they’re using.
At the end of the video, I’ll provide you with a basic strategy and some keyword opportunities.
So whether you’re thinking that you’ll do it yourself or end up hiring an expert, this is a great opportunity to see where you are standing.
You can click below and get yours in 24hs.
Get my free website and SEO video audit
I wish you all the best with your veterinary digital marketing strategy!
