Let me start out by saying, the title of this blog post is a question, you opened it and hopefully are reading it carefully right? Questions are what the internet has evolved into. Google’s algorithms are advanced, Alexa is right there to answer questions you speak aloud, the internet is chocked full of all kinds of information; too much in fact to sift through manually. It’s much easier to simply ask a question and that’s what the majority of internet users do.
Think about it, do you speak in keywords in real life? How weird would that be if a patient showed up for a consultation and said to you, ‘Liposuction Los Angeles’ and expected an answer? The goal of technology is to seamlessly fit into our real-world lives and the search engines are now advanced enough to parse questions and figure out intent. In other words, you can ‘talk to Google’ the way you would talk to a person and that’s how people search in today’s world.
That’s the goal with all of your plastic surgery SEO efforts, to employ tactics that emulate real world interactions. So let me ask the question again, does your medical practice website have FAQ pages? Let’s discuss why you should and then how to do it.
Spoiler Alert: We’ll do this for you for free just for reading this, read all the way through to find out how!
Why Your Medical Practice Website Should Have FAQ Pages
The obvious answer is that you want an educated potential patient and not one who is a tire kicker or one that has unrealistic expectations about outcomes, price, or anything else. People viewing your practice website looking for plastic surgery or a cosmetic procedure have questions that they are seeking out information for. Sure, your procedure pages or doctor bio page can provide some great information but remember how people use the internet, they ask questions. Why not feed them information in the exact format that they’re seeking it out?
Here at ABM, we’ve seen through our client’s Google Analytics that these FAQ pages or even FAQ sections on various procedure pages perform quite well. We’ve dubbed these FAQ sections on procedure pages ‘scroll stoppers’ as they immediately stop people from scrolling down the page to consume the FAQ content as they recognize that they have the exact same question that you have answered on the page.
As valuable as that may be to have a well-informed potential patient, that’s simply only the beginning as we’ll show you how these FAQ pages can be extremely valuable for your SEO.
Medical Practice SEO & FAQ Pages
Your FAQ pages or FAQ sections on procedure pages can be extremely valuable for your medical practice SEO for a number of reasons.
- These FAQs have great keywords, great keyword phrases, and typically are worded in human-spoken language sentences which are considered high-quality content by Google. It’s not keyword-stuffed spammy SEO just to attempt to game the system.
- Google includes these FAQs (if done properly) in their fairly new, “People Also Ask” (PAA) section in the search engine results pages (SERPS). The PAA section is, you guessed it, other questions similar to the one you just Googled. It’s a sneaky way to get more Google traffic and rank higher for information about the surgeries and procedures you offer.
- They require clean, fast-loading website coding and a certain format in order to work. Creating the on-page improvements that these require will help your entire website and medical practice SEO.
Take a look at the coding format and styling needed from one of our client’s FAQ sections on a breast augmentation procedure page:
In the image above, notice how the format has the questions showing and requires the visitor to click the down arrow to reveal the answer to the question? This provides a better user experience as they don’t have to scroll down past content that they don’t have a question about. They can immediately identify which question they want to know the answer to and simply hit the down arrow to find out the answer. The backend website coding that does this also tells Google that this is an FAQ and makes this content eligible to be included in the coveted ‘People Also Ask’ section of the search engine results pages.
Now let’s take a look at what this looks like on Google when you search for the first question, “are silicone breast implants safe?” Take a look at the SERP page when you look that question up:
So not only did we show up as an answer to the question Google lumped that answer below our organic listing making the plastic surgery practice stand out even more and take up much more real estate on the search engine results page!
Potential patients that just Googled the question see your practice featured along with the associated answers to their questions (your FAQ’s) and can click the down arrow on Google to reveal the answer:
This gives you premier placement, additional opportunities to gain traffic relevant to the procedures offered and improves your overall SEO.
How To Implement FAQ’s On Your Medical Website
There are a few things to do to successfully pull this off.
Compile a List of Questions Asked
The first is to research the most common questions potential patients ask about the plastic surgery procedure that you would like to show up for. Ask your front desk staff and anyone else who speaks with brand new patient inquiries to compile a list of the most common questions asked. Look for more than just the obvious questions about price and recovery. Is there anything unique to your geography? Maybe your practice is located in Alaska and patients typically ask if surgery should only be done during the warmer months? You get the idea but get a list of all the questions potential patients ask about the various procedures that you offer. Next, search these questions on Google.
Google These Questions & Review What’s Already There
What we’re looking for when we search Google for each question on your list is to see what source Google is currently using as “the answer” to this question. You’ll want to look at the page and see what format the page is using to display the answer. By format, I mean what is the content format… is it an unordered list (ie… bullets)? Is it an ordered list (Numerical)? Is it straight paragraph format, etc…? Is it FAQs on a procedure page or is it a standalone FAQ page with lots of various questions on the same page? You need to figure out the format Google wants to present for this answer to the question and implement that format on your page(s).
Add The Content To Your Page in the Proper Format
The final step is to pull it all together and add the content to your page in the proper format with the correct coding so that it emulates what’s already there. If you need to create a separate FAQ page for breast augmentation then do that with all of your questions and answers on it. If the format Google wants is the FAQs added to the breast augmentation procedure page then do that.
Capitalizing on Your Medical FAQ Pages
Wrapping this up let’s talk about ensuring all of these efforts result in new patients and increased website traffic to your practice website. After you do your research, compile your list of questions, perform the necessary website coding and implementation make sure you make a strong effort to get in touch with people that the added Google traffic brought to your website. Have strong calls to action and incentives for them to get in touch with the doctor. If you are able to offer a compelling reason why they should give you their contact information it will translate into significant practice growth.
Here’s the formula;
Increase Google traffic (through various methods with this being 1 of them) + strong, compelling offers that encourage people to contact you = $$ to the practice.
Let ABM Do This For You For Free
If you’ve made it this far you are on the right track to growing your practice. You understand the importance of the internet, SEO, and getting traffic from search engines. This discussion was just one of many strategies and tactics that we can employ on your behalf to help you capitalize on the internet better than you currently are. We would love to opportunity to have a conversation with you and see if a partnership makes sense. In fact, if you call or email us today, we’ll offer you something for free with no obligation. Just let us know you read this blog post and we’ll game plan with you about how to set up a simple FAQ page on your existing website for free. If you find value in our free help maybe you will consider us for more work, but no obligation at all we’ll offer this to you for free just for reading!
