How A Little Nip And Tuck Can Improve Your SEO

March 17th, 2015 by Search Influence Alumni

Makeovers aren’t just for mommies looking to restore and improve their post-pregnancy appearance through multiple, personalized plastic surgery procedures. Makeovers can also work wonders for websites in the cosmetic medicine industry. If your website isn’t bringing you a consistent stream of new patients, it may be time to give your site a much-needed SEO facelift. Learn how adding graphics to your website can help you get results!

Quick—what do professional skin care, breast augmentations, and braces all have in common?

Give up? Well, first of all, if you want any of these things, you’ll need to seek the help of an accredited medical professional—a dermatologist, cosmetic surgeon, or orthodontist, respectively. More importantly, however (at least for the sake of this blog post), is the fact that you can actually see the end results of these types of medicine. So how can medical professionals incorporate these visible results into their SEO strategy?

If your medical specialty provides some sort of aesthetic benefit, there is a good chance you could (and should) be doing more to improve your rankings in organic search results. “More” in this context doesn’t mean “more keyword-rich text” or “more high-quality links to your site.” Instead, it means taking advantage of industry-specific SEO opportunities. Optimizing and adding images, educational infographics, or patient testimonial videos can have a significant impact on your site’s search visibility.

Optimize Existing Images

Optimizing image file names, alt text, and title text will give search engines information about the image and the content on your site. Any images can be optimized with keywords, but before and after images of your patients are an excellent industry-specific opportunity to naturally incorporate relevant keywords into your site’s content.

One of our clients, a plastic surgeon, has a before and after image gallery on his site. We optimized each of the images in the gallery and saw some interesting results. Links to the gallery outperform the corresponding page on his site for the majority of his targeted keywords. The same client even has images that rank in organic search results!

Add Relevant Images

It’s important to note that Google can’t read or understand images without alt text or title text. But a page with relevant images that have no alt text or title text will most likely still rank better than a page without images! Why? The answer is simple—the ranking algorithm also pays attention to user behavior. If your site’s visitors are happy with what they see, search engines will recognize a pattern and reward your website for providing quality content.

Another one of our clients, a plastic surgeon in New York, didn’t have a before and after image on his BOTOX® page. As an authorized physician, our client was allowed to use some images provided by Allergan, the manufacturer of BOTOX® Cosmetic. We chose this relevant image and placed it on his site:

In the 30 days after we implemented this image, the average visitor spent 13% more time on the page compared to the previous 30 days. When visitors landed on the page from organic search, the bounce rate improved by 24%. Both of these stats demonstrate to Google that users are not only finding the information that they’re looking for on this page, but that it’s also engaging enough to keep them on the site.

Create Custom Graphics

Another behavioral signal that has become increasingly more important is social behavior. Adding custom graphics to your site is a great way to promote social media sharing and demonstrate positive social signals to search engines. And, like other images, custom graphics also give you the opportunity to create keyword-rich file names, alt text, and title text.

The infographic above was shared more than 2,000 times on Facebook. The month it was published, the site saw a 25% increase in referral traffic compared to the previous year. It’s relevant, informative, and interesting for viewers. In other words, it’s exactly the kind of content that helps with SEO.

Upload Testimonial Videos

There are other options if you don’t want to use before and after images or infographics. Another one of our clients in the field of plastic surgery uploads patient testimonial videos to his site. Generating nearly 9,000 page views in 2014, these testimonials have certainly had a positive impact on his site’s search rankings. The fact that these patients were so happy with their results has also helped to bring in new business.

*Note the keywords in the video titles.

Get Results

In the end, people considering a cosmetic procedure want to know that they’ll be satisfied with the results. Search engines want to see that your site is providing quality results for the people who are searching. Using images, graphics, and videos can help kill both of these birds with one stone. You’ll be rewarded with better organic rankings, website traffic — and, ultimately, more business.