Plastic surgeons are an important part of the medical community. Highly trained specialists, plastic surgeons aid their patients in everything from reconstruction following a traumatic injury to rectifying birth defects and even elective cosmetic surgery. In Charlotte, North Carolina, plastic surgeons may wonder how they can best expand their practice and connect with patients who seek and rely on their services. In order to do so, it can be important to understand how to engage in effective digital marketing.
In today’s increasingly plugged-in and online world, many individuals who are seeking services, medical or otherwise, turn to the web. They may use mobile devices or home computers in order to search for local businesses and services. As such, for plastic surgeons in Charlotte who wish to connect with their community and attract new local patients, it can be important to engage in some form of digital marketing.
One often crucial consideration in digital marketing is search engine optimization, also commonly referred to as SEO. That’s why we’re exploring this important topic and discussing some of the approaches that plastic surgeons in Charlotte North Carolina can take to SEO.
What is SEO?
To understand what SEO is, let’s take a moment to imagine a scenario. Imagine that you’re looking for the answer to a question, and you hope to find that answer online. What might you do?
There’s a good chance that you might navigate to your search engine of choice. Search engines, such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo, are often online users’ go-to methods for locating information online.
So, where does SEO come in? Let’s suppose that you search for a nearby bakery. You may receive numerous results—too many, in fact, to read all of them. As such, you may begin with the results that are near the top of your results page. Search engine optimization aims to “rank” your website. Search engines take steps to offer their users helpful information. As such, they often utilize ranking systems that rank results by relevance, importance, or helpfulness. In order to get your website to rank, it can be important to take steps to that end.
What about AI?
Perhaps if you’re looking for a local bakery, you actually wouldn’t use a traditional search engine. Many users now like to consult with Large Language Model systems, such as ChatGPT, Google Bard, and Microsoft’s Bing. Some of these are connected or integrated with search engines so that they can help users find information online.
So, is SEO still important?
Absolutely! For one, search engine-optimized websites may be more likely to make it into the training data that LLMs rely on. Additionally, LLMs may prioritize information that they consider useful, and that may hinge upon the same kinds of metrics that search engines use. Finally, LLMs are still in development and are improving every day—but they’re far from perfect. For now, many users still rely on search engines, especially if the LLM they’re using isn’t quite capable yet of answering their exact question.
How is Search Engine Optimization Carried Out?
So, we’ve discussed what SEO is, its importance, even in the age of LLMs, and why it can be an important part of a plastic surgeon in North Carolina’s digital marketing strategy. But how do you do it? Let’s explore!
High-Quality Content
Depending on who you ask, this may be often the most important factor. Google and other search engines want to provide their users with the most helpful information possible. In order to do so, they take into account a number of metrics designed to determine which content is high quality and useful to users. So, a simple way to better ensure that your content is considered useful is to ensure that it’s high quality, well-written, technically accurate, and easy to understand. Additionally, search engines may prefer content that is unique—rather than plagiarized or extremely similar to existing content—and regularly updated.
Keywords
Keywords are another crucial SEO factor and one of the most important. Search engines work by crawling, indexing, and analyzing keywords to find the most relevant content for their users. In order to determine what a page is “about” search engines will take into account words on that page related to the topic that users are interested in. That’s why populating your website with relevant keywords in addition to high-quality content is crucial in SEO.
Links – Internal, Outbound, Inbound
Linking is another crucial component in SEO. Inbound, outbound, and internal links are all important to consider. So, what are those?
- Internal: these are links from one part of your website to—you guessed it—another part of your website. Why do this? For one, it can be helpful. Let’s suppose you write an article about the best ways to paint a car. Maybe you have another article about the best paints to buy for cars. That would be an opportunity to give your readers an easy way to learn more if they’re curious. Additionally, this can drive extra traffic through your site, which search engines may take note of.
- Outbound: These are links that take your readers away from your website and to another one. Wait—why send readers elsewhere? In short, because it’s helpful to them. By linking out to other helpful sources of information, you can increase the usefulness of your website.
- Inbound: These are links that take users from other websites in to your website. But, hold on. Do you have any choice in the matter? In short, yes and no. While you cannot guarantee that others will link to your content, you can encourage them to do so by networking, making connections, and creating high-quality helpful content that they will want to share.
The Bottom Line
For plastic surgeons in Charlotte North Carolina in today’s ever-more digital world, it can be important to embrace the power of digital marketing. In order to do so, SEO can be highly important. That’s why it’s also important to understand what exactly SEO is, and some of the factors that contribute to search engine optimization. Even as AI becomes more advanced, SEO will remain important for a while to come, and some of the factors that are important to consider include the quality of your content, the links in and leading to your website, and SEO keywords.
If you’re looking for additional help with your SEO strategy, don’t hesitate to get in contact. At BlueFin Digital Marketing, we have over 25 years of experience helping companies like yours. Reach out today for a free SEO audit!
