Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a digital marketing tool that has become essential for businesses. Without it, your website will miss out on valuable search rankings as potential clients searching for local veterinary services are directed entirely toward your competitors. SEO for vets should be one of the most important focuses of your overall marketing efforts and, if done correctly, will help your website thrive in a sea of competitors.

Why Is Veterinarian Search Engine Optimization Important?

The average person performs three-to-four searches per day, and Google incredibly gets over 63,000 searches per second! Of those searches, 46% are for a local business or services; the average number of monthly local searches totals around 97 billion.

When you consider that 76% of people who use their smartphones to search for something nearby, then visit a business within one day of searching, it starts to become apparent that looking to the internet is becoming the primary way people find local businesses.

If you have a veterinary practice and want people to be able to find you, it all starts online. But where and how do you begin?

SEO for Vets Important: What It Does

SEO is the primary tool that can help your practice get found in organic search results. Developing a website that search engines are able to locate and index gives you the potential of increased visits and traffic to your site. And, of course, more traffic means more potential clients.

Nowadays, people often search using “near me” to locate businesses that are nearby. Even if they don’t use “near me,” search engines usually know what location people are searching from, and, correspondingly, they also know what businesses are nearby.

According to the data, about 72% of people who perform a local search visit a business within 5 miles of their search location. If your veterinary practice is not showing up when people are searching for your services, you could be missing out on a significant amount of potential clients.

By appearing on the first page of search results, people have a higher likelihood of finding your practice and may decide to give it a try. This is why it is important to make sure veterinary SEO is a part of any digital marketing plans you consider.

How Can You Improve Your Veterinary SEO?

It all starts with your website. Google’s algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) have become increasingly complex over the years, and they make hundreds of adjustments to them every month. These factors and changes can all impact your search rankings. For this reason, your website also needs to stay updated so that you don’t disappear from search results.

You also have to get your veterinary SEO details right. Google takes over 200 factors into account when deciding how to rank each website. Every page and post on your website matters, and should have strong elements present, such as page titles, meta descriptions, and keywords. These all work together to tell search engines what information you are trying to convey and what it is that you want to rank for.

Even with a great veterinary website and all the SEO pieces in place, you still need strong content. Google and other search engines want to provide users the best information possible when they are searching for something. Consider your website your virtual waiting room where people can come to see your story and learn who you are. You want to try to answer people’s questions before they need to ask.

Some ways you can do this are:

• Make sure you have consistency with online directories.
• Build a website that is fast & easy to navigate.
• Write blogs that answer the questions your users are asking, such as: why do cats knead, what is the reverse sneeze, or why do my dog’s feet smell like cornchips?
• Hire a veterinarian SEO company to perform these and other necessary tasks to improve your search ranking.

The Benefits of SEO for Veterinarians

Using your website as a marketing tool with the right veterinary SEO tactics in place can offer a lot of great benefits, especially when compared to older and more traditional advertising channels. For example, rather than just hoping someone remembers your name when their pet needs help, you can make sure your website is the first thing they see when they’re ready to take their fur babies to the vet.

SEO tactics, combined with your veterinary website, are also an effective way to track people’s online behavior. This data can show how visitors interact with your website, how long they stayed, and where they were on the site when they left. You can see how many people visit each day, and see which efforts have the most impact on your efforts. This helps you cater your site content to user behavior, which will entice people to stay on even longer.

By posting content that ranks well for the questions your users are asking, this may:

• Increase traffic from local users.
• Establish your practice as an authority.
• Drive conversions like new client form submissions.
• Encourage physical visits to your practice.

Beyond Indigo Pets is a top veterinarian seo agency. SEO is affordable, and it’s measurable, which means you can minimize wasted effort while increasing the search visibility and presence of your website, and we want to make it accessible for you. If you are ready to use veterinary SEO and Google ads to bring in new clients, we are here to help. Call (877) 244-9322 to get started.