Issues to Avoid While Scaling SEO For Multi-Location Clinics

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Issues to Avoid While Scaling SEO For
Multi-Location Clinics

• This article explores the most common SEO
  challenges that high-growth, multi-location
  healthcare practices face when they expand to new
  markets or grow through mergers and acquisitions.
  It also explores the best solutions to those
  problems based on our 40 years of experience
  working with multi-location healthcare groups and
  providing SEO services for doctors.
• The eight most common issues faced by healthcare
  organizations include
• Not planning for the future
• Neglecting website scalability
• Ignoring site maintenance
• Not investing in online reviews
• Not merging Google Business Profile listings
• Skipping audits for acquired websites
• Overlooking MA link building strategies
• Ignoring or fixating on localized content Lets
  look at each of those in more detail
• 1.Not planning for the Future
• The practice leaders in younger groups tend to
  focus too much on expanding services and
  providers while ignoring future issues that may
  arise. Your website may look great with the three
  locations you just acquired but will eventually
  look cluttered when you reach 20 locations. The
  time to invest in updates is now.
• From a healthcare local SEO perspective, it may
  be worth investing in a more dynamic solution to
  help improve your acquisition efficiency. If
  youre still custom-building every location page
  for each new location,

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• consider investing in an API solution or a more
  scalable website to help improve your website
  maintenance operations in the future.
• How do you become more future-oriented?
• Ask your healthcare SEO company for help. Ask
  them what common issues you should prepare to
  address. Most importantly, start answering the
  difficult questions today, before you add 20 more
  locations.
• Neglecting Website Scalability
• Many websites look and function superbly on the
  front end. But the back end may be a mess that
  requires a great deal of hands-on maintenance.
  Consider these three common signs of poor website
  scalability
• The need to rebuild website sections that could
  be populated dynamically
• A static sitemap that doesnt update with new
  content
• A flat site architecture
• How do you improve your website scalability?
• Work with your healthcare SEO company or web team
  to organize your content into sections and create
  a framework for your sites information
  architecture. Then, make a list of web elements
  that are frequently rebuilt on new pages and that
  could be dynamic, such as a section for recent
  blog posts. Work with your healthcare SEO company
  or web team to create an action plan for scaling
  your website.

3.Ignoring Site Maintenance Dont ignore or
neglect regular site maintenance. A lack of site
maintenance will lead to future roadblocks on the
way to multi-location SEO and scalability. Common
site issues include
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• Multiple technical SEO issues
• Outdated WordPress versions
• Outdated site plugins
• Too many unused plugins
• Broken features/functions
• How do you address underlying site maintenance
  issues?
• Conduct a full SEO technical audit that includes
  the entire backend of your website. Check the
  Google Search Console for any coverage or penalty
  issues. This audit will give you a clearer
  picture of where your site is today and where it
  should be. It will also provide a framework for a
  more scalable approach to your site maintenance.
• 4.Not Investing in Online Reviews
• Healthcare organizations often fail to establish
  their online business listings on platforms like
  Google Business Profile, Healthgrades, Vitals and
  others, let alone maintain them. During
  expansion, reviews are often relegated to a low
  priority. Unfortunately for practices that
  neglect
• them, online reviews are often the highest
  priority for prospective patients searching
  online. Reviews give those healthcare consumers
  confidence in your trustworthiness. If they
  cannot find your business listings or you dont
  have enough reviews, you risk losing viable leads
  that are ready to book appointments.
• How do you scale up review generation?
• There are numerous online reputation management
  tools available to support your review generation
  efforts. You can also partner with a healthcare
  SEO company to scale up your review generation
  program. Either way, invest in your online
  reputation because its directly tied to your
  practices new patient growth.

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• Not Merging Google Business Profile Listings
• Your Google Business Profile (GBP) listings
  should work for you, not against you. Too many
  multi-location healthcare organizations add new
  listings for acquisitions while leaving the old
  listings hanging. In addition to sending the
  wrong signals to Google, this creates a poor user
  experience for potential customers.
• How do you properly manage your GBP listings?
• Once you acquire your original business listing,
  work with GBPs support to merge your listings.
  This is important because it helps you acquire
  the existing reviews, as well. You can also
  simply acquire the listing and change its name
  and URL.
• Skipping Audits for Acquired Sites
• Avoid the mistake of redirecting acquired sites
  without reviewing their content performance. This
  mistake can create all kinds of issues that will
  degrade your SEO health, from excessive redirects
  to duplicate content that hurts SEO.
• How do you bring best practices to your acquired
  sites?
• Conduct thorough content audits to identify any
  content thats worth keeping. We recommend tools
  like
• SEMrush for keyword performance
• Google Search Console
• Google Analytics
• Overlooking MA Link Building Strategies

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• You need a solid backlink portfolio to enhance
  your sites ability to rank in search.
• How do you build an MA link-building strategy?
• Launching press releases when you open, merge
  with, or acquire new practices is a good idea,
  but you need more. Your SEO team should conduct
  unlinked and linked brand mentions to help you
  earn links from the original site to the new
  site.
• Ignoring or Fixating on Localized Content
• When it comes to local SEO for healthcare, its
  easy to focus on local search terms when starting
  a new site. However, when you expand to include
  dozens of locations, your challenge becomes more
  complex. Too many healthcare local SEO teams make
  the mistake of only focusing on high-volume
  so-called short-tail keywords that are very
  competitive.
• Examples of short-tail keywords might include
  terms like back pain or
• orthopedist.
• How do you localize your content for practice
  growth?
• A better, more localized keyword strategy
  typically consists of longer-tail keywords that
  include location modifiers such as back pain
  treatment in downtown Dallas or top-rated
  orthopedist in Davenport. Armed with a more
  targeted keyword list, you can create more
  localized content on each practices location
  page. Look for opportunities on these pages to
  add localized keywords where they make the most
  sense. The most natural opportunities include
• Page headers
• About this location sections
• Directions to locations
• Titles and meta descriptions

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• You can also write blog posts about special
  events or activities that specific locations may
  be participating in for their local communities.
  Keep in mind that some multi-location practices
  give too much weight to localized content. The
  common signs are
• Local keyword stuffing (jamming too many keywords
  together in content)
• Creating different service pages for each
  location (microsites)
• Putting each location into a subdomain with its
  own microsite
• Publishing blog posts that are too locally
  focused
• Creating too many service pages for each city,
  state, and metro area
• How do you balance localized content?
• If youre working on a site suffering from too
  much localized content, talk with your local SEO
  healthcare team to perform a content pruning
  audit, called a remove and redirect strategy.
  Your goal should be to maintain a clean,
  well-organized site architecture.
• Remember what scalable multi-location, local SEO
  for doctors is about. These local SEO services
  for doctors require strategies that are more
  complex because healthcare consumers seek care in
  so many ways. With more online patient journeys
  to account for, you need to achieve more
  touchpoints in your SEO strategy.
• These are some of the most common SEO problems
  that healthcare organizations face. The solutions
  come from our experience scaling SEO in
  healthcare. Remember that even the most scalable
  local SEO for doctors strategy must always put
  the patient first.
• If you need help with local SEO services, consult
  a local SEO agency or a local healthcare SEO
  company like Practice Builders and take advantage
  of their expertise. Just remember that
  multi-location SEO strategies like those detailed
  here will help you drive more patients to your
  practice. To learn more, visit practicebuilders.co
  m.