SEO for Optometrists – A Comprehensive Guide for Optometry Clinics to Increase Organic Traffic, Revenue and Online Visibility

In this article, we will discuss how search engine optimization is the strategy you need for your optometry clinic to experience long-term growth and success. Creating SEO for optometrists can help you achieve long-term results that will drive clicks and organic traffic to your optometry website. It will also help your clinic stand out over your local competitors and bring you more new potential clients, increasing your revenue.

1. What is SEO?

SEO is short for Search Engine Optimization. It’s optimizing a website’s online content to ensure it ranks high on SERP or Search Engine Result Pages. Optimizing your website’s content relevance, link popularity, and technical configuration will make your optometry website more popular and easier to find, and increase organic traffic and revenue to your optometry clinic.

1.1 Understanding SEO Optimization

To fully implement this strategy as part of your marketing campaign for your optometry clinic, it’s important to understand why you need on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO to help your optometry website rank higher organically on SERP.

• On-Page SEO: This involves optimizing on-page elements like URL slugs, title tags, relevant keywords, internal links, and meta descriptions.
• Off-Page SEO: This involves optimizing off-page elements (or elements outside your website) like building backlinks, and making efforts to increase the exposure of your site using different platforms and channels.
• Technical SEO: This involves optimizing your optometry website for search engines, which usually involves elements like fixing indexing issues, duplicate content, page speed, and ensuring it’s a mobile-friendly website for a better user experience.

1.2 How SEO works

Now that you understand the importance of the different aspects of search engine optimization, it’s also essential to understand how SEO works:

• Crawling is usually the first step before your optometry website is considered for ranking on search engines. This is when search engine bots (or website crawlers) find new and updated content on your optometry website. The content on your website can be a webpage, a PDF, videos, images, and other types of files that are accessible to these engine bots through links.
• Indexing is the next step after crawling, and this is usually when a website or page URL is indexed. Indexing involves storing, analyzing, and organizing the content and connection between the pages on your website. You want to ensure that you are indexing your website or webpage URL so search engines can find it, and rank it on SERP.
• Ranking is the final step and will usually happen after search engines rank your web pages using intricate algorithms. Remember that factors like content quality, relevance, and overall user experience will also affect your ranking.

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2. Why SEO for Optometrists?

Implementing SEO as your marketing strategy will help your optometry clinic establish credibility and a stronger online presence on SERP. This then will indicate to search engines and users that you are an expert in the field of optometry, and that they can trust your optometry website.

SEO for optometrists can help you reach your target audience, with lower advertising costs compared to traditional advertising, and it will give you long-term results, and a competitive advantage over local competitors without the need for expensive ads. Once your SEO strategy is in place, it can improve your digital return on investment while promoting your optometry website every day, and bring you a continuous stream of organic leads, sales, and high-quality traffic.

Let’s look at the results on SERP when searching for “Optometrist Near Me”:

2.1 Local SEO

In addition to on-page, off-page, and technical SEO, there is also local SEO. You will want to include local SEO in your strategy, especially if you have one or more physical locations for your optometry clinic. Optimizing your local SEO will help you appear at the top of local search results that include your location in search queries, for instance, “optometrist near me for eye exam”.  An element that can help with your local SEO efforts, is encouraging previous or present clients to leave testimonials, online reviews, or feedback to help attract your target audience in your local area.

3. On-Page SEO

3.1 URL Slugs, Meta Descriptions, and Title Tags

URL Slugs (also known as website slugs) can be found at the very end of the URL address. Ideally, you will want to include the target or primary keyword of the page on your site since this will also be used as its unique identifier.

The first example uses the “testimonials” keyword as its URL slug. It indicates to the website visitor that the content of the webpage contains reviews and feedback from previous clients, and should contain all the information they need regarding the service.

Example: https://www.ea-ny.com/testimonials

Your URL slug doesn’t have to be just one keyword. You can use more keywords to describe the content of your webpage, like the second example below, which uses “pediatric-eye-exams”, catering specifically to eye exams for children. Using more than one keyword for your URL slug can help explain the product or service from your optometry web page.

Example: https://www.eyeandhealth.com/pediatric-eye-exams

How to optimize your URL slug:

• It should be specific, descriptive, concise, and easy to read.
• Use less than 5 words.
• Don’t use underscores, use hyphens instead.
• Use lowercase characters.
• Don’t use weird or special characters like *%#.
• Avoid using numbers, especially if they might need to be changed in the future (e.g. publishing year).

Meta Descriptions are HTML tags that inform and attract the interest of a user while encouraging them to click on your page. A meta description needs to provide a piece of short information about the page content, and it needs to be concise, unique, and relevant.

How to optimize meta descriptions:

• Include your primary target keyword.
• Encourage the user to click on your page.
• A meta description should be between 155 to 160 characters max.
• It should satisfy the user’s search query.

The example below uses a short but straightforward meta description, encouraging the user to schedule an appointment for a comprehensive eye exam, where they also offer frames for their eye needs.

Title Tags are usually HTML code tags. These give your optometry webpage a title and can be seen in the browser and on the search results page. Your title tag should support your keyword ranking efforts, and you can do so by ensuring it needs the search intent of a user.

How to optimize title tags:

• Accurately describe the page.
• Length should be kept between 50 to 60 characters.
• Avoid keyword stuffing.
• Focus on targeting one primary keyword,
• Make your title tags unique.
• Ensure the title element is present in your page’s HTML.

Below is an example of a title tag on SERP:

The second example also showcases title tags, but on browser tabs instead:

3.2 Alt Tags

Alt tags work by describing the appearance or purpose of an image being used on your optometry website. They allow search engines to crawl and rank your website, and they help screen-reading tools describe these images for visually impaired readers. Alt tags also help website crawlers and users better understand the content of your site:

How to optimize alt tags:

• Avoid copying the image caption.
• These should be short and descriptive.
• Don’t go over 125 characters.
• Make sure it’s relevant to the topic discussed on the page.
• Avoid keyword stuffing.
• Include your primary keywords.
• Don’t include “image of” or “picture of”.

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3.3 Internal and External Links

Internal links are the hyperlinks seen on a page on your optometry website, and these should direct the reader to another relevant page on your site, that provides the reader with additional and relevant information.

Best Practices for Internal Links:

• Include at least 3 to 5 internal links per page.
• Avoid phrases like “click here” or “read here”. Replace these with anchor texts instead.
• Use plenty of internal links throughout your optometry website.
• Make sure to use authoritative and relevant sources only, to improve your website ranking and the website visitor’s experience.

External links are also hyperlinks seen on the pages of your optometry website, but the difference with internal links is that external links direct the reader to a reputable page but on a different website. These external links can help search engines better understand the content on your page, and they can boost the ranking and reputation of your optometry website when you use authoritative and relevant sources.

Best Practices for External Links:

• Link credible and relevant sources.
• Make sure you use professional and authoritative sources.
• Don’t link your competitor’s website.
• Use keyword anchor texts.
• Ensure that your external links open to a new tab.

3.4 Update Old Blog Posts

If your optometry website has a section specifically for blog posts, you will want to update these to maximize your reach and support your on-page SEO efforts. Updating old blog posts will also help your optometry website rank higher on relevant searches, and it will signal to search engines that your site content is relevant and up-to-date.

How to update blog posts?

• Review your old posts and remove outdated features and trends that aren’t applicable anymore.
• Ensure that all internal and external links on your blog posts work. These should not redirect users to dead or broken links.
• Use other formats when promoting your blog post, for example, infographics.
• Share your blog posts on social media platforms, like LinkedIn and Pinterest.

4. Keyword Research

Conducting keyword research is critical to support your SEO for optometrists efforts. Keyword research will help you understand the terms and search queries users use to find your products and services.

4.1 Choosing the right target keywords

When researching keywords for your SEO for optometrists, look for the following keyword’s data insights to help you choose the right keywords for your strategy to be effective:

• Monthly search volume data indicates the demand for a specific keyword, or how popular it is.
• Keyword difficulty data will inform you of how difficult it is for a keyword to rank organically, usually categorized into low, medium, or high.
• Relevance to your business data will inform you how relevant these keywords are to your niche or industry, so don’t forget to include keywords relevant to your specific products and services.
• Search intent – These can be either informational, navigational, transactional, or commercial.

4.2 Understanding Search Intent

Search intent is important to consider when choosing which target keywords to use for your SEO for optometrists strategy since it can potentially impact your website’s rank in search results:

• Informational intent is when a user needs more information about something. These search queries usually include terms like “how”, “why”, “tips” and “solution”.
• Navigational intent is when a user already knows what they are looking for, for example, “eye exam”.
• Commercial intent is when a user has the intent to make a purchase. This is usually after previously gaining enough information and research about a product or service. Commercial intent searches can also look like searches for testimonials or feedback from a product or service, like “optometrist near me for contact lens exam x reviews”
• Transactional intent is when a user is determined to make a purchase, avail of a service, or any other conversion action, for example, “comprehensive eye exam” or “prescription glasses”.

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4.3 Keyword Tools 

Now that we understand the importance of keyword research, below are a few tools we recommend, which should help with your keyword research for SEO for optometrists.

Google Autocomplete Predictions

Google autocomplete predictions is a feature that uses an automated system to generate real and trending predictions, which are usually based on the location and language of the search query.

Google Related Searches

Related searches on Google can be found at the end of the results page. It’s a feature that will allow you to understand the search intent of your target audience better, and it also uses Google’s algorithm to generate SEO-related search keywords.

Google keyword planner

Google’s keyword planner is a great tool to use to help with keyword research because it will provide you with data insights on relevant and high-intent keywords, like how popular a keyword is and its competition level. It’s free and you can access it from ads google.

To use keyword planner, all you have to do is enter the products or services offered by your optometry business, then click “Get results”.

Keyword planner will provide you with all the relevant keywords from your keyword search query. Make sure that you select the right location when using keyword planner since results can vary depending on the geographical location.

Browser Extension: Whatsmyserp

Browser extensions are another great tool to help with keyword research, for instance, whatsmyserp. It’s a free tool that can give you data on related keywords, and it offers a free SERP checker tool. To use this tool you will need to create an account.

Let’s look at an example result for the search “eye exam near me”:

Browser Extension: Keywords Everywhere

Keywords Everywhere is another browser extension you can use for keyword research. No signup or login is needed and offers a “freemium” plan that will provide you with enough keyword analytics, like volume searches, CPC, relevant keywords, and long-tail keywords.

Let’s look at an example result for the search “optometrist near me New York”:

5. Off-Page SEO

As mentioned earlier in this article, off-page SEO involves optimizing elements outside your optometry website, like backlink building, to help with your SEO efforts in ranking high on SERP.

Let’s look at the off-page SEO strategies you can choose to implement for your optometry website.

5.1 Guest Posting

Guest posting is a tactic that can help link-building for your site. As a result, it will be able to drive high-quality traffic to your optometry website whilst also improving your ranking on SERP. To be able to do guest posting, you can search for guesting opportunities by typing in a search engine search bar “write for us+optometry“. Effective guest posting will also help indicate to search engines that you are an industry expert.

It’s important to note that when you participate in guest posting opportunities, you will need to ensure that you are following all guidelines, like their quality, word count, content review, originality, and more.

Best practices for writing guest posts:

• Strictly follow guest post guidelines.
• Meet the requirements and terms and conditions of the website.
• Follow with their style of writing.
• Include internal links from their website.
• Proofread for grammar and spelling mistakes.
• Work on your author’s bio, like your expertise and the social channels where users can reach you.

 

5.2 Content Marketing

Content Marketing is another off-page strategy you should consider for your SEO for optometrists campaign. This is because it will help nurture and convert leads into new clients, and it will help attract and retain your target audience. Content marketing will only be effective if the written content is enjoyable and informative for the reader. Ideally, it should also provide a solution for your target audience.

When the content on your optometry website has been optimized, consider distributing and sharing the content through some of the following channels or platforms:

• Ebooks
• Podcasts
• Newsletter
• Press Releases
• Online Forums
• Video Marketing
• Influencer Marketing
• Content Syndication
• Social Media Email Marketing

5.3 Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing requires engaging with your target audience and this off-page SEO tactic will surely help increase organic clicks, establish authority, drive on-site engagement, generate backlinks, improve local ranking, and gain insights from social media metrics.

Best practices for social media marketing:

5.4 Online Forums

Just like guest posting opportunities, online forums can help your SEO for optometrists efforts by gaining more backlinks and building authority. In addition to this, it will also drive traffic to your website, it will improve your ranking on SERP and overall bring you more potential new clients.

When you join online forums, you want to ensure you establish your expertise in the optometry industry. You will also need to link relevant and trustworthy sources (like your optometry web pages) to support your answers. If you aren’t sure where to start, Reddit, Quora, LinkedIn, and Facebook are good places to start.

Best practices for online forums:

• Provide accurate answers.
• Follow the platform’s policies.
• Avoid adding links to every single answer you provide.
• Don’t spam the comment section (spamming will diminish your credibility, potentially ruining your reputation).

5. Technical SEO

Technical SEO is the next strategy you need to implement to ensure your SEO for optometrists efforts don’t go to waste. Ensuring that all technical aspects of your SEO for optometrists campaign are seamlessly running will allow you to rank high on SERP, and the first technical aspect you could focus on for your optometry website is making sure it’s secure.

6.1 Website Security

Lacking website security on your optometry website poses a big risk not just for your actual website, but also for website visitors. Without website security, you are signaling search engines to rank your site low, since the risk of personal information from website visitors getting stolen, read, or modified by hackers will be high.

Making sure that your website is secure will help your optometry website gain the trust of users or website visitors, and one way to do this is by using HTTPS. This will make sure that your optometry website uses a “secure encrypted connection” and it will protect sensitive information from being compromised.

Best practices for website security:

• Make sure you are using a reliable hosting provider.
• Schedule regular website backups.
• Always ensure that your website is updated with the latest version.
• Use anti-malware software
• Use a web application firewall.
• Authenticate the identity of your site by installing an SSL certificate.

6.2 Single Website Version

Another technical aspect that goes hand in hand with website security, is making sure your optometry website only has one accessible version. This will help support your campaign efforts for SEO for optometrists, and it will help avoid duplicate errors and issues.

Let’s have a look at the example below:

• Example: https://newyorkoptometrist.com
• Example: https://www.newyorkoptometrist.com

The example shows two versions of a website. The main difference between the two is that one has “www” at the beginning and the other does not, which will confuse search engines about which version to rank on SERP.

Avoid this to ensure that the performance of your optometry website won’t be negatively affected on Google. Having more than one single website version can also reduce the effectiveness of your backlinking profile, and negatively affect your SEO efforts for SEO for optometrists.

6.3 Page Speed

In the digital landscape, Facebook took note that up to 40 percent of users or website visitors abandon a webpage if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load, hence the need to ensure that your optometry website seamlessly loads fast enough from the moment a user clicks on your site.

Not optimizing your website’s page speed both on mobile and desktop devices can give the user a negative experience, and overall negatively affect conversions and your SEO for optometrists efforts.

Best practices for page speed:

• Compress all images on your page
• Minimize the use of JavaScript files
• Use a content distribution network. This will allow requested files to travel less by using the nearest server.

6.4 Mobile Friendly Website

Your optometry website should be accessible not just on desktop devices, but also on mobile devices. It is important to ensure that your site is mobile-friendly since many users and website visitors are likely using their smartphones to browse and search online, and because Google uses mobile-first indexing.

Check that your optometry website is compatible with different mobile devices in the market by using free tools like Mobile-Friendly Test on Google Search Console.

6.5 Keyword Cannibalization

Avoiding keyword cannibalization on your optometry website is essential to avoid harming your SEO for optometrists. This can happen when multiple pages on your website have been optimized for the same keyword. In short, keyword cannibalization can cause your pages to rank poorly on SERP, as it seems like you are competing with yourself.

How to fix keyword cannibalization:

• Use a targeted keyword strategy.
• Track the ranking and performance of your keywords.
• Schedule regular content audits.
• Use spreadsheets (or other organizational tools) to organize all URLs and target keywords from your optometry website.
• Reduce the number of times a keyword is used.
• If reducing the number of times a keyword is used is not effective, remove the keyword completely.
• Improve the content quality of your pages.
• Check if any pages cannibalize each other and why.

6.6 Fix Duplicate Content

Check if your optometry website has duplicate content by using tools like Semrush. You want to ensure that your site does not contain duplicate content, and if it does, make sure you fix it to avoid backlink dilution and wasted crawling spending.

Remember that the technical aspects of your SEO for optometrists campaign will support your SEO efforts to rank high on SERP, but if these are not fixed, for instance, duplicate content, it will make it hard for bots or website crawlers to decide which page should rank.

Using tools like Semrush can also help your optometry website, by providing real-time performance reports that will identify your rank on search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, and YouTube.

6.7 Fix Broken links

Just like fixing duplicate content, you want to find and fix any broken links on your website to support your SEO for optometrists efforts.

A broken link is when a website visitor is unable to access the link provided on your webpage, which can happen when there has been a change in the URL or if the page has been removed. This can also happen if you have forgotten to redirect the URL to its new domain.

Having broken or dead links in your optometry website can discourage users from converting, so make sure you update or remove these by using tools like Google Search Console or Ahrefs’ Broken Link Checker. Using these tools will also allow you to track the performance and ranking of your website on SERP.

7. Conclusion

If you want to experience long-term results that will consistently bring your optometric clinic more new clients, then SEO for optometrists is the advertising marketing strategy you want.

Investing in SEO for optometrists will help your optometry clinic not only to stand out over local competitors, but it will help establish a stronger online presence by ranking high on search engine results pages, and by making sure new clients can easily find your products and services. Additionally, effective implementation of on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO to your SEO for optometrists campaign will help you build credibility and trust, gaining more new clients and revenue as a result.

At YoYoFuMedia, we have been able to successfully run over 1,000 SEO campaigns for our clients. If you carefully implement all the SEO strategies and best practices discussed in this blog post, you will be able to successfully run your SEO for optometrists campaign. For faster results, you can consider Google Ads for Optometrists instead, or visit YoYoFuMedia’s page to learn more about our successful SEO and Google Ads campaigns.

If you don’t have the time to personally manage and optimize your SEO for optometrists, Schedule A Free Consultation with our team of experts, and watch how your ROI grows exponentially once your SEO for optometrists is up and running.