Putting Your Treatment Facility On Top the Rankings
For addiction treatment centers, SEO is one of the primary breadwinners when it comes to marketing efforts. The majority of clients typically stem from someone with an addiction issue searching up something on Google and, if all goes to plan, is captivated by one of your blog posts and decides to seek assistance at one of your treatment centers.
And while this sounds simple in theory, there’s another layer added that raises the stakes. Local SEO is the true driving force, and without an optimized search engine optimization plan that caters to the local market, you’re likely to be swallowed by the competition.
Even the Small Business Administration (SBA) itself endorses local SEO as a way to get seen for small businesses and, yes, rehab facilities.
But local SEO for rehab centers goes deeper than just creating a few blog posts and mentioning the city or town your rehab centers are located. Search engine optimization has grown into an intricate, sophisticated, and, unfortunately, rapidly evolving organic entity.
In this article, we’ll explain the major points of local SEO for addiction treatment centers, what goes into the most valuable strategies, and how you can audit and enhance your own local SEO efforts.
If you’d like to receive an audit now, courtesy of one of our own search engine optimization experts, contact Ads Up Marketing so you can get a head start on your approach. Otherwise, continue reading to learn more about local SEO for addiction treatment centers.
What’s Different About Local SEO?
Local SEO for addiction treatment centers is a niched-down form of marketing that involves targeting certain geo-specific regions using search engine optimization. The idea behind local SEO isn’t that different from standard search engine optimization strategies; however, your efforts are more focused on local geographic areas, landmarks, and businesses, in addition to targeting other points of awareness like directories and similar listings.
Local SEO helps clients searching for rehab centers from your area specifically or someone from out of town who searches something like “treatment centers in (your town).” This brings more potential clients to the pages you have ranking in Google or other search engines. But what are some of the other benefits of local SEO?
What are the Advantages of Local SEO for Rehab Centers?
Local SEO for alcohol and drug rehab centers presents a large number of new opportunities for most organizations. If you haven’t emphasized your local SEO strategy enough, consider the following advantages of deploying a more efficient local search engine optimization plan.
Higher Focus On Local Clients
For most rehab centers, a large portion of their revenue comes from local clients. But what good is your SEO if it doesn’t target the local demographic? It might seem trivial, but it’s very possible for a website to NOT cater to the local recipient of addiction treatment if it hasn’t been tuned for local search engine optimization. By attracting local residents for addiction treatment, your chances are much higher of converting them into paying clients.
Higher Trust Factor
Your trust factor is a critical metric when it comes to search engine optimization in general. If you’ve ever looked at any keyword search tool, you’ve probably seen “Trust Factor” delivered as a numeric value. And while this does have an impact on where you land in the SERPs, the type of trust factor mentioned here deals with locals accepting your treatment center as a valued and standup part of the community.
When you’re not visible online, not only does it stop potential clients from discovering your rehab center – those that do may be put off because of the fact your local search results were subpar and your site was difficult to find.
Boosted Traffic for Your Rehab Center
Local search engine optimization and SEO are contact sports – the more people you contact, the more conversions you’ll witness. Boosting your website’s overall traffic for local SEO will also help you climb the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) as a whole.
This puts your website in front of the most relevant searchers nationwide, delivering an opportunity to not only snag local clients but out-of-staters as well. This helps you build a good rapport with your target market in other regions of the country. x you start receiving good reviews and citations from all over the map, you’ll experience an uptick in traffic.
Enhanced Partnerships Through Local Search Results
When your local SEO strategy is optimized properly, connecting and collaborating with other local businesses in the area becomes much easier. For a rehab treatment center, connecting with organizations like community centers, VA Hospitals, mental health treatment centers, primary care physicians, and other locally-based establishments can be a golden opportunity.
Not only does this enhance your reputation and put the word out regarding your treatment center by boosting word-of-mouth referrals, but you’re likely to see a substantial increase in medical referrals. Future clients visit all types of medical agencies and establishments, public and private, before landing at a given treatment center.
The medical professionals at these offices provide them with referrals when they can’t treat what the client is experiencing. By forming partnerships with local entities, you increase your revenue and your reputation in the community.
More Satisfying Client Experience
Local SEO plays a huge role in the client experience – and rightfully so. This is most likely the first contact and experience future clients have with your treatment center. They begin forming an opinion of your facility before they even click to navigate onto your website.
Was it easy for them to find the information they needed about your treatment center? Were there clear reviews, ratings, and a correct address on your Google Business listing? Were your meta titles and descriptions worded in a way that gave them an efficient preview of what lay on the page ahead?
Dialing in Local User Engagement for Treatment Centers
When it comes to local search results, all these dynamics accumulate and shape the client experience – at least the beginning stages of it. Of course, the next phase of this is optimizing your website pages, but there’s much to be said of rehab centers that put in the effort to showcase a clean entry on search engines.
It seems like a lot to take in, but local SEO doesn’t have to be as complicated as it seems. Addiction treatment centers have a leg up because there are so many different ways your rehab centers can leverage the power of local SEO.
Now that you’re aware of the way local SEO empowers rehab center marketing efforts, let’s take a look at some of the strategies your organization can use to propel your brand to the top of the search engines.
Local SEO Strategies Rehab Centers Use to Dominate Search Results
The following section contains all of the highly-effective methods that drug rehab centers just like yours use to take over the search results on Google, Bing, and other engines. How do we know these strategies work?
At Ads Up Marketing, we use them daily for rehab centers like yours to help them reach the pinnacle of the search results on Google, Bing, Yahoo!, and other platforms. These are just a portion of the strategies we deploy in the addiction treatment marketing space:
Enhanced Google My Business (GMB) Listings
This is so simple yet, such a vital part of your local SEO strategy. So simple, in fact, that many rehab centers forget to give it the proper amount of attention. Your Google Business listing contains the basic information about your addiction treatment center:
- Name of rehab centers
- Phone numbers of drug rehab centers
- Addiction treatment center address
- Photos of addiction treatment center
- Areas of focus/specialty fields of addiction treatment (short snippet about your addiction treatment center and what exactly your focus is on regarding recovery and healing treatments)
- Addiction treatment services and levels of care (do you provide inpatient, outpatient, or additional care levels?)
- Your addiction treatment center’s hours of operation
You should also be mindful of the reviews left for your addiction treatment center and respond to them promptly whether they’re positive or negative.
Keyword Research That Knows Your Region
This goes without saying, but keyword research is still an essential part of the SEO process for any rehab center. Try and find keywords centered around addiction treatment services that might not be over-used. Instead of using broad terms like “dual-diagnosis treatment,” try using “dual-diagnosis treatment for OCD and substance abuse.
You’ll find that you rank higher, and faster, and attract a more intention-based demographic that’s looking for something specific. They’re past the awareness stage and looking to make a decision in the immediate future. In this case, you would even try “dual diagnosis for OCD and substance abuse in (your city).”
On-Page Elements: Honed to Perfection
The on-page SEO of your rehab center needs to be laser-focused and structured properly. A large part of local optimization for drug rehab centers is placing local keywords strategically throughout your site, blog posts, and homepage. This could be anything from referencing other businesses, mentioning historical landmarks or well-known places, local roads and highways, and names of neighborhoods or surrounding cities and towns.
Your on-page structure for your drug rehab should also include things like a Google Maps with your business pinpointed – this drastically improves SEO and means you’re searchable on Google Maps. If you have pages dedicated to local happenings or anything relevant to the area, make sure you link them accordingly with similar content throughout your site and the right external content.
Directory Listings
Part of local SEO for your rehab center includes placement of your business in directory listings. This might sound old-fashioned and some may think it has nothing to do with search engines – but it’s the act of getting your business posted in another space online.
Google gives a little more authority each time your drug rehab center is cited in recognized sources like Yelp!, Yellow Pages, and other business directories. These can be filled out similarly to your Google My Business listing and should be monitored and treated in the same way. Respond to your comments, reviews, and other customer engagement.
Local Link Building
What is local link building for your drug rehab center? When you’re tackling traditional SEO, link-building is a large part of the equation. Your local efforts aren’t much different, as you’ll use relevant keywords to link from your own website outwardly to external sites and attempt to have them link back to you. This can be done through citations, blog posts, reviews, blog comments, and other methods.
The trick is to link out to the websites of local businesses, which signals the search engines that you’re relevant in this vicinity. Try and use anchor text that has relevant search terms that are locally focused. Keep in mind you don’t want to over-optimize in this situation, as Google might see it as spam, but use your best judgment.
Optimize for Mobile
Optimizing for mobile has a profound impact on your search results. Search engines now give more attention to sites that are focused on mobile. Most people conduct business using mobile (more than desktop) and a large majority of searches are conducted from a mobile device.
Plus, if your site isn’t optimized for mobile, you’re likely to turn away potential clients, anyway. If they arrive at your site and everything is out of focus, or doesn’t fit properly on mobile – or has issues with loading times, it’s a surefire way to increase your bounce rates exponentially.
In surveys, nearly 70% of consumers claim that they won’t continue researching or doing business with a website that isn’t optimized for mobile. In addition, most internet users won’t wait over 4 to 5 seconds for any given page to load.
Achieving Local SEO Success for Addiction Treatment Centers
If you’re having difficulties with any of the issues above, or want your local SEO efforts in the hands of a professional team with decades of combined experience, Ads Up Marketing is standing by to take your call.
For more information on how we can help you get your site optimized, or help enhance any of your online marketing, contact us today!