With the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and its ability to churn out informative content, how can you ensure that Google and your website visitors see your content as valuable and worth consuming?
Or to look at it another way, if the Google bots are crawling thousands of pages in response to one query, all with similar content, how will it decide who should rank highest for a search term?
From past page ranking algorithm changes, it is most likely that Google will be relying more on what it terms Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (EEAT) signals to determine who is writing website content. So websites that clearly demonstrate expertise and authority will be the biggest winners over time.
Sites that focus on convincing visitors (potential patients) that they should trust you and your team, and the content you publish, will fare best. One way to do this is to ensure you feature your people on your website through detailed ‘meet the team’ pages, author bios and expert opinions. This also means showcasing your services using authoritative articles and expert pieces.
3 SEO elements to focus on
There are three elements of your SEO improvement project to keep in mind:
- Create quality content – Create a content strategy based on keywords and phrases that reflect your clinic’s services and stick to it. One method is to create quality content to answer patients’ queries.
If you want to use AI tools to generate content, you must be sure that you have human curation. The best solution is to infuse AI content with human expertise, edits and anecdotes. This way, you can differentiate your content from AI-generated fodder. - Increase focus on EEAT – Your clinic, and the people behind it, are your biggest asset and that translates to the world of SEO. Double down on showcasing you and your team’s experience and expertise and what makes you qualified to speak on specific topics.
- Become a topical authority on your subject matter – It’s not enough to put one article out every month to be called an authority on your subject in 2024. Clinics/practitioners should aim for the holy grail of SEO and remember that to become a topical authority, you must provide regular high-quality content.
Google (and all search engines in fact) assess the authority of a website or content based on various factors, one of which is topical relevance. By identifying the frequently asked questions that your patients are asking about your specific services and treatments, and making efforts to cover those subjects in their entirety on your website, you can ensure to stay ahead of the competition for page ranking, and make your website more visible. Remember too, Google may also review how long you’ve covered your expert topic – so best to get started as quickly as you can.
As we brace for the transformative change that AI is going to bring to search results, it becomes evident that adaptation and strategic planning will be key for website marketing to thrive in this evolving digital environment.
So do you have an SEO Plan?
