If you have experience writing, editing, or commissioning creative or educational content for a business marketing strategy, then you’re already familiar with search engine optimization (SEO). But what about tailoring your content for local autism care SEO?
The next step in taking full advantage of the benefits of local SEO is ensuring your digital marketing strategy is using content to make the most of location-based search functionality.
What is Local SEO?
Local SEO helps you reach prospective clients that are nearest to you geographically. Adding this approach to your digital marketing strategy is incredibly beneficial for autism care providers. Treatment centers with a physical location need to be visible to users in their community. And, since your program serves a specific geographic area, you’ll benefit from a well-designed local autism services SEO strategy.
As of 2021, 97% of American adults own and use a cell phone of some kind. When you look into the research further, 85% of American adults specifically own a smartphone, up from just 35% in 2011 when Pew Research Center conducted its first survey on the topic.1
Why Your Autism Care SEO Plan Needs a Local SEO Strategy
If you were born prior to 1990, you likely have some vague memory of a pre-search engine internet. Google came on the scene in 1996 and before long, started ranking search results based on a concept they called “trustworthiness.” One of the factors Google used to determine how trustworthy a link—and by extension, whether the page was worthy of a coveted first-page search ranking—was the size of the website’s digital footprint.
Digital footprint can have a number of meanings. In terms of SEO, the phrase primarily refers to backlinks.2 While Google’s search engine algorithm has changed significantly over the years, “rank by trustworthiness” is still a qualifier today.
Before We Start: Is Your Contact Page Up To Date?
We’ll get to the main point of this piece—walking you through the basics of creating content for autism treatment SEO—really soon. But in the meantime, there is one important question for you to consider: Is your “contact us” page in the best shape it can possibly be?
There are many big companies investing in research to learn how to connect folks with the nearest and most “trustworthy” provider of the product or service they’re looking for using voice assistants like Siri and Google Voice. Your contact information is one of the most highly prioritized pieces of information in the search results.
Watch How the Big Guys Work
Even though you’re not a tech giant, pay attention to how the heavyweights work.
Like it or not, this is essentially what we’re focusing on when we talk about creating content for local SEO. Businesses like Google, Apple, and Amazon spend millions on research and marketing to connect users with the information they need. And providing accurate, intuitive answers ensures users keep coming to them with their questions.
Optimize your SEO for Search Engines and Users
Ensuring your content meets the following criteria is essential. Following these steps when creating autism care SEO content makes your website attractive to prospective patients and search engines alike.
1. Research Keywords Using Google Trends
Time spent researching keywords relevant to your target audience and geographic area of operation is never wasted. Particularly when you take the time to assess which keywords are most effective for individual search engines.
Google Trends is one of the most accessible methods for tackling this task. This helpful keyword research tool analyzes the popularity of Google search terms using real-time search data. Your content and advertising decisions are far more informed because you can see what topics users are or aren’t searching for as they happen.
2. Research and Write Local Headlines
Ever heard of geo-specific keywords? While you’d obviously like to appeal to anyone interested in connecting with your autism care center’s programs and services, the most relevant audience is likely those searching for those services in the geographic area you serve.
Include location-specific keywords like “new york autism care” on your home page, map them to the service pages of your website, and add them to your URL. These are all areas search engine algorithms crawl when determining how to rank search results.
3. Become the Most Relevant Result for Your Primary Keywords
When was the last time you searched for your autism treatment center on Google and Bing? Was your center’s website showing up on Google’s first page?
The rise of cell phone use among American adults is one of the primary drivers of a recent push for marketers to incorporate local SEO into their digital marketing strategies. Up to 30% of mobile searches are location related, and 82% of smartphone users conduct mobile searches using the words “near me.”3
SEO rankings can be difficult to navigate on your own—but they’re not that complicated, at the end of the day. It’s true there are literally hundreds of ranking factors taken into consideration by sites and search engines every day! But some factors matter more than others.
The most important factors for highly ranked SEO are:
- High-quality content
- Page Experience
- Links
4. Make a Good Impression
Capture your audience, make a good impression, and take advantage of every avenue to show your content to prospective patients. Show them why your autism care services differ from competitors and how your treatment center offers patients and their families the help they need.
The most obvious reason for this? Well, in this day and age, 30 seconds of a person’s attention is a very, very valuable thing! Is your content strategy up to the task of making the most of that time?
The world of content marketing is changing all the time. At the end of the day, effective use of local SEO comes down to allowing carefully crafted content and a robust strategy to work together to mold a top-ranking reputation online.
For help getting started, or ways to level up your local SEO strategy, Dreamscape can help. Call us at 888.307.7304 to schedule a discovery call with our strategy team.