When you think of white hat SEO for drug rehabs, think of the cowboy with the white hat in old western movies. He’s the good guy who always prevails over the bad guys in the black hats. You know the story. The black hats ride into town and shoot up the place. For a while, they get their way. Eventually, however, they always get what’s coming to them. The white hat hero rides into the sunset, having delivered the town from the bad guys.
Like the white-hatted western hero, a white hat marketer is one who conforms with (rather than rebels against) the rules. In this case, the rules being search engine guidelines. The white hat western hero and the white hat marketer sometimes feel alone, even though they’re doing the right thing. As with the white hat hero, the white hat marketer must never give in to the dark side.
White hat SEO for drug rehabs refers to any strategy that improves Google ranking without running afoul of the rules. Google’s guidelines are quite specific (and they change over time). Staying within these rules helps your addiction treatment center maintain its reputation. With black hat marketers jeopardizing the reputation of the entire industry, it’s important to take a stand for ethical marketing.
What Constitutes White Hat SEO for Drug Rehabs?
The white hat western hero saves the town or the heroine from the bad guys in the black hats. OK, great, but what does white hat SEO look like? Here are some examples of what you’d expect to find on a website using white hat SEO techniques:
- Quality content that informs
- Meta tags that accurately reflect the page’s content
- Fast loading webpages
- Mobile-friendly web pages
- Easy navigation to appropriate webpages on the site
All of this is the exact opposite of black hat SEO for drug rehabs. Unethical marketers constantly use tricks and deceptions to boost web traffic. Black hat tactics include purchased links, cloaking, and thin content that has been overly stuffed with keywords. Such techniques endanger a website’s ranking, which is more than enough reason to avoid them.
Why White Hat SEO For Drug Rehabs is So Important
White hat SEO should always be considered the right thing to do. Why? First and foremost, it keeps your reputation intact. Dishonest players are endangering the reputation of the entire addiction treatment content marketing industry. The best thing you can do is to make sure your facility remains above such lowly practices.
An excellent reputation is built slowly over time. Once you have a solid reputation, it pays dividends in many different ways. When that reputation is lost, however, drug rehab centers will find it extremely difficult (if not impossible) to rebuild. That’s why white hat SEO for drug rehabs matters so much.
How does black hat SEO trash your reputation? Basically by getting your website banned from search engines like Google. Since Google is the dominant search engine, it’s not a good idea to get on their bad side. Billions of people use the search engine giant each day. It’s no exaggeration to say that being shut out by Google is more or less a death sentence for most websites.
Let’s face it, Google searches largely determine whether your drug rehab website gets visited in large or small numbers. If your website is penalized, the drop in traffic would likely be devastating to your admission rates. It makes no sense to work at building a website only to see it burned due to unethical marketing techniques. Remember also that there’s no iron-clad guarantee of getting back into Google’s good graces later on. Knowing this, the promises of huge web traffic increases from black hat marketers won’t sound so good, will they?
Two Effective Ways to Implement White Hat SEO For Drug Rehabs
Avoiding black hat tactics isn’t all that difficult. It just takes a commitment to do the right thing. Here are two techniques for employing white hat SEO for your drug rehab website:
Feature Quality Content
White hat SEO for drug rehabs uses original content that both informs and motivates prospective patients. Black hat marketers care nothing about the quality of your webpages or the viewer’s experience. Therefore, they won’t hesitate to excessively stuff content with keywords. Such pages read poorly and offer little of value to the reader.
White hat SEO means uploading quality, well-written content that is relevant to the viewer’s interests. It also means content that is entirely original. Some unethical marketers won’t bat an eye about literally stealing content word-for-word from other websites. That’s a mistake that search engines can spot quite easily. Original content is how you showcase your unique expertise and compassion to viewers. It’s also one of the big reasons why people pick up the phone and call you. White hat SEO for drug rehabs enables you to display that you’re an honest operator. That’s an important prerequisite for patient trust. In a healthcare industry like drug rehab, patient trust is everything.
Use Meta Tags That are Descriptive, Keyword-Rich
Everything on your webpage should be working together. Your meta description, for example, should be a highly accurate indicator of what’s on your webpage. Black hat marketers don’t care about deceiving your viewers. They’re just looking for the views, and it doesn’t matter to them how they get them.
Accurate meta tags add to a positive viewer experience. That leads to longer visits and more pages of your website being visited. When Google sees people spending more time on your website, that’s a big indicator that your website is of value to viewers. As a result, they’re going to rank you much higher than websites with high bounce rates. It’s more proof that white hat SEO for drug rehabs makes good business sense.
Fire Black Hats & Hire White Hats
Many black hat SEO companies out there will offer you spectacular web traffic results. And they may deliver them too. However, those great results won’t last long. The black hat villain in a western may prevail for a while. But you just know he’s going to be defeated before the end credits!
Every reputable drug rehab center needs to work with white hat marketers. Dreamscape Marketing, a leader in addiction treatment marketing ethics, can help maintain your good reputation. We’ve created hundreds of websites for drug rehab clients, and we’re setting ethical marketing standards in the addiction treatment industry.
Contact us today at 888-307-7304 or via our “Contact Us” webpage. Let’s put white hat SEO for drug rehabs to work for your facility today.