5 Quick tips to improve your vet website’s SEO

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is often considered a complex and very time-consuming process, yet it is such an important way for people to discover your veterinary practice.There are however, some quick and easy things you can do to help improve your veterinary website’s visibility on Google.

Here are 5 tips to help your veterinary website’s SEO:

1. Make sure your NAP is accurate

One of the most important things you can do is ensure that your NAP (Name, Address, Phone number) is accurate and consistent across all your internet listings as well as your website. Check your listings on Yelp,Yellow Pages, Any-UK-Vet.co.uk and VetHelpDirect.com, etc. This ensures that Google has no confusion in determining that your current location details are accurate and therefore it can place more trust in your brand. This should result in a ‘Trust-related’ SEO boost.

It is  particularly important to check that your ‘Google My Business’ listing is up to date with the correct details. Your ‘Google My Business’ listing has the potential to be the first thing people see when they search for vets in your area.

The listing appears with a map and the three vet practices that it deems to be the closest and most relevant for the person searching. Consistency between your listing and your website is vital to help people to find and trust your brand. As more people switch from word of mouth to doing online research it becomes even more important to be showing in this map pack consistently.

2.  Add keywords to your ‘Meta Titles’ and ‘Meta Descriptions’

Meta title tags and meta descriptions (meta data) are bits of HTML code in the header of a web page that help search engines understand the content on a page. When a web page appears in the search engine results, the title tag and meta description are shown.

Your metadata is one of the most important things Google looks at when determining what a web page is offering in terms of information. If you aren’t putting important keywords into the relevant page’s meta data, you are missing out on a huge opportunity to rank higher for the searches you want to be showing up for. Your meta title can display up to 70 Characters, so try and use as much of that space as you can.

3. Ensure content is informative and well written

“Content is king” is a very famous saying in the SEO world and for good reason. Well written content on your website is not just important for your online visitors, but it is also vital for search engines to inform them about what you are offering and the value you can provide to a Google search. As Google becomes smarter at reading websites this aspect is going to become increasingly important to your SEO success.

4. Ensure your site is mobile optimised

With around 40% of all internet searches done on mobile in the UK, it is imperative that your practice website looks and works properly on a mobile device. In 2018 Google introduced ‘Mobile first indexing’ which means it considers the mobile version of a page for listing (indexing and ranking) in the search engine results. If you don’t have a responsive website or a mobile version, your website will still show however it may not perform as well as other mobile-friendly content. Remember, ensuring that your online content is easily accessible online means it is much more likely that people will discover your site and revisit it.

5. Resize large images on your website

Large images on websites result in a multitude of issues from user experience to Google not viewing your
site favourably in rankings. If your images are too big, your pages can load extremely slowly, and people may leave your site resulting in lost potential customers. By reducing the image sizes down to appropriate proportions, your pages will load much faster and Google and other search engines will be able to read them more effectively.

Hopefully these five tips can help you to start to optimise your website. If you are struggling to find the time to manage your website or social media, the team at VetHelpDirect for Vets is here to help. Contact us to find out more about our flexible approach to digital marketing support.