It’s true. Growing your practice with SEO is like pet care. Here’s why—and what you can do today to get in front of more pet owners.
More veterinary practices now view search engine optimization (SEO) as an important part of their practice growth strategy. According to LifeLearn Animal Health’s 2024 State of Veterinary Marketing Report, 77% of practices are planning more SEO or maintaining the same level, and the increased focus makes sense.
In a digital world where 98% of people (per Statista) search online for a local business and the top three organic Google search results get more than half of all clicks, improving your website’s rank in search results puts your practice in front of more pet owners to increase website traffic, convert more visitors into clients, and improve your profitability—and SEO works. According to Search Engine Journal, 49% of businesses report that website traffic generated by SEO has the best ROI of any marketing channel.
So, why do some practices experience better SEO results than others?
For some, the subject of SEO, writes dvm360, “is often met with skepticism from veterinary practitioners.” So, some practices may only have nominal SEO elements in place where other practices have more robust strategies. For other practices in areas with high competition, their SEO strategies may not be aggressive enough to rank above competitors, and for many, SEO advantage comes from understanding that SEO is not a static list of elements and best practices that you can set and forget. That’s like watering a plant once and expecting it to stay fresh and green for years.
The foundations of optimal SEO involve asking yourself two basic questions on an ongoing basis — “What are people searching for?” and “What do people want?” — because the world is a dynamic place. Pet owner interests change. So, SEO involves a dynamic mix of elements and making adjustments/additions as needed over time in response to changing search queries and what people want and expect from websites.
This includes website features that may not seem connected to SEO.
Live Chat is a good example. Though not commonly viewed as an SEO element like keywords or backlinks, Live Chat indirectly contributes to SEO because people enjoy Live Chat, and the reason isn’t mystifying. Unlike robotic chatbots, Live Chat conveniently connects people to real humans when they quickly need answers. This convenience (which also improves practice efficiency) helps increase the amount of time people spend on websites and reduces bounce rates, which increases the chances of converting website visitors into clients. Yet in more direct connection to SEO, Live Chat provides important real-time insights into pet owner pain points and concerns, and such metrics help keep SEO strategies on point and websites ranking well.
Mobile responsiveness is another example that underscores the what-people-want aspect of SEO.
Before smartphones could connect to the internet (yes, that time existed), having a mobile-responsive website didn’t matter. Businesses only needed to ensure their websites worked well on laptops and desktop computers. Yet those days are long gone. Today, roughly 93% of the world’s population owns a smartphone and uses them to access the internet. In the U.S. (per Pew Research Center), 97% of Americans now own a smartphone, and here’s the important part:
People are increasingly using smartphones as their primary or sole device for accessing the internet.
- Younger adults are especially likely to reach for their phones to go online.
- 58% of 18- to 29-year-olds say they mostly go online through a smartphone.
- The share of adults ages 30 to 49 who mostly use a smartphone to go online has nearly doubled.
In other words, when existing and potential clients want to interact with your practice website, chances are good they’re going to do so on their smartphones some or most of the time because they value mobile access. Because Google is in the business of delivering value to users, Google unsurprisingly announced in June 2024 that it will no longer index or rank websites that aren’t accessible on mobile devices. This means, a mobile-responsive website is no longer a nice-to-have. It’s a must.
Live Chat and mobile responsiveness are just two examples of how considering what matters to people (and search engines) helps you build and maintain a strong SEO strategy and grow your practice when combined with other key SEO elements, including:
High-Quality Backlinks
As a top Google ranking factor, backlinks (links back to your website from third-party websites) serve as endorsements of your website’s trust and credibility. So, backlinks are a fundamental aspect of SEO and crucial for ranking higher in search results.
Local business listings fall under backlinks. Local business listings (e.g., Yelp, Google Business Profile) provide information for people searching for businesses in their area, and typically include a link back to your website. So, the more you list your practice in local business listings, the more backlinks you get. Yet information quality is just as important.
“Google’s algorithm for ranking Business Profiles,” writes WordStream, “does not just consider proximity and relevance but also activity and quality of information.” So, make sure all your local business listings contain complete and accurate information. Monitor listings on an ongoing basis to make sure all links and information remain relevant and update as needed.
Quality Content
Quality content means more than dropping keywords into text to rank better in search results. As important as keywords are, “Google’s automated ranking systems,” writes Google Search Central, “are designed to present helpful, reliable information that’s primarily created to benefit people, not to gain search engine rankings.” To help guide quality content creation, Google advises content creators to ask themselves people-first questions, such as, “Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with friend, or recommend?”
Such questions are particularly important when it comes to AI-powered content generation tools like ChatGPT. AI is certainly amazing as a lightning-fast information search and retrieval tool. Yet AI-generated content typically sounds robotic. Google can certainly detect AI-generated content but doesn’t inherently penalize AI-generated content. Google penalizes poor content, which includes lack of originality, value, and robotic content that sounds like it’s been cut and pasted from another website. “If you can create content that’s unique, fresh, and helpful for users,” writes MonsterInsights, “then Google will rank it higher on its search engine results pages.”
Fast-Loading Webpages
Tom Petty said it best: “The waiting is the hardest part,” and this is especially true online. People want websites that load quickly. According to Google, 53% of people will abandon a webpage if it takes more than three seconds to load. “Our users,” writes Google Search Central, “place a lot of value in speed—that’s why we’ve decided to take site speed into account in our search rankings.” So, fast-loading webpages are another SEO must.
There are other elements (both direct and indirect) that make up a strong SEO strategy, like website structure, visual appeal, and social signals (meaning your social media presence), but you likely have the overall picture by now.
SEO is a lot like pet care. Optimal health and growth for pets involves veterinary professionals and pet owners working together, and elements that may change over time (e.g., diet, medication needs)—and it’s the same with SEO. Growing your practice with SEO involves different elements working together, and monitoring and adjusting them as needed over time to ensure a strong SEO strategy, and if it all sounds complicated, LifeLearn’s WebDVM custom websites provide a comprehensive solution.
Customizable to reflect your practice, WebDVM websites come with core SEO essentials and incorporate digital and search industry trends and best practices to rank your website better in search results and grow your practice. Pages load fast, they’re easy for pet owners to navigate, and all WebDVM websites are optimized for mobile devices. You also have a range of stunning visual design choices to instantly make a great first impression and keep visitors on your site longer, and the content management software makes it easy to make updates whenever you need them.
If you need a more aggressive SEO strategy, you’ve got options, like professionally written custom content and advanced SEO services.
You also have the option of adding ClientEd to your website as a pet owner-facing resource.
Containing more than 2,100 pet health education handouts written and reviewed by animal health experts, ClientEd handouts can certainly be printed or emailed to clients to improve compliance. Yet when you position ClientEd as an accessible resource that empowers pet owners as active participants in their pet’s best health, you increase website traffic, which is another SEO factor.
If your head is spinning at this point, you don’t have to figure it all out on your own.
PSIvet members save 10% on LifeLearn’s education and marketing solutions including WebDVM and ClientEd. Visit lifelearn.com/PSIvet to claim your PSIvet member discount and connect with our team to better understand where your practice ranks today and how to set your practice up for growth in 2025.