Skipping this 10-second SEO step is blocking your wellness business (and costing you thousands)

On a snowy day in May of 2019, my husband and I got married on a dock overlooking Lake Tahoe.

It was just as magical as it sounds, and we were lucky to have our friends and family there to celebrate with us.

Including, of course, my mom, who was bursting at the seams with love, excitement, relief that her only daughter was finally getting hitched, and a slight buzz from a week’s worth of high-altitude oxygen depletion.

At the end of the ceremony, Andrew and I broke a glass, kissed, and heard my lovely mother yell, clear as a bell in the thin mountain air…MOLOTOV!

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Now, to be clear: Andrew and I are not Jewish. My mother is, obviously, not Jewish.

But we loved the ritual of breaking the glass, so with the help of our dear friend and officiant Gary Cohen, we incorporated it into our ceremony.

Out of anyone that day, Gary laughed the hardest, and we all laughed to tears.

My poor mom took it well….”I was so sure it was Molotov! Not mazel tov!“

First, let’s talk about keywords

Before I explain how my mom’s Molotov faux-pas plays into this, let’s talk about keywords.

When you create new content for your website, it’s crucial to use the words and phrases your potential clients use when they perform a Google search.

Every day, Google returns results on over 250,000 wellness-related searches PER MINUTE.

So if you want your site to be one of the top results of those searches (and believe me, you do…why would you leave such a large potential untapped?) the words in those searches should also be on your website.

In SEO parlance, these are called “keywords” or “keyword phrases,” and you can learn more about them here and here.

Want to know the biggest mistake we see clinicians make on their websites, a mistake that’s costing them thousands of site visitors per year and millions in revenue?

Talking science instead of solutions, aka, instead of publishing content that’s easy to read and solutions-based, they’re using words like pathophysiology and pharmacokinetics.

The language on your site matters, both for user experience and getting your work in front of the millions of eyes searching Google each hour for wellness support.

The problem with unvetted keywords

We love it when our clients start translating their sites from clinician to client and incorporating keywords that increase their traffic (and bottom line).

This is such a critical step for getting found on the internet, and it’s not uncommon to see results like these.

But there’s one aspect of keywords that can be easy to overlook: Search intent, sometimes known as user intent.

Let’s imagine you’re creating a new blog or page that will outline the most effective foods and meals to help people with autoimmune hypothyroid lose weight, complete with recipes, a 7-day meal plan, and a shopping guide infographic.

And you’ve got the perfect primary keyword.

Instead of using the phrase “nutrition to address Hashimoto’s thyroiditis-related obesity,” you’re going to say “foods to avoid thyroid weight gain.”

Great translation!

But…what are most people looking for when they go online and search for “foods to avoid thyroid weight gain”?

You HAVE to know the answer to this question before you can determine if this is the right keyword phrase for you.

The easy SEO step you’re probably skipping

Let’s go back to my mom and her Molotov! wedding well wishes.

“Molotov” sounded like the phrase she’d heard before. It felt right.

But as soon as it was out of her mouth, the expression on our guests’ faces let her know it was a tad off phonetically and a universe away from the congratulations she meant to bestow.

Thankfully for us, she didn’t do her research before the big moment came. This story holds an eternal place in our family’s lore.

But I highly encourage you not to follow her example.

Before you use that perfect keyword on your website? Search for it on Google.

Checking for search intent doesn’t require any fancy SEO tools.

All you need to do is Google the phrase you’d like to use and quickly review the top 10 results.

“Foods to avoid thyroid weight gain” will more than likely return results that provide lists of the top foods that support people with thyroid imbalances.

But what if the top 10 results are heavily focused on supplements instead of foods?

Or popular meal services that deliver ingredients right to your door?

Or foods that you actually don’t want your patients to eat?

Those top 10 results reveal search intent, i.e., what most people are looking for when they Google your keyword phrase.

You cannot know search intent, I repeat, you can ???????? not ???????? know ???????? search intent ???????? until you check for yourself. (Believe us, we’re perpetually shocked at what we find when we get to this point in keyword research.)

But the reality is that many people skip this step and go straight to creating the content, ending up in the same boat as my mom on my wedding day.

Why is skipping search intent a problem?

The big takeaway is that skipping a search intent check means you’ll be writing content (or worse, paying other people to write content) based on a phrase that effectively hides your website from potential patients online.

The blog or page might be helpful for your current patients, and that’s great.

But your site can do so much more.

The beauty of SEO is that it turns your wellness website into a multi-tool.

Your web pages can be funnels for tons of new patients to find your work instead of simply information repositories.

They can be useful and lucrative.

Evidence-based and effective at increasing your bottom line.

Just take 10 seconds and make sure what you want to say matches what your patients are searching for on Google.

Ready for more simple SEO hacks?

Click here to start your free 7-day trial of the Market Your Wellness Biz Monthly Membership, where we talk all things wellness marketing, from SEO to sales funnels.

We’ll see you at our next meetup!