Just because you have an autism treatment website doesn’t mean prospective patients are finding you. In fact, you might be surprised to learn that without proper ABA therapy SEO, the website you worked so hard on is practically invisible on the web. But keep in mind just how crowded a place the internet is. The internet is like a racetrack, but with millions of horses racing rather than the usual five or 10.
Obviously, everyone is jockeying for position, and plenty “riders” will be left in the dust.
ABA Therapy SEO Must-Haves
So what can you do to help make sure your autism treatment website doesn’t get left far behind? The following tips for improving your ABA therapy SEO are an effective way to increase your ranking on all major search engines.
1. Your Website Needs to Load Quickly
No one likes landing on web pages that load slowly. With the increased use of mobile browsers and social media, fewer and fewer people are willing to wait for a slow-loading page. Various studies have indicated that most people are unwilling to wait much more than three seconds for a web page to load. If your website takes four seconds to load, you could be losing a lot of business. Clearly, faster is better.
Action Step: Reduce your website loading time
There are a number of ways to reduce the loading speed of a website. Some are very simple, such as excessively large image sizes or simply too many images altogether. Other causes aren’t quite so obvious. You may need a thorough assessment to reveal hidden technical issues. As you build your autism treatment SEO tips toolbox, loading speed is a big consideration.
2. Your Website Should Display Correctly in Every Browser
It can be a shock if you view your website through different browsers. In some cases, there can be discernible differences in the viewing experience from one browser to another. This is especially true between desktop and mobile devices. It’s essential that your website has a responsive design that makes it attractive while viewing on a mobile device.
Action Step: Review your website in every browser
Designing and viewing your website through one browser or device is a mistake. As any good web developer will tell you, it’s best to view your website through all major browsers and a variety of devices to make sure it displays correctly. If you’re working with an expert web developer, it’s their job to make sure everything looks right.
3. Ensure Your Links are Active
When a viewer lands on a website, it needs to provide an excellent experience. Anything getting in the way of that could cause users to navigate away from the site. Unfortunately, something as simple as broken links on your pages can frustrate viewers. That’s a negative experience… and viewers may penalize you for it by leaving. You work hard to develop good ABA therapy SEO. Don’t waste that effort by leaving broken links on your website.
Encountering a dead link basically stops viewers in their tracks. They will be annoyed. However, at a subconscious level, they will likely be thinking, “Why is this here? Why don’t the owners of this website care enough to remove bad links? What else do they not pay attention to?” This thought process can derail trust in an autism treatment center.
One way dead links often occur is when a page is removed without editing other pages that link to it. This happens easily if these links were created a long time ago.
Action Step: Monitor your internal and external links
Closely monitoring your entire website on a regular basis is important. Things like 301 directs are essential for avoiding dead links. Your exterior links must be carefully monitored as well. Of all the ABA therapy SEO tips we can offer, this is one of the simplest and most important.
4. Your Content Must Be Free of Errors
Web viewers may forgive some things on websites they visit. Typos and obvious grammatical errors aren’t one of them. Missing or misspelled words are huge red flags for visitors and immediately break their trust. Errors on your website give the impression that you don’t care. This can make viewers say, “If they don’t care about their website, do they care about the treatment they offer their patients?” Patient trust issues can begin long before a patient sees a doctor.
Action Step: Double-check your facts
In any discussion of ABA therapy SEO, this is crucial. Error-free pages don’t come easily. They need to be proofed and then proofed again. Going over your content multiple times minimizes errors and helps build trust among visitors.
5. Keep Information on Your Website Up To Date
As your autism treatment website gets larger and contains more content, it’s easy to miss when certain information becomes irrelevant. In addition, if events or changes are happening at your facility and your website isn’t being updated in a timely fashion, that’s a problem.
Action Step: Update your website information regularly
Your website is a valuable resource of information for people who want to know about autism treatment options. Make sure it reflects what you offer currently, not what you offered a year ago. If nothing has happened at your facility in the last year, that is an entirely separate problem that needs to be examined.
Keep in mind that these tips are only the starting point of a comprehensive ABA therapy SEO strategy. Following them can lead to more visitors and a larger audience for your content.
Dreamscape Marketing can help. Schedule a strategy session with us by calling 888.307.7304.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in April 2020 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.
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