Today, more than ever, it’s important to show up in search results when people look for medical information online.

For a healthcare organization like yours, searchers rely on your expertise as an industry leader. Writing quality content on your website can help you gain valuable rankings on Google and show up higher in search results.

You Probably Don’t Need a New Website – You Just Need SEO

Improving your healthcare search engine optimization (SEO) allows your marketing team to enhance website performance and convert more traffic. Our agency has compiled the performance benchmarks that all healthcare websites should work toward.

In this post, we’ve identified four SEO metrics that will give your healthcare practice insight into just how well your website is performing:

• Sessions per User
• Average Session Duration
• Pages per Session
• Bounce Rate

Session per User for Healthcare SEO: 1.5 Sessions

When a user returns to a healthcare website, that means the site has trusted information to share that people want to come back to read.

The “sessions per user” metric looks at how many times a specific user has returned to your website within a specified date range.

Sessions per user shows the re-engagement of a user. That could mean they are researching more of what your practice does or are coming back to you for reliable healthcare information. 

Littledata recently surveyed more than 3,500 sites and reported 1.4 sessions per user as an average. If your website has 1.6 sessions per user, it ranks in the top 20% of websites; if it has 1.9 sessions per user, it ranks in the top 10%. 

Average Session Duration for Healthcare SEO: 2 minutes

The amount of time spent on a website is averaged out per person. This “average session duration” shows how long people are interacting with the content on your site.

The longer users spend on your site, the more engaged they are.

Keep in mind that if you have a small website, two minutes may be a lot for most users. If you have a large website with a lot of content, two minutes is a good amount of time.

Most benchmarks across the Internet vary depending on your industry. For large websites, like many healthcare sites, the average session duration is between two and three minutes. We found valuable benchmarks from Hinge Marketing while researching this data point. 

Pages per Session for Healthcare SEO: 2 pages

“Pages per session” looks at the average number of pages each user views before leaving your site. The more pages they visit, the higher their engagement.

Both Data Box and Hinge Marketing noted two or more pages per session is a good benchmark for healthcare organizations.

Similar to average session duration, if you have a website with minimal pages, three pages may be difficult for users to average. Don’t let that discourage you, though; instead, work on ways to funnel users through your website easily. 

Bounce Rate for Healthcare SEO: 60%

The “bounce rate” metric in Google Analytics looks at the number of users who come to a website but don’t click on anything before leaving. 

The average bounce rate goal is to stay under or around 60%, based on stats from Hinge Marketing and Siege Media. 

A 0% bounce rate is unrealistic, yet a 100% bounce rate can happen. So it’s important to make sure your pages are optimized with the right information and clear calls to action.

Often, someone will search for the answer to a question and land on a page on your site. If the page gives them the cut-and-dry answer they need, they may leave without further interaction. In this case, a high bounce rate isn’t bad.

Your bounce rate does not make or break your healthcare website stats unless your content does not meet readers’ expectations or your website is broken (in which case you’ll see a high bounce rate).

Set Your Healthcare Website Up for Success

Search engine optimization increases reach, conversions, and appointments for healthcare organizations big and small. 

If you’re not sure where to start, we can help you find a good point of reference. Check out how we’ve helped healthcare professionals online, and see what services may work best for your practice.

Grow Your Healthcare Practice With 9 Clouds »