Inbound linkbuilding is a critical part of any hospital Website’s success—starting with the benefits it provides for SEO and search engine page rankings, (SERPs) and ending with increased traffic and all it implies (e.g., conversions).
A well-written and strategically distributed release can be a very effective way to build inbound links to your hospital’s Website.
As more hospitals and healthcare systems continue to embrace online communications, resources and efforts to produce new content are often shifted to blogs, videos, Twitter messages, etc. Although they have tremendous value and potential (as we’ve certainly covered in this blog over the years), the problem is that efforts should not be shifted to these techniques as much as they need to be integrated with traditional techniques.
In particular, this means the classic release. No matter whether you call it a press release, news release or media release, releases still have tremendous utility—even in today’s online-centric climate.
Feed Google’s Thirst for News
Regularly publish a news article on your Website—especially if it uses RSS—and you can almost expect it get picked up immediately by Google’s search engine spiders.
You’ll know this by the announcement from Google Alerts in your e-mail inbox that can arrive within minutes after your article goes live. (Of course, if you aren’t using Google Alerts to track your hospital’s name on the Internet, make it the very first thing you do after reading this blog).
It’s no mystery why this happens: Google values relevancy, and news articles are not only often relevant in terms of content, topics and themes, but also often in regards to be fresh and new.
Repurposing for Social Media
Every time you publish a release, it’s a reason to fire up your social media apps and start distributing your link. Twitter (including key #hashtags), Facebook pages, LinkedIn groups, social bookmarks (Digg, Delicious, etc.): All are excellent ways to get attention for your release—and as a consequence, links to your Website.
Take this a step further and encourage discussions about the release—either as footnotes or parenthetical statements when you share your content’s links, or even in abridged and more casual versions on your blog.
Are you regularly publishing news on your Website? If so, how often—and about what topics and subjects? Does your news page support RSS? How else are you using and distributing releases, especially in terms of an integrated inbound marketing strategy for your hospital?
Derek Rudnak | Communications Specialist | AVID Design
Do you need an experienced healthcare marketing consultant that can help you develop a successful online strategy and effective content for it? Contact AVID Design today for a free Website and social media assessment.
You might be one of our blog readers but not one of our newsletter readers, so as 2009 draws to a close, we thought we would provide our blog readers (and our fans) with a look back of this year’s hot topics featured in our monthly newsletter, 
