While every community is different, there are several proven, simple ways to help more people find your website online.
The following checklist is organized from highest to lowest impact, while also considering ease of implementation. Centers looking for the biggest return on their time should focus on the items near the top of the list first.
1. Help People Find Your Center Locally
Most women looking for pregnancy services start by searching for help near where they live. Your website should clearly explain both what you do and where you serve clients.
Best Practices
- Clearly describe your services throughout your website in clear terms that your target audience would use. For example, a 19 year old would likely be searching for words like “free pregnancy test” or “free baby supplies” and not “free pregnancy verification” or “free material assistance”. It’s a balance between pulling up for words or phrases your audience would relate to and remaining professional.
- Mention your service area naturally throughout your website content. Include your city, county, and regional area names when appropriate. Covering a broad range of terms helps increase relevance when people search for services near their location.
- Add a link to your Google Business Profile or map listing in the footer of your website. This helps search engines and AI tools verify your center's location, making it easier for local clients to find you online.
- Keep your Google Business Profile active and up to date. Regularly add new photos, update business information, and verify your hours are accurate. An active profile helps build trust with potential clients and can improve local visibility. Businesses with photos receive 42% more requests for directions and 35% more website clicks than businesses without them.
Why It Matters
Google and AI tools build confidence in your center by comparing information from your website, Google Business Profile, reviews, maps, and other online sources. When your services, location, and contact information are consistent across these platforms, your center is more likely to appear in local search results.
2. Strengthen Your Service Pages
The more clearly you explain what you offer, the easier it is for search engines, AI tools, and potential clients to connect your center with the help they are looking for.
Best Practices
- Give each core service its own page and answer common questions about that service. Explain what clients should expect, include testimonials when appropriate, and always provide a clear next step.
Why It Matters
Your service pages are often the first pages people visit. The more helpful and complete they are, the more likely visitors are to stay on your website, trust your center, and schedule an appointment. If your website isn’t clear about what you specifically provide, it’s easier for a potential client to click away from your site and browse your competitors than to pick up the phone and call you.
3. Build a Strong Local Reputation
People are more likely to trust organizations they see active in their community. Building a strong local reputation helps create awareness, trust, and credibility both online and offline.
Online Best Practices
- Encourage eligible clients, volunteers, board members, and supporters to leave honest Google reviews about their experience with your center. Consistent positive reviews can help demonstrate that your organization is active and trusted within the community, leading to search engines finding it a more trusted source to rank higher on result pages.
- Make sure your center's information is accurate across online listings such as Google Business Profile, Yelp, Facebook, and local directories. Your name, address, phone number, website, and hours should match everywhere they appear.
- Encourage trusted organizations to link to your website. Links from other websites act like digital referrals. They help more people find your center and signal to search engines that your organization is a trusted community resource. Consider asking pediatricians, churches, daycares, baby stores, medical offices, and other family-focused organizations to include your center on their website's resource or community partner pages.
- Include testimonials, medical citations, or medical credentials in relevant places across your website. Search engines and AI overviews are more likely to trust you as a recommended source, leading to higher rankings across result pages.
Community Best Practices
- Look for opportunities to increase awareness of your center by participating in local events, partnering with other organizations, sponsoring community activities, or finding other ways to connect with the people you serve. The more visible your center is within the community, the more likely people are to recognize and recommend your services.
- Make it easy for others to promote your center. Give volunteers, supporters, churches, and community partners simple tools they can use to share information about your services. Small cards or flyers with a QR code, website address, and brief description of your services can be placed in approved public locations such as coffee shops, community bulletin boards, or restroom stalls, helping more people discover your center when they need support.
Why It Matters
Local reputation also creates a compounding effect. The more people talk about your center, visit your website, leave reviews, and interact with your information online, the more opportunities there are for others to discover your services.
4. Use Paid Advertising Strategically
Paid advertising can be one of the fastest ways to increase website traffic, but it is rarely a "set it and forget it" solution.
Best Practices
- Target the communities and service areas you actually serve. Reaching the right audience is often more important than reaching a larger audience. Check with your marketing company to make sure they are only setting campaign parameters to your service area.
- Make sure ads direct visitors to the most relevant page on your website. If someone clicks on an ad for pregnancy testing, they should land on a page specifically about pregnancy testing rather than your homepage.
- Review campaign performance regularly and be willing to adjust messaging, targeting, or budgets over time. The Her Journey app can help provide your marketing company with insights on which campaign is leading to appointments that show up. This can help optimize performance and avoid wasted ad spend.
- Start small and scale up what is working rather than investing heavily before understanding your results.
Why It Matters
Paid advertising helps place your center in front of people who are actively searching for help right now. Unlike SEO and content creation, which can take time to build momentum, advertising can generate traffic almost immediately.
5. Create Strong Page Titles & Descriptions
When someone searches on Google or another search engine, they typically see a page title and a short description before deciding whether to click. Think of this as your website's first impression.
Best Practices
- Write page titles and descriptions that clearly explain what the page is about and who it is for. Avoid generic wording like "Home" or "Welcome" and instead focus on the services and value you provide.
- Use language that matches how your audience searches. For example, "Free Pregnancy Testing in Waco" is much more helpful than "Women's Services."
- Most websites allow you to customize page titles and descriptions for each page. If you're unsure where to update these settings, ask your marketing team or website provider for assistance.
- Review your most important pages regularly and consider testing different wording if traffic is lower than expected.
- Keep in mind that search engines do not always use the page title and description you write. Sometimes they will pull other text from the page if they believe it better answers a person's search.
This can become challenging with abortion-related disclaimers. In some cases, search engines may choose to display disclaimer language instead of the messaging you intended to highlight. Placing disclaimer text in accordion dropdowns or the footer, rather than directly within the main page content, can help maintain greater control over how your pages are presented in search results.
Why It Matters
Even if your website appears in search results, people still have to choose whether to click on it. Clear and compelling page titles help visitors quickly understand that your center offers the services they are looking for.
6. Create Helpful Content That Answers Common Questions
Creating helpful content allows your center to meet them early in that journey and provide trusted information before they ever contact you.
Best Practices
- Start by identifying common questions clients ask during appointments, phone calls, text conversations, or intake forms. These questions often make excellent topics for website content like blogs or FAQ pages.
- Focus on providing clear, helpful answers rather than trying to promote your services in every paragraph. The goal is to be genuinely helpful first.
- Support medical information with reputable sources whenever possible. This can increase trust with both website visitors and technology platforms that evaluate content quality.
- Include real client stories, testimonials, or examples when appropriate. Personal experiences can help build credibility and make content feel more relatable.
- Keep content updated over time to ensure information remains accurate and relevant.
Why It Matters
Google and AI tools are increasingly focused on finding the best answer to a person's question. When your website consistently provides helpful, trustworthy information, it becomes more likely to appear in search results, AI-generated answers, and featured snippets.