Maxicare remains to be one of the most sought-after HMO providers in the Philippines because of the quality of health care they provide, and their comprehensive health card coverage plans.
I remember when I was still working in the corporate side, a team of Maxicare agents went to our office to present their various HMO plans under a corporate package. I have used my Maxicare health card ever since, and I can say that I have never encountered any problem with hospitals or clinics in honoring my HMO benefit.
A lot of self-employed individuals like me aspire for a quality and affordable health care plan that match the level of service by Maxicare. They’re one of the best, if not the best, I must say.
But today, I want to focus on helping their business reach a greater advantage by tapping the SEO opportunity, as well as to push for their health advocacy. Check out these 7 SEO action items I’ve outlined for the Maxicare Philippines website.
1) Target “Health card” and “HMO” related keywords
Maxicare, in its home page title, uses the branding “The Best Health Care Provider in the Philippines”. While this is well and good (as evidenced by the keyword search volume data in the table below), there is missed opportunity in tapping other popular search terms. This is especially true for terms related to “HMO” in the Philippines. HMO and health cards are the common conversational words used by Filipinos when referring to Maxicare and other health card providers. Very seldom do we refer to it as a “health care provider” because that phrase can also mean: hospitals, clinics, and health professionals.
Keywords in red boxes are low-hanging fruits: They have significant search volume, while competition is low.
Consequently, Maxicare is outranked by third party sites and a competitor site for the keyphrase: “hmo card philippines” on google.com.ph
2) Use the Universal Google Analytics Tracking Code
The site still uses the classic version of the Google Analytics tracking code. Maxicare can greatly benefit from switching to the advanced, and more powerful Universal Analytics tracking code. Universal Analytics works well in tracking user activity across all devices, enables custom dimensions and metrics, plus a whole lot of features that are not easily accessible via Classic Analytics. In a mobile world such as ours, Universal Analytics is the standard. Also, any new feature rolled out in Google Analytics will not be received by Classic Analytics users.
To know more about Universal Analytics, visit the Google Help Center.
3) Install WordPress Plugins for SEO
In a previous post, I discussed about how to help your client in optimizing his WordPress site. Maxicare is built on WordPress 3.8 and needs to be upgraded to its 4.0+ versions. Also, it can make use of these proven and tested SEO plugins to aid them in on-page optimizing their WordPress site.
- Yoast SEO – This is actually what you’ll ever need! It’s complete with Google Analytics integration, SEO recommendations, and all the essential on-page and tech SEO elements to optimize each blog post.
- All-in-One Schema.org Rich Snippets – Very easy to use. This plugin is a no-brainer when you need to use schema.org rich snippets, especially if you harness product/plan reviews, launch videos, etc.
- Broken Link Checker – Checks your blog for broken links and missing images and notifies you on the dashboard if any are found.
- WP Smush – minifies images so they are optimized for speed. Site or page speed is now a SEO ranking factor, FYI.
- W3 Total Cache – The highest rated and most complete WordPress performance plugin. Dramatically improves the speed and user experience of your site. Add browser, page, object and database caching as well as minify and content delivery network (CDN) to WordPress
Related Read: SEO Tutorial: How to Optimzie your WordPress Blog
4) Do ALT tag optimization
Upon checking the Maxicare site, they have important text used in images. However, these images have lacking ALT tags or ALT text.
ALT tags are used to help search engines understand what an image is about, especially if it is content-bearing. ALT text improves the accessibility of the site as Google is able to crawl almost all sorts of files. Ideally, ALT text should be descriptive and representative of the image used. Target keywords should also be present, as long as it is relevant to the image file.
5) Go for Mobile Responsiveness
Google tends to favor mobile-responsive and faster sites as these generate good user-experience. This has been part of their algorithm as Google commits to the welfare of web users. Unfortunately, Maxicare displays a mobile site with very tiny fonts, buttons, navigational menus, etc. This does not contribute to a great user-experience.
Additionally, the site still uses Flash – the type of file that Google has made obsolete. Flash has the tendency to slow down a page, and crank up on mobile devices.
6) Website Revamp urgently needed!
I think we can all agree on this one. The Maxicare site is painfully outdated in terms of its look and feel. It can really do a better job in aiding visitors to sign up for a plan, or check their accounts, or find answers to frequently-asked-questions by going for a more modern, and less-cluttered interface.
In terms of technical SEO, it has inline Javascript and CSS that tend to increase its page load time.
7) Launch your traffic and lead generation strategy through digital marketing
Despite being one of the pioneers in health care coverage, I don’t see a dedicated digital campaign using the Maxicare site. I believe they are both a B2B and B2C site as they cater to self-employed individuals, and companies, too. They have published some news, PR, and other announcements, but there so much opportunity for the brand to get business and do advocacy out of their online presence.
Perfect example would be Sunlife’s Brighter Life Philippines campaign. This content marketing strategy has boosted the positives for Sunlife and has also helped in advocating financial preparedness/financial intelligence among Filipinos.
A good case to build for Maxicare to push for a SEO investment is to compare the cost-per-sale or deal they get from offline promotions versus SEO and other related online initiatives.
Want to discuss your website’s SEO strategy? Book for a 1-on-1 online consultation:
Romela de Leon-Ortega
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