With a compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of approximately 10%, the global healthcare industry is expected to see major industry growth in the next 5 to 6 years. This massive industrial expansion suggests human dependence on digital media to search for healthcare facilities.
According to recent studies, the healthcare industry will be worth around $44.76 trillion by the year 2032, which is around 5X the industry’s worth as found in 2020. This huge industrial advancement might pose a serious challenge for healthcare business owners to secure top search engine rankings.
If you are also a healthcare business owner, it is time to dominate the marketplace with improved Google rankings, soaring online visibility, and increased organic traffic.
Because it’s NOW or NEVER!
We have shared 6 proven strategies to do link building for healthcare sites to boost your site’s authority and presence on the SERPs.
So, keep on reading to know what healthcare link building is all about, some crucial factors to consider while building backlinks, strategic implementation, and the challenges.
What is Link-building for Healthcare Websites?
The process involves acquiring backlinks from other reputable and relevant resources to your healthcare website. These inbound links to your site are like ‘votes of confidence’ from the other established websites that signal the search engine that your site is credible and authoritative.
Link building for healthcare sites results in:
✔️Improved search engine rankings
✔️A massive referral traffic
✔️Improved authority score
✔️Enhanced site credibility
✔️Improved audience trust
✔️Better online presence
✔️A strong brand reputation
✔️Increased traffic conversion
However, link-building is a long-term process that requires constant attention, effort, and patience.
But, is it worth your time?
Is building backlinks for your healthcare site crucial?
Let’s find out.
Is Link-Building for Healthcare Sites Still Relevant in 2025?
Before we answer your question, have a look at this data report.
This shows the intent of the keywords ranking on one of our clients’ healthcare websites. As you can see, the ‘dominant intent’ of 5.5K ranking keywords is purely informational. It means most of the audience is looking for guides, articles, and blogs.
161 navigational keywords suggest that the users are looking for reviews, listicles, comparisons, etc. The 1.5K commercial keywords are high-intent search queries to make the audience take specific action, and transactional ones are brand-specific keywords.
The keyword intent shows the huge number of audience searching for particular information related to the healthcare niche. So, when you place such anchor links back to your site on other relevant resources, their audience will be directly referred to your healthcare website, boosting its search engine rankings and online visibility.
According to a few popular reports,
✅ 90% of global health systems have started adopting digital tools to ensure faster connectivity
✅ Around 70% of Google searches in a day are health-related.
✅ Every minute, more than 70,000 people search for healthcare services.
✅ 82.8% of patients depend on Google searches to find their nearest healthcare providers.
✅ Around 72% of patients analyze Google reviews before booking an appointment with healthcare experts
✅ 71% of people do not book healthcare appointments if they can’t find a service website.
✅ Approximately 64% of the patients visit websites directly for booking healthcare checkups.
As you can see, almost 80% to 90% of patients take the help of online reviews and recommendations when it comes to selecting a healthcare service provider.
Now, the recommendation coming from the already established industry leaders and site owners plays a big role in boosting conversion on your site.
Link-building helps you get just that because when other authoritative resources link back to your site, your potential leads start believing you and consider your site to be authoritative.
This increased authority results in higher search engine rankings of your site and improved online visibility of your site, leading to better audience reach and lead generation.
Top 5 Metrics to Look for When You Do Link Building for Healthcare Sites
Building backlinks is easy if you are systematic and implement the right strategies. However, not all backlinks will help your site secure the top spot on Google. Some are not very effective, and some of them might even get your site penalized.
So, it is important to verify the quality of the backlinks acquired for your healthcare website.
Here are a few attributes that improve the backlink quality:
☑️ DA/DR
Both of these suggest the authority, credibility, strength, and overall trustworthiness of the referring domains and affect the backlink quality significantly.
Domain Authority (DA) is a scoring system developed by Moz, and Domain Rating (DR), developed by Ahrefs, range from 0 to 100. The better the score of a website is, the higher it ranks on the SERPs.
We secured backlinks for our client from resources with high Domain Authority and Rating. Here is what we have achieved. The high-authority backlinks have significantly improved the Domain Rating of our client’s website.
So, it is better to acquire backlinks from a website with a higher DA and DR score to ensure improved authority and online visibility of your healthcare website.
☑️ TF/CF
Trust Flow (TF) and Citation Flow are both crucial metrics, developed by Majestic SEO, suggesting respectively a website’s reliability based on the backlink quality and the number of backlinks pointing to a site, irrespective of the quality.
The scoring system is based on a scale of 0 to 100, and the higher scores indicate higher reliability and more inbound links to a particular website.
Here is the TF and CF of a target website where we secured a link placement for our client. As you can see, both of these scores suggest that the site is highly credible, and the external inbound links show the number of websites linking to it.
So, to make your site’s backlink profile stronger, you need to target websites with higher TF and CF scores.
☑️ Contextual Relevance & Quality
It is important to target websites that post content that is relevant to your niche. So, try to make sure that the resources you target for link placement or guest posting incorporate niche-specific keywords in their content, or post blogs on relevant topics.
Here are a few examples of keywords that we searched for on the target websites to ensure the best backlink acquisition for one of our clients.
Also, it is important to evaluate the overall website design, user experience, and the content quality of the target resources. A navigation-friendly website design, a seamless browsing experience, and user-friendly content naturally attract more leads to a particular website.
So, when you link your healthcare website to a relevant resource that is visually appealing and has great content, it will drive more referral traffic to your site as the target site will reach a huge audience, increasing the number of clicks to the link placed.
☑️ Referring Pages & Domains
Referring domains are unique websites linking to your target websites. For example, if a website, abcd.com, links to your target site on two different pages, it gets 2 backlinks from 1 referring domain.
A higher number of referring pages and domains of a particular site suggests that multiple independent industry resources have linked to it, and hence, it is a highly trustworthy and authoritative site.
Recently, we reached out to a website for our client in the healthcare niche, and as you can see, the Domain Rating itself showcases the credibility and authority of the website.
With 10 million do-follow backlinks coming from 41K unique referring domains and pages, the website we targeted is one of the top industry resources that skyrocketed the search engine rankings of our client’s website.
However, it is always better to secure backlinks for multiple domains instead of multiple backlinks from a single resource. This results in a diverse backlink profile of your site, earning trust from the search engine.
☑️ Spam Score
Use tools such as Ahrefs Site Explorer, SEMRush backlink audit tool, or Moz Spam Score to check the spam score of the target websites. It indicates the likelihood of a particular website to be considered spammy or involved in ‘black-hat link-building or SEO technique.’
This is the spam score of a target website where we secured backlinks for our clients. The low score and high domain or page authority show that the site is trustworthy.
| Black hat link-building techniques are backlink acquisition practices that are deceptive, unethical, manipulative, and against Google’s guidelines. The techniques include purchasing backlinks, exchanging links, backlinks acquired from PBNs, and link farms, etc. Link spamming is also a sort of black hat link-building strategy that refers to the process of acquiring a large volume of backlinks from a single website just to boost the search engine rankings of a website. Never acquire backlinks from websites that practice such link-building techniques because once detected by the search engine, it would result in a rapid fall in the search engine rankings of your website and heavy penalties. |
Securing backlinks from a site with a higher spam score is a risky operation because the search engine might unindex or penalize your healthcare site anytime if it finds out that a spammy site is linked to yours.
5 Proven Link-Building Strategies for Healthcare Websites
Link building for healthcare sites is different from traditional backlink building because the growth in this industry highly relies on audience trust and site authority.
That is why you should focus on making your industry network stronger by actively reaching out to the industry owners and acquiring backlinks from reputable and authoritative resources.
Here are 5 simple yet powerful link-building strategies that you should implement.
💡 Partner with Medical Universities
Partnering with medical colleges and universities is considered an effective link-building strategy. Start off by collaborating with the medical experts on a research project or publishing research papers on the university websites.
Also, by sponsoring university and college events, you can create awareness about your expertise and service initiatives, potentially making valuable link-building sources accessible to you.
💡 Join Healthcare Associations
Joining your nearby healthcare associations helps you connect with your potential leads at a personal level. Now, there are multiple ways to leverage the audience of the healthcare associations, including:
☑️ Work with healthcare associations, offer services, and join awareness campaigns
☑️ Reach out to healthcare professionals and contribute to their websites or services
☑️ Organize community health events or sponsor free medical diagnosis campaigns
All of these are simple strategies to connect with the industry leaders, earn their trust, and acquire backlinks for your healthcare website.
💡 Leverage The Network of Healthcare Experts
In order to build authoritative backlinks for your healthcare site, look for resources that your competitors are targeting. Identify relevant industry resources, reach out to healthcare bloggers/influencers, and collaborate on their websites by posting guest articles or blogs.
By connecting with industry leaders over popular social media platforms and participating in conferences, webinars, seminars, and workshops, you indirectly promote your website and services.
When your potential leads start noticing your strong industrial presence, communicate with them or start answering their queries to build authority in your niche. This way, you will get referrals not only from the industry leaders but also from your leads, boosting your site’s credibility and online visibility.
💡 Content Creation & Publications
Did you know this is the most powerful and effective link-building strategy?
If your site has valuable content, it will attract natural backlinks from the top industry leaders. But how do you build backlinks with this strategy?
| Before you create any content, keep in mind that it should adhere to Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) guidelines to ensure medical accuracy. Also, follow the HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) regulations strictly and never share Protected Health Information (PHI) to avoid legal complications in the future. |
✅ Research well and identify the most common yet ‘not properly addressed’ queries
✅ Use the skyscraper technique to find out the content gaps
✅ Create educational videos, infographics, and write informative articles or blogs
✅ Get them published on websites with .edu or .gov domains
💡 HARO Link Building
Now, here is another strategy we have shared that will help you secure backlinks right from reputable media publications and news, or media websites. The process is known as building HARO backlinks, and here are the steps to follow.
👉 Create an account on popular HARO platforms such as Qwoted, SourceBottle, etc.
👉 Choose your field of expertise and keep a regular check on the new relevant posts.
👉 Once you find one, reach out to the journalists via personalised emails or messages.
👉 Address the query briefly with relevant information showcasing your niche expertise.
👉 Add a link to your website in your query
If your content is helpful for the audience, the journalist will link back to it, earning your site a valuable backlink.
What Makes Healthcare Link Building Challenging?
⛔ The healthcare industry follows strict guidelines and rules in terms of content publication. This poses a serious challenge in informative content creation.
⛔ To establish site authority in this highly competitive industry, you need to beat some of the top competitors, which is time-consuming and resource-intensive.
⛔ Due to privacy concerns, promoting your healthcare site or sharing specific data is subject to legal restrictions.
⛔ Most of the healthcare industry experts do not want to link back to new websites, making the link-building resources highly limited.
FastLinky: Your Trusted Healthcare Link-building Partner
In this highly competitive landscape of healthcare industries, building trust and authority for a website is crucial.
Only strategic healthcare link-building can help your website secure the top rankings spots on the SERPs. However, building backlinks is a time-consuming process that requires patience, regular efforts, and resources.
So, if you do not have an in-house team for link-building, it is better to partner with an expert link-building agency. FastLinky offers you high-authority and managed link-building services at an affordable budget so that you can focus on your core business.
Connect with us to grow your healthcare website today.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1. How much does link-building for healthcare websites cost on average?
Ans: Since the healthcare industry is a highly competitive one, building backlinks might be a costly affair. Depending on the competitors, industry opportunities, and complexity of the project, the link-building cost might vary as well. Usually, link-building for healthcare sites starts from $100 and might exceed $1000.
Q2. Should I invest in building backlinks for my healthcare websites?
Ans: High-quality backlinks work as ‘votes of confidence’ from other authoritative websites that establish your site as a credible source of information. When placed strategically, high-authority backlinks can boost your healthcare site’s search engine rankings and organic traffic, leading to better online visibility and conversion. So, link-building is a crucial process when it comes to growing your website online.
Q3. Is buying backlinks for healthcare websites illegal?
Ans: Though buying backlinks is not illegal, it goes against the search engine guidelines. If Google detects that you are involved in unethical link-building practices, it might penalize or unindex your site. So, it is important that you practice only white-hat link-building practices by growing your industry network and manually securing backlinks for your site.
Q4. How long will it take to see improvements in the SEO rankings for my healthcare site after building backlinks?
Ans: Link-building is a process that takes time due to the strategic outreach to influencers and securing link-building opportunities. However, some of the link-building strategies, such as link insertion, can boost your site’s search engine rankings almost instantly.
After securing backlinks for your website, you can see some improvements in the search engine rankings within three months. With continuous link-building efforts and high-quality backlink acquisition, your healthcare website will secure higher ranking spots on the SERPs within a year or two.
Q5. Is it possible to beat the already existing industry competitors through backlink building?
Ans: Yes, it is possible.
If you follow the right strategies to build backlinks for your healthcare site, you can beat your business rivals.
Analyze your competitors’ backlink profiles, learn about their target resources, and then reach out to the site owners with better content. If your content is linkworthy, informative, and valuable for the audience, the industry leaders will add a link back to your site as a better replacement for the links to your competitors’ websites.
