Summary
The web is shifting quickly. Not just in a “more people are using AI” way — in a “the agentic web is on the horizon” kind of way. The kinds of updates that would have felt like big news 10 years ago are now just another day in marketing.
Positioning your healthcare brand to thrive into the future requires marketers to not just keep up with the changes — but stay ahead of them. GEO and ChatGPT have the spotlight today, but things could look very different 2 years (or 6 months) from now.
The bad news is there’s no fully future-proof search strategy. The good news is it’s an even playing field. We’re all working from the same:
Fight the urge to go full ostrich, dear marketer. There’s never been a better time to upgrade your skills and put yourself (and your brand) ahead. Let’s talk schema, content structure, and entity linking for SEO.
Aha Media Group and Schema App held a healthcare marketing webinar about schema markup, structured content, and other must-have AI search skillsets. Watch the recording to level up.
Watch the webinar
As AI continues gaining mainstream adoption, keyword-driven search is officially exiting stage left. We’re moving toward something more personalized. And more complicated.
Longer, more specific “queries” are replacing shorter key phrases. Healthcare consumers are feeding AI platforms more information and expecting highly relevant answers.
Where patients used to search “heart specialist near me,” they’re now moving toward multi-sentence prompts with context, such as their:
These kinds of searches can’t be answered by a stand-alone piece of content. AI platforms surface relevant information by analyzing your site’s structured data and the relationships between your pages. We need to ensure machines can “read” our content and interpret the connections.
Search is and always has been about answering people’s questions. The human-centric content writing practices you’ve been following all along are still important:
The difference now is that we also need to structure healthcare content for machines to understand. With zero-click behavior increasingly becoming the norm, search platforms must be able to serve your information to users accurately.
This is where schema markup joins the chat.
Schema markup is a standard language that tells AI and search engines what your content is about. It’s coded into the backend of your website to define your key entities and the links between them.
Key entities in healthcare for schema markup include:
By linking your key entities through schema markup, you help search and AI engines better understand and present your organization’s expertise, services, and providers.
As a marketer, you probably won’t be doing schema markup alone. But it’s important to learn how it works before looping in your IT team or external partners like our friends at Schema App.
Start the process of structuring website data at the content end. Ensure your pages are organized with:
(Not sure if you have reusable components or how to create them? Our strategists can help with that.)
Next, identify what structured data already exists on your health system’s website. Use a tool like Google’s Rich Results Test or the Schema Markup Validator to test key URLs, like service line pages or physician profiles.
Answer these questions:
Remember, you don’t need to become an expert in coding. If you get stuck, external partners can help with the technical schema work.
Identify the entities your content describes — such as physicians, services, specialties, or conditions — and connect each to the correct schema type. This step sets you up for the next one.
Add or update schema markup on key pages first. Use schema types such as Physician, Hospital, MedicalCondition, and MedicalProcedure where relevant. Follow this up with your other webpages.
Hint: If your pages follow consistent templates (like condition, treatment, program, and locations pages), implement schema markup on the templates. This can help you scale the process of schema markup for your health system’s complete website.
Internal linking (connecting related pages on your website) is already standard process. It helps users and search engines navigate your website and see how pages relate to each other.
You probably already interlink certain types of related pages, such as service line pages and physician profiles. Check your content and ensure your interlinking strategy is consistent across your website and helpful to users.
Entity linking has become equally important for SEO. On the backend of your website, link entities (like the ones you mapped in step 3) to external knowledge bases to help machines understand the meanings of terms. Google’s Knowledge Graph and Wikidata are popular knowledge bases for entity linking.
It’s easy to look at current tech advancements and the vision for the agentic web and think, “That won’t affect healthcare for a long time.”
However, consumer expectations are adapting in line with the tech. The patient experience doesn’t begin when they walk through your doors — it often starts with a search for information. As other industries make things more convenient for consumers, expectations for healthcare will inevitably shift, too.
By structuring your content for humans and machines now, you’re preparing your health brand to meet people where they are as search evolves.
The future is uncertain — and maybe even a little scary — but it’s also exciting. Big things lie ahead for healthcare search, and now is the time to seize the opportunity.
Schema markup, entity linking, reusable components — oh my. If you have questions or want to put your game plan together with a partner, our strategists would love to help.
AUTHOR
Ahava is a leading expert in healthcare content strategy and is recognized for her ability to make complex medical information accessible. She has spent nearly two decades transforming how healthcare organizations communicate with their audiences. Ahava is trusted across the industry for her clarity, evidence-based approach, and thought leadership.
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