| |
Healthcare Search Engine Optimization - Making Friends With
Spiders, Crawlers and Bots
Five quick search engine optimization techniques to recognize
if your healthcare website needs help with search ranking—to
attract more visitors and win new patients.
Here's a quick assessment tool for your healthcare
website. Internet Search Engines, like Google, decide how
high your site will be listed on a mountain of search results.
Sophisticated computer programs-spiders, crawlers, bots-do
the work, and we know how to make friends with these critters
to improve your page rank and bring more traffic to your website.
As a test, we just did a Google search for dentist in
Cincinnati.
Results: about 676,000 results for dentist in Cincinnati.
(0.21 seconds.)
Google sports some incredibly impressive technology...but
1. We're pretty confident there aren't 676,000 dentists in
Cincinnati, and 2. Wouldn't you hate to be listing number
432,123? The rude reality is that a prospective patient will
not get past the first page or two—less than 30 listings.
Google is constantly indexing millions of websites using
SPIDERS--complicated computer programs that methodically "crawl"
the web to evaluate every page they can find.
Before human eyes ever find your website, it's best to make
friends with these spiders, crawlers, or bots, and give them
what they like. There's an art and science to pushing your
website toward the top—and winning a higher page rank
than the next guy.
Google will not tell anyone exactly how they determine page
rank; it's an intricate and secret algorithm, and they change
it all the time. But there are some quick checks you can do
to know when to call for professional help.
It doesn't matter if your website is for a hospital, solo
practice, healthcare organization, or physician group, you
can use the following checklist. But keep in mind that this
is not a substitute for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
But look for these five areas to quickly spot an underperformer.
- KEYWORDS ARE KING: These are the significant
words or phrases that are noticed and indexed by Search
Engines. CHECK: ARE keywords (that patients search
for) used - but not overused - in your code, navigation
and text?
- WHAT'S IN A DOMAIN NAME: What you do
is more important to Search Engines than who you are. For
example: The URL www.doctorjones.com is
general, but www.DentistForKids.com is
specific. CHECK: What does your domain name have
to say?
- SPIDERS NOTICE CHANGE: Search Engines
are constantly searching, but they don't waste time looking
at what they've already seen (and indexed). Regular changes
in a website have value for both visitors and spiders. CHECK:
When was the last time you updated your website?
- TEXT WITH IMAGES: Spiders are blind to
images, artwork, or videos. So you've got to use text to
reveal content to spiders. CHECK: Are you using
tags and captions with pictures and visuals?
- USE VIDEOS ON YOUR SITE: We are in the
beginning of an entire series of special video reports about
how to harness the benefits of video in healthcare marketing
for hospitals, group practices and medical advertising.
Suffice to say that videos on your website help boost page
rank. CHECK: Look for our video series about online
videos. We'll tell you some of the best ways to harness
this tool.
This is just a quick assessment. If your website is deficient
in any of these areas, please give us a call pronto. The business
of keywords and Search Engine Optimization are vital to page
rank, but they are definitely challenging.
Reach out to us at (800) 656-0907. We'd
be glad to get your website on the road to peak performance
(or create one if you need). We know how to make friends with
spiders, crawlers and bots.
|
|
Get Articles Like This One As They Are Published
|
|
 |
| |
|
|
|
|
digg
