You’ve created a stunning healthcare website and emailed everyone you know inviting them to stop by for a visit. Now all you have to do is sit back and listen to the cash register ring, right? Not exactly. If you haven’t optimized your healthcare website then it’s time to get going. Every SEO for doctors professional knows that, without optimization, your healthcare website is only halfway complete.
The problem is that there’s so much information available about SEO—it’s hard to know which advice to take and which to ignore. Here are 7 SEO for doctors myths debunked to help you get started.
1. Myth: Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads will drastically hurt or help your organic rankings.
Fact: PPC has no effect, either positive or negative, on your organic rankings.
2. Myth: Google bans healthcare websites that ignore its guidelines.
Fact: Google does not ban websites that ignore its guidelines, but it’s never a bad idea to read Google Webmaster Guidelines.
3. Myth: Your healthcare website will be banned if you buy links.
Fact: Google won’t ban your site, but it also won’t count your links.
4. Myth: True optimization means that your copy includes a specific number of words, your keywords are bolded or italicized, and that you utilize a precise keyword density.
Fact: SEO for doctors professionals used to believe that there was a “magic number” of words to include in copy and a specific number of times to use keywords. None of this actually matters at all, even bolding and italicizing.
5. Myth: Google will penalize your healthcare website for duplicate content.
Fact: Google simply filters out duplicate content and pays no attention to it at all in rankings
6. Myth: Google doesn’t count reciprocal links.
Fact: Google counts all links, although some are given greater weight than others.
7. Myth: SEO for doctors companies can guarantee better rankings for you without doing on-page work.
Fact: Any SEO expert that tells you this is lying.
Now that you know the truth about many of the SEO for doctors myths being perpetuated in the online world, here are seven keys to getting traffic to your healthcare website by getting search engines to find and index it.
1. Create one healthcare website with many domains pointing to the primary domain rather than creating several websites that have similar content. Search engines often view multiple websites with similar content as spam.
2. If you choose to have several healthcare websites anyway, ensure that each one caters to a unique target audience and has a unique domain.
3. Avoid JavaScript menus, drop-down menus, flash, and pop-up windows. Search engines have difficulty with these. Instead, use CSS menus, image links, text links, and tags.
4. Make your keyword phrases relevant to your topic. Think about which words you would use if you were a potential patient looking for your medical service. Those are the words you should use.
5. Use Keyword Discovery, Wordtracker, or Adwords to validate your keywords or phrases.
6. Find out how competitive your keywords are. Type allintitle: “your keyword phrase” into the search field to see how many other companies are using the same keywords. As you’re checking out your competition, see if your competitors are larger or smaller than you. In this case, size does matter.
7. Use your keywords in meta descriptions, title tags, body text, headlines, and anchor texts.
If you’re new to SEO for doctors, this may all be a bit overwhelming. After all, everyone has a different opinion about what counts and what doesn’t in the world of optimization. If you find the process of optimization interesting and exciting, then chances are you’ll have fun optimizing your healthcare website. If the thought of optimizing your website exhausts you or brings on an anxiety attack then you may want to consider hiring an SEO for doctors professional to do the work for you. Either way, prepare for some hard work and great rewards!
The problem is that there’s so much information available about SEO—it’s hard to know which advice to take and which to ignore. Here are 7 SEO for doctors myths debunked to help you get started.
1. Myth: Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads will drastically hurt or help your organic rankings.
Fact: PPC has no effect, either positive or negative, on your organic rankings.
2. Myth: Google bans healthcare websites that ignore its guidelines.
Fact: Google does not ban websites that ignore its guidelines, but it’s never a bad idea to read Google Webmaster Guidelines.
3. Myth: Your healthcare website will be banned if you buy links.
Fact: Google won’t ban your site, but it also won’t count your links.
4. Myth: True optimization means that your copy includes a specific number of words, your keywords are bolded or italicized, and that you utilize a precise keyword density.
Fact: SEO for doctors professionals used to believe that there was a “magic number” of words to include in copy and a specific number of times to use keywords. None of this actually matters at all, even bolding and italicizing.
5. Myth: Google will penalize your healthcare website for duplicate content.
Fact: Google simply filters out duplicate content and pays no attention to it at all in rankings
6. Myth: Google doesn’t count reciprocal links.
Fact: Google counts all links, although some are given greater weight than others.
7. Myth: SEO for doctors companies can guarantee better rankings for you without doing on-page work.
Fact: Any SEO expert that tells you this is lying.
Now that you know the truth about many of the SEO for doctors myths being perpetuated in the online world, here are seven keys to getting traffic to your healthcare website by getting search engines to find and index it.
1. Create one healthcare website with many domains pointing to the primary domain rather than creating several websites that have similar content. Search engines often view multiple websites with similar content as spam.
2. If you choose to have several healthcare websites anyway, ensure that each one caters to a unique target audience and has a unique domain.
3. Avoid JavaScript menus, drop-down menus, flash, and pop-up windows. Search engines have difficulty with these. Instead, use CSS menus, image links, text links, and tags.
4. Make your keyword phrases relevant to your topic. Think about which words you would use if you were a potential patient looking for your medical service. Those are the words you should use.
5. Use Keyword Discovery, Wordtracker, or Adwords to validate your keywords or phrases.
6. Find out how competitive your keywords are. Type allintitle: “your keyword phrase” into the search field to see how many other companies are using the same keywords. As you’re checking out your competition, see if your competitors are larger or smaller than you. In this case, size does matter.
7. Use your keywords in meta descriptions, title tags, body text, headlines, and anchor texts.
If you’re new to SEO for doctors, this may all be a bit overwhelming. After all, everyone has a different opinion about what counts and what doesn’t in the world of optimization. If you find the process of optimization interesting and exciting, then chances are you’ll have fun optimizing your healthcare website. If the thought of optimizing your website exhausts you or brings on an anxiety attack then you may want to consider hiring an SEO for doctors professional to do the work for you. Either way, prepare for some hard work and great rewards!
No comments:
Post a Comment