Observing trends in medical online marketing is always interesting. And it’s interesting to learn how people are looking for information online, including medical.

Google searches are by far the most popular – over 67% of online searches in December 2009 were through Google. And I understand why – when I need to look for something online, I just enter keywords into the search bar. If that doesn’t give me what I need, I just tweak the words to find more specific information.

Therefore, it’s not anything new to learn that organic search is a preferred means of locating information online…a method that continues its upward trajectory.

New data from comScore confirms this statement. Over 131 billion online searches occurred in December of ’09, a 46% increase over the same month the year before. In the U.S., searches grew by 22% despite the country’s recent economic troubles.

In terms of online searches, the U.S. is the world’s largest country in the world. Even though other countries saw much higher growth in 2009, the U.S. continues to be the top source online searches.

But where do these web surfers go to search for information online?

As stated above, Google remains the largest search engine in the world, experiencing 58% growth in 2009. But “core” search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing are not the only places people go to search for stuff online. Take for example eBay, who appears 5^th on the list below with 2.1 billion searches. Facebook is another example, handling 1.6 billion searches in December ’09, a 43% increase over the same month a year before.

Looking at this data can only lead to one conclusion: optimizing medical websites for the search engines is an increasingly important means of drawing visitors to your website. Without good search engine optimization practices, potential patients searching for the services you offer will never know about you.

A site audit is a pretty fundamental task that every medical online marketer and SEO professional has to conduct – but sometimes, one needs to be done in a flash.

When evaluating a site or beginning an online medical marketing project, you need to be able to quickly asses the site’s standing in the search engines. You can get more in-depth later but an initial assessment needs to be done quickly.

It isn’t as bad as it sounds…it doesn’t take long at all to understand what a medical website has and what it lacks in terms of medical SEO.

Using Google Webmaster Tools and Web analytics package for the site, you need to determine:

• When the site had its last major redesign
• How many indexed pages it has
• User-friendliness (not a medical SEO concern but important for site visitors and thus, the search engines)
• Locate any duplicate and template content
• How title and H1 tags are used
• ….and much more

Take a look at this interesting Search Engine Watch article – The 60 Minute SEO Site Audit – to learn how to quickly assess where your site stands and what needs to change for it to dominate in the search engines.