SEO (search engine optimization), or internet marketing, has become recognized as increasingly important in non-technology industries like healthcare.
Your medical practice knows this, and you’ve implemented a SEO strategy. But your Google search results still haven’t improved. What’s the deal?
Most likely, your SEO strategy is missing several important factors of the search engine algorithm. Review the following list to see if any of these common mistakes are hurting your search results.
1. For WordPress sites, you may have checked the box that reads: “Discourage search engines from indexing this site”
This is both an obvious mistake and one that’s easy to overlook.
To remedy this, go to your WordPress settings on the dashboard. Select the Reading sub-category, scroll down and uncheck this box.
2. Your website may not be on the index yet
This is true of new websites especially, and it’s perfectly normal. It can take up to a week (sometimes more) for search engines to start noticing your website. This is because your website is new and doesn’t have any inbound links yet. Once your website gains inbound links, Google will notice it quicker.
3. Failure to upload high quality, relevant content
In order for your website to come up on a search engine, your practice’s page must have high quality content that contains relevant keywords for your practice. These keywords and content tells Google what phrases and search terms you want to rank for.
4. Your practice is in a highly competitive keyword market
If you’re in highly competitive market, you may need to target keywords that are less competitive. Optimize your keywords to decrease the competition.
5. Not using meta-tags
Meta-tags are codes that websites use to get the attention of Google search engine bots. This practice can increase the number of keywords your practice’s website has. Ideally, you want between 10 and 20 meta-tags.
6. Backlink quality and quantity
Your practice gains backlinks when another website links to your website. While the goal used to be to have a large quantity of backlinks, this has shifted to having quality backlinks. A quality backlink is a website that Google readily trusts and comes from a credible organization.
7. New content frequency
Google prefers websites that are “alive” or have new content added with frequently. Failure to do so could hurt your search engine appearance.
8. Google has removed your website
Your practice may have violated one of Google’s mandates and could have been temporarily or permanently removed from its index. This is the worst case scenario.
For more tips and best practices for your medical SEO strategy, continue browsing our blog or learn more about our services.