Medical Marketing Enterprises, L.L.C.

Website Optimization, SEO, Reputation Management for Medical Practices

Use Analytics to Increase Rankings and Website Traffic

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Use Website Analytics to Increase Your TrafficEvery website needs to have an analytics package installed.  It is an SEO requirement of all the search engines and the data gives you information to improve your content and maximize the growth of your website.

What is Analytics

The gold standard is Google Analytics.  While it is free, you must start a Google account.  The easiest way is to simply start a GMail account.

With the same login information, you then create an analytics account.  Google gives some code to insert within your website to allow tracking to begin.

If you are lost at this point, you should best talk to your IT person or web developer for help.  Don’t worry, you only have to do this once.

Analytics tracks data on all kinds of topics;

  • Website traffic – # of visitors
  • Specific browser used
  • Devices used (i.e. laptop, smart phone, desktop)
  • Internet company
  • IP address
  • Geographic location of visitor
  • Time spent on website
  • Popular topics
  • Etc.

Analytics Improves SEO

Having an analytics package installed on your website improves your overall SEO.  An analytics package is expected by the search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo all expect you to have an analytics code contained on your site).  Those having one rank better than those lacking a package.

Value to Your Practice

To keep your website fresh and interesting, you’ll want to publish articles that are interesting to your readers.

For instance, when I first started my clinical website, www.retinaeyedoctor.com, I assumed that writing about the 3 most popular retinal diseases would automatically attract lots of readers.

Analytics showed I was wrong.  For instance, analytics showed me that when I wrote articles on retinal detachments, my traffic soared.

Analytics data will keep your website topics fresh, interesting and relevant to your readers needs.

Just as important, with analytics, you can determine which browser (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome) is the most favorite of your readers.  You can also figure out which type of device is used most often to visit your site.

If most of your readers are using Chrome on a smart phone, you will want to ensure that your website is mobile responsive and performs, as you expect, on the Chrome browser.

Not every website looks and behaves the same across all the browsers.

The more traffic you build, the better your practice can grow.

3 Google Tools You Need: Analytics, GMail and WebMasters Tools

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 3 Tools For Every Website to Optimize Medical SEO

After your have purchased your URL, hosting and installed WordPress.org, your next tasks are to start a GMail account, install Google analytics and register your site on WebMaster Tools.

All these are Google products, are free and require a Google/Gmail account.

Get a Google Account

Go to Gmail.com. There will be a link to create your new Google Account.  It is free.

“Create an Account” and follow the directions.  This will now give you a username and password for all of your Google products, e.g. Google Analytics and Webmasters Tools.

Google Analytics Gives You Data About Your Patients

Installing an analytics package onto your website is one of the first things you need to do with your new site.

Analytics allows you to monitor your traffic and behavior of your visitors.  Good analytics can tell you;

  • Number of visitors (usually unique visitors during the previous 30 days)
  • Time spent on site
  • Page/Articles Viewed
  • Average Time Spent
  • Traffic Sources
  • Location of Viewers
  • Browsers Used
  • Site Speed (slow download speeds decrease your ranking)
  • Keywords

In short, analytics allows you to find out about your readers:  what they like to read.

Remember, your goal is to rank your website high to get new patients.  Valuable, highly ranked sites get there by providing information relevant to the users’ (patients’) search query.

For instance, I found that many of my followers like information on retinal detachments.  I noticed this by reviewing my Google Analytics data.  Articles on retinal detachments are read more often than any other topic on my site.

Thus, I know that I’ll attract more readers if I continue to write on retinal detachments.

Submit Your Site on Webmasters Tools

Google also offers this free tool.  Webmasters tools can do many things (see below), but this is the best way to submit your site to Google.  If your site is new, you want to tell Google that you have a new site so you will be indexed.  Google can not rank your site if it does not know you exist.

If you have an older site, it is may already be indexed.

With Webmasters Tools, you can;

  • Verify that your site is operating properly (e.g. do all hyperlinks work?)
  • Determine Incoming Links to Your Site (important for SEO)
  • Identify Popular Search Queries (what search phrases were used to get to your site)
  • Verify a Sitemap

Perhaps the most important function second to allowing Google to index your site is to verify that you have a sitemap on your webpage and that it works.  A sitemap is basically a file on your site that functions as a table of contents for the search engine bots.

Search engines look for a sitemap, without a sitemap your pages may not get indexed.  Without indexing, you may not rank.  It’s important for your SEO rankings.

 

 

 

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