Every website owner (you) of every small business must understand 3 terms;  content marketing, SERP and SEO.  Not only is content marketing the ONLY way to get your website to market your practice, but it is the only way to achieve and maintain high rankings on a search results page (SERP).

Click ads and social media won’t do it either.

Just as winning a stock car race is a combination of the right components and maximizing performance, so too is getting your website to rank!

Content marketing is basically SEO.  Using the tactics and principles of content marketing, one webpage may outrank the other.

Websites Not Ranked on Theme

Too many practices make the mistake of paying to simply redesign a website.  While the fancy graphics and a modern look do help with your pages’ navigation and branding (and show you care to have a website!), they have no impact on ranking your site.   None.

Websites are ranked and evaluated solely on the content of the site.

Google Compares Webpages Based Upon Content

Google and other search engines evaluate your website based upon its content.  The content of your site is comprised of any file containing text (Word, .pdf, text files, Power Point, etc.).

Google reads, analyzes and then ranks every webpage in the world.  Using the content of your article, Google then compares and ranks it against similar articles yielding the results (SERP = search engine results page).

Your Internet marketing strategy is to get your webpages ranked as highly as possible to improve the likelihood of future patients finding your website.

No other method can get you high rankings.  Click through ads, social media campaigns and email blasts simply will draw attention to your website article, but unless the strategies of content marketing are employed, only the article itself will get you the high rankings you desire.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

The acronym SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.  “Optimization” is the process by which you define your article for the search engines.  Maximizing your SEO means that you are making the extra effort to ensure the search engines know exactly

For instance, two articles of identical content on different websites will rank differently based upon the “SEO” of each article.  The article where the SEO has been maximized will achieve the higher rankings and, therefore, will have higher marketing value than the SEO naive article.

Search Engine Optimization, therefore, only pertains to content marketing and its usefulness applies only to websites that provide content on their sites.  Search Engine Optimization, therefore, is a way of ranking comparable content (articles) from different sites.

SERP

The search engine results page (SERP) is the listing of “results” Google provides after you’ve “Googled” something.  The SERP pages are a listing of the most relevant articles that may answer your query, that is, the content of these articles is felt to be most relevant to your needs.

Your goal is to have your website’s pages rank highly on SERP for a variety of keywords, or subjects.

Using the methods of search engine optimization, Google (Bing and Yahoo) then compares similar articles and ranks them according to better SEO techniques.

Websites paying attention to SEO will fare much better (i.e. rank higher) than those that ignore SEO.

Race Car Analogy

I often use the analogy of a race car to help explain some of these terms.

Theme:  The theme of the your website is analagous to the paint job of your race car.  It makes it look nice, but has nothing to do with the actual speed of your car nor the ability to win a race.

Content:  The content of your site would be components of your racing vehicle.  The racing tires, the fuel injection system and the performance engine.

Search Engine Optimization:  The analogy here is the professional race car driver.  Using the best components, the driver uses her knowledge and experience to drive the car to maximize it’s performance.

SERP:  Basically the finish line.  While racers don’t always finish first, they do strive to finish as high as possible.  Using the effective content marketing and SEO, your webpages may not always place first, but you want them in the “Top 10,”

To Your Growth And Success!

Randy

Randall V. Wong, M.D.
Medical Website Optimization
www.MedicalMarketingEnterprises.com