SEO Archives - Medical Marketing Enterprises, L.L.C.

Google Ranks Web Page, Not Websites |

August 24, 2017 by Randall Wong, M.D.

Search engines rank individual web pages wherever and whenever possible. This means each of your web pages might rank well for a particular keyword given the assumption you’ve paid attention to SEO.

Understanding that search engines rank individual web pages focused on keywords will help you avoid a common SEO blunder.

Each of your providers should have their own “About” page, and here’s why.

Keywords

Keywords are pretty tricky to understand, but for our purposes are synonymous with topic or subject. Each or your articles must be focused around 1 (or possibly 2) keyword or topic.

The topic of your article should be the keyword for which you want to rank.

Best practices dictate that the keyword should appear in certain locations of your article: the title, subheaders and comprise no more than 2.5% of the total words of the page.

YOAST SEO Plugin

This is the probably the best SEO plugin around. The free version is terrific and I have been using it for years after letting go of a paid optimization service.

YOAST will walk you through the process of optimizing each of your articles so that you may maximize your opportunity for high rankings.

The About Page(s)

Each of your providers should have a separate “About” page. Cramming all providers onto the same page gives you only one page to rank for the services your provide.

Chances are that your providers each specialize in one facet of your practice. This should be your keyword. For instance, as a retina specialist, my about page should be focused on the keyword “retina specialist.” (Admittedly, it’s two words, but one keyphrase.)

If all your specialists are grouped on the same page, it becomes very difficult for that one page to rank any specialty. A single webpage can realistically rank well for only one or two keywords.

By creating separate pages, you now have multiple opportunities to rank!

Are You Writing Enough to Dominate Website Rankings?

February 9, 2017 by Randall Wong, M.D.

How often should you post to your website to insure great website rankings? If you want great rankings, you need great SEO and the most important factor in determining your rankings is the quality of your posts, or website articles. You will be surprised to learn that you may not need to write as much or often as you think.

This post corresponds to our latest podcast episode of “Russ and Randy” – a podcast on Healthcare and Medical Internet Marketing. We hope you like “Winning the Rankings Race.” You can find us on iTunes.

There are 3 Rs or general rules to achieving great rankings, or great SEO. Your articles must be;

Relevant to the Google Search (it must answer the question asked or provide a solution)
Refreshed – articles must be published on a site that is refreshed (new content)
Regularly – website must be refreshed regularly with relevant content

Assuming you are writing great content, for your website to rank well, you must write often, but how often?

With Whom are You Competing

To dominate the rankings, you need to write more than your competitors. The more competitors you have, the more you’ll have to write.

But who are your competitors?

You will be glad to know that your competitors are NOT your colleagues with whom you share the same specialty. The definition of competition has changed. Your actual competitors are;

Those who practice the same specialty as you
Those who practice in the same area (zip code) as you
Those who have an active website, like you

Very few of your competitors will be maintaining an active website. All you need to do is outwrite them!

Own Your Zip Code

You want to publish better content and more often than your digital competitors with whom you share a geographic location…or your zip code.

Your goal is to write better and more often than those in your surrounding community…to own your zip code!

All the best!

SEO for Healthcare and Medicine | Website Rank?

August 27, 2016 by Randall Wong, M.D.

Have a brand new medical website and can’t figure out if it’s growing your bottom line? Why aren’t patients calling?

You are not alone. While most healthcare groups and medical practices now have a website, very few of you are actually happy with the marketing results. In fact, most of you are frustrated as;

Website not ranking
Website not growing practice
Return on Investment (ROI) is not defined
Cost/Benefit ratio too high

How Google “Searches”

When you “Google” something, you are beginning a search. You are “searching” for an answer to a question or solution to a problem.

Movie tickets, restaurant reviews…or a new doctor.

How exactly do the search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.) decide which webpages are most likely to help you?

Every search engine travels the Internet and visits every webpage on every website. Every word is memorized, catalogued and indexed. Each file on your website containing text gets indexed.

Google et al have their own algorithms to compare one webpage to another. They use these formulas to decide which webpage will best answer your question or problem.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is your key to making sure Google, Bing and Yahoo pick your webpage!

Your goal is to get your webpages ranked in the “Top Ten” with the search engines.

Search Engine Optimization

Any and every healthcare and medical website must be optimized for it to rank well with the search engines. Understanding SEO is understanding what criteria Google expects to rank your page well.

Understanding the different variables in the SEO algorithms is only way your webpages can rank highly. There is no exception or gimmick to avoid search engine optimization.

The most important element of your website is the value and quality of your content. It is your content, when optimized, which will allow you to beat your competitors and rank highly.

With properly optimized content, you have the ability to “tell” Google, Bing and Yahoo exactly why and how your content is more relevant and valuable than other’s sites.

“Randy”

Randall Wong, M.D.
Healthcare and Medical Internet Marketing

Subscribe to “Russ and Randy” | Podcast on Healthcare and Medical Internet Marketing.

Choosing the Best Domain Name

May 25, 2016 by Randall Wong, M.D.

The first step to starting your website is to select and purchase a domain name.

How do you choose the best domain name?

Your domain name will be unique to your website and your business. Getting your website to rank with Google and the other search starts with your domain name.

Here are a few ideas and suggestions about choosing the best domain name for your website.

Branded Domain Names

Most of us do NOT have a brand name. Brand names usually do NOT describe our goods and services and, in fact, have nothing to do in terms of describing our business.

Examples of a branded domains are Coke.com, Sears.com and Amazon.com. There is nothing inherent about these names which indicate the type of business they run, but they are simply known by the “brand” of their product.

If you do operate a business with a brand name, purchase that domain if available. No need to read on, but if you are like the rest of us, you’ll need to spend a few minutes to choose the best domain name.

Want Your Website to Rank?

Getting your website to be the most powerful marketing tool to grow your practice means your website needs to rank well with the search engines.

The only way to achieve and maintain high search engine rankings (e.g. Google, Bing, Yahoo) is to optimize your website. Search engine optimization employs techniques and tactics to get high rankings with the search engines. There is no substitute.

With brand new websites, optimization starts with your domain name.

Choose and combine a few words (aka keywords) which best describe your medical practice. You may add a location, but it’s not absolutely necessary.

Your goal is to choose a few words which are likely to be the same words used by your next patient searching for your goods and services (see below).

Goods and Services

If you are hoping to grow your practice, you’ll want to take advantage of every opportunity to maximize the SEO of your website. Optimizing your website starts with your domain name.

What 3 words best describe your practice? Can you guess what words patients might use to “Google” you?

Combining a few words likely used for “search,” is an easy and useful way to start optimizing your website. Avoid proper names and use a combination of a few terms which best describe the services you provide and/or where you provide them.

For instance, an ophthalmology practice might use;

EyeDoctorsofAnywhere
EyePhysiciansandSurgeons
CataractSpecialists
GlaucomaandCataractCenter

Search engines are pretty smart. You don’t have to worry about the particular order in which you arrange the words. In fact, the search engines will analyze your URL and decipher all possible words contained within!

Best Domain Name

The best domain name should have many of the criteria listed below, but don’t kill yourself in meeting all these criteria. The best URL for your website may not fulfill all these attributes.

Describe the goods and services that you provide
Provide SEO value to help get your website ranked
Be easy to remember
Be easy to spell (thus easy to type!)
Avoids confusion with similar domains (plurals, contains hyphens)
Short
Avoids hyphens and numbers

Is Your Domain Available?

The last step is to check for availability of your domain and purchase. There are many registrars where you can both check for availability and then purchase your domain.

Bluehost, Godaddy and Hostgator are just a few registrars which also offer hosting services.

A Few More Tips

We recommend purchasing your domain for at least 3-4 years. The search engines are aware of how long you have purchased your domain. Blackhat/illegitimate websites change often and are unlikely to purchase domains for more than a year.

Don’t worry about the suffix (.com vs. .org vs. .net). If given the choice, choose the .com, but for SEO purposes, the TLD (suffix) does not matter.

Make sure your hosting company is in the same country as your business. Don’t choose a TLD of a foreign country. Both these actions will decrease your SEO.

If you have additional suggestions or comments, please comment below.

All the best!

Search Engines Rank Webpages Not Websites

October 2, 2012 by Randall Wong, M.D.

Search engines rank webpages, not websites.

Think of a reference manual; dictionaries, encyclopedias, thesauraus. The title of the book refers to a collection of pages bound together. Unlike a novel, reading each page in order serves no purpose.

A website is composed of webpages. A collection of webpages constitutes a website and as in our manual example, each webpage of a website contains useful information.

Search engines, such as Google, rank individual pages of each site and not the whole site collectively.

Overall, with good SEO, most of your pages will rank well.

The URL or Domain

Think of a website as a place (i.e. your Domain) where webpages of a common theme reside. In this way, you may better understand how a “website” may rank for dozens of keywords. In actuality, a successful website contains many pages allowing for the excellent SERP rankings.

When establishing a PageRank, an overall score is assigned to your domain, or website. A PageRank is different than index rankings on a SERP. It gives you an overall score of the relevance of a website.

Webpages

Each article you write for publish for your site will have a separate and unique URL. The root URL remains the same, but the extension, or filename, is unique to everypage of the site. For instance;

MedicalMarketingEnterprises.com

This points to the home page and is the “root” URL.

MedicalMarketingEnterprises.com/About/Randall.V.Wong

This URL is the address of my “About” page. It is indexed separately from the home page and all other pages on this site. This extension signifies that it is completely separate file, or page, on my site.

Each of these pages is read and indexed separately by Google. One page may rank better for “medical search engine optimization” and the other for “randall wong md.”

This website has almost 300 pages “indexed” with the search engines. In theory, this means this site could rank for at least 300 different keywords or subjects!

Do you have 300 areas of your practice for which you’d like to rank Number 1?

What Can You Do?

This emphasizes the importance of relevance. Each and every article should be relevant to one subject, or keyword. The more specific your article, or post, is to one keyword, the more relevant. Try to write an article “concentrating” on too many keywords and you lose specificity, i.e. relevance.

To your success!