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Website Management Guide

80% of patients searching the Internet don't look beyond the first three pages of their search results.

Will your website be there?

The following information will help you understand how your website and the search engines on the Internet work together. It can assist you in implementing cost-effective steps that can improve your website’s search engine ranking and guide you in writing search engine and Patient-Friendly copy.  

In this guide, we focus on Search Engine Management (SEM) and provide essential tips to help you make your website content more visible to Google™, Yahoo®, MSN®, AltaVista™and other search engines. These results won’t happen overnight, but as you begin to effectively manage and optimize your website, you will begin to notice higher and higher rankings on the search results pages. Effective SEM is a slow, tedious process and can take from three to six months before you notice the improvement.

What is Search Engine Marketing?

SEM encompasses all marketing efforts geared to achieving leads and sales from the search engines. SEM is generally associated with those targeted advertisements that appear above and the right hand column of most search engine organic listings. SEM is the researching, designing and creating highly effective "Pay-Per-Click Ads"or "Sponsored Links".

A dynamic, sophisticated SEM campaign enables you to selectively place your message every time a person searches on a term that is related to your practice. For example, if your practice offers "Cosmetic Surgery" but does not offer "Reconstructive surgery", your SEM campaign will appear every time a prospective patient in your area searches for a phrase like "Facelift" or "Liposuction", but will not show up for a search phrase such as "Breast Reconstruction."

SEM products through Google are highly effective in achieving placement and website traffic goals. To gain maximum results from your SEM campaign, establish a realistic budget and carefully select your keywords and phrases. Follow through by evaluating the impressions, clicks and the Click Through Ratio (CTR) for each of your Sponsored Link Ads.

We can get your website ranked #1!

No one can make that claim. Companies that specialize in SEO do not control the rankings. Nor do they have insider information about algorithms. However, SEO performed properly can certainly improve your search engine rankings and position. 

How are rankings displayed in search results?

There are two primary methods used when displaying listings on the results page. One method is free and is called an “Organic” or “Natural” listing. The other is called a "Sponsored" listing because you pay; usually on a "Pay Per Click" basis. 

When you enter a term in a search engine, you usually see a list of 10 results per page. These sites are called “Organic” search results and are developed after search engines search and index the websites according to their relativity to the keyword or phrase that was entered in the search. Their ranking is determined based on hundreds of criteria in the search engine’s “algorithm”, or search formula. The website listed first was considered to be the most relevant when compared to the search term entered. 

The results that you see at the very top of the page and on the right side of the page are the “Sponsored” links. To be listed in these sections you arrange to have your site appear in this section of the results. Typically, you will pay a predetermined price for each click that you get from your sponsored link. That’s why it's often called “Pay Per Click” advertising.

How do search engines search?

Search engine programs called “spiders”, sometimes referred to as “robots”, “bots”, or "web crawlers", are busy crawling across the Web 24/7. These spiders read through all of the text of every page looking for keywords and phrases, located in specific areas of your website, and entered by users into a search box when they want to find information or products and services online. 

Search engines give every word a weight or numerical value based on the engine’s proprietary algorithm. The information is “indexed” and the crawler follows your page’s links to other pages and related websites. Unfortunately, these algorithms change constantly. Which makes SEO an ongoing process.

Is the way my website is built important?

Yes. Search engines are designed to work with almost all technologies commonly used in websites. However, many website designers are not aware of how to set up a website to achieve an appropriate rank from major search engines. If your site uses dynamic pages, frames, java script menus and/or Flash images that provide textual content, make certain your designer takes special care in optimizing those pages. They generally are not search engine friendly.

The way the code in your site is written can also influence how the search engines index your website. This means paying particular attention to Title, Description and Keyword tags as well as your site map and writing your content to a specific web standard so the search engine can index your website properly.

Why is it so hard to improve my sites ranking?

Thousands of patients search the same keywords every day. Search engines are always looking for websites where those keywords are the most relevant and help the user achieve their objective as quickly as possible. In addition, search engines change their algorithms frequently to prevent sites from gaining a position the site really doesn’t deserve. 

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization is the process of fine tuning the content of your website in ways that make it more relevant to search engines and therefore easier to find and rank your website. This is done mainly with the keywords in your content (along with other factors) to determine how highly you are ranked in the search engines.

Content is key to being found by the search engines

Content is the main reason visitors are looking for your site. Your content must be written to fulfill a need for the visitor; whether this need is for information about a procedure or about you. Proper SEO copywriting is crucial because Google and the other engines have become very good at browsing the way humans do. So the more your writing pleases your readers, the better it will be indexed by the search engines.

Write content with keywords

Keywords are specific words that relate to your practice and that patients are likely to type into a search engine to find you. Most Internet users today know that using a single word search like “liposuction” or “breast augmentation” will yield millions of irrelevant results. They are more likely to type in a phrase than a single word.

The first step in effective SEO is determining the phrases that are most likely to deliver the patients you desire. Your SEO plan needs to determine what differentiates your practice from your competitors. You may want to consider specializing in a few procedures within an area from which you draw the most patients. 

The next step is to adjust your content so that your specific keywords and key phrases appear strategically throughout the text. This needs to appear natural to both humans and web crawlers to help the search engines accurately define your niche. Try adding phrases like: “liposuction in New York is…” or “Dr. Harris is renowned in New York for his outstanding liposuction results.”

Selecting keywords

Developing keywords or key phrases for medical practices is not as difficult as it may seem. You can usually expect patients to type in your specialty, a procedure and a geographical location. Finally, you should promote both your name and your practice name so that they both will show up in the search results.

Select the highest quality keywords that describe procedures and services offered in your practice. They should include both general and specific terms. In order to move your website higher in search results for your target (Geographical, Age, Gender) audience, you must place the most effective keywords in the right areas of your site’s content and HTML code.

You can generate keywords by brainstorming your own list or by visiting a competitor's website. Keywords can be viewed by “View” in your toolbar and then “Source” from the menu. The “Keyword Content” is usually the third line and lists the keywords used for that page. You can also use one of the many online keyword suggestion tools.

Is there a limit on the number of keywords for a page?

There is no official limit on the number of meta keywords you can have but each search engine sets their own rules. However, a good rule of thumb is that since an average page is generally around 300 to 600 words long, more than 30 to 60 keywords would be considered stuffing. More words are fine; as long as you break it up into questions and answers, bulleted items and/or headlines. Ideally, your keywords will also appear in the Title, Description and Keyword tags, headings, subtitles, bolded text, leading paragraphs and inbound links from relevant websites.

Don’t overdo it!

Overusing keywords in a webpage is called Stuffing. Each search engine has a different threshold for what it considers overuse. The keywords can be in page content, or hidden in HTML tags within the code. Some designers even try to hide keywords by making the text the same color as the page background so that it is invisible to human readers.  Note: Stuffing can result in lower rankings and possibly dropping your site from the rankings altogether.

Using keywords effectively

Now that you have your keywords, use them in your website where the search engines will look for them: the Meta tags and HTML coding of your website.

• Meta Title Tag
A Title tag is part of your webpage’s HTML code. It appears on the top of your browser window. It’s like the heading for a book chapter. You should customize the Title tag on every page to describe the contents of each page. It should be the first tag in your HTML code and be about 40 to 75 characters and contain keywords.

• Meta Description Tag
While the 'description' Meta tag has only a minor role in SEO algorthyms, Google often uses this tag for the content of the description displayed in search results. It is then seen together with your page 'title' tag which is very important and should be individually scripted for each page of your website. Description tags should be between 50 and 256 characters. Do not repeat any single word more than four times, and do not repeat any keyword phrases more than once. The first letter of each word should be capitalized. Keyword phrases should be separated by commas.

• Meta Keywords Tag
A Keyword tag is part of your webpage’s code inserted on top of each page of your site. The keywords used in this tag are not viewable in a web browser, but can be viewed as part of the source code. This is where you will insert any keywords that are relevant to each page’s content. Try to avoid repetition and the use of stop words (a, the, and, or).

Some SEO Experts simply suggest keeping keywords less than 256 characters in total because most databases have that as a default maximum size for certain fields. As a result those engines that do look at the keyword tag only look at the first 256 characters. However, many webmasters do not even bother listing any keywords.

Does Google penalize for excessive characters in Meta tags?

No. Google states clearly that they do not penalize sites with excessive characters in their Meta tags. 

Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising

The Internet has opened up a whole new field of marketing using many different forms of creative advertising. PPC is one of the most effective Internet strategies. Simply put, your ad (sponsored link) is linked to a keyword frequently used in search queries. You pay a pre-agreed to fee each time a user clicks on your ad and is linked to your website.

In 2007 Google, Yahoo and MSN were the most widely used search engines on the Web with over 90% of all searches made on the Internet. It makes sense then to concentrate your SEM efforts on these three search engines. 

PPC advertising is not as simple as it seems. You'll want to choose a company or a staff member with the necessary skills to optimize your TopSite and maximize the results of your campaign to ensure that your ads show up on the search results pages of Google, Yahoo and many others. 

Google and Yahoo consider a number of factors to position your ads in the search results. The main factor is the maximum you are willing to pay for each click on your ad. This is the "Cost Per Click." The second factor is the ad's "Click Thru Rate" or the percentage of people that click on your ad versus the total impressions of your ad.

PPC advertising is enormously powerful and extremely profitable when executed with precision and efficiency. It’s cost efficient because you only show ads to people who have already expressed interest in what you sell, and you only pay when they express a desire to learn more about you.

How much will my PPC campaign cost?

That's up to you. You determine your monthly budget. Generally speaking, the more you spend the more results you'll get. Your PPC campaign can be as expensive as you want. Most campaigns begin with a comfortable test budget based on our history with keywords. Analysis of your results is crucial to justify adjusting your budget as your campaign evolves.

Links

“Incoming links” are one of the best ways to help spiders find your site and keep them coming back to index your site frequently. Having other websites linking to your site, the search engine spiders will visit your site more frequently and find your new, updated content quickly. To search engines, every site that links to yours is like a vote for your site.

The key is to get high ranking sites in your industry to link to yours because search engines will use the sites that link to you to help determine what your site is about. You can find out who links to you already by typing “Link: yourdomainname.com” in any major search engine.

The higher the quality of the sites linking to you, the more votes you have. This aids in boosting your ranking.

“Outgoing links” are those links leading from your site to other websites.  It is generally a good idea to have outbound links to websites that contain useful information for your visitors. Do not link to a website that has a "Fimd a Doctor" or "Member Physicians" option on it. They will redirect your visitor to another practice. Outbound links should be evaluated regularly as part of your overall link strategy and to make sure they have not added a  "Find a Doctor" or "Member Physicians" since your last visit.

Here are some methods for increasing your site’s link popularity:

1. Ask for links

Talk to some of your suppliers and ask them if they will link to your website. Another idea is to contact the organizations you may belong to or your suppliers. Ask each of them to link to your site, and explain how providing the link will be of use to their website visitors.

2. Directory links

Submitting to directories helps increase your link popularity as well as targeted traffic because they place links to websites within specific categories. A directory may be considered an unbiased authority and links from them may be considered high quality links by search engine algorithms.
 
Beware: There are many scams offering reciprocal link programs. Most of these offers are of no value to you because the site that links to you must have related content to be considered a valid link. 

3. Press Releases

When your practice reaches a major milestone, takes part in a charitable event, hires a new employee, or has some other newsworthy item, post a carefully crafted press release that contains popular search keywords on your website. This will add to its searchable content. You can also use an online distribution service that can assist with spreading it throughout the Internet. 

Search Engine/Directory Submission

Submitting your website to search engines is no longer a simple task. Most popular search engines now charge fees for including your website in their index. As a result, once popular "mass submission" services may no longer work.

Below you will find the links to the "submission page" for each major search engine.There is usually no need to submit a website to the top search engines and it's rarely worthwhile to pay for inclusion. Although there are thousands of search engines and directories where you can submit your site, you should focus on these three search engines Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Maintain good results and use best practices

The last step is to maintain good Search Engine Optimization by continuing to tweak and change the content on your site. A website should be kept fresh and up-to-date by adding new keywords occasionally, adding content or updating the content that exists monthly. Your results should be closely monitored using your ranking reports and analytics. 

Website Analytics

Use website visitor tracking to see what your visitors are doing on your site. Using the analytics tool in your MJD Website, you’ll be able to see how many visitors you get each day, which search engines your visitors are using to find your site, and which keyword phrases they are using to get there – as well as a wealth of other data about your site’s visitors. The tool is included and if you aren’t tracking your site’s traffic, you are missing out on a key measurement of your website’s success.

Be Patient

Search Engine Optimization is a gradual process of testing, measuring, and refining. Once you have optimized your website, it can take weeks to months before you start to see an increase in your site’s rankings for the keyword phrases you targeted. 

Do not expect a top ranking in Google overnight. Improvement can take as long as 3 to 6 months. Once your rankings kick in from Search Engine Optimization, it can be extremely rewarding, so it is worth the upfront initial investment to do it now and do it right. If you need more immediate results, consider a paid search campaign (Pay Per Click) while you wait for your Search Engine Optimization results to grow.

Finally, search engines algorithms are constantly evolving. As a result, Search Engine Optimization specialists must keep up-to-date on the latest developments in the field and modify their website and Search Engine Optimization strategies accordingly.

For In-Depth Google Webmaster Guidelines Visit:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769#quality