Contents. Introduction... 3 What is SEO?... 4 Why You Should Care Why The First Page Matters... 7 SEO Best Practices... 8

Contents Introduction ....................................................... 3 What is SEO? ..................................................... 4 ...
Author: Jasmine Lynch
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Contents Introduction ....................................................... 3 What is SEO? ..................................................... 4 Why You Should Care ...................................... 6 Why The First Page Matters .......................................... 7

SEO Best Practices .......................................... 8 Keywords ........................................................................ 8 URLs ............................................................................... 10 Titles .............................................................................. 10 Meta-Descriptions ........................................................ 12 Internal Links ................................................................. 12 Images ........................................................................... 13 Canonical Tags ............................................................. 14 Page Loading Speed ................................................... 16 In Short .......................................................................... 16

Dispelling Old Myths ...................................... 18 How to Choose an SEO Service ................... 19 Conclusion ...................................................... 20

SEO 101 | Introduction | 3

Introduction From a high-level overview to a deep-dive into SEO’s technical aspects, we’ll show you how to immediately apply it to your online marketing today.

As you build your practice’s online presence, you’re likely going to come across recommendations to invest in your Search Engine Optimization or SEO. While the term ‘SEO’ is ubiquitous, you may not fully understand how it works or why it’s your biggest priority if you want to stay competitive in an age where more than 40% of people begin the search for a doctor online. Quality marketing takes time and financial resources, so it’s crucial to prioritize the most efficient and cost-effective strategies to get in front of potential clients -- that means implementing SEO best practices across your website. If you know you need to do it, but want to learn more, this eBook contains everything you need to know. From a high level overview, to a deep-dive into the technical aspects, you’ll learn:



What SEO is and how it works.



Why you should care about your search engine rankings.



Crucial SEO best practices you need to institute now.



Common SEO myths that need to be dispelled.



How to know if your site is optimized.



Your next steps to optimal SEO.

SEO 101 | What is SEO? | 4

What is SEO? Search engine optimization, commonly called SEO, is the practice of ensuring a website shows up earlier, or higher, in search non-paid, or organic, search engine results to relevant queries.

SEO techniques ensure a site shows up earlier on the search results page of a search engine like Google or Bing. As a website rises in rank, it gets more visitors, which potentially equals more conversions. Conversions happen when website users achieve the goal of the site (e.g., become patients, read an article, buy products). In an age where 40% of patients start their search for a provider online, prioritizing SEO is crucial for potential patients to find your practice. Although the term SEO is over 20 years old, SEO is a dynamic discipline that constantly adapts to the ever-changing landscape of the internet and the tools we use to navigate it.

Did you know? • 131 billion searches are conducted worldwide each month. • According to Business 2 Community, 50% of people conducting web searches begin that search on a mobile device. • According to Search Engine Journal, 81% of businesses consider their blogs to be important to their business.

SEO 101 | What is SEO? | 5 In order to gain a more in-depth understanding of how SEO works, let’s take a look at the most popular search engine: Google. When a user enters a search query (e.g, best dermatologist in San Diego), it uses a “Googlebot” to “crawl” billions of web pages. This bot is also commonly referred to as a spider, and uses a complex series of algorithms to decide which sites are of the greatest relevance to the user. SEO boosts your visibility by ensuring your site is full of content most relevant to potential queries and is user-friendly. Analyzing how Google measures relevance is a complex process on its own, but Google also looks at the user experience of your website to measure an overall quality score. This quality score is what ultimately determines how your page or content will rank on a search engine results page, or S.E.R.P. In full transparency, Google publishes their best practice guidelines for search professionals any time there is an update. And while you are welcome read through the most recent 32 page document, we created this eBook to focus on core principles that remain consistent and if followed will ensure you’re aligned with best practices regardless of changing trends.

SEO 101 | Why You Should Care | 6

Why You Should Care You’ve probably been in business for some time and your website and word-of-mouth recommendations have been working just fine. Yet as the marketing landscape continues to evolve, implementing SEO best practices is crucial to getting found online.

Since its inception in 1998, Google has become more than just another search engine. As of 2012, it was the highest used search engine by far, outpacing Yahoo by nearly a billion users and processing 1.2 trillion searches. These days, it’s a verb synonymous with “research” or “searching.” Based on a 2012 survey conducted by Search Engine Land, 85% of respondents use the internet to find local businesses and services. A 2012 Pew Research Survey showed that 72% of respondents looked online for health information within the past year (including searching for health care professionals); 77% used a search engine to do so. It’s no wonder that optimizing Google search rankings has become a number one priority for healthcare providers!

SEO 101 | Why You Should Care | 7 You may currently be getting the majority of your patients through referral sources such as insurance companies or word of mouth. Consider how many more patients you could be inviting to your door by increasing your online presence. After all, there are a variety of reasons why many patients might search for services instead of waiting for a referral. Maybe they’ve moved to a new area. Maybe they are looking for a new pediatrician for a family addition, or shopping around for a specialist. You’ll want to rank highly on search engine results when they inevitably turn to Google to find a provider. Additionally, referred patients often Google you after they receive the recommendation, so you’ll want to capture their attention with easily accessible information and a strong online presence.

Why the first page matters And these days, it’s crucial to make the first page of Google results. In 2013, Chitika Insights conducted a study of internet traffic through Google search engine results. They determined that 91.5% of all referring traffic came from the first page of search results, and only 4.8% from the second page. The percentage only goes down from there.

So let’s get started...

SEO 101 | SEO Best Practices | 8

SEO Best Practices Google is on the side of the user. Their goal isn’t to make it easy for businesses to reach the front page; they want to provide the most relevant, high-quality content to users who search with their service. The key is convincing these engines that your content fits the bill.

First local business result on Google!

Dr. Tristan Bickman found SEO success. If you google “OB-GYN Santa Monica” she is one of the top three local results and made the first page of overall Google results. We’re going to tell you how you can achieve the same results, using her site as an example along the way.

Keywords Let’s start with an SEO basic: Keywords. You query a search engine with words or phrases relevant to your topic. Google looks for these words and phrases across all web pages. Ensure that you utilize relevant keywords throughout your entire site. Don’t just use the same word over and over; think about the different ways a user could find you.

SEO 101 | SEO Best Practices | 9

Tristan Bickman’s title featuring the keywords “OB-GYN” and “Santa Monica” is just the beginning of the keywords on her site. After all, potential patients could also be searching for “prenatal care,” “gynecological care,” or even something as specific as “pregnancy blood test”. An easy way for physicians to take advantage of various search terms is create unique “services” pages, which could hook users looking for specific procedures. Using “long-tail” keywords gives you the edge as well: General keywords tend to have a higher search volume, so, while it may be more likely a user will search for those terms, you’ll probably fall behind. (E.g., doctor, Southern California.) Long-tail keywords are more specific (e.g., dermatologist, San Diego, Juvederm) and, therefore, more likely to match you with the right patients. Although long-tail keywords may have a lower search volume, they are more likely to land you on the front page when they are searched. This is especially helpful for physicians, as most potential patients tend to search for niche disciplines and locations, not simply “doctors.” Identifying keywords is only part of the battle when it comes to implementing SEO strategies. It’s not enough to just know what words your patient base is likely to search and pepper your website with them. Where and how you use those words matters too...

SEO 101 | SEO Best Practices | 10

URLs A good place to start is at the very beginning, with your website URL: Create a simple one with the most relevant keywords. URL

Avoid “dynamic parameters”, or the messy string of numbers and symbols, that sometimes follows the legible portion of a link. (E.g., doctorsmith.com/123456wdh) Subpages will have longer URLs than the landing page, but replacing these parameters with real words will not only promote readability, it’ll act as a sitemap so a website visitor -- and Google -- always know where they are.

In this example, the user knows they went to Dr. Bickman’s Services, then chose “Pregnancy”... and they know how to find their way back. Changing the URL of your subpages to reflect their content is a great SEO practice as Google likes sites which provide a good user experience.

Titles It can be helpful to match your URL to your website’s title. Like URLs, website titles should be short and relevant, with a maximum title length of around 70 characters for sites and pages. Just like URLs, website titles should be short, sweet, and to the point. Google has a maximum title length of around 70 characters for sites and pages, but even that much could be too much. Use relevant long-tail keywords in your website’s title, but don’t overdo it.

SEO 101 | SEO Best Practices | 11 You don’t need to say MD three times for Google to understand that the website belongs to an MD. Web page titles are not to be confused with website titles and can also be important for SEO purposes. To help illustrate the difference between a website title and a web page title, let’s consider Wikipedia. If you search for “beagles” on Wikipedia, you come up with a webpage entitled “Beagle.” The website is still only “Wikipedia.” In general, the same rules apply to web page titles as apply to website titles. Remember your keywords and keep it short and relevant.

However, there’s still more you can and should do here to ensure that the engine crawlers are sending the right people your way. Web page titles should be specific. If you have a page on your site dedicated to breast cancer awareness, make sure this is reflected in the title. Don’t just repeat your website title over and over again in the hopes that Google will pick up on all those keywords. Maybe “Breast Cancer” isn’t one of your typical keywords, but it will drive people to your site who might just stick around to learn more about you. If expanding your reach isn’t reason enough to tailor your web page titles, consider that having multiple pages with the same title can actually be detrimental. This confuses the engine crawlers and makes it difficult for them to tell which page is which when displaying search results.

SEO 101 | SEO Best Practices | 12

Meta-Descriptions When you’re on a search engine results page, you probably give a quick glance to the small blurbs under each web page title to ensure the page is the exact one you want. The blurb is the “meta-description” for that page. Consider it a first round interview between you and your potential patient. You’ve made it to the front page; now it’s time to convince the viewer that your site is the one they need. Meta-Description

It’s crucial that Meta-descriptions are easy to read, highly relevant and, so they’re not cut off, between 130 - 160 characters. Meta-descriptions actually don’t affect your search engine results; Google dropped them from their algorithm in 2009. They’re still crucial -- even if you show up on page one of the search engine results, you still need to convince your potential patient to click.

Internal Links Internal links are links within your site that connect to other pages on your site; these make it easier for users to navigate your site.

These internal links are easy to find at the top of the page and lead to pages with more links.

SEO 101 | SEO Best Practices | 13 These links help develop a site structure for your website, also known as an information hierarchy. Let’s say your home page links to your three major specialties. Each of these specialties also has a page, which in turn links to a series of pages for each physician or other professional within that specialty. These links give your site a clear organization and makes it easier for Google to know which pages to link in search engine ratings. Finally, these links provide “link juice.” Remember the Google spider crawling along the web? She finds sites through tracing web threads, and the more threads that lead to a site, the more likely it is to be found and promoted. Internal and external links (links from other sites) to your pages help create more “threads” which makes content easier to track by building more paths to your door.

Images Take a stroll around some of your competitor’s websites. Which ones are more or less professional looking? Do the ones that appear more polished have anything in common? Chances are, they all use clean and professional images and plenty of them. The images could be in their banners, their sidebars, or the headings to their blog posts, but they’re there. However, effectively using images for SEO purposes doesn’t end when you upload the image to your site. Using “alt tags” will make your website more searchable by increasing your ranking in the Google image search results. “Alt tags” are, more specifically, “alternative attributes of an image tags.” In other words, they are the “image description.” A standard image html tag might appear as follows: . The image title or URL could be a link complete with http in the beginning or it could be something as basic as “image.jpeg.” In either case, what you’re primarily concerned with is the “alternative description.” For your purposes, you might as well read that as “keywords go here.” And they do.

SEO 101 | SEO Best Practices | 14

True, not many potential patients in dire need of a new chiropractor or physical therapist are going to be conducting Google image searches in order to satisfy their needs. But plenty of people will be looking for images related to medical content, be it an infographic about sun cancer prevention or a picture from the latest “run for the cure.” Thanks to all of that new content you’re generating, those people are likely to end up on your website and reading your blog post. Google sees more traffic to your site -- no matter through which entry point -- as popularity. When Google sees that a site is popular, it wants to send more people there because it assumes that searchers are finding that particular site valuable. The more people come to your site (caveat: it must be quality traffic), the higher you rank for your particular keywords.

Canonical Tags Search engines look down on multiple URLs linking to very similar content, also called duplicate content, and this can actively harm your search engine rank. One duplicate content example is that you have a long boilerplate, full of practice descriptors, on the footer of each page of your site. It may seem harmless, but Google might see it as keyword stuffing -- or trying to load a page with as many searchable keywords as possible -- a dishonest SEO practice that Google has adapted to detect. Another example: you write a guest blog for another site, and like the result so much you post the exact same piece on your site with a slightly different title.

SEO 101 | SEO Best Practices | 15 In this example, search engines don’t know which site to send traffic to, or which site to rank higher. Dividing your traffic between multiple URLs dilutes your SEO juice and makes your content seem less popular than it is. Capitalization differences count as duplicate content.

Canonical tags allow a page containing duplicate content to reference one source page by adding a canonical tag, a piece of HTML code that references the page you want to filter traffic to. Traffic otherwise split between multiple pages will then be funneled to the source page. To create a canonical tag, decide which web pages containing the duplicate content you want Google to focus on. Then dive into the html code of any page containing duplicate content and add a link that references the canonical page (or page that you’ve chosen as the focus). The line of html code would look something like the following: . Here, the code is telling Google or similar search engines to treat the current URL as if it is a copy of the listed website.

User Experience Getting potential patients to your site is only part of your goal; you have to keep them there in order for Google to see that your site is worth sending visitors to. In addition to having a clean and professional website with a logical layout, your site needs to be responsive. Responsive design makes it easy to navigate and use a site regardless of the device the visitor is using. We’ve all been annoyed by sites that require us to pinch to zoom in or make us click tiny links when looking at them on our smart phones.

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Google announced in 2015 that non-responsive websites will be penalized in search engine rankings, so responsive design has gone from a nice-to-have to a must-have.

Page Loading Speed Page loading speed can have a dramatic impact on your website’s search engine rankings. Check your page speed using this tool provided by Google developers: https://developers.google.com/speed/ pagespeed/insights/ Type in the name of your web page and Google will tell you your page speed and offer suggestions for improving it, including directions to get started. You can increase page speed by reducing your server’s response time, optimizing images so they load faster, reducing redirects within your website, and even compressing large code files so they take up less space.

In Short... We’ve covered a lot in the last section, so here’s the short version, compliments of the Google developers. pages for users and not search engines. In other words, don’t try to game the system “tooMake much; it won’t work out for you. • “If you “cloak” your website by showing different content to users than you share with Google, you’re likely to be equally as unsuccessful. After all, if you’re not being transparent about what service you provide, you’re going to be attracting the wrong people. In

SEO 101 | SEO Best Practices | 17 short, be honest and genuine. • “Design a site that is logically organized and easy to navigate. This means having a clear hierarchy and internal links. A good rule of thumb is to map it out and make sure that every page is accessible by at least one static link. • “Create a site that is helpful, relevant, and rich in content. Remember, you’re not trying to trick anyone. You want your potential patient to have a positive experience and to view you as a professional and an authority in your field. Being clear, concise, and on topic is a great way to achieve this. Remember to bring that clarity to your titles and alt links. • “Last but definitely not least, use your keywords. Use them in your titles, your URLs, and your meta-descriptions. Do not jam them into every crevice of your site. Remember that the goal is to help people find you, but not at the risk of sounding like a broken record.



Google Search Console If you’re eager to dive in but not sure where to start, consider using the Google Search Console, formerly named Google Webmaster Tools. This handy tool is free and easy to use, providing data and diagnostics to help you asses your website. It also provides a variety of tools to assist you in making your site Google friendly.

SEO 101 | Dispelling Old Myths | 18

Dispelling Old Myths Now let’s address some of the myths about SEO circulating around the marketing world. As we’ve already stated, the SEO landscape is a dynamic one and some practices from 10 years ago are no longer effective... while other habits may never have truly been successful at all.

Myth #1 - Using The Same Keywords Over and Over Is Effective Keyword stuffing is exactly what it sounds like. Whether in site descriptions or blog content, this describes the practice of inserting the same keywords over and over again, thinking the more a word is used, the greater chance they’ll be found. In the 90s, this was an effective strategy; however, search engines have evolved since then, and their parameters for assessing web content are far more refined. These days, you’ll be penalized for keyword stuffing and turn off savvy readers.

Myth #2 - Multiple URLs Mean More Traffic In reality, it means the opposite. Too many URLs competing for space in the search engine rankings means too many clicks to go around. Whatever traffic you are getting to your site will be divided and your site won’t reap the benefits -- use your canonical tags!

Myth #3 - You’ll Rise to the Top of Google in a Day Unfortunately, nothing will make you an overnight success with Google. The good news is that, in time, you can make a huge difference in your search ranking. Implement the SEO tactics above, and continue producing fresh, relevant, valuable content (such as educational blog posts) to draw traffic to your site. Guest blogging or contributing to other sites isn’t just good PR; it means backlinks. Also stay on top of SEO updates to ensure you’re following changing algorithms.

SEO 101 | How to Choose an SEO Service | 19

How to Choose an SEO Service Only work with an SEO consultant or service if they appear professional, transparent, and knowledgeable. Make sure their strategies line up with what you’ve learned, and are aimed at providing relevant content and promoting clarity, not tricking search engines into listing you.

There are a lot of people out there claiming to be SEO gurus -- and while many mean well, look out for: • SEO consultants that guarantee you’ll immediately be ranked number one in Google. Any company that suggests they are somehow endorsed by Google or that they have any kind of special relationship with Google isn’t being honest with you. • SEO consultants who appear secretive about their practices and won’t clearly explain what they intend to do on your behalf. We’ve already discussed “cloaking” as a nefarious SEO habit, but it’s not the only one. This company may be seeking to create deceptive content in an effort to mislead the search engines and this kind of activity can have you completely removed from Google’s index. They won’t care that you hired an outsider to do it, either.

SEO 101 | Conclusion | 20

Conclusion SEO may seem intimidating, and implementing best practices may seem like a big project. It doesn’t have to be, especially now that you have a deeper understanding of it. Don’t waste any time getting started. These days, implementing SEO strategies is less about getting a leg up on your rivals, and more about staying competitive in a market where everyone is working to gain an online marketing edge.

SEO 101 | What is SEO? | 21