Get your practice name front & center without paying a dime
In this video from “The Wired Practice” series, Ron King discusses organic, or unpaid, search engine marketing. Learn what influences Google’s search results about you and why search engine optimization (SEO) is important for marketing. Most importantly, discover how to get your practice’s name front and center on Google search for free.
Watch the video on MedPage Today
Video transcript
Okay, I haves a question for everyone watching this video. How many of you have you ever Googled yourself? Come on, fess up. It’s only human. And if you have typed your name or practice into a search engine, did you like what you saw? Would you like to change it?
Basically, there are three choices for influencing what Google and other search engines say about you on the internet: Choice one is buying an online advertisement in which you control the message and the link to a website page of your discretion. For this choice, we address online advertising in another segment of The Wired Practice video blog. Choices two and three, on the other hand, are free, but you have to work for them.
Getting on Google through organic search
Let’s look at the results of entering a physician’s name into Google and see what this yields in organic search results (unpaid). The first thing you see in this example is a map of the office location of the doctor you’re searching for. This is a Google Map, which in this case coincidentally displays the offices of another doctor by the same last name in the same city, albeit practicing in another specialty.
Getting your clinic or office on a Google Map is very easy and requires merely registering with Google. To learn how, just Google the search term “how do I register my business with Google,” and follow the instructions. Now, in this example of a Google search, scroll down a little and you find links to excellent reviews of the doctor on two rate-your-doctor websites, followed by a link to the good doctor’s biography page on her practice’s website. The important point is that the doctor’s website bio page is the one page over which she has control. And her first goal is to get a link to that bio page somewhere in the top ten text listings of Google search engine results pages – or SERPs. These listings are what we call organic search results.
In general, landing on page one can be exceedingly difficult and even impossible, depending on the search term for which you wish to be ranked. Why? Because Google is the phone book of the twenty-first century, and being on page one can be as valuable as appearing on the phone book cover in a big city was thirty years ago. In healthcare and in other professions and industries, competition for page one is often ferocious, with millions or even billions of dollars in business revenues at stake.
SEO: The science and art of ranking
The science AND art of ranking highly in organic search results falls under the skill known as search engine optimization, or SEO. And it is a skill. Google’s rankings come from an incredibly complex algorithm that is as much of a secret to the world as the recipe for Coca-Cola. Further, Google executives have said that they change the secret algorithm hundreds of times each year. Their goal is to stop people from cheating the system. Instead, you can only succeed by applying SEO basics.
Now, no one’s going to learn SEO mastery from a short video. My advice: If you’re serious, hire an SEO specialist. However, I can give a few pointers to help you put your best foot forward whenever someone Googles your name.
First, write a page about yourself for your practice’s website that people will want to read. To climb up the organic rankings, you must amass lots of website visits because Google rewards more popular web pages with higher rankings. Bottom line: Don’t be boring. If you’re writing about yourself, don’t talk about just your degrees, residency and clinical interests. Share personal information, such as hobbies and family information, as well as your personal philosophy of healthcare.
Secondly, be sure to include your name in both the web page’s headline and the page title, or what’s also called the meta title. Unless you know how to write HTML computer code, you’ll need a web programmer to help you with the latter. Thirdly, register with rate-your-doctor websites such as Healthgrades, Vitals.com and Yelp.com. These sites usually give you links back to your web page, which make a BIG difference in search-engine rankings because they grant a certain credibility known as Google juice.
Fourthly, repeat your name just a few times on the web page. Most SEO specialists say three to five or six repetitions is plenty. Any more than that is what we call keyword stuffing, which gets you nothing. Overall, these basic tips should provide a good start on influencing your online presence. And as always, stay tuned for more about digital communications for healthcare professionals in The Wired Practice.