SEO: Three Powerful Letters

Search Engine "Optimization". That last word means "the action of making the best or most effective use of a situation or resource." The resource is a search engine on the Internet. In Spanish the word is "mejoramiento". In Russian, "оптимизация"and it sounds just like it is spelled. In Arabic, ". ??????" In French, "optimisation". in Greek, "βελτιστοπο?ηση". In Korean, "???". In Thai, "???????????????????" and in German, "Optimierung." Every language has its own word for this important "treatment" of your web content. SEO is how one increases the quantity and quality of traffic to their website through organic search engine results.

Organic search engine results refers to the visitors that land on your website as a result of unpaid (“organic”) search results. Organic traffic is the opposite of paid traffic, which defines the visits generated by paid ads.

It stands to reason that if a reasonable and prudent business owner makes the effort to create and publish a website or hires out the project and pays someone else to make it for them, that that business owner would want to maximize or optimize the content of the website. That way, the website will be successful to attract visitors effectively, without paying money or barter for sponsored advertisements (i.e., AdWords, Banners, and Interstitial ads). The business owner's web content would squeeze every last drop of unpaid organic traffic potential out of the site.

But writing content and applying SEO treatments to it requires skill that comes from specialized training. Skills that takes time to learn, and time for the learning curve - the correlation between a learner's performance on a task and the number of attempts or time required to complete the task to be consistently effective with it. No one just "knows" how to maximize their content for SEO success. SEO must be learned or hired and applied or your pretty, modern website won't attract new patients.

93% of online experiences start with a search engine - Neil Patel

So why is it that most physicians, dentists, ambulatory surgery centers and allied health providers and suppliers and medical tourism facilitators have such poor SEO on the majority of their websites? I believe that it is because they don't understand marketing, advertising, brand message construction. And without getting those things right, first, the SEO which puts a nice amount of topspin on your content, won't be effective.

I chose this analogy from tennis because of the following five considerations tennis players ask themselves (and must answer quickly) while the ball is in play and also prior to play when they size up their opponent(s):

1. If I try to add more spin does this cause my opponents more or less trouble? (Competitive rivalry, barriers to entry, difficulty causing the market to switch or switch back to a brand they may have considered awarding their business in the past in favor of a newer or more recently introduced brand)

2. How well can I hit/control my flatter shots and how much trouble do opponents have with these balls? (Can you control those 93% of online experiences so that you place high in search engine returns? What will it take to do so?)

3. Is it more important for me to miss less (indication for more topspin) or do I need to focus on being more aggressive (indication for flatter shots)? (This decision is tactical and is borne of your marketing strategy and highly dependent on your competitors and how they use the internet and SEO and paid ads for effective search engine marketing (SEM) and advertising.)

4. Is my game more successful from way behind the baseline hitting high topspin shots or am I more effective standing closer to the line and hitting flatter? (Return on marketing investment analysis and interpretation - one shouldn't waste time or money on marketing or advertising if one cannot measure and interpret results and use the new information to improve or adapt what time, effort and money are invested in marketing and advertising and SEO efforts.)

5. Am I good at the net? Do I want to get to the net frequently ? If the answer is yes then heavy topspin from behind the baseline is probably not your best option! (Think "engagement" and how engagement is experienced by both the healthcare entity and the potential patient. If they fill in a form, or click, or call, or engage in onsite chat, do you provide deliverable and schedule an appointment at that moment? Because if you do all the right things and effectively win organic traffic and then let it slip through your fingers because you have no way to manage conversions at the point of engagement, why bother with SEO? You aren't ready for success.)

Ranking high on Google is important, if Google is the search engine you have in your crosshairs

But Google isn't the only search engine out there. In some countries, Google is not the leading search engine, either. Here are some of the major search engines:

• Google
• Bing
• Yahoo
• Ask.com - What's Your Question?
• News, Sports, Weather, Entertainment, Local & Lifestyle - AOL
• Baidu
• WolframAlpha
• DuckDuckGo
• Internet Archive
• Yandex.com

Which one you choose to optimize for depends on one thing: Which one your ideal customers use. So for a local doctor or dentist practice, a local ASC or a local hospital or DME supplier or physical therapy practice, you must optimize for local search. But if you have intention to market outside your local catchment area, for domestic or international medical tourism, your content must be SEO adapted for both the search engine your ideal customers will use locally, and also the search engine your ideal long distance targeted customers use in their locality.

To do that effectively requires that you "know your customer." That's where you'll invest time, money and effort for market and internal proprietary business data-analytics research, the interpretation of the data gathered, and a strategic and tactical plan to apply the SEO treatment to your proprietary content.

That part isn't free, and it is a prerequisite if you are to benefit from unpaid search engine organic traffic. That's the only way that your website will successfully take the place of a 24 hour sales rep while you provide patient care or services.

Branding and SEO work collaboratively to make the magic happen

Once you have created and developed your brand, SEO can be applied to your targeted, proprietary content with the right messaging that aligns with that which your ideal customer is searching for. That means, your content is benefits focused - in that you've written content that positions the customer as the protagonist; not your featured services and products. That requires writing from the best perspective -- your ideal customer's perspective. You can't begin to do that until you "know your customer."

Effective SEO applied to your properly constructed message and content increases traffic, which in turn increases the positive returns on your marketing investments. It also builds brand awareness and inspires brand trust. And if your competition is making use of SEO, you won't be competitive if you don't do so as well.

This is something that I experience almost daily in my role as Director of Business Development at St George Surgical Center, in Southern Utah. As I work on marketing and web content, I research what our competitors do first, which in turn, influences what I write and how I decide to optimize the content for SEO.

Yesterday, I published a related lesson you may wish to read. The title was Weaponizing your healthcare brand to generate organic traffic and grow your business or medical practice.

About today's lesson

The lesson I'm sharing today is not armchair expertise written by someone purporting to know all the answers to a problem, situation or scenario but has little or no experience or real understanding of it. I am writing from a perspective of a) knowing about SEO and digital marketing from formal training and certification, and b) daily practice on that which I've written.

Frankly, I read a lot of fluff out there and none of it focused on marketing and advertising, branding, publicity, and SEO -- "for healthcare".

Healthcare marketing, advertising, branding, publicity, and SEO is different from other businesses

Why? Because the audience is considered "vulnerable".

With healthcare marketing, it is both morally and legally impermissible to market goods to specially vulnerable populations in ways that take advantage of their vulnerabilities.

Laws and regulations exist for healthcare marketing that come from consumer protection laws. There are federal regulations that in the USA are promulgated by the FDA, the Federal Trade Commission, the USPTO, and others. Outside the USA, similar laws and regulations are enacted. If you run afoul of these laws and regulations, you risk fines, rebuke, reputation damage, brand damage and even take down or removal from the search engines without your knowledge. That's because there is great risk of manipulation, exploitation, and deception or "perceived" deception where there was no intention to deceive when addressing a healthcare consumer audience.

It is morally and ethically and legally permissable to market health services to vulnerable populations - the elderly, the young, the poor, the desperate seeking last chance therapies, and so on. What you promise and how you explain through content, imagery, video, podcasts, blogs, advertising, and publicity, and how you structure your SEO so that your content is findable ties together to connect buyer with supplier. Many people believe what they read on the Internet. They assume if it is on Google, whatever was written must be true. Like FBI Special Agent Fox William Mulder, the fictional character in the Fox science fiction-supernatural television series The X-Files, they "want to believe".

To whom am I writing?

Healthcare providers and facilities and businesses who are frustrated with the search engine results they get and don't understand why or how to improve.

Why am I writing this?

To share knowledge so we all fare better with internet marketing. If that causes you to want to know more than that which I've shared, I hope you'll call on me with your questions. And if you feel comfortable speaking with me and decide you want further assistance, such as website evaluation, critical analysis and want to know how to improve what you've got, or you just want someone to just handle it for you, that you'll engage with me as your paid expert to guide that improvement towards the results you want.

For those marketing international health services

And, for those in medical tourism or international marketing for health services, if your facilitators and marketing agents working on your behalf violate the laws, regulations and ethics of marketing to vulnerable individuals and making promises of results, cures, etc., they can impact your brand and you'll suffer rebuke, ridicule, fines, and brand scandal because of their actions. Yet, every day, I encounter medical tourism businesses that want to hire facilitators and marketing agents who will work without fixed compensation on a success basis. The healthcare providers and facilities who hire them simply look for the cheapest way to attract and acquire patients. They want cheap and easy, perhaps because they don't know how to shop for paid valuable guidance to promote their businesses themselves.

And, I don't have all the answers. I don't know anyone who has all the answers, even if they say so in their LinkedIn tagline. But the answers I offer come from tested and verified use cases and previous practice over the past 40+ years as a healthcare marketing and branding expert with clinical experience and healthcare business administration experience working in 117 countries and client objectives used to measure success and effectiveness. So please, take them for what they are worth.

Choosing your battleground

Each day when I arrive at the surgery center, I begin my day with a quick scrum with the ASC administrator. I explain what I'll be focused on for the day, strategies and tactics I've considered, what got done, how it worked, and anything I need or authorization or input I want to ensure I meet his objectives on his timeline.

Google enjoys about 87% of market share for desktop search. Google enjoys about 9.5% of mobile search market share. This correlates to the number of people using Android devices. According to Advanced Web Ranking, nearly 32% of people searching the internet click on the business or listing that appears "first", after the paid and sponsored ads. If you aren't in the top ten, chances are your website won't be found.

But on which battleground will you compete? How will you define your battleground and select battleground tactics that will win organic traffic?

And if you have home battleground advantage, how will you plan to make your website stand out from others who sell what you sell? Will you make pages about you? or design your content to place the visitor as the protagonist on every page? And how will you drive conversions? Which conversions will you aim for? What sort of engagement do you want and are you ready for it when it happens?

Google, is quite generous with its "wellness" information. Google explains what it wants in terms of healthy websites, how to avoid errors, warnings and even recommendations. Google offers these tips and insights without cost or obligation. But if you don't have time to study this because you are too business caring for patients, you can't simply skip all this and expect to succeed with search engine optimization for organic visitor traffic. Google also participates on Twitter @SearchLiaison, where they post updates you need to know for tactical and strategy adaptation. Have you followed Google's updates there? Here's a litmus test: Ask your web designer and programmer if they follow @SearchLiaison. Better yet, look for them. These are official tweets from Google's public liaison of search, @dannysullivan and they share insights on how Google search works. Yes, you'll find me on there as a follower. But is your web designer or programmer there too? If not, are you missing out?

Are you also following "Think with Google" which supplies lots of data points and information without additional costs? Probably not. I bet you don't have enough time to run the business, care for patients or administer the business, stay current on your journal, your industry newsletters and stay current on the latests insights about Google's ever changing algorithms and best practices.

This is where the old "make or buy" choice comes to life. You make the expertise, strategy and execute on your tactics or you buy the assistance you need. Either way, you cannot skip the optimization and expect traffic. It is unreasonable to expect results the same as it would be to expect a tomato plant to grow without planting a seed or a starter and not providing water or pest control or invasion.

Where you decide to plant your seed or starter is your battleground. The battleground environment is the richness of the soil, the adequacy of hydration, and the mitigation of pests and barriers to entry for other uninvited competitors for your food. Google ranks whole sites; not just some pages. That would be like optimizing only certain plants you chose for your garden. That's silly, right?

Is there one single magical thing you can do or buy to rank first on Google or your chosen search engine?

Nope.

There are multiple factors that contribute to your search engine optimization. Things such as:

Your content - does it prove expertise and authority? Does it inspire trust? Authority pages are linked to your relevant hub and expert pages and these internal links help you rank higher. You write an article. Do you select keywords first or write and then decide where you ended up and choose keywords from what was written? I use this backwards approach.

When I write about a topic, I research any share of voice of my competitors have attempted to "own". The less I find, the better -- for me. I analyze their shortcomings (audit). Then I outline my piece and list the key points I want to cover.

Next, I write, then edit, then amend the draft title if need be. After this is sorted out, I decide what keywords conceptually link to my content, then choose the images and then decide how I will prepare to engage with visitors.

• Some will want a brochure. Is it ready?
• Some will want a proposal. Do I have a template?
• Some will request a price estimate. Have I priced my services for a typical project?
• Some will request an appointment. Do I have bandwidth for more business on short notice?
• Some will fill in a form. Can I respond quickly?
• Some will call. Will someone from my staff be available to answer the phone live without voicemail?

Depth - the more depth you include in your content, the better your ranking. For instance, many surgical centers and hospitals make a bullet point list of their procedures. When I switched to a page per procedure with in depth content about the procedure, the equipment and special technologies, the price, price comparisons with hospitals, price comparisons when someone finances through our health financing partners, and information about the specialists who perform the procedure all this enhanced our SEO results. I love when my competitors use bullet points and out of lack of know how or laziness go broad.

URL length - I break rules here intentionally. The bad things happen when you do this without intention out of ignorance. The longer your URL length, the lower your rankings. Except when you offer an exact match to what the search engine user entered in their search term! That takes knowing one's customer as well as addressing and optimizing all the other factors. Again, SEO success comes from balancing many factors in a search engine's algorithm. Not just one magical thing.

Content length - Your shares are impacted by content length. Content of 3000-10000 words get far more shares than thin content and are found more easily. Fluffy content of 3000-10000 words is not the same as content with audience value. So many of the consultants I know haven't yet figured this out. They create content that they believe is the teaser and that one must hire them for the rest of the story. No! That's not how it works. That is such a 1980s approach. It is a different world out there in 2020. If you don't post content, the right way, you won't be found online. People don't hire consultants because they list services as bullet points on their websites or declare expertise or authority without proof.

Here on LinkedIn, I get messages every day from people who write and say, "We're into blah blah blah." "Our expertise is [more] blah blah blah." "Here's my portfolio for your review." (I did not ask nor do I have interest to review it and invest time, my most valuable possession, in them.) "I'll call you in a few days to discuss." They may call but I won't take their call if I did not agree to an appointment." If I have the slightest interest, I may check their website and their LinkedIn content posted. If I don't see evidence of authority or expertise, I click off, report the cold pitch to LinkedIn as spam and relegate them to my dungeon of incompetent marketers.

Site optimized for mobile search - Google has a mobile-first index. If your site looks ghastly in mobile renderings, you'll lose placement and ranking points even if what content you have is just wonderful. I use Elementor to design my pages and posts. It offers me the opportunity to design the page with variable layouts for mobile, tablet and desktop in its free version. I use the Pro (paid) version on all my sites.

Page Speed - Hubspot tells us that every 1 second delay sacrifices 7% of conversions. Neil Patel's Ubersuggest tool (free during COVID pandemic) tells you what caused your delay and how to fix it. I use tools to speed up images and page renderings.

Backlinks - from where did your visitors arrive at your site? Which referring domains? What is their rank and authority or trust factor? Some people buy backlinks on Fiverr. I tried it on a test website some years ago. You'll risk a lot of SEO damage if you do that. Don't try to buy backlinks. Earn them. This is important, and some experts declare that it is more important than On Page SEO. It is also far more challenging. You can earn On Page Backlinks and still not get them.

Encryption - using SSL certificates. You can get them for free or you can pay for them. These are the http"s" websites. By now, everyone should have them. Otherwise the search engine may render a warning that scares visitors away.

What should you do next with the knowledge from today's lesson?

#1. Don't call me to review your website. I charge for my time, my expertise and the value I provide. If you believe there's value in my opinion, you should be prepared to hire me and compensate me ro analyze and render an opinion and recommendations. If you don't believe I will bring value with my opinion and recommendations, please don't call or write. After all, isn't that how it works when patients want your time and expertise and the value of your counsel?

#2. Do assimilate this information and decide if it is worth it to you to optimize your website and content.

#3. With what you learned through reading my content and this lesson, search your competitors' websites and analyze and critique their use of SEO, their content, layout, encryption, backlinks, keywords, etc. If theirs is really poor, then almost anything you do to advance your ranking will be helpful.

#4. Decide what you can do on your own, and then make a list of what's left to be done. Who will do what's left on the list that you cannot do for yourself either because of lack of skill, lack of personnel with expertise and training, or lack of time or all three?

#5. Make a short list of who might help you tackle the things you cannot do. Decide on a budget and a timeline for when you would like the work done. Make some calls, interview consultants and freelancers, decide, hire the winners, and get busy.

Let's talk about it

If you'd like to chat with me about this, call me. That's the best way to connect with me for a request for my time and attention. +1 (800) 727 4160. My phones are live answered around the clock, every day of the week. It's best to request an appointment first so that I can provide you my undivided attention. I'm not always personally available.