Why Your Healthcare Site is Not Ranking on Search Engines

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Why Your Healthcare Site is Not Ranking on Search
Engines
If your healthcare website isnt ranking in
search results, you might have website design
issues or website technical issues that are
hurting your SEO performance. Typically, there
are several possible reasons why you are not
ranking. Your mission is to identify those common
technical SEO issues that are preventing your
site from showing up in search engines. The last
thing you want is to invest time and money into
your practice website only to find out that
prospective patients cant find you online. The
good news is that there are solutions for the
technical and design problems that are hurting
your SEO results. The purpose of this article is
to describe the most common technical SEO issues
and explore SEO best practices for website design
and development. What is the Most Common
Technical Issue that Prevents a Site From
Ranking? The most common technical issue that
prevents search engines from indexing your
website pages is the dreaded meta noindex tag.
This line of code tells search engines not to
index your site or page in search so it will not
appear when you search for it on Google. It is
often caused by a checkbox or similar feature in
the content editor of your content management
system. This problem often arises when you have
too many editors or unfamiliar users updating
your website content. The meta noindex tag
typically looks like this ltmeta namerobots
contentnoindexgt You can easily determine
whether your site or page has this tag by
checking the source code and searching for
noindex. The noindex directive might also
appear in the HTTP response header. Keep in mind
that there are occasions when you prefer using a
noindex tag to hide a page from search. For
example, you may have a landing page that you
want to direct paid traffic to or a form
submission confirmation page.
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You can use a tool like Moz to crawl your site.
This will give you a structured report of all
pages that contain the noindex tag as well as
other issues that affect your SEO. If you want to
index a page with a noindex tag, remove the tag
and ask Google to index the page within Google
Search Console. If you dont know how to do this
yourself, ask your web specialist for help. Make
Sure Your Page Topic Aligns with Your Targeted
Keyword Another big reason why a page may not
rank is that your content isnt effectively
targeting the right keyword. This means that
Google doesnt view your page as a good answer to
the question users are asking and searching for.
Remember that Google strives to serve up the most
relevant content to a user. For example, if you
have a page called Treatments and youre trying
to rank for backpain treatments, then your page
topic isnt specific enough. The topic of your
page and your chosen keyword should be identical
or closely aligned. Google looks at the text
appearing in your pages URL, HTML page title,
and H1 (page header) to understand your page
topic. Its up to you or your content writer to
determine which keywords to use in those critical
areas. A related issue is that your page may be
trying to target too many keywords. Are you
trying to rank for backpain treatments,
nonsurgical backpain relief, and backpain
solutions on a single page? If you want to rank
well for each of those keywords, then give each
one a separate page with its own URL, HTML page
title, and H1. Think about the users intent and
what they expect to find. A user searching for
backpain treatments may want different
information than someone searching for
nonsurgical backpain relief. But a user
searching for back surgery wants the same
information as someone searching for spinal
surgery, so these keywords may be used on the
same page. Your goal is to ensure that youre
building pages with the most relevant information
and providing a good experience for your users.
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Make Sure Your Content is Geographically Relevant
to Local Users Google wants to serve people local
results for healthcare services near them. When
people search for urologist, urgent care,
low backpain, or gynecology, Google will
prioritize websites from local practices. Make
sure your website clearly states which cities you
serve. If your website doesnt rank for a local
keyword, its because Google doesnt have a clear
understanding of the local area you
serve. Incorporating relevant city keywords
within your page titles, page headings, and body
copy helps Google to better understand those
areas your practice caters to.
Make Sure Your Page has Authority As you check a
website for SEO issues, consider authority.
Google wants to give healthcare users relevant
and reliable information. Google wants your page
to convey authority. And the easiest way to gain
authority is by establishing links to quality
authoritative sites. The more links you have from
authoritative sites, the more Google will see
your site as a reliable source of information.
The more links you have, the more weight your
domain will carry in search engine results pages,
or SERPs. Your website also needs a good internal
cross-linking strategy. Internal links can pass
authority from high-authority pages like your
homepage or landing pages down to deeper
sub-pages. If a page isnt ranking well in
search, placing strategic internal links to your
page can help improve the pages authority
quickly. You can use 301 redirects to gain
authority. For example, if you change a pages
URL but dont implement a 301 redirect from the
old page to the new one, you will destroy your
pages authority. By implementing a 301 redirect,
you can pass most of the previous pages
authority to your new page and preserve its
hard-earned SEO. This issue often comes up when
you are going through a website redesign and
changing your sites structure or domain.
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Another issue that often hurts a pages authority
is duplicate content. If you use identical or
nearly identical content on two or more pages,
Google may not rank those pages in search and may
even drop your website ranking. This often
happens with healthcare provider profiles that
display across multiple domains.
If you prefer to rank for a certain URL, you can
tell Google by using the so-called canonical
element By placing this html element on each of
your duplicate pages with the preferred URL, you
will tell Google which URL you want to display in
search results. This will also prevent your other
URLs from appearing in the search. Make Sure Your
Targeted Keyword Isnt Too Complex SEO for
healthcare is unique. Thats because the tactics
necessary to rank for a keyword vary
dramatically. For healthcare search services,
Google prioritizes relevance over authority and
prefers to rank local websites. For searches
related to healthcare conditions or treatments,
Google prioritizes authority and prefers to rank
nationally recognized brands that have
long-standing reputations. If you target a
keyword thats being used by a nationally
recognized authority, you are hurting your
chances and you would be better off targeting a
different keyword. Always consider the value
gained by ranking for a certain keyword versus
the amount of effort required. As you estimate a
keywords value, always consider the users
intent. One of the best ways to estimate a
keywords value is by running a paid
search campaign using your prospective keywords
to identify those that convert most often. This
helps you better understand which keywords will
actually drive new patients and revenue to your
practice. When estimating the effort required to
rank for a given keyword, analyze the sites that
are currently ranking for that keyword. Are they
local sites? Or is Google prioritizing
high-authority sites with many inbound links?
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How are they targeting those keywords within
their content and how many inbound links do they
have? If, for example you search for heart
disease, youll see that Google ranks sites like
Mayo Clinic and WebMD. Consider that Mayo Clinic
alone has over 11 million inbound links. So, even
if this keyword has value to your practice, the
effort required to rank for heart disease is
impossibly high. You will be much better off
finding related, niche keywords that your local
users are searching for, such as heart disease
treatment kansas city. Conclusion Common
technical SEO issues and website design issues
like those mentioned in this article can seem
really complicated. But if you follow the
guidelines in this article, you or your web SEO
specialist should be able to position your
website for better search ranking. If you lack
the time and resources to apply SEO best
practices for website design and SEO issues, then
consider partnering with a professional
healthcare marketing company that can check the
website for SEO issues and resolve them for
you. If you need help implementing SEO best
practices for website optimization, look to the
healthcare marketing specialists at Practice
Builders.