By now, smart healthcare providers should realize the importance of planning a medical business website that includes a well-developed content strategy and plans for execution.
The problem is there are no places for doctors or practice managers to learn “how” to do this, and few good examples in the market place. While anyone can launch a website these days, planning for proper website content is more than dressing up a template in WordPress or Joomla! or hiring a web designer off some freelancing site in India or Romania to build it for you.
Hummingbird, the current Google search algorithm pays more attention to each word in a query, ensuring that the whole query — the whole sentence or conversation or meaning — is taken into account. Conversational search leverages natural language, semantic search, and more to improve the way search queries are parsed. Think about how people use voice search on Android and iPhones. The artifical intelligence program listens to what you say in words and tries to find the most relevant items to show you. They days of loading a bunch of keywords like, cardiologist, cardiovascular, haemodynamic, cardiology or other related terms into the “metatags” of your page are over. Hummingbird places greater emphasis on page content making search results more relevant and pertinent and ensuring that Google delivers users to the most appropriate page of a website, rather than to a home page or top level page.
Content Strategy for Physicians, Dentists and other Healthcare Practitioners
So how does a concierge physician, a plastic surgeon, or an orthopedic specialist use this information to update and enhance their websites for improved competitive advantage? In a nutshell, think about why people are looking for something rather than what they are looking for. Then, write an essay to answer that question or request. A real essay. One that contains at a minimum:
- Thesis statement
- Introductory paragraph
- Three supporting paragrahs and
- A conclusion
Once you are done writing your essay, identify a term or a string of words you have used at least three times in the essay, and in the thesis statement. Whether it is one word, a two-word phrase or a multi-word pattern ( referred to as a “long tail keyword“), that is your keyword which must be used in the title and in the content’s URL for that particular article as well as in a summary or abstract subheading coded in H2 (Heading 2) text treatment. You shouldn’t need an editor for basic punctuation, grammar, spelling, and paragraph separation. But just before you publish, if you are not trained in SEO techniques, have your article professionally edited by an editor who understands healthcare, medical terminology and is thoroughly familiar with current practices in search engine optimization. Otherwise your article will be well written…but the web crawlers won’t see the article and you won’t get any traffic.
“A content strategy should be designed to answer their needs, not just provide them with facts.” — Steve Masters, Journalist and Marketing Strategist at Brightpath.
If Masters is right, then WebMD, NIH, Mayo Clinic, and others that present facts won’t automatically rank at the top of organic searches for much longer. Instead, your practice might just be the website that a person searcing the internet sees on the first page of search engine returns! Imagine the pride of that accomplishment.
How to pick topics that are interesting to your website visitors
A recent article I read on Pinterest focused on how Hearst Magazines Digital Media (HMDM) used Pinterest to determine what captivates and inspires its audiences in order to refine and enhance their editorial strategy. How clever! So, I figured what the heck… let’s try “neuropathy” as a search. Wow! The result was a virtual gold mine of topics that a podiatrist, neurologist, massage therapist, or orthopedic surgeon could use for inspiration. Then I tried “bunion surgery”! Amazing what people have pinned from a variety of rich content sources. Then I tried ACL Repair, another amazing cache! My final search was for Concierge Medicine. Still another jackpot. If you are the healthcare practitioner looking for ideas on what to write about, this is one way to zero in on patient preference and concerns. Something else to note: Check out the pictures on each pin. Every blog post should have a photograph that is relevant to your content. Make sure you aren’t using the same stock photographs everyone else used in their posts or your credibility will suffer.
Plant a bug to “zero in” on what your competitors are writing about – if they are blogging
No silly, not some wiretap device! Use better technology – that’s free!
Facebook Pages to Watch
A very underutilized area in Facebook Insights – and it’s free! You don’t have to worry that page owners will know that you have put them on your list; they’ll just get a notification that “someone” has put their page on a Pages to Watch list. If anything, they will be flattered!
Step 1: Go to the Overview section of Insights on your Facebook page and scroll down to Pages to Watch. Click Add Pages. There will probably be some suggestions, but you can also search for and select pages to watch.
Step 2: Add competitors’ pages, as well as pages that get a lot of engagement in other industries. You can add up to 100 Pages to Watch, so don’t worry about running out of space.
Check Pages to Watch regularly, and take note of how many times they post and what type of engagement they get. If you click on each page, you’ll see their top posts of the last week, starting with one that received the highest engagement. Then, go to the Posts section of your Insights, and click on the Top Posts from Pages You Watch. This will only show the top five posts across all of the pages you watch, so you may want to adjust your selections, depending on what you want to monitor easily from this page. This is critical for cosmetic surgeons that are running specials and posting content on their Facebook page. Chiropractors, Dentists, and Podiatrists should also take particular note of this, as well as Concierge physicians.
Create Facebook Interest Lists
Another way to easily monitor pages without letting them know you are watching is to put competitor pages on a Facebook interest list. You can even add a page to a list without liking it (thus keeping you in stealth monitoring mode). Click on Interests on the left sidebar of your personal Facebook home page or just go there directly: https://www.facebook.com/bookmarks/interests. Now click the Add Interests button. Next click Create List. Then search for the pages you want to add to that list. Click on each page you want to add. After you add several pages, click Next and name your list. If this is a list of competitors that you want to monitor, select Only Me under the “Who can see this list” option. That way it’s private. Then click Done. When you click on the list name under your Facebook Interests, you can watch and review all of the recent posts on that list. Cool, isn’t it?
Google Alerts
Google alerts is a service that generates search engine results, based on criteria provided by you, and delivers the results to your e-mail account. This service is useful for many reasons such as monitoring the web for specific information about your company, your kids, your online content’s popularity or your competition. Use it also to keep up to date with new advancements, celebrity gossip or current trends. It is also free!
To begin, open the website. Once you have a web browser open, type “Google Alerts” into your search engine or go directly to the website http://www.google.com/alerts. This will bring you to the Google Alerts home page. Next, enter your search. Enter the topic you would like to receive alerts on. As soon as you begin typing, a sample of your first Google alert will appear. If you are not getting the results you expected you can change your input right away. this is a great way to check to see if Google “sees you” and your posts. The next step is really important to filter what you get back. Choose source type (where you want Google to look). There are some additional options available to tailor your search to your particular needs. For instance you may choose the type of sources you wish to search from. The default is everything, which is a good choice if you’re not sure which to pick. The other options are: News, Blogs, Video, Discussions and Books. If you have a look at this screenshot, the same topic is chosen as in the original example but the source is changed to video. You can see how this changes the type of results you would receive. then choose the frequency. I like the “As -it-happens” frequency. This helps in case someone has posted a review about you that deserves a thank you or a corrective action and an apology or contact.
Follow the simple directions and then complete the process by clicking on the red create alert button. You will then receive a email from Google Alerts asking you to confirm or cancel this request. Once you confirm the request you will begin receiving your alerts. Your first basic Google Alert is now complete.
