SEO best practices are ever-evolving, and the VCG team is constantly learning and developing our strategies by attending SEO seminars. We sift through the big picture information to provide you with the most relevant guidelines for medical practice websites. Here are some of our biggest tips for SEO. And if you’re already a fully-retained VCG client, don’t stress—we handle all of this for you!

Seo tips

  1. If your content isn’t great, no amount of SEO will help your website do its job (showing up for, engaging and converting prospective patients). Content is “non-technical” SEO, because Google is reading everything on your site and using it to determine your rankings, what terms your site shows up for, and who sees your site. Every word matters.
  2. Without strategy, you’ll end up somewhere completely different from where you want to be. If your website’s SEO efforts are lacking strategy, you might as well be running around in circles. What is your goal? Who is your audience? What is your call to action? These answers inform your keywords, your metadata, and every word of content that is placed on your site. Are you “doing SEO” but without a clear strategy? Then you’re not doing SEO effectively.
  3. Want to see the big picture? Start with Google Search Console. This is how we monitor how Google views your website, so that we can make changes to it. It shows which pages get the most traffic, which pages have errors or links that aren’t getting indexed, how your mobile site is performing, which terms you’re showing up for, how often users click through, and so much more. This is the window into your SEO efforts, so that you can make sure you’re operating with knowledge and have a functional foundation. Problems can be troubleshot manually or with the help of a crawling tool.
  4. Fix problems immediately — unless you want your rankings to suffer. Slow page load times, links that don’t work, broken code, bulky images, poor user-experience, visuals that don’t content, content that isn’t grabbing a visitor’s attention immediately — these are all problems that 1) make people leave your site and look elsewhere and 2) get reflected in Google’s rankings of your site. At VCG, we know that any issue with a medical practice’s website is costing that practice patients; that’s why we maintain client websites constantly.
  5. A pretty website doesn’t matter without good structure. Google is complex. It takes into consideration so many factors as Google Analytics gets smarter and smarter. Search engine success is no longer just about keywords — it’s about everything. When we strategize and create websites at VCG, we are taking search engine success into consideration with every decision we make.
  6. Google doesn’t care if you’ve been number one for years. Another site can show up and do it better. You have to work to maintain high rankings. If you’ve been showing up high in Google’s search results for important keywords, that’s great. But don’t rest on your laurels. The world of SEO is getting increasingly competitive — SEO best practices are a must.
  7. Give more clarity; use Schema. Schema.org exists to improve the web by creating a common vocabulary to describe web data. By adding a schema.org markup to your HTML pages, many search engines and companies, including Google, will better understand your website. This can generate higher rankings, more traffic, and better click-through rates.
  8. Be smart when redesigning a website. When redesigning a website, launching a new structure in small chunks is helpful to not lose rank — but there are always fluctuations. Allow time for the search engine rankings to come back. If you’re changing the structure and the content, make sure they are just right before launch. (Don’t launch and then troubleshoot; troubleshoot first.) 
  9. Don’t build or manage a website with any company who can’t explain all of this to you! Anyone doing web design, web development or SEO — essentially anyone touching your website — needs to be able to explain WHY they are doing something, what steps are necessary, and how long it will take. Without a full-spectrum understanding of Google (and all of its updates), and technical SEO, a person can be hurting your website without even realizing it.

Things in SEO-land move fast. At VCG, we work hard to stay ahead of the curve for our clients! Want us to take website pressure off your shoulders? Let’s talk.