New to SEO - Need Help

Hello everyone and thanks for your help in advance. I am new to SEO, but need lots of help. A little bit of history. My wife is a physician who has a very simple site designed by someone else years ago. The site has never ranked higher than lower second page, upper third page ever in its history with Google or any other engine. Recently, other physicians have put websites out that almost immediately reach the first page in a Google search. Most of the sites are also rather simple with only 4 to six pages and very little difference in the page title or meta information. My wife has now asked me to get her rankings higher and I need help because I’m really not very well versed in this area (I’m a backend programmer), however, she is tired of paying someone else to get poor results. I know there are many books and websites on this topic, but most don’t seem to provide enough site-specific information for me to make substantive changes. Would some be able to point me to tools and resources that would allow me to analyze her site as well as others and understand what I need to do? To all the married men out there, you will understand that any help would be appreciated!

The place to start SEO is Google’s guidelines

1 Like

Wow!, you sure do stay “new” for a long time! :wink:
After at least 5 years I’d have thought you’ve learned something by now.

At least around here there is a shortage of physicians and they have more of a problem with turning away patients, not getting new ones.

So I’m assuming the problem is that the current patients are having trouble finding the website?

Does not a search for something like “physician (doctor’s | practice) name” bring up the site as first in the SERP?

1 Like

Thanks for the response. I appreciate the link and have previously read this document. Unfortunately, either I simply don’t understand it, or have found it not particularly helpful in advancing the rankings since I believe many of these things have been implemented. What else is out there? What about analysis tools?

The document might be worth rereading if it has been 5 years since you last read it, but yes there are plenty of online tools out there. The trouble is that in my experience they come up with contradictory results or use out-of-date SEO techniques.

Wow. Great memory (or search capabilities!). The problem is really both new and current patients not being able to find her. I offloaded the project to someone else and stayed out of the SEO arena, but that obviously didn’t work out, so I’m back again. The site has never broken the first page and seldom the second and with some of the new sites coming online ahead of her, she’s not too thrilled. Also, since more and more patients are finding physicians through the internet, she doesn’t want to lose any more ground. Any suggestions other than the Google doc? Given there is an entire forum to the topic, there must be more than that.

Thanks for the response.

I don’t know what her patients are using for search terms, but I just did
physician my_town his_name
and all 10 of the results on the first page were for him.

I have experience in the medical field, and I do know there is different terminology used among medical professionals and “lay” people, not to mention billing codes.

I guess the best thing to do is study the sites GWT to see what type of search terms have been used to find the site.

For example.
myalgic encephalomyelitis
vs.
chronic fatigue syndrome
vs
ME
vs
CFS

or

diabetes
vs
sugar

etc.

I think ideally it would be best for the text content to include both medical and lay terminology.
I don’t imagine many would be searching by billing code,

Unless her practice covers more than the local area (hah! do doctors even make house calls nowadays?) it would be a good idea to have the physical location of the practice in a “heavier weighted” place in the page (eg. as opposed to the footer)
Likewise her name and the name of the practice itself.

Hi @kmcnet,

Have you guys tried guest posting in your niche? A few decent links from some higher authority sites might just give you that little boost you need. Try finding a list of websites that accept guest posts. Try something like “guest post” (enter your keyword/niche). Or may be read a few blogs on how to find guest posting opportunities.

In addition

  1. Check Indexation Issues
    Since the site was designed a while ago, there might be a possibility of not getting all pages indexed properly. No harm in checking, right :wink:

  2. Figure out any other technical issues
    Fix your website technically. It sounds of little importance to many people, 'coz they use CMSes like Wordpress, Magento etc. But many times the theme used are un-optimized for SEO and all other kinds of issues. But hey! you’re the programmer here, so you know better.

  3. Collect emails and Build a list
    Emails can have a great conversion rate. So do have a email strategy in place. You may send only a monthly letter giving some free tips or maybe asking people about their problems.

  4. Provide valuable Feedback in medical forums
    Medical forums are filled with people asking for help. Do help them out. Your reply
    — may help someone in dire need of it
    — may possibly generate future clientele for you

I’m really just trying to get “Naples Fl pediatricians” to work.

With at least 19 in the area, not all will appear on the first page for that general search phrase.

I would recommend to start with Onpage SEO optimization.
Then learn about contextual links seo and how to build them. With this you will learn the basics of what is SEO and how to properly build backlinks to your site. This one is called off-page SEO.
Focus on low competition keywords but with high searches. Also long tail keywords like: “how to do xyz in no time” - just an eg.
These are just some SEO Basics.

Also use tools like:
Google Webmasters to find keywords, Google Keyword tool, OpenSiteExplorer.
Search for them on google.

The first thing you can start right now is optimizing your website: make sure that it looks clear and nice. Then adding high quality content in your blog or anywhere appropriate. If you have already finished all these above, you can start thinking about your inbound and outbound marketing strategies. Actually, B2C and B2B business should be different in making the strategy. If it is a B2C business, social-media platform is a good place to start. If it is a B2B business, outreach for cooperation is essential.

@kmcnet: are you listed with Google My Business? That’s well worth doing for an actual bricks-and-mortar business.

HEllo Dear, you can start your SEO yourself. First, you go throuht on page viz. URL Structure, Meta Data, H1, Image optimization, content of the page, In content linking.
After that you can build back links for your websites i.e. off page activities for websites which bust your page rank and SERP.
Still you didnt get satisfied result then you can go for paid traffic i.e. facebook ad, etc,

kmcnet is asking specifically about improving search engine rankings for a physician’s practice. Please ensure your replies address this issue. Posts which are too general or offer marketing suggestions instead of SEO advice will be removed as fluff/off-topic.

Yes, I have a Google My Business page set up. No Facebook or Twitter.

OK. Facebook and Twitter will have no effect on SEO, but the Google listing can influence local search, and also the way in which search results are presented, so it’s worth having.

1 Like

Well first of all you need few things to be done corectly fopr your site.

1 Check your On page SEO
Keyords in headings,keywords in meta description, Page speed
Check for duplicate meta & title at search console(if you dont have set up one imedietly )
Also check are facing an7y duplicate content issue or not.

2 Check your competion
You need to check who are your prime competittor and what ketwords are they targeting and from where they are geting they are backlinks from. You can use ahref(paid) for this. Then make a list of those backlinks and keywords that your competitores are using and target them if you can

3 Get High Quality backlinks
I think this is the most important point after you finished your on page correction to get some high quality backlinks to your site. The best backlinks are mainly the contexual backlink which comes from high authorative sites.