There could be any number of reasons why your plastic surgeon Search Engine Optimization (SEO) isn’t working. We’ve compiled a list of reasons we’ve encountered that can have a significant impact on both local and organic rankings for your medical website.
SEO would be pretty nice if it were only as simple as having a beautiful website. One of the most typical problems seen with plastic surgery websites is that they are inherently photo-heavy. Indeed, you want to show off what you do best: before and after galleries, the transformations, etc. The less desirable part is writing-specific, in-depth content. However, Google loves exactly that; in fact, content gives an extreme amount of value to your visitors and to the Google bot that determines rankings.
But if you’ve discovered something from a generic source and copied that, you won’t see any benefit from that. That is known as duplicate content, and Google hates seeing that. Someone must take time to write original content. So instead of copying sources or skipping content, distinguish yourself by being the authority who breaks down each element of a specialized procedure into well-written, presentable content.
Go to the Links Report in Google Search Console. Backlinks have a significant role in how your website ranks in comparison to your competition. If websites possess equal amounts of content and similar quality, backlinks are often the main deciding element concerning who will come out on top. Fortunately, tools like Ahrefs.com & SEMRush.com allow you to scope out some of your competitors’ backlinks!
This intel can inform you where your website lies on the range of backlinks. Note that not all backlinks are created equal. The quality, relevance, type, and anchor text all factor into how effective a backlink is. Performance-based plastic surgeon SEO offers handles to acquire the correct type of backlinks. This is an important aspect of SEO, and without it, plastic surgeon SEO will not work.
In order to improve this, you may attempt to become featured in industry publications such as the American Society of Plastic Surgeons or research papers and have a link to your website within the content. This is known as a contextual link, which is very powerful. If you also have surgeons friends, you should ask them if you can write a guest blog post about your area of expertise and include a link back to your website.
With freelancers flooding inboxes all over the globe, it can be hard to ignore those emails persuading you that for an excellent deal, you can get a plethora of backlinks. Perhaps you fell victim to an offer that seemed too good to be true. After all, it seems like a cost-effective way to fix the lack of backlinks you might have.
However, there are automated backlinks made by software that is hugely low-quality. Please do not use these kinds of services, because Google identifies them as spam. Links like these are often seen as spam on private blog networks, low-quality backlinks, and automated blog comments with thousands of other comments.
To fix this, you should simply avoid these types of links. If you happen to buy them or a business you employed created these kinds of links, you can use a vital component within the Google Search Console known as the Disavow Tool.
Be mindful that disavowing the incorrect links can have a damaging impact on your website, however, so disavow with caution.
Spam-like anchor text ratio is something to avoid. Anchor text is the blue clickable link in an article. They are words that describe the link. People used to plug hundreds of their keywords inside of anchor text to rank well. Some companies still utilize this practice, even though it can penalize your website. The algorithm update known as Google Penguin, released in 2012, eradicated many websites that used this age-old link-building method.
As a result, a plastic surgeon marketing agency should never create spam-like links. Instead, make sure that when you build links, you are not only using the keyword you want to rank for as your anchor text. Use your domain name, brand name, company name, and more. When you write fantastic quality content, other websites will link to your website and will typically never use any keyword you are trying to rank for. If you have spam-like anchor text links, and your keyword accounts for more than 10% of your backlink profile, you may Disavow those links within Google Search Console.
Giving your plastic surgery patients the best experience is essential. The same applies to Google and major search engines providing customers the best experience. Users do not want to go to a website that takes too long to load, so Google won’t send their visitors to your website either, as it would reflect poorly on them. The faster you can make your website, the better user experience you will provide your patients.
To improve this, you can go to Google Page Speed Insights and run a test to see where your website ranks. It will provide you with a score from 0 to 100. It will also give you tips to increase your website speed—because site speed is a confirmed ranking factor.
A website without ample content is the opposite of an over-optimized website. This is one of many other reasons why plastic surgeon SEO does not work. If there are several pages regarding the same topic and just worded differently, this is not good and is considered over-optimization. This also applies if there is a page with a 20% keyword density.
To combat this, you should de-optimize content. Reading it out loud will help you see if it sounds too spam-like. Ask yourself, “Would I read this content in front of one of my patients?” If the answer is no, then the page is probably over-optimized and you should re-write the content to make it sound more natural.
The last reason is those who have done a “one-time SEO” deal. Plastic surgeon SEO campaigns are ongoing and should never stop. Your content should be valuable to your patients. Write a blog about new technology, release some case studies, talk about procedures, answer patient FAQs, etc.
If you have worked with SEO one time and did not see any results, it’s not that SEO doesn’t work. It’s because it is an ongoing endeavor. Blogs and other content must be updated a minimum of once a month. It would help if you considered an ongoing SEO campaign, whether internally or by hiring a plastic surgeon marketing company.