The whole purpose of your website is to attract new patients, right? Why else would your medical practice have its own site?
And of all the potential patients you’re looking to reach, do you know whom you should focus on impressing? The answer is actually Google.
And here’s why.
Having a trustworthy site means achieving a higher search engine ranking; and when you increase your Google ranking, you generate more organic traffic to your site.
Needless to say, ranking on Google should become a priority. If your site’s ranking poor, it may very well be because your website sucks. Here are 10 of the most probable reasons why Google would reach that conclusion.
1. You’re Not Implementing Basic SEO Practices
The first step to improving your Google ranking is to use sound search engine optimization (SEO) practices. This goes for every single item that gets published to your website.
If you don’t emphasize good SEO, your medical practice has zero chance of obtaining a better position on the search engine.
2. Your Site Is Over-Optimized
You know the saying, “all things in moderation”? This applies to SEO as well. Yes, keywords are important and they will help your site’s ranking – when used properly.
Keyword “stuffing”, however, has the opposite effect. Not only does overusing keywords not improve your site’s SEO, but it also works against your ranking.
3. Your Content Marketing Strategy Is Poor
Suppose your medical practice has an outstanding writer who’s producing high-quality, SEO-optimized content for your site. This alone isn’t enough for search engines to view your site favorably . . .
If your content isn’t circulating around the web, or being shared via social media, your site will struggle to reach its Google ranking potential.
4. You’re Not Using Different Content Forms
Diversity is important to Google – not in terms of your message or your audience, but with regards to media. If your site is loaded with written content but it doesn’t contain any images, videos, or infographics, you’re doing it wrong . . .
5. Your Content Is Riddled with Errors
If you read an article in the newspaper and it had grammatical errors and typos every few lines, wouldn’t you question the authority of that paper? You might even switch papers.
Naturally, Google does the same thing with your medical practice’s site. The famous search engine knows an error when it sees one.
6. Your Site Is Slow
Google likes fast sites. That’s largely because people do too. And because Google is always looking out for its users, they will down-rank your website if it performs below the threshold of a speedy website.
7. Your Site Can’t Be Crawled
Google has web robots that browse, or “crawl”, your website. This is a process that Google uses as a prerequisite for ranking your site higher on its search engine.
So, if you hired a poor developer to build your site or if you haven’t been maintaining your site regularly, it’s likely that there are technical errors or architectural problems with your site that are preventing Google from crawling your site.
8. Your Site Isn’t Mobile-Friendly
Internet users are migrating to mobile. This isn’t news. Yet so many medical practices still have websites that either don’t load or appear jumbled when visited on a mobile device.
It’s 2018. A site that isn’t mobile-friendly is a bad website – plain and simple! But don’t just take our word for it. Google says so, too.
9. You Have Broken Links on Your Page
If your content includes backlinks or links to other sites and pages, chances are that some of those links are going to become outdated over time.
Often due to little fault of your own (other than oversight), Google will penalize your site for any broken links that appear.
10. Your Site Isn’t Secured
Google Chrome, which is currently the most popular web browser, has implemented a new initiative that promotes site security. If your medical practice’s site hasn’t been secured via SSL or TSL technology, Google will penalize your site by down-ranking it.
Chances are, your practice’s site is subject to a few of these different issues; and until you tackle them head-on, Google is going to hold these things against you by limiting your Google ranking.
At filmMED, we’re able to create, maintain, and fix websites so that Google views them positively and finds plenty of reasons to boost their rankings.
Don’t let your medical practice get buried by its competition on Google. Contact us today and let’s start optimizing your site and generating more organic traffic for your business!
