t’s no secret that the most important part of any dental or medial website is the content. I’ll say that once more time because it bears repeating.
With this knowledge in mind, it amazes me that the one thing that most professionals chose to skimp on, outsource, ignore, [insert verb here which minimizes the work you need to do] the content. The content is the very essence of your website, and it WILL make or break your site.
With that being said, it’s key to understand HOW to evaluate your content to make sure it’s as search engine accessible as possible. Remember, search engines such as Google look at web sites as if they were looking using an all-text web browser (like on an older Blackberry). So naturally if your content isn’t in an format that the search engine can see (e.g. Flash), then your content will not help you in improved search engine rankings.
1. Is the content relevant and unique? If it’s not, your rankings will suffer and so will your visitors.
2. Are your keywords /subject in the <title> tags? Recall that the title tag is the line of text at the very top of the browser – see the image below for an example from the Firefox browser.
3. Does the URL have the keywords/subject in it? For example, take www.mysite.com/tg54d33332 vs. www.mysite.com/seo-tips-and-tricks. Which URL structure do you think is more informative and more useful for search engines AND your visitors?
4. Is the keyword/subject in the <alt> tag of your image(s)? Remember, search engines don’t understand images, and <alt> tags are special HTML tags that are used to describe an image for a search engine. If you don’t “do HTML”, it’s fine. Simply tell your web developer, “Do I have <alt> tags on my website for my images?” (It’s pronounced like the beginning of “alternative”.
5. Is the keyword subject mentioned in the physical title of the content of the page? Is it mentioned in subheadings?
6. Is the keyword or subject mentioned in the content of the page several times?
7. Does the page have a link back to the home page of the site?
Now take this list and examine your pages and see if they meet the criteria. And if they don’t, start making changes, as you should start to see the benefits soon!
