Effective Keyword Strategies

An important part of creating a website that will rank high in search engines and attract visitors is creating keywords for your site that are relevant and effective. A keyword is a word or phrase on a website that relates to the content of that site. Search engines like Google and Yahoo rank your website partially based on the number and relevance of the keywords found there. Any keywords that appear on your site should be closely related to the content of the site. For example, if you are a surgeon who specializes in arthroscopic joint surgery your website should contain words and phrases such as “arthroscopic surgery,” “joint surgery,” or “surgeon.” These keywords tell visitors – and search engines – what your page is all about.

Optimizing Your Keyword Placement

Of course, it’s not enough simply to have the right keywords, it’s also important that they be seen in the right places. When search engines look at your website, they don’t only scan for keywords relevant to your practice, they also determine where on the page those keywords are located. Keywords that appear in the headers of articles or in the flow of text are better than those that appear in sidebars or as unsorted tags. Particularly good places to include keywords to ensure high visibility are in header tags and the ALT text in graphics.

The keywords on your page also ideally will be spread evenly throughout the site, rather than packed into one or two locations. You probably have seen web pages that have blocks of text containing long lists of keywords, one after the other. Some firms that do SEO (Search Engine Optimization) try to use this ploy to cram a lot of keywords onto a page in hopes that search engines will give the site a higher rating. However, many search engines are designed to identify this tactic and can actually downgrade you site for trying this tactic. Your keywords should be located on all of the pages on your site and appear in different places on different pages.

Backlinks for Building Your Business

At Axiom Health Care Marketing, our strategy for optimizing your keywords includes not only compiling a list of keywords, but also backlinking to other relevant websites. Backlinking is the practice of locating links to your website on other sites that are likely to attract the kinds of individuals who also will be interested in your practice. This means linking to sites that are directly related to the type of medicine in which you specialize and the kind of practice you manage. We won’t just throw links out to a lot of random sites in hopes of increasing your search ranking, We’ll be sure those links are in places where they will work for you.

However, creating a single set of keywords and then sending you on your way is not the way we operate at Axiom. Our professional staff will continue to work with you to ensure that your links remain relevant and fresh and that your link portfolio reflects the latest updates to your practice. We will also make sure the sites to which you are backlinked remain reliable and relevant to your potential patients. Our top-of-the-line analytical software can help you measure how well your keywords are working for you. We will use this information to update your keyword portfolio to ensure that you stay at the top of search queries and remain visible to potential customers.

The Axiom Approach

To learn more about how a coordinated and coherent keyword portfolio and backlinking strategy can benefit your practice, contact Axiom today. Our staff not only has the IT knowledge to optimize your website, we also have experience in healthcare business and marketing and we bring that expertise to the table in all of our SEO efforts. Let us show you how we can help your website continue to be a key asset for growing your practice.

Posted by: Axiom Health Care Marketing