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Attract New Patients with an Engine
How Internet search engines can transform Web-savvy consumers into new patients.
BY DAVID M. PEARCE, Rouses Point, N.Y.

Now that you have a Web site or plan to get one, it's time to understand how to get people to visit your site. You can push out your Web address as widely as possible (put it on your invoices, letterhead, business cards, etc.) in hopes that people will see it and visit your site. However, unless most people have a written URL (web address) in front of them, most won't remember it. Plus, most people who receive these materials already know you.

The other means to get people to your Web site is to pull them. By this I mean effectively designing your Web site to respond well to search engine queries. While search engine algorithms can get quite complicated, if you understand the basics, the rest will fall into place.

A search engine functions as an index of information available on the Internet. Search engines employ programs — frequently called robots, spiders or crawlers — that scour the Internet and record everything they find (see "Search Engines: Did You Know?" on page 74). The recorded content is indexed by keywords and phrases. Search engines rank pages based on the prominence and relevance of keywords used and the number of other Web sites "linking" to that page.

Live at the top

You can impact where search engines rank your Web site. The higher the page is ranked (towards the top of the first results page), the more people will click on that listing, resulting in more visitors to your site. More visitors translates to more potential new patients, so designing a search-engine-friendly Web site can be a low-cost source of growth for your practice.

While many factors affect the search engine's results page rankings, probably the single most important is relevant use of appropriate keywords. Therefore, spend considerable time and effort in this area. Learn what keywords and phrases a potential consumer of your site's products or services would use in a search. Incorporate those terms into the title, description and text of your site's pages.

Keep your expectations realistic. Search engine queries may yield millions of results (a search for "eye care" returned more than 28 million pages). Getting to the top of such a list is an accomplishment.

Creating keyword-rich content for your site alone will not necessarily jump your site to the top of a search engine's list (especially if the keywords are fairly general and frequently used such as "eye care"), but it's the best place to start.

There's no magic set of keywords to target — it depends on the practice. A practice specializing in pediatric optometry would not necessarily want to target "contact lenses" as primary keywords. Instead, keywords such as "pediatric optometry," "eye care for children," etc., would give a Web site/page a better chance of ranking toward the top of the SERP (search engine results page).

Imperial Optical, a contact lens distributor, has chosen "contact lens distributor(s)," "wholesale contact lens(es)" and "contact lens news" as its primary keywords. When searching on Google or Yahoo, we rank either first or very near the top for these terms (with the number of pages indexed ranging from 400,000 to 5.5 million).

The key is judicious use of keywords. Search engine algorithms tend to discount the relevance of the page if terms are over-used.

Tools for keywords

Overture, a leading pay-per-click online advertiser (owned by Yahoo), has a tool available that helps determine keyword selection based on frequency of searches in the previous month's period. You can find this tool at http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/. For more information on the issues and intricacies involved in keywords, visit http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/2231541.

Before Imperial Optical employed a search strategy, our site was unranked and we had little traffic. Today we get thousands of visitors a month who call or email for information.

While I say use of keywords is important in improving SERP rankings, keywords must be incorporated into the content/body of text of the page to create a relevant and meaningful page. If someone reads your page and thinks, that was good info, well written and I got something out of it, then generally speaking, the search engine algorithms should also like it and move it up. Keywords alone will not get a site to first page ranking though.

While the algorithms are complex, it's generally accepted that ranking depends on three things: keyword-rich content, "tagging" (programming codes for page title tags and description tags are the two most important), and page rank or "reverse-link popularity" (how many other sites are linked to your site – this is a measure of relevance and popularity). This is the three-legged stool that site creators must keep in mind if they want a highly-ranked site.

The tagging and keyword-rich content you can control. The number of relevant, meaningful sites linking to your site is more difficult to control. Recent reports indicate that the importance of page rank is diminishing, but it still carries sufficient weight that it should not be ignored.

Local practice, local search

As most practices draw patients from their locale, you should consider a geographic term in your keyword selection, such as "Anytown's Eyecare provider for 15 years." This usually works when searchers enter "Anytown" and "eyecare" into the search query field.

A second solution would be to use pay-per-click advertising on a local level, which eliminates the need for geographic qualifiers. In addition to keywords and key phrases, search results are based on the proximity of a practice's location to the person who is searching. For additional information see: http://searchengine watch.com/searchday/article.php/3444861.

The Dieringer Research Group recently reported that 39% of U.S. consumers made an offline local purchase after conducting online research. This and other statistics suggest that an effective online presence is a great, low-cost source of new business. If your practice seeks new patients, your Web site is a great place to start.