How to attract ‘spiders’ to your Web site


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Image Web How to attract ‘spiders’ to your Web site
By Ronald Williams, DC

Are you aware that 85 percent of Internet users rely on search engines and directories to locate products and services online? Or that 57 percent of Internet users search the Web each day? And almost 60 percent of searchers don’t look past the first page of results?

Keeping these statistics in mind, you can see why it’s important to create a Web site that ranks high with search engines, such as Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Excite, and AltaVista.

Although search engines use various methods to rank pages, they all work approximately the same way — by sending robot “spiders” to index the content on your Web site. Consequently, it is imperative to prepare your Web pages for optimal indexing. The idea is to leave the spiders abundant clues as to what your site or page addresses.

With that in mind, here are some elements your Web site must have to be found and ranked high by search engines.

• Title. Every page of your Web site should have a different title. The title of the page will appear as a hyperlink on search engines when your page is found.

Entice searchers to click the title by making it answer a question they want answered.

Tip: Create a descriptive title with approximately 10 words. For example: The page title on your home page might read, “Low Back and Shoulder Pain Help — ABC Chiropractic Center.” This title describes what you do, as well as gives the name of your practice.

The title should list keywords in order of importance — that is, in the order by which people are most likely to use them. (This is called keyword prominence.)

‘Organic’ or paid results?

When people type a term into a search engine such as Google, the engine brings back hundreds of results. The engine will also bring up paid ads (placed separately from the ranked results).

You will achieve the most “hits” (people clicking your site) through “organic” or “natural” search results, as opposed to paid-advertisement results.

This is important because this title essentially represents your identity on search engines. The more people see that interests them in the blue hyperlinked words on search engines, the more likely they are to click the links.

• Description meta tags. Each page also needs meta tags, which aid in some search-engine categorizations. The description should be a sentence or two describing the content of the Web page using main keywords and key phrases found on the page. Including keywords not on the Web page can harm any chance of your Web site page ranking for those words.

Tip: Write your content first and the title and description tags last.

• Header tags. Search engines consider words appearing in the page headline and subheads (headers) important to the page, so make sure your desired keywords and phrases appear in one or two header tags.

In HTML language, headlines are designated by size: H1, H2, and H3.

Tip: Always use keywords in these tags to provide clues to search engines. Use them in numerical order with each subsequent number further explaining the H1 tag itself.

For example: <H1>Lower Back Pain</H1>

<H2>Causes of Lower Back Pain</H2>

<H3>Treatment of Lower Back Pain</H3>

• First paragraph. Search engines expect the first paragraph to contain important keywords for the document, since this paragraph generally introduces the reader to the content of the page.

Tip: Write the content as if you were talking with a friend about a problem. Mention the most important keyword in this paragraph. More is not better here; you want a “lean, mean” keyword and topic-rich paragraph for not only the search engine to index, but also for the reader to become interested in the rest of the page.

Creating a Web site is the easy part. Optimizing and marketing your Web site so it becomes a powerful advertising profit center is an art and a science — just like chiropractic.

Take advantage of your Web site’s power

Your Web site can market your practice and attract patients. But, to take advantage of its marketing power, you need to understand a few things.

• A Web site is not a practice brochure. While brochures look nice, they are not effective in attracting new patients.

Unfortunately, most chiropractors design their Web sites to look and read like an online brochure. These Web sites are just as (in)effective at bringing in new patients as the traditional printed type.

• A Web site can produce patients every day of the week. People search the Internet all times of the day. And their searches can result in new patients for you.

• A high-ranking Web site makes you an instant expert. Expertise is earned through education and experience. However, unless the public perceives you as an expert, your expertise does little to attract new patients.

One way to create expertise is to publish books and articles. Another is to be quoted in the press. And yet another — one entirely in your control — is to optimize your Web site so it comes up high in Web searches.

For example: Frank injured his shoulder at work. He reported the injury to his boss and was sent immediately to the company’s medical doctor.

Despite treatment, he is still in pain, so he searches the Internet for answers to his shoulder problem. He types in phrases such as “right shoulder pain,” “exercises for shoulder pain,” and “treatments for shoulder pain.”

Searches on Google, Yahoo!, Ask, and MSN bring up multiple Web sites, but Frank clicks the top five listings and finds a doctor’s Web site that explains possible causes of pain and ways to help fix the problem.

The credibility of the information Frank uncovers causes him to make an appointment with the doctor.

A properly optimized Web site can label you as an expert on various conditions, such as shoulder pain, back pain, sports medicine, or whiplash.

When patients come to you with the understanding you are an expert, they are more likely to agree with your treatment plan and comply with it.

Ronald Williams, DC, is with Web Promotion Consultants — a firm that specializes in Web site optimization. He can be contacted at admin@webpromotionconsultants.com or through the Web site, www.webpromotionconsultants.com.

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