Have you used Ethical SEO services for your medical practice?

SEO services for my medical practice? But do my patients even search for me online? The answer to that question is a very emphatic YES, they do. You might ask next whether SEO services will help you get a lot of patient inquiries. While patient inquiries are not guaranteed, what is guaranteed with SEO services is that people will start recognizing you and you will be easier to find online. Search engine optimization (SEO) should hence be your indirect tool to develop your practice. After all, visibility and recall is the first step to expanding you practice base.

Thanks to the internet becoming the Yellow Pages for today, patients now search online for local medical practitioners who are located near to them. This is proven by the growing popularity of Google Local, which people are starting to use to search for local services. Medical practitioners who have recognized this use SEO services including ethical search engine optimization techniques, to ensure that they are the first ones patients find when they search online for a local doctor. For example, if you are a general physician in Boston, you will want to be found when people search online for a general physician in Boston. But if you have not used SEO services for your website, you will lose out to other doctors who have.

One doctor who started his practice recently started with a website and significant SEO services. Within just a year of starting, the website has become his most important patient-getter. He has an online appointment scheduler and regularly tracks the number of patient inquires he receives through search engines. The website is getting him 60% more phone inquiries that of phone and references put together.

Being a medical practitioner, you will be very busy to take up the details of search engine optimization for your website yourself. You hence need the help of a professional with experience in SEO services. An experienced SEO consultant will ensure that your website meets your goals, whether it is maintaining a professional reputation or getting new clients. There are SEO consultants who specialize in SEO services for medical practitioners. If you are unsure of how to make your medical practice more visible online, take the help of such a SEO consultant.

A SEO consultant will also be able to supplement the main SEO service with add-on services like article and blog posting, link exchanges, on page and off page optimization etc., all of which affects a website’s rankings on search engines. Moreover, if you lay down your website goals for the SEO consultant, he/she can work accordingly and show you the progress reports periodically. This way, you can hand over all SEO activities to a pro, yet have an idea as to what is going on.

Internet has become too big a medium to ignore. So even if you have a strong medical practice, SEO services are a must to uphold a strong, positive reputation online. Look for a reputed SEO consultant who can help you make a strong online presence and benefit your medical practice.

Article source: http://www.thecitywire.com/index.php?q=node/6657

Blackhat SEO Attack Against

Tricky Issue of Duplicate Content and Google

Being a full-time online marketer means you have to keep a close watch on how Google is ranking pages on the web... one very serious concern is the whole issue of duplicate content. More importantly, how does having duplicate content on your site and on other people's sites, affect your keyword rankings in Google and the other search engines?

Now, recently it seems that Google is much more open about just how it ranks content. I say "seems" because with Google there are years and years of mistrust when it comes to how they treat content and webmasters. Google's whole "do as I say" attitude leaves a bitter taste in most webmasters' mouths. So much so, that many have had more than enough of Google's attitude and ignore what Google and their pundits say altogether.

This is probably very emotionally fulfilling, but is it the right route or attitude to take? Probably not!

Mainly because, regardless of whether you love or hate Google, there's no denying they are King of online search and you must play by their rules or leave a lot of serious online revenue on the table. Now, for my major keyword content/pages even a loss of just a few places in the rankings can mean I lose hundreds of dollars in daily commissions, so anything affecting my rankings obviously gets my immediate attention.

So the whole tricky issue of duplicate content has caused me some concern and I have made an ongoing mental note to myself to find out everything I can about it. I am mainly worried about my content being ranked lower because the search engines think it is duplicate content and penalizes it.

My situation is compounded by the fact that I am heavily into article marketing - the same articles are featured on hundreds, some times thousands of sites across the web. Naturally, I am worried these articles will dilute or lower my rankings rather than accomplish their intended purpose of getting higher rankings.

I try to vary the anchor text/keyword link in the resource boxes of these articles. I don't use the same keyword phrase over and over again, as I am nearly 99% positive Google has a "keyword use" quota - repeat the same keyword phrase too often and your highly linked content will be lowered around 50 or 60 places, basically taking it out of the search results. Been there, done that!

I even like submitting unique articles to certain popular sites so only that site has the article, thus eliminating the whole duplicate content issue. This also makes for a great SEO strategy, especially for beginning online marketers, your site will take some time to get to a PR6 or PR7, but you can place your content and links on high PR7 or PR8 authority sites immediately. This will bring in quality traffic and help your own site get established.

Top Positions in the Web's Largest Article Directory

Another way I combat this issue is by using a 301 re-direct so that traffic and pagerank flows to the URL I want ranked. You can also use your Google Webmaster Tool account to show which version of your site you want ranked or featured: with or without the www.

The whole reason for doing any of this has to do with PageRank juice - you want to pass along this ranking juice to the appropriate page or content. This can raise your rankings, especially in Google.

Thankfully, there is the relatively new "canonical tag" you can use to tell the search engines this is the page/content you want featured or ranked. Just add this meta link tag to your content which you want ranked or featured, as in the example given below:


Anyway, this whole duplicate issue has many faces and sides, so I like going directly to Google for my information. Experience has shown me that Google doesn't always give you the full monty, but for the most part, you can follow what they say. Lately, over the last year or so, Google seems to have made a major policy change and are telling webmasters a lot more information on how they (Google) rank their index.

So if you're concerned or interested in finding out more about duplicate content and what Google says about it try these helpful links. First one is a very informative video on the subject entitled "Duplicate Content & Multiple Site Issues" which is presented by Greg Grothaus who works for Google.
Forget Expensive PPC Advertising - There is an Alternative!

Another great link is this page from Google Webmasters Support Answers by Matt Cutts. It has a lot of helpful information, including a video on the Canonical Link Element.

In yet another post, Matt Cutts discusses the related issue of content scraping and advises webmasters not to worry about it. This is a slightly different matter, other webmasters and unmentionables may use software to scrape your site and place your content on their site. This has happened to me, countless times, including when my content has been reduced to scrambled nonsense. Cutts says not to worry about this matter as Google can usually tell the original source of the material. In fact, having links in this duplicate content may just help your rankings in Google.

"There are some people who really hate scrapers and try to crack down on them and try to get every single one deleted or kicked off their web host," says Cutts. "I tend to be the sort of person who doesn't really worry about it, because the vast, vast, vast majority of the time, it's going to be you that comes up, not the scraper. If the guy is scraping and scrapes the content that has a link to you, he's linking to you, so worst case, it won't hurt, but in some weird cases, it might actually help a little bit."

As a full time online marketer I am not so easily convinced, I mainly have pressing concerns about my unscrupulous competition using these scrapings and duplicate content to undermine one's rankings in Google by triggering some keyword spam filter. Whether in fact this actually happens, only Google knows for sure, but it is just another indication, despite the very detailed and helpful information given above, duplicate content and the issues surrounding it, will still present serious concerns for online marketers and webmasters in the future.

About The Author

The author is a full-time online marketer who has numerous websites. For the latest web marketing tools try: Internet Marketing Tools. If you liked the article above, why not try this Free 7 Day Marketing Course here: Marketing Tools Copyright 2009 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.