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Cross-Linking is Key For Search Engine Optimization
By MatthewD | February 20, 2008
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One mistake that we find healthcare web sites committing on a regular basis is dumping a health library onto their site, and only linking to it from one or two areas on the site. One of those being the home page. This is not good, and huge waste of money if you just dropped $50,000 on a health library only to have it sit by itself on the site. There are several reasons why this is a problem, but I will only hit on a couple. Maybe I will write a follow-up post to cover all of them.
Reason One: The home page is no longer the most visited page of your web site. Shocking, I know. A well optimized site has people coming into your site from all directions. They are visiting your centers of excellence, doctors, service lines, programs and events before they even see your home page. The reason being that Google and the major search engines index your entire site, not just the home page. This could be bad if you are not optimizing your entire site, and integrating your health library content. There should be links from all the relevant content to your health library, and there are several ways to do this successfully. Contact us and we will let you know.
Reason Two: All of your content is related. Your web site needs to tell the full story of the patient experience, and what they should expect when coming to your hospital. The story consists of services, symptoms, diagnosis, visuals, and related events. All of these areas can and should be linked, this includes your health library. Sometimes hospitals do not have the resources to fully integrate their health library into the rest of the site, this is where we can help.
Ultimately your health library should not be an island or a dead end. With that said, no pages on your web site should be a island or dead end. Integrate and cross-link, Integrate and cross-link… say it with me integrate and cross-link…
Your search engine rankings depend on it.
Topics: Search Engine Optimization |
March 10th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
From our analysis of hospital web sites, most visits are extended by providing more in-text links. Visitors are interested in contextual navigation - that is navigation that is related to the content they are reading. Once a visitor gets into the section he/she wants - they follow in-text navigation or “read further” content.