Each week has some activity or the other going on in search. Succeeding in healthcare digital marketing requires constant monitoring of the changes. The 2nd full week of February was one full of such algorithmic innovations. Google’s updates were never confirmed by the search giant, but their effects were certainly noticeable.
A Massive Update, but No Confirmation
After a massive Google search ranking update during the week, which the SEO world felt everywhere, but wasn’t confirmed by Google, webmasters felt shaken from their perch. In fact, unless the updates are broad core ones, Google doesn’t confirm it even if the impact is widespread. You could have an update today, just as an update dealing with local search could well have made its way on the 31st of January, as pointed out by Search Engine Roundtable’s Barry Schwartz.
Google also made the confusing announcement that being indexed doesn’t necessarily mean that you are ranked. Google made some changes to its help document for indicating that it does matter to use keywords in descriptions. Local search engine optimizers, though, don’t quite agree when they see the actual results.
Remembering the Featured Snippet Deduplication Update
Earlier, Google had its featured snippet deduplication update, making the featured snippet part of the actual search results. That did shake the conventional concepts of search performance. Google Search Console then featured many new reports and tools dealing with review structured data and review snippets. It was also reported that Google My Business now has the practice of emailing businesses whose reviews are deleted.
Annotations in Google Ads Reports, New Home Page Design Tests
Google Ads reports are now increasingly featuring annotations. Search Engine Roundtable also reports Google testing a new design for its home page. There were some changes brought about in Google Partners as well, which search engine marketers haven’t quite been happy about. And while Google isn’t quite explanatory when it comes to the updates it launches, it did release a video that explains SEO.
Changes from Bing and Microsoft
But changes haven’t been coming from Google alone. Bing brought out its answer to Google’s BERT mechanism – Turing Natural Language Generation (T-NLG). Bing also tested a search feature by which searchers can clarify the question they asked in search. Conditional IF functions were added by Microsoft Advertising.
The fact that so much happened in just a week shows that successful digital marketing for hospitals needs to be sharp, and you must closely observe these changes, and even be prepared for them though they are unpredictable.
Follow Webmaster Guidelines and Do What’s Best for Your Audience
The only solution you can look to is, ensuring your website follows the general webmaster guidelines Google provides. Ensure the content of your web pages and blogs is high quality and informative, optimized particularly for long tail keywords or search phrases. Those are the phrases that are used by people searching seriously and who are closer to conversions. Such content has a greater possibility of coming up in the featured snippets for the concerned keywords.
And while coming up in the featured snippets would keep you out of the regular results, the featured snippet is now part of the regular results and is the most prominent. The unannounced and unconfirmed updates of Google don’t really have a solution for you to bounce back, if you’ve been hit. The key is to have a long-term perspective and do what Google reckons is the best for your audience.
However, you still need to monitor the updates and keep track of how they’re affecting your traffic and rankings. If there are more of ranking and traffic dips you experience with every update, it’s probably time for an overhaul of your site. You need efficient medical website development here.
Getting traffic online, and customers and conversions to their physical business location, is what physician clinics, healthcare practices and businesses are looking for. That’s what healthcare digital marketing aims at.
A Google My Business (GMB) profile significantly raises the visibility and the reputation of your practice or business. But while healthcare practices and physician clinics rush to get themselves listed, they need to ensure they do it well, to prevent their listings from being suspended.
The Horror of Google Suspending Your GMB Listing
Google My Business sometimes suspends listings, citing issues with quality. This normally happens when the algorithm gets updated. This is of course tough, because the business whose listing is suspended stands to lose a lot in terms of conspicuousness, reputation and publicity, which would inevitably result in loss of business. And once suspended, it’s been reported to be quite hard to make Google review the suspension. So in all circumstances, the first priority is to prevent this from happening.
Soft and Hard Suspensions
So let’s look at these kinds of suspensions in detail. You have the soft and hard suspensions. The soft suspension comes with a label saying “suspended” on the Google My Business homepage. You can’t change any of the details. But with a soft suspension, the listing will continue to be in Google search. Users would also be able to navigate to the physical location on Google Maps. What’s scarier is the hard suspension, under which you have your listing removed totally from Google Maps and Google search.
Avoid Fake Reviews
So, let’s look at what not to do to earn yourself a soft or hard suspension. The first thing you need to avoid, though we see this in many business listings, is fake reviews. If you find listings with fake reviews, you’ll eventually see them penalized by Google.Reviews are meant to give a genuine opinion of how a business works. Fake reviews mislead people and Google views them seriously. The best way to earn positive reviews is to offer good service to clients or customers. Don’t make someone churn out positive reviews for you.
Ensure Consistency in Details
The other aspect you need to ensure is that there isn’t any other verified business listed at your address. And you should keep the business address on your site similar to what you have on your GMB listing. Your phone number and address on online citations must be similar to what’s in your GMB listing. Don’t change your GMB profile information unnecessarily.
No Physical Address for Service Area Business
If it’s a service area business you’re running, it’s better not to use a physical address.Why is that? It’s because a service area business is one where the business owner or employee visits customers at their location to serve them. Such a business cannot use a physical address since it negatively interferes with the algorithm. A physical address should only be used if you have clients or customers actually visiting your location.
Keyword stuffing is something Google abhors in content, and it’s the same in your business name. Don’t unnecessarily stuff keywords to the name of your business.
No Forwarding URL for Your Website
Your website shouldn’t use a forwarding URL, which is basically a website URL redirecting to another website. This usually occurs when you change your website after listing your business on Google My Business and listing the website in your profile. But this usually invites a soft suspension rather than a hard one. Google verifies businesses usually with the domain email ID. Modifying this listing could result in a soft suspension being imposed. Google would then require your business license.
Ways to Get Your GMB Listing Reinstated
Though it is hard for businesses to get their GMB listing reinstated, particularly in the case of a hard suspension, legitimate businesses don’t need to worry. To get out of a suspension, Google requires you to offer proof of your legitimate existence, such as the license of your business mandated by your state, any professional licensing that is legally required, electricity or any other utility bills that prove your occupancy as well as rental agreements, if applicable.
Tax identification papers can also help. You also have to show photos of your business’ physical location. The business logo must be visible clearly along with the street address on your door. If applicable, you can provide photos of your business vehicles with your business logos. Videos are also useful.
You can head to Google My Business Help to appeal for reinstatement. This is truly an essential aspect of digital marketing and medical SEO. With the intense competition faced by healthcare practices, a great GMB profile is one of the ways to stand out.
Something that panics webmasters is when they realize the rankings of their web pages have taken a major hit following an update. But professional medical website marketing companies understand that a rankings loss isn’t the end of the world. Google does not necessarily believe that your site is doing anything bad.
Minor Algorithmic Changes Not as In-depth as Broad Core Updates
Algorithmic changes keep happening every now and then, as part of Google’s supposed objective of giving the best user experience with its search results. These changes do cause confusion among webmasters when results get volatile. Web pages that ranked higher end up slipping down the rankings and other pages find renewed rankings that send them higher up. These changes tend to get balanced after the initial update.
But it’s the broad algorithmic updates or updates to the core algorithm that cause the greatest changes. Some websites end up getting penalized and they need to do the required changes and request Google to index their pages again.
Google’s Insight on Core Algorithmic Update Recovery
Google did recently provide some insight on what to do to recover from a core algorithmic update that has adversely affected your website.Before you start your recovery, here are some things you should remember. These points come from Google’s John Mueller himself.
It’s very important to realize that the pages that experience traffic loss are not those that are penalized. Traffic loss does not equate to a penalty. Mueller also said that the objective of a core update is to make more relevant pages rank better, and drop the rankings of less relevant sites. And if your rankings drop, you don’t need to wait for the next core update for your website to recover. You can improve the content of your site and make the necessary changes to get back. Mueller also stated that such ranking drops aren’t usually about targeting spam, but more about relevance.
Losing rankings can perhaps give you the same feeling as being penalized. Even then, the two are not the same. The most prominent way to understand this is, when your rankings drop Google does not send you any notice. But when your site is penalized, you get a notice citing the Webmaster Guideline violation, as the example below shows.
You get to see the notice through the Search Console on Google. Ranking drops from a core update to the algorithm are not the result of the website publisher violating Google’s guidelines.
Core Algorithm Updates Do Keep Changing Constantly
Another important aspect Mueller mentioned was that Google constantly updates its algorithm changes. So what does that mean? You really don’t need to hold on till the next algorithm update to see the results of the improvements you’d have made to your pages following your rankings drop from the previous algorithm change. Since that algorithm keeps updating and is not constant, you can see the results of your improvements faster, as the algorithm gets updated.
Algorithm updates could sometimes produce unintended results, whereby sites Google didn’t intend get affected. So when Google realizes that, it makes modifications to those updates to ensure the desired results are met. Here’s an example of Google explaining it following a core update in 2018.
If your rankings have been adversely affected, perhaps unnecessarily, from a core update, you could see the rankings return sooner as Google improves its update.
Keep the Panic Button Away
This clarification by John Mueller can certainly put the fears of webmasters at rest. Next time a core update comes, and you experience what you didn’t want to see – rankings drop, you don’t need to hit the panic button. That’s what advanced and experienced healthcare digital marketing companies would tell you as well.
The Internet keeps evolving because it is alive and vibrant. Quite like how word usages change over the decades in a live language, trends in the Internet also keep evolving or changing totally. While we are familiar with the minute changes in SEO concepts, a long look back reveals there were even greater changes in the way websites were created and marketed from around 10 years back. Some of those old trends appear outdated now, but remember, they were once considered best practices. With their vast experience, healthcare digital marketing companies are aware of outdated SEO practices and will use only updated techniques that are guaranteed to work.
SEO practices that were once
considered best practices have been replaced by newer concepts. That’s
something we need to be prepared for, especially since the search engine algorithms
keep evolving. To stay ahead of competition you need to embrace new tactics and
discard old practices. Here are 6 outdated website and SEO practices to avoid:
Not too long back, webmasters were obsessed with stuffing page content with keywords. Too many keywords detracted from the relevance of the content. This practice is known as keyword stuffing. The idea was that the more the keywords in a page, the greater are the chances of it ranking when people search with all those keyword phrases. This eventually had the opposite effect and affected the customer experience.
Google rolled out Panda to deal with low
quality content and Penguin to penalize sites that indulged in keyword
stuffing. With these algorithmic updates, Google finally put paid to the
practice of keyword stuffing. While keywords continue to be super important in
content, stuffing them to more than 3% of the page’s content will result in penalties
and send the site sinking like a stone through the rankings.
A Truckload of Backlinks from Link Directories
The practice of using link
directories to link back to your website was once considered quite normal,
something that Google wholeheartedly accepted. However, with sinking quality,
Google decided to do something about it and started reducing the cached link
directories in its index. Buying and selling links that pass page rank is now
frowned upon as a black hat trick. Your website could be in trouble if Google
finds it to be associated with exchanging money, goods, or services for a
followed link that will pass value to your site.
Manufacturing Content
The following screenshot shows the spun content of the original text in
the screenshot above.
Another practice which was
commonplace previously but frowned upon now is article spinning. An article
spinner is something that provides an alternate version of an article by
rearranging or replacing words and phrases. The idea was that if there were
more articles with the same keyword by a website, there is a greater chance of
any of them figuring in the search results. So your website gets more
conspicuous and, as a result, gets more traffic and more probability of
conversions. But the content quality ends up becoming really poor and users get
frustrated reading something that makes little sense. It was somewhat like
keyword stuffing, where quality takes a big hit. But Google rolled out a new
algorithm just for devaluing such content. It was called the Hummingbird. And
that was the end of it.
We now move on from hardcore
SEO tactics to more stylistic elements of websites that are not considered
worthy at all now. These significantly hamper user-friendliness now, though
they were once considered distinguishing factors.
Too High Tech, Too Much Stuff on a Website
With its series of algorithmic updates,Google has also stressed the importance of having a user-friendly website. The information websites present must be relevant, comprehensive and insightful while their interface shouldn’t confuse the reader to scroll too much or click through links unnecessarily only to get back when they don’t find the information they’re looking for. It isn’t just enough that your website has comprehensive and relevant information; it must also be easily detected by the reader. Too many graphic elements also make the site confusing and slower to load. The interface should be simple to give the user a pleasant feel.
About a decade ago, webmasters thought that a website with many elements, menus and graphic elements would impress the visitor. They figured the complexity would be the differentiating factor over other websites. But users were just tired of such sites and would often leave them because they confused them too much. Today’s websites are so much easier to find information. Webmasters also felt complex and artsy fonts would raise the profile of the websites. As a result, people had to struggle to read the text. But the practice has long since stopped when websites weren’t getting the conversions they were hoping for. Today, almost all sites employ a legible and easily readable font such as Calibri or Times New Roman.
Not Giving a Context to a Linked Button
Linked buttons saying nothing
but “Click Here” were quite common, and are probably still in use by some
websites now. A link that just says “click here” doesn’t reveal where it links
to. Now,a link is always offered in context, which gives users a clear picture of
what the link is leading to.
Music, anyone?
Something that seems really strange
now, but wasn’t uncommon back then, is music that served as a constant audio
companion while you’re visiting a site. But soon, visitors starting leaving
these sites the moment they got in because it was irritating. So it wasn’t any
wonder that this practice was dropped.
Experienced companies offering website design services for healthcare are aware about outdated practices that must be avoided. With innovative solutions that give priority to user experience and service, websites have truly become informative, relevant, pleasant and worthy of attention. And much of the credit goes to Google’s algorithms.
LinkedIn is unique among the popular social networks, and that makes it not quite the preferred means for marketing. But it does have its benefits. Experiencedhealthcare content writing servicesfocus on content in web pages, blogs and also social media posts for healthcare practices, physician clinics, medical equipment manufacturers and others in the field. They also help in crafting marketing strategies for various social platforms, including unlikely ones such as LinkedIn.
The Professional Network
LinkedIn is one of the most popular professional networks. People sign up to the network to keep in touch with other professionals from their field or the other fields out there, ranging from business and management to arts and culture. Employers are also onboard to find out about the talent force available. Keeping in touch with LinkedIn serves the needs of both job seekers and job providers. It also serves as the ideal platform to forge professional relationships and industrial collaboration.So you can see how ads placed in LinkedIn can help businesses get to target the right people.
More Focused Browsing on LinkedIn
People visiting Facebook usually do a great deal of casual browsing. But on LinkedIn, it’s a lot more focused. They usually visit LinkedIn if they want to put out a job ad or find out the response to it, or if they want to find job opportunities. On other occasions, they’d visit LinkedIn when they get an email notification when someone has messaged them or sent them a connection request. They may also go through profile suggestions that come up as they browse the network.
Need to Keep Ads Highly Focused on LinkedIn
Because of the focused nature of browsing on LinkedIn, ads in the network need to be heavily focused too. Unlike ads on Facebook or other social networks, you don’t need much creativity here, but you certainly need to get to the point right away. Long posts aren’t exactly ideal. The other point to remember is that LinkedIn isn’t something that is as frequently visited as Instagram, Snapchat or Facebook. So you can place an ad for nearly a month without having to update or change it. People won’t get tired of seeing it in just a few days since they don’t visit the network often.
But as you’d have already guessed based on the points we’ve mentioned, marketing on LinkedIn is quite different. There isn’t much user activity data that LinkedIn offers but the content you post will get seen and shared, at least that is the assurance LinkedIn gives. In fact, on average, LinkedIn reports that people spent 30% to 40% more of their time on its news feed in 2018 than the years before.
LinkedIn Advertising Costs Quite a Lot
However, LinkedIn advertising is expensive, and can range from $6 all the way to $20 per click. So unless you have a very focused ad that efficiently puts you in touch with potential customers and conversions, you wouldn’t be able to justify spending so much on LinkedIn advertising. So you need to figure out if LinkedIn is appropriate for your business.
B2B businesses primarily stand to benefit from LinkedIn ads since there are a lot of businesses on the network that look for recruitment or forging professional relationships. They can be attracted by ads. What’s advantageous is that businesses generating leads with significant lifetime value can find LinkedIn ads quite beneficial. This refers to deals exceeding $15,000. Such deals usually involve B2B brands.
How to target ads on LinkedIn?
When it comes to targeting ads on LinkedIn, you find that lots of people active on LinkedIn are also active on Facebook. But what makes LinkedIn different is that you can find quality prospects in an easier way on LinkedIn than on Facebook. It just takes a bit more precision.
While the usual targeting factors of demographics, interests and location can be applied here, LinkedIn also helps you target ads through other parameters, as you can see from the example above.
Job Title
The most popular parameter for targeting ads on LinkedIn is on the basis of Job Title. That’s why this is also the most competitive parameter, and the one that is the most costly per click. Targeting on the basis of job function can also come with the Job Function and Seniority parameter.
You can also target ads to people on the basis of the size of the organization they’re involved in. By size, LinkedIn refers to the number of employees listed by a company on its page.
LinkedIn also offers targeting on the basis of skills. It has more than 35,000 skills listed on its API. Each of these skills can also be broken down into various subcategories. Up to 50 skills can be added by members to their profile. Targeting by interests wouldn’t exactly deliver because they are limited and vague. You do have a list of highly generic titles which perhaps might help you to narrow down the audience.
Industry Categories and Subcategories
You can also target a general industry and zero down to subcategories within that industry. Among the industry options offered are arts, tech, education, etc. Subcategories include non-profit, for-profit, etc. Depending on the industry, you also have unique sub-categories.
Geographic Targeting
Geographic targeting isn’t exactly comprehensive or precise on LinkedIn. Geo-targeting is usually based on broad metro areas rather than zip code or country.
Company Name
Targeting can also be on the basis of company name. In fact, you can upload up to 300,000 companies into the Campaign Manager in the industry you’re targeting. These can then be used to target ads.
LinkedIn Groups
Targeting LinkedIn groups is also worth trying, depending on what your business objective is. You have groups on Facebook too. But in LinkedIn, a group is usually the result of people quite focused on the particular area of interest or industry joining a group. That helps you target a dedicated group. The audience may be smaller and narrowed down, but the click-through rates (CTRs) are usually higher this way. All you need to do is head to Groupsand enter the name of the industry you’re interested in. LinkedIn will give you a list featuring the top 20 having that particular industry in their name.
There are many options with LinkedIn to place ads. You need to choose them based on what the needs of your business are. The most common among the ad formats is sponsored content. These just appear as regular posts. You could add images or video. It could also be a carousel. You could also generate leads with an attached form. The user will only realize that this is an ad with the “Sponsored” or “Promoted” caption beneath the ad.
Text ads are another option for advertising on LinkedIn. In LinkedIn’s desktop version, you find the ads on the right side. Since these ads are restricted to the desktop version, they’re ideal for creating landing page experiences that may not quite work on the mobile. These are also the cheapest LinkedIn ads, in the region of $3 to $5 for a click. But there’s a good reason for that. Their click-through rate is quite low. These text ads can incorporate a tiny image, which would only usually be good for your logo since the image size is only 50 x 50 pixels.
LinkedIn also offers the sponsored InMail ad option. It works like email marketing campaigns and, as you’d have guessed, are suitable for personal invitations and other such specialized outreach. These ads appear somewhat like the ads on Facebook’s Messenger chat service.There isn’t much room for personalization and creativity since the ad can only include information such as the company name, the industry, the first name and last name. But this format is ideal if you want to send sneak peeks, VIP invitations, etc.It is expensive though, since you have to pay for the ad when you send it whether anyone clicks it or not. And users can only get these ads once in 45 days. So these ads only have a very limited scope.
Another category of not so high performing ads is the recently introduced dynamic ad. The only notable feature in these ads is that they allow the profile image of the user to be added. This is expected to capture attention, but these ads have pretty low click-through rate.
Experiencedhealthcare digital marketingcompanies can figure out the most appropriate social networks for your marketing objectives. And if LinkedIn is one of those networks, they can engineer the right strategy as well if your practice or company is large enough to justify the extra spending.
