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Search Engine Optimization Health Care Study

Introduction

U.S. Health Care Industry Doesn't Understand the Importance of SEO

Most U.S. health care companies apparently don't comprehend natural search engine optimization (SEO) or embrace it as a marketing strategy, according to our new study, "U.S. Manufacturers Resist Natural SEO and Online Sales Leads."

Unlike some local businesses with small geographic markets, these health care sites can sell in the United States and throughout the world in most cases. With that kind of reach, they should be well-positioned to take full advantage of SEO to improve sales. And, depending on the product and profit margins, it may not take too many new sales to more than recover the associated costs of SEO.

But they don't do enough. For example, 72% lack effective keywords in their home page title tag - a central driver to any SEO campaign.

For the study, Fathom SEO, a full SEO firm, in July 2005 randomly selected 350 health care sites, identifying them from online industrial guides and directories. We assessed baseline SEO techniques for the industry offering such health care products and services as:

Doctors
Hospitals
Pharmaceuticals
Medical Equipment
Chemicals
Plastic Surgeons
Orthopaedic Surgeons
Medical Law
Assisted Living

We looked at their page titles, META descriptions and META keyword sets as well as whether they use frames or splash pages. Our SEO company concentrated on the home page, about page, product summary page and an additional interior page, such as a specific product description.

Although SEO has been around more than 10 years, you wouldn't know that by looking at rudimentary aspects of the web sites. From title tags to META descriptions, scores of health care sites don't even have the basics in place.

We found exceptions. Some health care industry sites made an effort to insert strategic keywords in their pages titles and META sets.

Unfortunately, they are not well written in many cases. For example, we produced ranking reports for 10 sites that had at least nominal SEO techniques in place. Collectively, their rankings were poor among such search engines as Google, MSN, AOL and Yahoo!

Clearly, it doesn't mean all of the health care industry lacks visibility among the major search engines. Some do well because they've developed SEO expertise in-house or hired a consultant to handle their SEO for them. Pertinent search phrases in visible text can pay off. Manufacturers also may be working with pay-per-click advertising, which is expected to help the search engine marketing industry grow to $13.5 billion in 2007, according to Piper Jaffray analyst Safa Rashtchy.

Rather than continue to resist SEO, manufacturers should at least look at their search term choices and get the basics right. Enhanced page optimization - starting with the home page - can give them a much better shot of ranking well on Google and other significant search engines.

Read excerpts from this SEO optimization report online:

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