Search Engine Optimization Health Care Study

Page Titles

Even though title tags help produce rankings, the health care industry consistently overlooks their search engine marketing value on the home page. A staggering number of web site owners don't bother placing keywords in the title of interior pages either.

Our findings discovered that nearly 72% of U.S. health care sites don't use effective search engine marketing title tags on their homepage, while over 80% of U.S. health care sites don't use keywords in their interior page titles at all.

META Descriptions

The META description affects overall rankings, but web site owners either ignore it altogether or fail to include significant keywords within it.

Our results concluded that 78% of U.S. health care sites don't use an effective description tag on an interior page as part of their search engine marketing strategy.

META Keywords

It's widely accepted that major search engines don't put considerable stock in the META keyword tag (too much abuse long ago). It can't hurt to include at least a few keywords as they can influence positioning in some cases now or in the future.

We've found that nearly 35% of U.S. health care sites don't use a keyword tag on their homepage. Over 48% of health care sites also don't use keywords on an interior page.

Flash Pages

Flash introductions can impede search engines, or certainly rankings, because of the typical absence of text and re-directs in the source code. fortunately, our findings showed that only 14% of U.S. health care sites use flash pages on their web sites.

Frames

Frames are in considerable debate. Yes, search engines can index a web site if it's in frames (i.e. navigation doesn't move). However, if created improperly, search engines may pick up the content page and visitors may not see the logo, phone number or navigation.

Our search engine marketing report found that 8% of U.S. health care sites use frames on their web sites, while 92% of companies were not using frames in their web sites.

Webpage Content

The good news for the health care industry is that their content is in good shape from a search engine marketing perspective (81% rated "good" in our assessment). We didn't judge the quality of the writing or the structure of the visible text (i.e. user-friendly). To please the search engines, it's important to have copy on each page - some suggest at least 300 words. Although we didn't see that many words on all pages, we were encouraged to see copy blocks that could be revised or expanded with appropriate search terms.

Read excerpts from this SEO optimization report online:

• Summary
• Introduction
• Results
• Top Placement for Targeted Search Terms
• Picking The Wrong Keywords
• Case Studies
• Conclusion

Get your printable free copy of the SEO study in its entirety.