Add Frequent, Well-Organized Content to Your Dental Web Site

We’ve said before that when it comes to impressing the search engines, content is king. “Fill your Web site with original, useful content, free of errors—spelling or otherwise—and the search engines should reward you” is how we succinctly put it in a previous post.

However, Google also takes note of how this content is arranged on your dental Web site. Here are a few tips on how to organize your content:

• Give each dental treatment or service its own page. Instead of listing all of the dental treatments and services you provide on one page, give each category its own page, with three to five short paragraphs on each page.
• Blog. Set up a blog either within your Web site or separate from it. If you blog from a separate site, be sure to link to your dental practice’s Web site in every post. Regardless of where your blog is located, be sure to post often with unique content. Think of it as your own electronic newsletter. If you perform a new treatment, blog about it. If you add a new staff member, blog about it. If you see news in the dental literature relevant to the work you perform, blog about it. Over time, you will have a wide database of information on your blog, and the search engines will take note.
• Use images and alt tags. A Web site full of text but without images may turn readers away. Photographs add visual variety to your Web site. Unfortunately, Google cannot “see” the images when its spiders crawl on your site, so be sure to use the “alt tags”—a line or two of text embedded in the code of your site that explains the image. The search engines will read the alt tags and rank your site accordingly.

The Internet is full of advice on how to impress the search engines. Follow it, but don’t become too hung up on the technicalities. Give your readers quality, authoritative information on a regular basis. They will see you as the preeminent specialist in your field, and the search engines will reward you.