S.E.Overdoing it?

We hear the term “search engine optimization” a lot in our business. More and more of our clients are challenging us to land them atop the Google results pages. And I can’t say I blame them, really. After all, when a lady in Paducah types in “great hospitals,” you want your name to be first.

One of the most effective ways of accomplishing this, of course, is to fill a site with lots of content. Stuff in as many “key words” as humanly possible in hopes that you’ve got more in there than the hospital across town.

What this invariable does, though, is make the site bigger than it has to be. And it makes it more cumbersome to use. Which means that lady who is looking for specific information on your site might need to spend more time finding the relevant information she needs or, even worse, may give up altogether.

When designing sites for healthcare, I think it’s important to remember to keep them as user-friendly as possible. Could you be jeopardizing your ranking on the search engines by doing so? A bit, perhaps. But you have to remember that searching for a hospital isn’t the same as searching for a pair of shoes. Patients are rarely looking for a medical facility blindly. They’re relying on doctor referrals, recommendations from friends and family and even on their own experiences. And in any given community – or even region – folks know who the major players are in healthcare.

Sure SEO is important. But it’s not as important as making your potential patients comfortable and confident when they visit you online. It’s the interactions that truly “make the sale.”