Many health care providers have online presences, but are their sites truly useful?
In fact, thin content, or content that doesn’t add value, could actually hurt your site. To determine if your site has thin content, you might want to check if it’s doing any of the following things:
Neglects to use tools to analyze your pages
If you’re wondering about the effectiveness of the content on your pages, you’re not alone. Since this is such a common concern, there are tools that allow you to study this and other questions.
Using products such as Google Search Console could help you understand how Google and internet users view your site. The tool could:
- Allow you to submit your pages’ URLs and sitemaps. Sitemaps are pages with information about your site and how they’re related and ranked.
- Provide information about how Google crawls, indexes, and serves information.
- Teach you the queries that users have when they visit your site.
- Alert you if Google finds problems with your URLs and let you inform Google when you’ve remedied them.
Knowledge is power, and the right tools could supply both.
Fails to use rank trackers to monitor keywords
Other tools could help you analyze the effectiveness of specific aspects of your site.
Rank trackers are one such tool. They’re a tool that determines the ranking of URLs on search engine results pages for specific keywords. By consistently studying these rankings over a period, site owners could spot trends and whether their search engine optimization (SEO) efforts have been successful.
Repeats keywords, titles, and meta descriptions
Of course, just using keywords isn’t enough. It’s also important to use them in the right ways.
Does the text repeat the same keywords multiple times on the same page? Does it use keywords that don’t relate to the rest of the content? Those practices are known as keyword stuffing, and it’s best to avoid them.
Instead, use the keywords you want to target, but use them sparingly. Use synonyms for your keywords in your content, titles, subtitles, and meta descriptions. Variety could keep readers and search engines interested in your site.
Offers duplicate content
Keywords aren’t the only things you want to keep original. It’s also important to vary the content of your pages.
There’s a wealth of information on the web, but don’t plagiarize it, post very similar forms of it, or use long quotations to make up the bulk of your content. Search engines may discover these tactics and rank your pages lower.
Instead, paraphrase, paraphrase, and paraphrase. If you want to quote something, make those quotes short and mention where you found them. Mentioning reputable sites has the added bonus of adding more legitimacy to your own site.
Includes too much similarity
Duplicate content isn’t just dangerous if it comes from other people’s pages. It can hurt you if you use duplicate information on multiple pages within your own site.
Variety keeps readers interested and the search engine scanning bots away. Creating different content and URLs makes it less likely that they’ll be confused or miscategorized by what you offer.
Write to reach actual readers, not search engines. Your content will sound more natural and be more engaging.
If you’re concerned that you’ve created duplicate or too similar content, you can use a tool that will crawl your website to look for content that’s too similar.
Is too short
During the writing process, keep in mind that quantity is important, not just quality.
Too many keywords can detract from your page’s performance, and so can too many of the wrong words. Writing long passages just for length’s sake could repel, not attract people, to what you’re trying to say.
But you also don’t want to write so little that the content is thin. Instead, create content that answers readers’ potential questions in depth. Adding subheads, images, and descriptions of images could make this content even easier to digest. You can go online to research recommendations for the length of different pages and other helpful tips.
Promotes heavily
Consider how you present content in other ways.
Although your medical practice might be really excited about its new software system or another service or product, you don’t want to promote it everywhere online. Again, it’s more important to offer valuable information to answer people’s questions, not sell the latest product at every opportunity.
Speaking of promotions, don’t cram your pages with multiple advertisements and affiliate links. Such additions may slow down page loading, making your pages less useful and attractive to the people who visit. Search engines may also label such ads as spam, which could devalue them even more.
Generates little to no traffic
Pages that aren’t useful also don’t generate a lot of traffic to your site.
You want to create substantial pages that encourage people to visit and stay on your site. If you have pages with thin content, delete the pages. If they contain content you’d like to keep, add it to other pages or use it to help build more substantial pages.
Deleting the pages isn’t enough, though. When you remove the page, set up a 301 redirect, which will route readers to another of your pages and prevent them from seeing a 404 error message that indicates that the page hasn’t been found.
Uses outdated designs that aren’t mobile friendly
Thin content doesn’t just relate to words.
Looks matter on the internet. If your site features outdated design elements, contains bad formatting, and isn’t mobile friendly, users might think you don’t keep up with the times and don’t pay attention to your work.
To avoid these perceptions, use modern designs and update your content regularly. Consider employing a dedicated person to handle your site so it’s a priority, not an afterthought. A well-designed site shows you care.
Caring may sound corny, but it helps build solid relationships between health care providers and their patients. Professionals who create and maintain substantial, useful websites are providing useful information and communicating it with the people they serve.
For further assistance about digital matters, they could contact Practice Builders. The professionals there could help them with their online profile and so much more.