Search, Site Maps & Your Plastic Surgery Website

When it comes to marketing plastic surgery practices on the Internet, a good website is one that’s comprised of lots of content. In fact, content can be a very powerful tool. Lots of keyword-rich content can improve your website’s rankings in the search engines and increase the traffic to your site. By also ensuring that that content is valuable and informative, you can satisfy your visitors and quickly become an expert in their eyes.

There is, however, one drawback to the content-rich website. Finding the information that you’re looking for can prove challenging and confusing. Because of this, it’s essential that you take efforts to ensure that your visitors are able to quickly and easily find the information that they’re looking for. This means that your site’s navigation must be easy to understand and use. But even with the best navigation, visitors may still find themselves lost or confused. Because of this, adding a site map and a search feature to your website can be very beneficial.

A search feature works just like a search engine but on a smaller scale. Visitors can type in a word or phrase and any documents within your website that include that word or phrase will appear in a list of results. Adding search capabilities to your site is relatively easy and inexpensive. In fact, many site search companies on the web offer free access to their search applications and your web host may even offer a search feature. When adding a search box to your website, remember that simpler is often better. The box should be a type-in field located on every page of your site and it should be long enough to accommodate large phrases. It’s often best to position your search box on either the right hand side or the center of the top of the page as these locations will be readily visible.

Site maps are comprised of text links and descriptions for all of the pages within your website. This can make it much easier for visitors to find what they’re looking for. In addition, sitemaps increase accessibility because the text-only links are beneficial to visitors with disabilities using assistive technologies like screen readers and web page readers. Furthermore, the search engines love sitemaps. Sitemaps are full of text, keywords, and keyword-rich hyperlink text that can greatly improve your rankings and, thus, increase the traffic to your site. Sitemaps also make it easier for the search engine spiders to index your site. When creating your sitemap, organize it as basic text links and be sure to use standard link colors so that visitors can easily recognize what links they have and have not visited. Include a link to your site map on every page of your site in a clear and prominent position. The link to your site map can even be incorporated into your main navigation bar.