Plenty has been written about best practices for SEO content development, but one concept that is often overlooked—and a reason why SEO projects are often delayed by hospitals—is because the scale of the project is too daunting.

Prioritizing each department’s SEO needs (which start with identifying goals) is critical before you start.

That perspective is not an illusion. Optimizing content for just one department or center of excellence is a project unto itself that can take days, and when a hospital starts looking at Website SEO in terms of it being dozens of projects, the big picture often distorts the reality that a hospital is not a homogenous operation.

As you likely know, a hospital is a collection of very autonomous departments. Thus, SEO truly needs to be recognized as a collection of independent tasks rather than just one massive project.

This is why prioritizing each department’s SEO needs (which starts with identifying goals) is critical before you start. Not only will it help you better grasp the scope of the overall project, but it will also help you improve your hospital’s traffic, conversions and other objectives.

Start with Centers of Excellence

Most likely, a CoE’s content has already been given plenty of attention because of these departments’ relatively elite statuses, so the optimizing their content should presumably not require a lot of time.

But if it hasn’t been given previous attention—and considering that as a CoE, that content must look outstanding and perform optimally—then it is all the more reason to make this a logical starting point.

Then Think About Conversions

Center of Excellence or not, if a department is not getting the conversions that you expected, wanted or needed (starting with the possibility that there’s not enough incoming traffic), this is the next area to prioritize.

Low Hanging Fruit

It’s tempting to start with easier pages like “About Us,” smaller departments with only a few pages, etc. By all means, if they can be properly optimized in a very short period of time, go for it.

But if reality (e.g., approvals, other responsibilities, etc.) is going to get in the way of clearing these off the list so you can move on to more pressing areas, consider the possibility that these “easy” pages might mean little for attracting traffic or conversions, and thus should be given a lower priority.

SEO is a Job That’s Never Done

If you aren’t already revisiting content because of something you spotted in analytics, then you are expanding content to keep your Website fresh or you are implementing new linking strategies between old and new pages…and those are just a few possibilities.

The point is that SEO is not only a big job, but it’s a job that’s never done. Choose your battles wisely, prioritize your tasks, and keep your expectations realistic.

Are you getting the most from your hospital’s Web content? Find out today! AVID Design offers free SEO assessments.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 19th, 2009 at 3:26 pm and is filed under Best Practices, SEO, SEO Tips, Tricks and Advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.