At MedTouch we work with a lot of hospitals and we have seen our fair share of Content Management Systems (CMS). While all have their idiosyncrasies,  Google’s algorithm requires a standard checklist of items for website content to be indexed, and further, ranked well in search engines for your hospital’s services and procedures.

Using this checklist, you can identify 11 different CMS factors that may be adversely affecting your search rankings.

1. Ability to create custom HTML Page titles

HTML page titles are still the number one ranking factor you can control with a CMS. This important html property not only informs search engines to what the page is about, but it’s also most commonly used as the main linked heading in the search engine results page (SERP).

Each page on your site should include a unique HTML page title. Rather than stuffing all your keywords, try matching your page title and page heading with one key descriptive phrase for your service that visitors might be searching for, such as “Cancer Treatment.” Remember optimal title length is 70 characters. Don’t forget to include your hospital’s geographic location in the title. So your Custom HTML page title might look like this:

2. Use of Headings

Although you can format headings with bold and font tags, it’s best to use heading tags. Google reads headings as more important content than body.  Strategize your headings to include the keywords for the page. Include one and only one H1 as the main content heading of the page.

3. Friendly URLs

When doing a site redesign, it’s the perfect opportunity to set new, search-friendly URLs to improve your website’s rankings. How you set your site’s folder structure and URLs has a huge impact on search.

Use URLs like this:

Not like this:

4. Searchable Modules with Friendly HTML Page Titles

You have a Find a Doctor module with profiles for all of your providers or Calendar of Events with popular event information. The module is searchable on your website, but often not from Google. This is a clear missed opportunity. If you already have the content, why not make it publicly accessible via search? You may also increase qualified traffic to your site! Test out your site by typing in one of your doctors names or events in Google, does your site show in the top results?

5. XML sitemaps

XML Sitemaps are Webmaster tools to let search engines know about the site’s content. Do you submit XML sitemaps of your website to search engines? Typically this is a URL that looks like: http://www.stdom.com/sitemap.xml. By submitting your sitemap to Google on a regular basis, the search engine knows where to find your content and will crawl more frequently to index your pages.

Read on for part two, which includes the next six items on the checklist!