SEO FOR PLASTIC SURGERY - MICROSITES AND ANCHOR TEXT

My SEO sins

By Calvin Lee, MD Surgeon and SEO dabbler

Search Engine Optimization for Plastic Surgeons

Around mid May of 2012, I noticed that my high ranking plastic surgery webpages have been penalized. Some seemed to have disappeared from Google search. SEO by the way = Search Engine Optimization. It's the ranking race that determines the order of appearance after you type in a search term or phrase into a search engine. The better your SEO, the higher up you show up in the results. Ideally the #1 spot would be best. Google is the discussion of this webpage. There are some other excellent search engines as well but perhaps another discussion at another time.

Google doesn't publish exactly what they are thinking, thus we have to guess. I've done my own guessing and soul searching to see what I've done to deserve this severe downranking. Google periodically updates it's search algorithm and it gives it creatives names such as Panda and Penguin. Penguin is a recent change. Panda was right before Penguin from what I understand. Keep in mind that these are my thoughts and I just dabble in SEO as a small hobby. I have many other hobbies that I take seriously. So I'm probably not the world's expert on this.

I hope that the the Penguin Search Engine Optimization update continues to evolve. Some of my best websites with great content can't be found too easily now. But perhaps I'm somewhat to blame for this problem.

Here are my thoughts on what I've done wrong in the eyes of almighty Google.

My GOOGLE PENGUIN PENALTY

Too many domain names

I have about 300+ domain names and over 150 websites that I've started/stopped.
Google probably thinks that this isn't really a focused attempt at making webpages and can link most of my IP addresses to the same C class.
Many of these are in the same field - related to health, beauty, plastic surgery, skin care, and Modesto.
Many of these websites became microsites. More on Microsites later.
But I enjoy having these domain names and working sporadically on different websites. So I guess I'll continue to have this problem.

Microsite Abuse

These are sites in my mind that have a focus. For example. Surgical Artistry provides services in Veins, general surgery, Acupuncture, Botox, and Plastic Surgery. Then for my preference in making webpages, I would make a separate page for each item. For example for veins, I have www.bigveins.com and for general surgery I would have www.modestosurgery.com and so forth. For plastic surgery, I had even more separated microsites: I had www.breastguide.com for breast augmentations, and www.modestotummytuck.com for abdominoplasties.

I think somehow Google doesn't like this idea of microsites so much anymore. It seemed to like it in the past, and had rewarded me with the #1 SEO position for all these webpages. Now I can't even find some of these pages after searching through the first 5 google pages of search results.

I personally like the idea of microsites so that I can focus and make use of my 300+ domain names. Plus it's easy to tell folks about which URL to use depending on their interest. If they are interested in lasers, I'd tell them to go to www.modestolasers.com. Or if it was skincare it would be www.modestoskincare.com. To correct this problem with Google, I guess I'll try to make all the webpages under one umbrella website: www.surgerytoday.com. It somehow chose to penalize that website the least. It seems as though they have figured out the oldest of my websites or went by some sort of size measurement, and chose to lessen the value of the microsites surrounding it.

Yes, I'm sure you will say this is way too many webpages and too many microsites for my business. Perhaps I got too carried away.

I have too many microsites.
I have too many microsites in the same IP class range (c class).
I need to consolidate them - I think this is the new SEO trend that Google has. Google Panda didn't seem to upset my work, but Penguin certainly made my sites "disappear."

Anchor Text Abuse

An example of Anchor text is: SEO in Modesto instead of just a raw link like: http://www.surgerytoday.com/modesto/seo/index.htm. I have some theories as to why Google thinks I abused anchor texts.

With my microsites, I kind of crosslinked everything together. Really creating a mish mash of entangled web connections.
I used similar anchor texts throughout ie. Breast Augmentation Modesto. Many of these anchor texts would lead to my microsites - which I think is expected.
I used too many anchor texts that look alike and thus didn't appear to be a natural web vote of confidence regarding my websites. Looks like I was stuffing the ballot myself - which essentially was what I was doing. But using my different websites to point to each other. And I wasn't so smart about hiding it because all the anchor text look the same and all the IP addresses were essentially the same too of all the different websites.
Perhaps Google thinks of this what I've done as spam. But I don't. No crazy link farms utilized here. Regardless, I'll need to play by Google's new rules and impressions.

Abnormal Language Abuse

Yes, I'm guilty for writing for how I think a machine will like to read instead of how a human would like to read. I've written things like, "Dr. Tammy Wu, Plastic Surgery Modesto Cosmetic Medical Spa, sees patients from Manteca, Stockton, Ripon, Oakdale, Riverbank, Sacramento, Turlock, Ceres, Patterson, Sonora, Tracy." Yep, pretty ridiculous. If my wife (Dr. Tammy Wu) saw that, she would make me take it down, and Google seems to agree.

I've noticed that Google now seems to have a thesaurus. And consideres Cosmetic and Plastic Surgery to be similar words. So I don't need to title my webpages as "Dr. Tammy Wu, Modesto Plastic Surgery Surgeon Cosmetic" which for humans makes no sense. It's not a great user experience. So I will mend my ways since Google's Penguin update seems to make fun of it too.

What I'm going to do to cope with Google Penguin and future changes

Continue making great content based web pages and web sites, but consolidate. Place them into one or two gigantic sites instead of smaller ones. Although I wonder if I put this webpage in the right place - oh well, at least I didn't spin off a microsite website that is a Plastic Surgery SEO website which would have been my primal urge.
Decrease the amount of unnessary microsites - churned out just for SEO needs. I will argue that many of my microsites are valid and needed and contain great content such as how to run and operate a plastic surgery office - which I really don't want to mix it up into a webpage dedicated to getting plastic surgery. They are different aspects of life although they share key words. But for now since my "how to" website on running a plastic surgery website got demolished in the Google search world. I'll add this SEO babble to the webpage for consumers of plastic surgery and hope that our potential patients won't get thrown off on this web page. I am consolidating.
Use more human language instead of SEO key word stuffing.
I will concentrate more on user experience instead of SEO, and hope that people will link to me however they want to.
I won't send out anchor text request to others - link to me however you want.
Maybe, just maybe, I'll consider getting professional help. I realize that the SEO professionals have resources that I can't quite duplicate. They have plastic surgery authoritative resource pages with high Google page rank which then can link to our plastic surgery personal pages (for a fee I'm sure), and they also have the ability to make other plastic surgeons pages and link several of the plastic surgeons together ie. a plastic surgeon client of theirs in New York to other plastic surgery clients of theirs in California. But for now I'm having too much fun in this battle.

So where do I stand right now in the Google search world 6/18/12

I'm no longer number one. In fact I don't think I'm number one in much of anything any more. Sad. But it's a slap in the face to wake up and clean up. I'm not sure what the search results are, because Google has a way of knowing where I'm working from and somehow has given me different search results to look at vs. what the rest of the world is seeing. Plus it changes quite frequently. I've also noticed that the searches are different depending on which browser (IE or chrome for example) or computer that I use.

My #1 webpages have disappeared. So what's coming up on most of the search engines are older webpages that I have made which for some reason didn't get downgraded. For example my www.bigveins.com webites are not easily found, as are my www.askdrwu.com, www.breastguide.com, and www.modestotummytuck.com. So what I have left is now trying to compete with other websites and this is how my Google search results have dropped.

I used to have as a #1 search for "Modesto breast augmentation" = www.breastguide.com. Now I am #4 for the same search but with a strange website www.surgerytoday.com/tammywumd/. Reading into this reason came up with the majority of this webpage above.

Search Phrase	Current Organic Result	Previous 2011 Result
modesto plastic surgery	#2 Local	#1
modesto plastic surgeon	#1	#1
modesto botox	#3	#1
modesto breast augmentation	#4	#1
modesto tummy tuck	#3	#1
modesto veins	#2	#2
modesto spider veins	#5	#2
modesto acupuncture	#2	#1
modesto skin care	#2	#1
ask dr wu	can't find	#1
big veins	can't find	#1

The last two search phrases aren't actually important but it told me that my websites www.askdrwu.com and www.bigveins.com have been severely downgraded. Just clues into what Google has been thinking with their Penguin updates.

I'm going to try to improve on the above search terms. Hopefully when you try it, my results will be better.

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RELATED MATERIAL

Modesto Plastic Surgery | Why Choose Dr. Wu | Cost of Surgery

Breast Augmentation | Tummy Tuck

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Surgical Artistry webpage is for information only, not medical advice. Dr. Calvin Lee on Google+
www.surgerytoday.com homemade website by Calvin Lee, MD and Tzuying Tammy Wu, MD, Modesto, CA
Botox in Modesto, California Date of edit: 03/09/2013