How to maximize your Connect profile for SEO

If you have a practice website, you probably know about the importance of search engine optimization, or SEO. There are a lot of different strategies to boost your search engine rankings, but your goal is always the same: Make it easy to be found by the people who are looking for you.

Here are some ways to use your Plastic Surgery Connect profile to help further that goal:

Link to your website from your Plastic Surgery Connect profile

The most important thing you can do is, fortunately, also the easiest: Add a link from your profile on PlasticSurgery.org to your practice website.

Search engines use a variety of factors to determine how relevant a website is to a certain topic so they can serve up the right content when someone searches for it. While the exact algorithm is a trade secret, one major signal that a website is an authority on a topic is if other websites that are an authority on the same topic link to it. PlasticSurgery.org is recognized by Google and other search engines as having a high degree of authority on plastic surgery topics, so a link from PlasticSurgery.org is a strong indicator that your website is also an authority on these topics.

To add a link to your website, go to My Content > Connect Premium Profile on your member dashboard and click the Links tab. Enter a descriptive name for your link, like Practice Website, and the URL in the boxes provided. Check the box under Primary so this link shows up in your contact information, then click the +Add button.

Add links to the other sections of your website

Don't stop there. While the home page may be the place you want to direct most of your traffic, not everyone comes in to your website through the front door. Give your most important subpages a boost by linking to them as well.

Every time you add a link on your profile dashboard, you will have the option to add another. Give each one a descriptive title, like "Blog" or "Procedures," so people know what they are clicking on. Only one link can be included in your contact section, so leave the Primary box alone and click +Add. Repeat as many times as you need. These additional links will show up in the More Links section of the About tab on your profile.

Fill out each section of your profile

One of the features of the Plastic Surgery Connect profile is any section left blank simply doesn't appear, so there's no need to worry if you didn't get to all of them. But while you don't have to fill out every section, you probably should, or at least as many as you can.

Having more content on your profile helps improve its search ranking. While it's more important for your practice website to rank highly, having your Plastic Surgery Connect profile also rank highly improves your overall visibility in search results. It also helps push irrelevant content, like posts from low-quality review sites, further down the page.

You can borrow content from your practice website or create new content for each section. If you borrow content from your website, be sure to use Paste as Plain Text to avoid unintentional formatting errors.

If you choose to write new content, be sure to include all the relevant keywords where appropriate. Search engines are looking for content written for humans, not content written for search engine robots, so write accordingly.

While the search landscape is constantly changing, search engines are always going to be looking for the same basic thing: Clear, well-organized content relevant to what people are searching for. Follow these basic principles and you're well on your way to maximizing your search visibility.