The SEO Compass: Essential Strategies for Plastic Surgery Websites

Exploring the evolution of the SEO Compass, accompanied with a list of outdated SEO tactics for the modern medical website.

Pardon me as I address this article in the first person for this article is about experience. From working the front desk to being trained to assist in surgery, all the while in the background I was always the marketing manager, self-taught in web development and medical website SEO from the beginning of WWW. Having decades of plastic surgery website development experience, I write this article for the wits of the modern SEO, the emerging SEO, the stubborn SEO, and musing of the medical professional exploring my website seeking a better understanding of the current coordinates of SEO.

Forgive me and my literary muse, like Dr. Ralph Millard, I too, am a writer first.

 My husband would sometimes kid me, “what does the Google crystal ball tell you to optimize today?” His little chuckle couldn’t be further from the truth at times. Over a decade ago, SEO was about background “tricks,” keyword stuffing, more-content-more-content-more-content, and the-more-backlinks-the-better. Those tricks are now seriously outdated and even penalized. Yet many marketing agencies insist on their outdated, one-size-fits-all template strategies, while never glancing into the crystal ball, much less a compass.

So where is the SEO compass leading now? Content is king. Period.

I have created a list of outdated SEO tactics should you desire to see where the SEO compass once directed and is now lost at sea. What this list tells us is that SEO is more about quality content than background tricks and crystal balls. Sure, there are still SEO basics to implement, but the algorithms favor authority more than ever.

On a side note: If you need a great book to read, I highly recommend Longitude by Dava Sobel. Not a thing about SEO, but everything about the history of navigation.

Outdated SEO Tactics:

1. Using AI to write content – without edits – a copy/paste losing scenario. AI content publishers excuse this practice with, “Google says it’s ok as long as it is helpful.” But they do little edits, if any, and fail to authenticate this so-called “helpful.” Afterall, AI scraped the internet to generate the content you requested.
2. Duplicating content – This is a big one for many SEOs because getting content from business owners is like pulling teeth. Many SEOs fail to have quality insights into business structures, plans, practices, and industry insights. They resort to item #1: using AI to write content. And the cycle continues because they think there is an SEO law that says they must constantly publish “new” content. This leads to:
3. Constantly publishing more content, more content, and more content. This creates spam and cannibalization. This leads to:
4. Not refreshing previously published content – they go stale, lose rankings, becomes outdated content.
5. The “more backlinks the better” theory – Proven wrong repeatedly. A backlink energy shift should focus on acquiring a few high-quality backlinks instead of dozens of low-quality ones. Less is more as long as that “less” is quality.
6. Using PBN backlinks – Now considered to be Black Hat SEO. These are usually purchased across the web. They are low quality, low value, low traffic, and Google knows everything. Site may get a little boost after acquisition of a PBN or two, but the long-term effects are harmful and cause ranking losses. What PBN believers do? They purchase more PBNs and the cycle continues.
7. Failing to monitor backlinks for black hat attacks – the SEO forum rumors that Google “ignores” spamming backlinks has been taken too far. There is a difference between spam and black hat. Google understands spam but cannot differentiate intent or who-dunnite black hat PBNs or other nefarious black hat tactics.
8. Only chasing blue SERP listings, while cowering from other opportunities – SEOs hoped the AI generation would make their jobs easier with bigger profits. They had big hopes of streamlining their optimization efforts while hitting the green. Instead, they are all on Reddit crying foul, they don’t understand where they failed and continue to stick with their outdated SEO strategies. They will possibly read this list and arrogantly shake their heads, telling themselves, “My system has worked for years.” Yet they weren’t around for the Panda update and haven’t lived through a google-tectonic-shift before. They fight change, and Google de-ranks their once beautiful SEO strategies.
9. SEO mentally disconnecting GBP from the website: they work together. Google Business Profiles are not limited to obtaining reviews and convenient directions links. Reviews are a must, but so is a properly optimized business listings that aligns with the business structure outlined on the website.
10. Bad URL structure– publishing date in URL, keyword stuffing with category slugs, duplicating slugs with service pages. The first thing bots “see” is the URL. URL structure should not be spamming or competing with other pages such as blog post competing with the service page.
11. Outdated Schema for Organization and Local Business – Schema is a background code that explains your business and what is on the page. There are many different types of schema markup in addition to your business details, but also specific reviews on that specific page, video, and FAQs. What have SEOs missed recently? That these elements can no longer stand alone, they must be connected to the business within the schema “script” brackets.
12. Not using ALT on images in media library as well as on page. I see this every single day! Images are indexed just like web pages. Not having proper image names, descriptions and ALT add up to lost opportunities.
13. Ignoring page speed performance and accessibility – If Google is scoring it for free, why would you ignore them? Seriously, many Reddit SEOs insist page performance doesn’t matter. They laugh at the likes of me that don’t ignore Google. I’ll keep my respect for Google, respect for my client’s website performance, accessibility, and keep my OCD in check.
14. Still haven’t caught on to the power of video and the video “view” page. Too many SEOs still think video view page means the YouTube landing page. SMH. The hint is in Google Search Console and Google published the instructions. Yet sometimes I think I am the only SEO to have read it and taken advantage of it. SMH
15. Disconnecting Website Design from SEO – this should be the first when creating a new website: website DESIGN is SEO! Taking on a newly built website as the SEO because the business owner thought they had to hire out these tasks separately is a disaster. I spend more time correcting bad designs causing layout shift errors, converting images to webp format, fixing heading title tags, correcting bad font sizes, font loading or lack thereof, and scrubbing useless plugins causing bloat. YES! All this matters with SEO! As you can see, SEO is not a magic hat of background tricks.
16. Using a bad WordPress theme thinking they are all the same – Yes, there are garbage themes out there. The worst offender is Brizy. Complete disaster when it comes to SEO. My personal favorite is Divi.
17. Finally – Cheap Hosting. Please, for the love of God stop going with the cheapest hosting service. There are reasonable options available that don’t compromise on speed and reliability. My personal favorite is Kinsta. This is a premium hosting company but more than well worth it. My second favorite is Hostinger. I recently worked with a client that had a disaster hosting service that will remain unnamed here. Their website was periodically down, not found in search results, and the backend scripts were seriously outdated with no update promise in sight. As a result, this company relied on internet traffic and their business slumped dramatically. The recovery effort is on-going, as Google has quietly classified their website as unreliable – because it once was.