http://www.usaeyes.org, Site Review Please Options

[LaserEyes]

First of all, thanks just for being here. Browsing around this forum has been very helpful and you are all appreciated.

I know that every good website should be created with the reader in mind. Content is King and all that, but I'll admit the truth. The primary reason I want a review of our nonprofit organization's website is because I want us to be higher in the SERPs. Our primary keyword is "lasik" and we are number 1 at Yahoo!, around number 4 at MSN, and bounce between about 15 and 45 at Google, depending on the dance and the day. Obviously Google is the concern.

I do have a sitemap (http://www.usaeyes.org/sitemap.xml) that is updated about weekly. We have a phpBB forum and thanks to a Robots.txt file most of the duplicates are restricted. We have an RSS feed at /lasik.xml and we use that feed for our own current news page. All dynamic pages are converted into static html. Except for the phpBB forum, all pages are static.

Many of our articles have original and plain-language content with a medical journal abstract at the bottom. That abstract is dynamically derived from the National Library of Medicine (nice folks there), but the page is converted to static html. This process of getting the latest subject-specific medical journal abstract and adding it to the bottom of our article occurs for about 20% of our pages about every week, sometimes more often. Even if I didn't write a word (although I do) these pages would have content changes.

We have a Google Webmaster Tools account and about twice a week I check to verify that there are no abnormal problems. Something that may be a concern is that according to Google we have about 1,500 pages indexed and about 1,900 pages restricted by the Robots.txt file. Also, we lost all related websites (related:www.usaeyes.org) about 2-4 months ago. I have no idea why. We had several truly related websites listed, and now they are gone.

We have no deliberately reciprocal links. Links are a natural element of the nature of our website and the user's convenience. We did have a subscribed reciprocal link program, but that was abolished about four months ago. We do have a small amount of paid link listings, but they are all one-way. We have a hearty number of natural inbound links.

We are cited in many news articles and we regularly publish press releases. We were prominently featured in Oprah's magazine in June. Our organization was started in 1997, our website went up in 1998.

I use FrontPage to create, edit, and publish our website...hey, I can hear those groans! Bit by bit I have converted formatting to .css but the server-side incudes of our header, left side, and footer is an important component. As much as I loathe FrontPage's overwrought code, I equally loathe trying to manage our website without it. Our pages do not validate and when I add the DocType, FrontPage does strange things.

All internal links are absolute (http://www.usaeyes.org/article.htm not ../article.htm). We have many outbound and inbound links to our sister website http://www.complicatedeyes.org. The content at the two websites is similar, but significantly different with duplication at a minimum. We have 4 other websites that are peripheral - laser-eye-surgery.org, lasik-surgery.org, wavefront-lasik-surgeon.org, and lasiklasereyesurgeryblog.org. These sites are almost orphans as I rarely do much of anything with them. All sites are on the same shared server. The number of accounts on this server is limited.

One last thing. There is no traditional "Return on Investment". Our nonprofit goal is to educate the public about Lasik issues and help them find the better doctors. Our funding comes from certification fees charged doctors we evaluate and certify. We do want people to go to doctors we have certified, but only because we know those doctors' patient outcomes meet or exceed the norm. We get no financial benefit from a referral. there is no quid pro quo. We also have a comprehensive "50 Tough Questions For Your Lasik Doctor" to use for evaluating any potential surgeon. A doctor we have certified or any doctor is okay, so long as the patient is informed and the doctor is good.

Thanks in advance for any and all assistance.

Glenn

[JohnMu]

Hi Glenn
Good to see you here at cre8asiteforums!

I think the main problem you're having is that Google is having trouble separating good, legitimate links from bad, self-placed or spam links. Links from the Wikipedia have likely been devaluated (since it is user-editable, even if it is checked afterwards). Links from other sources are probably hard to differentiate - many "spam" websites have similar links, only their links are usually self-placed or come from other similarly spammy websites.

Lasik is one of those topics where a bit of money is involved - it's something that many people want to use for an "Adsense" or affiliate site (assuming the doctors involved will go along with it).

Looking at your site and at your links, it appears that the site is legitimate, however: it's hard even for a trained user to tell if it really is. That, I believe, is the root of the problem:

How can you build "trustability" in your site, for search engines and users?

Perhaps it would make sense to remove all "similar to spam" elements from your website? Things like the automated article directory could be seen as spam-attempts (automated content is generally not well received and discounted on Google once it is recognized).

Looking at some of the links, what have you done in the past? Did you have a link-directory on your site? What other changes have you done? What did you try so far to get better rankings?

John

[LaserEyes]

Content
The primary technique to rise in the SERPs has been adding current relevant content.

Dynamic Files
Although we dynamically update pages with current medical abstracts, these are not .php or .asp files. All dynamic input is converted into static .html before publication and templates are excluded in the robots.txt file.

Inbound Links
Google shows 169 inbound links. We previously participated in an inbound-only link program. Although we have been out of this program for 3-4 months, about 18 of Google's listed inbound links are derived from this source. We are no longer on those pages, but Google has not updated our departure. Those will eventually disappear.

One company with three AdSense sites appears to have used our DMOZ information to create a "Directory". They are listed as inbound links by Google. Other than these roughly two dozen suspect inbound links, all other inbound links are from websites directly related to our industry.

Recriprical Links
We have not had a recriprical link program for about a year and even then they all related to healthcare. All current outbound links are to industry related websites. Most have rel="nofollow" in them or the entire page is excluded by the robots.txt file. Some of the websites to which we link also link to us, but this is natural linking of related websites.

Spammy Stuff
If I'm doing something that Google considers spammy it is not by design. I try to keep up with the SEO forums and will make changes that seem appropriate, such as www and 301 redirects and using a dash (-) instead of underscore (_) between words in file names. No hidden text. No misues of CSS. As far as I know, no black hat.

Credibility
Boy, how much more does a nonprofit ten year old patient advocacy featured in Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Fox News, and Oprah's magazine need to do to be considered legit?!

Lasik
This is a highly competitive industry and four of the top 10 websites listed each spend more than our entire annual budget on SEO and SEM. That is why I need to gain every legitimate advantage possible.

[yannis]

All internal links are absolute (http://www.usaeyes.org/article.htm not ../article.htm). We have many outbound and inbound links to our sister website http://www.complicatedeyes.org. The content at the two websites is similar, but significantly different with duplication at a minimum. We have 4 other websites that are peripheral - laser-eye-surgery.org, lasik-surgery.org, wavefront-lasik-surgeon.org, and lasiklasereyesurgeryblog.org. These sites are almost orphans as I rarely do much of anything with them. All sites are on the same shared server. The number of accounts on this server is limited.

Links to similar websites on the same IP address can be causing the problem. For example the one of them has this:

Common misspellings of the refractive surgery term LASIK are LASIC, LASIX, LASAX, LAZIK, LAZIC, LAZIX, and LASEC. Common misspelling of IntraLASIK are IntraLASIC, IntraLASIX, IntraLASAX, IntraLASEC, IntraLAZIK, IntraLAZIC, IntraLAZIX, InterLASIC, InterLASIX, InterLASAX, InterLASEC, InterLAZIK, InterLAZIC, InterLAZIX, IntroLASIC, IntroLASIX, IntroLASAX, IntroLAZIK, IntroLAZIC, IntroLAZIX, and IntroLASEC. Common misspelling of Intacs are Entac, Entacs, Entack, Entacks, Intak, Intaks, Intack, Intacks, and In Tacks. Occasionally the term Wavefront is inappropriately split into two words as wave front.

This is definitely considered spammy! How do these related sites rate? Are they pulling the main site down? Try experimenting here. For trustability add a real address at the bottom of the main page. Google likes that.

Yannis

[LaserEyes]

Yannis: What do you mean by address? You mean our street address?

There are two sister websites. USAEyes.org is for patients considering eye surgery and looking for a doctor. ComplicatedEyes.org is for patients who have had eye surgery and have long-term problems. Both websites are similar in content, but significantly different. As an example, on USAEyes we talk about dry eyes, but mostly about how unmanaged dry eyes would be a contraindication for surgery, etc. On ComplicatedEyes we focus on current dry eye treatment and dry eye relationship to surgery issues.

In reviewing ComplicatedEyes outbound links, I found what could easily be considered spammy. We have an extensive glossary of eye care terms on USAEyes. In articles on Complicated eyes, the first reference to a technical term would be linked to that term on the USAEyes.org website glossary. As an example, 'myopia' would be linked to http://www.usaeyes.org/glossary/mno.htm#Myopia. This is a real convenience for visitors, however there were more than 1,800 links from ComplicatedEyes to USAEyes due to this glossary linking. Every link is perfectly legitimate, but I think 1,800 links to one website would raise some concerns. There are now about seven links to the USAEyes.org website from ComplicatedEyes.

I have reviewed all articles in the ComplicatedEyes website and most that were near duplicates to what is on the USAEyes.org website have been appropriately edited or deleted completely. I'm still working on this.

The different common misspellings have been removed from the home page.

Having two so closely related websites within the same IP group has been resolved by moving one of the websites to a different host/server. We have a couple of other websites on that IP that have a large number of links to the USAEyes.org website that I'm deciding what to do with them. Anyone want to buy an established laser eye surgery domain? 8^)

A new sitemap has been uploaded and pinged to Google and Yahoo!, thanks to SoftPlus' GSiteCrawler. Only time will tell if this helps.

I'm very much open to any other comments or concerns.

[LaserEyes]

Success!

I implemented virtually all of the recommendations I received in this thread. I reviewed other posts within this forum and implemented those too. It appears that all the issues that were collectively holding us back were successfully resolved.

We are now in the Top 10 for our primary keyword searches at Google, MSN, Yahoo!, AOL, and Ask.com. Google "Lasik" and "Lasik Doctor" and we are right there. Top 10 in the Top 5 and we have been there since November. That is success, especially considering we were languishing in the 40s not so long ago.

I am now applying the same process to resolve issues we have had with regional searches, such as "Lasik Houston" and "Houston Lasik Doctor". In less than two months, we jumped to the Top 10 here too.

Thank you for everyone's help.