Alexa and Page Decide to Have LASIK

Perhaps an unusual post for a LASIK blog, but we find ourselves increasingly discovered in the world from our website and more importantly from this blog.  At any instant in time there are a myriad of people in front of a computer screen, much like the one you are reading now.  They are using their eyes, their vision, to see that screen and to see the world beyond it.  Our job at Dishler Laser Institute is to make that vision as clear as possible without the need for glasses or contact lenses.

How people find us is through this internet along with the conventional "old school" referral patterns which bring new patients to doctors.  On the internet side, there are two powerful forces at work that measure the popularity we achieve and their names remind me of two women, Page and Alexa.  Like  social secretaries, these two women control the internet and everything that comes from it. I like to think of Page and Alexa at a switchboard, controlling the traffic of the internet with a headset on and many blinking lights.

Page has an interesting job.  She takes everything on the web and gives it a number, Google's number which is her "Page" rank.  This number can be anything from zero to ten.  It is a measure of how popular she thinks you are in relation to all other websites out there.  Of course, the most important factor is how important you are in relation to other websites. In our case, we care what Page thinks of us not only locally but regionally and globally since Page rank is universal.  Page has an interesting way of evaluating your importance, and it is not dissimilar from the Richter scale for earthquakes.  That is, a Page rank of four is about ten times more potent than a page rank of 3.  Every number increase means a huge increase in importance in Page's view.  She lives in Google land, and that is just the way that they see things there.

Page has a friend, and her name is Alexa.  Like Page, she is interested in the popularity of your internet site but she works a little differently.  Alexa takes everyone and makes them line up every three months to be counted against everyone else.  Alexa thinks you are her number one if you are more important than anyone else in internet land.  Not too surprising is that Alexa really likes Page, so Google is usually the number one spot.  She is also fond of social sites being a socialite herself.  So she usually lines up with Facebook and Twitter and the whole gang of chatty sites in the top ten.  Medical sites don't make it in the top 100 but she will let you look at sites by category so you can see how you stand compared to others of your ilk.

What does any of this have to do with LASIK and more specifically with Dishler Laser Institute?  Up to this point, this discussion could be about any of the tens of millions of websites out there.  I am writing about it because we care that we are popular with Google PAGE rank, with Alexa ranking, and with all the other measures of success for a website and a blog.  Currently our Page Rank from Google is 4.  This is not that terrific compared to the big boys, but when you look at the other LASIK sites in Denver metro, and even the national chains, we are as popular as anyone.  Also if you have the Alexa bar (which I highly recommend) on your browser, you can follow our and other sites Alexa rating.  Currently we are about 380,000 in the world and about 75,000 in the United States.  This means that there are a lot of sites more visited than ours, but compared to other LASIK sites, we rank near the top.  For instance, 20/20 Institute is almost 2 million (remember -- a smaller number is better), Spivack Vision Center is 2.6 million, and Denver Lasik (Cutarelli Vision) is about 6 million.  Even the national chains such as TLC Vision and Lasik Vision Institute have lower popularity scores with Alexa than does Dishler Laser Institute.  Yes, LASIK Plus is just ahead of us, but considering that they have dozens of locations and we have only one, our popularity on the internet is about as good as it gets for a single LASIK center.

So what,why should you care?  Most of the dozens of posts to this point have been about our real selves.  We have concentrated on what and who we are that sets us apart from other LASIK centers.  In the future I will continue to post about these things as well as new issues and advances in the field.  But for a change of pace, this post discusses how people who DON'T know us come to find us on the internet.  As to why you should care, consider that Google makes it clear that their page rank is based on the rich quality of content, and how many other sites link to a given site.  We have consistently and continuously updated and upgraded our content and we have many other sites that refer to us, thus we have a nice Google Page rank.  Actually Page is not a girl at all but in fact has nothing to do with pages per se but is the name of the person at Google who invented the scheme of ranking, his name being Larry Page.  When you are looking for something specific, like to make a plane or hotel reservation then the Page rank does not matter too much, but when considering competitors in a market, usually there is some association between Page rank and the information you will be able to obtain on  a site.  Similarly, Alexa is also not a girl but a site owned by Amazon that rates sites by how many visitors they have, how long those visitors stay, and how many pages they look at.  It is the best ranking for how many people are actually spending time with a site, and for this reason is very important in selling advertising on the web.  You probably noticed that many sites have advertisements on the sides, and these are paid to the owner based on mainly their Alexa rank.  We of course do not accept advertising since we are a medical site.

Quite simply, Dishler Laser Institute, or Dishler LASIK is the most popular LASIK vision correction site in the Denver metro area.  It is more popular than all the other sites some of which have much larger advertising budgets and spend a lot more time trying to increase the footprint of their site.  It is probably because we have been around the longest, we are dedicated to the latest technology and patient education, and because we are the 'go to' site for everything from research, to clinical expertise.  How popular are we?  For the last few months we have consistently had over 1000 page views per day.  That means that on any given day, hundreds of people are viewing over 1000 pages of our site to learn more about laser vision correction.  Yesterday, I was called personally by the CEO of Einstein Medical who created our site and maintains it.  They have hundreds of doctors in many specialties and do a fantastic job of medical website development.   He called to ask me to be one of only two doctors in Ophthalmology in the entire country to be on a Webinar that Einstein is hosting for all of their doctor members to learn how to make their website more effective at communicating with potential patients.  Of course I was very flattered and agreed to participate in this web based seminar program to be held within the next month.  It really has helped us to have a good company like Einstein design and optimize our website, but what has helped even more has been the improved content management provided by our clinical nursing director, Rachel Gomez, and by the wide appreciation we have enjoyed of our content.  The benefit to you is that every time you visit our site, we will be providing you with the latest information of laser vision correction, we have a robust "contact us" form that lets us stay in touch with whatever your question may be, and we have new video updates on our media page which speak for themselves.  You may wish to also add us to your "feeds" since we support both RSS and ATOM type feeds.  What this means is that you can be alerted every time we update our site to the latest information of LASIK and laser vision correction as well as many other vision related topics.  Again, you can comment to this or any of our posts, and we will get in touch with you about your comments here or on our contact us page.

Thank you everyone who has helped to make this site and blog successful.  And also thanks for helping to make our practice so enjoyable and robust during the last 25 years and especially in these more difficult economic times.  We appreciate the confidence placed in our hands which starts with visiting our website for many and the trust that we have earned as your doctors and care givers.  And thanks to the two ladies, Alexa and Page.

Jon Dishler, MD, FACS