Archive for category chiropractic marketing

Chiropractic Internet Marketing Strategy: Do it Yourself or Hire a Company?

May 10

Posted by admin in Uncategorized, chiropractic internet marketing, chiropractic marketing, chiropractic websites | No Comments

Here’s an interesting question for you to consider: Do you want to keep your internet marketing in-house or do you want to hire a professional? There are pros and cons to both, and the answer lies in your particular situation. Let’s check out the advantages and  disadvantages of both.

Advantages of in-house chiropractic internet marketing

  1. There is a lower monthly cost involved in using someone already employed by you.
  2. The staff knows your practice intimately.  Your staff has a good understanding of your clinic’s particular services and, therefore, is able to describe your specialties easier than those who don’t know the specifics of your particular practice.
  3. You can communicate anytime. Being in-house it is easier to set up times to have meetings or just to chat about situations on the fly.

Disadvantages of in-house chiropractic website marketing

  1. The staff may not be fully aware of what SEO (search engine optimization) is, let alone how to accomplish it. In that case, a lot of education and training will be needed to make sure SEO gets done right.
  2. The staff may be overworked. Sometimes the time it takes to do SEO can be underestimated. It is an ongoing process that can actually be a full-time job.  If a marketing manager has been told to do SEO as well as his or her full time job, obviously that person will be overworked and feel overwhelmed.
  3. Attention needs to be paid to detail. This goes together with Point #2. If the staff is overworked, they have no time to check out search engine news and keep up-to-date on how the search engines have changed the game each week and what needs to be done to implement those changes to keep your clinic internet presence up in the rankings.

Advantages of using an outside professional

  1. chiropractic marketing companies are specialists in the field.  They have experience in working on numerous clinics and their websites and optimizing them for SEO.  They know, first hand, what works effectively and what doesn’t.
  2. There is a dedicated team at the company who will be working on your site and can give it the attention it requires.
  3. The company has a specific plan and won’t be just jumping around, going from short term tactic to short term tactic with no organized strategy and no clear way to reach your desired goals. In other words, they have an “integrated” internet marketing strategy.

Disadvantages of a chiropractic internet marketing company

  1. Let’s face it, it can get expensive, but costs vary widely from company to company. Some companies out there are charging $600-$700 a month for their services. It is definitely worth your while to shop around and research before you buy.
  2. There is usually a commitment. Most chiropractic internet marketing companies will want you to sign up for at least six months to a year.
  3. Account management can be a problem. With high turnover rates at many companies, especially the big ones, there may be a chance that you’ll get handed from account manager to account manager just when you were building a relationship of trust. You may have to start over again, maybe even have to redesign and reiterate your strategy with the new manager.

Now that you’ve taken a moment to look at the pros and cons of both keeping your internet marketing in-house or hiring a professional, the solution to SEO and your internet marketing strategy will depend on the size of your practice, the time and staffing you can devote to it, and your overall long-term goals.

Now, of course, we are an internet marketing company that specializes in helping chiropractors with their internet presence. So, I will admit that I am a bit biased on the side of your hiring an expert to do it right. If you are thinking of hiring a company to develop and implement your internet marketing strategy, it is tremendously important for you to hire one that specializes in chiropractic clinics. Why? Because we understand the chiropractic profession intimately. Therefore, in the long run it will save you both time and money not having to explain what chiropractic is about to some general seo company. There are several of us out there.

If you are going to go with an outside company, be sure to read the fine print. Look at the bottom of their page for a disclaimer. If they have one, read about their “typical” results. You don’t want to be fooled by outrageous claims even though such hype can be enticing. Remember, your internet marketing strategy is just one stream of new patient leads. Even though chiropractic internet marketing is fast becoming a great source for new patient leads, and even though internet marketing gets more important with every passing day,  and even though it is a crucial area in which to generate new patient leads, it is still not the only source of marketing you will need to succeed in your practice.

Whether you choose to keep your internet marketing in-house or to hire a professional, you want to be sure that the time and money you spend on SEO gets you where you want to go. A member of your staff that does your internet marketing for “free,” while squeezing those efforts in-between other tasks, may “cost” you in the long run. A professional whose sole focus is internet marketing, won’t lose sight of your goals. Internet marketing is essential to your practice, so choose your chiropractic internet path wisely.

Technorati Tags: , ,

Tags: , ,

10 Reasons not to Ignore Your Blog for Facebook

Apr 28

Posted by admin in chiropractic internet marketing, chiropractic marketing | No Comments

This is a great post that I found in Small Business Trends. While I feel it is important for chiropractors to market themselves with social media, to make that your sole chiropractic internet marketing strategy is not a good idea. I hope you enjoy.
via Small Business Trends by Lisa Barone on 4/28/10

Brace yourself: Facebook is trying to take over the world. Or, if not the world, at least the entire Internet. With Facebook partnering up with popular sites like Yelp, many SMB owners may feel as if their load got lighter. I mean, why waste time worrying about your building your blog or your own site when you can grow your Facebook presence instead? If Facebook’s opening up the doors so that people can take you with them, you don’t have to worry about anything else anymore, right?

Wrong!

It doesn’t matter how hot Facebook or any of the other social media sites are looking right now. You still need to be focused on using your blog to create your own authority and brand. Want to know why?

Here are ten reasons.

  1. You Don’t Own Facebook: Today, Facebook stands as a great marketing channel for small business owners looking to extend relationships or bridge social capital via Payvment . Sounds great today, but remember that a few years ago MySpace and Friendster were the hot social networks of the moment. You don’t see too many marketers making these sites part of their social strategies today. Why? Because users move on. Because these networks can be bought and sold. They shift focus. They stop lending themselves to social marketing. While it’s never smart to put all your eggs in one basket, it’s especially unwise to do it when you don’t even own the basket. Make sure you’re diversifying your marketing and using the channels you most control.
  2. Not Everyone Is Happy With Facebook: Google engineers are deleting their accounts (with obvious motive), users are angered by the new invasive approach, and Facebook has even caught the eye of four US Senators now asking them to take a step back. With regulators being asked to step in and force changes upon Facebook, no one knows what’s going to still be around tomorrow.
  3. Blogging Builds Your House, Not Theirs: The content you create and post to your blog acts to build your site and your authority. That’s where your focus should be – on building a community on the site that you own. Facebook and the other social media sites help you build satellite communities, which are great, but the goal is always to direct people back to your site to get them to convert. Continually posting great content builds your network and your brand. You don’t want to build a house for someone else (say, Facebook), while yours in jeopardy of falling down.
  4. Creates A Site Reservoir For Common Questions: By blogging about common product or service questions, it gives you a permanent place on your site to direct people for information. That means less phone calls into your customer service center and less frustration from customers who now have a place to go to get help to common concerns. Putting that content on your site means it becomes part of your archives, no one else’s.
  5. Additional Search Engine Rankings: Keeping focus on your blog means that you can write content specifically intended to gain rankings for keywords you’re not strongly targeted on your main site. It also means that your content and brand will continue to show up for targeted searches and that you’ll gain authority and visibility through those rankings. You may be able to get your Facebook profile to rank for your company name, but through your blog you can get specific pieces of content to rank for high conversion searches.
  6. Credibility: Blogging breeds thought leadership when your become known as the “Go To” source for a specific topic. Constantly sharing thoughts, insight, and information helps you show your own expertise on a particular subject… expertise that is then associated with your blog and Web site. Posting information to Facebook segregates what you’re putting out to a walled garden and makes it harder for people to find it and associate it with your company. On Facebook, you only build credibility with the people who already know about you.
  7. Build Links: When you say something smart on your blog, people are going to link to your site and talk about you. The links then help to increase the overall authority of your site, earn you higher rankings and help other people find out about your site or blog. When you say something smart on Facebook, people are going to Like the status update. And then move on. Not quite the same effect.
  8. Centralized Content: Blogs allow you to utilized multiple types of content in one place. You can use images, video, audio, and graphics at whim without having to worry about whether or not Facebook will allow you to properly upload the content. This helps to present customers with a much more unified experiences and allows you to control your own marketing messages. You don’t get that level of control using a third-party site like Facebook or Twitter.
  9. Gives you something to link to: By creating content on your blog, it gives you something to link people to when you’re engaging on outside social networks. If you’re producing all your content on Twitter, then your Twitter accounts in the only tool in your bag. By strengthening your own site, you have a content-rich place to send people looking for information, either about your or the services that you offer.
  10. Better Conversion Tracking: While Facebook does allow some ability to track what people are doing and interacting with on your back, your blog gives you the greatest ability to track action and conversion potential. You’re ability to track people through your site, the types of content they most interact with, whether or not they’re clicking through to interior pages, etc. The more you know how someone is interacting with your site, the better you can customize their experience. Remember, the goal behind social media isn’t to be in social media. The goal is to increase conversions.

Though it can be attractive as a SMB owner to let social sites like Facebook or Twitter become your dominant Web presence, it comes with a high cost. The less time you spend building content and authority for your site, the more you make yourself dependent on tools that may one day fall away. And if Facebook or Twitter went away tomorrow – would you have enough seeds planted to attract your audience? Use sites like Facebook to build your audience and promote your brand, but your blog should still be the cornerstone of your social activity.

Technorati Tags: , ,

Tags: , ,

Yelp's Major Site Changes.

Apr 6

Posted by author in chiropractic marketing | No Comments

Great article on the latest news about Yelp.

Yelp Answers Extortion Claims With Major Site Changes
via Small Business Trends by Lisa Barone on 4/6/10

The big news you need to know today is this: In the face of February’s class action lawsuit and claims of extortion, Yelp is rolling out a number of major site changes to increase transparency and remove any question of impropriety once and for all.

What’s changed and what does it mean for small business owners and advertisers? Here’s a rundown.

Users will now be able to see ALL reviews left for a business

The first change to Yelp will allow users to see every review that has been on a business profile, including reviews that had been previously filtered out. Yelp’s review filter has come under attack lately as users began to wonder why certain reviews would “disappear” over time. A few weeks ago Yelp released a video on its review filter, explaining that sometimes legitimate reviews that were either overly negative or overly positive were filtered out to create a median effect. This meant that a user was never able to see every legitimate review that was left for a business. With this morning’s change, now they can.

Yelp hopes the increased transparency will help users to see that the review site is not filtering out reviews to favor advertisers and that all businesses are being treated fairly. According to Mashable, the additional reviews will be made available through a new link on all business pages and will show every review left for a business. Of course, be careful what you wish for. With Yelp now showing ALL reviews, it means everything that is left about your business, whether Yelp feels it’s legitimate or not, will be available for public consumption. For example, the nasty review your competitor left you? It’s now viewable. On the upside, all positive reviews that Yelp had previously filtered for being “too positive”  will also be seen.

Yelp will discontinue Favorite Reviews

Much of the controversy around Yelp came from the Favorite Reviews feature which allowed advertisers to select the first review that showed up on the page. There had long been some confusion (and rumor) that advertisers were given preferential treatment and could also have negative reviews removed for the right price or control what appeared on their page.  Yelp has strongly denied these allegations and has now removed the feature to put an end to any further speculation.

From the NYT article:

“Despite our best efforts, there’s still obviously confusion out there about what you can buy on Yelp, so we’re making a change to simply drop this feature,” [Yelp’s co-founder and chief executive, Jeremy Stoppleman]said.

According to reports, the Favorite Reviews feature will soon be replaced by one that allows business owners to post videos to their Yelp page, which seems pretty cool.

Overall, this is a big move for Yelp. As I mentioned, it wasn’t more than a few weeks ago that Yelp released a video explaining the workings of its review filter. Now, users are getting an even larger peak behind the curtain. While I applaud the increased transparency of Yelp here, I wonder if they’re not about to shoot themselves in the foot. By allowing users to figure out which reviews have been filtered out, you start to show your cards a bit in terms of how your algorithm works, thereby making it easier for those with bad intentions to game it. Obviously, the entire Yelp site is based on the integrity of reviews, which is why Yelp is making these changes to begin with.  The more public your filter becomes, the more of your ’secret sauce’ you’re letting out.

From a user standpoint, however, the changes will hopefully shed a bit of light on how Yelp works and show Yelp to be an unbiased source of reviews. As search becomes more local and with services like FourSquare nipping at Yelp’s heels, the review site needs to re-emphasis its commitment to the small business community. And these changes focus on doing exactly that.

Posted via email from chiromarketing posterous

What To Do When You Get a Bad Review!

Mar 29

Posted by admin in chiropractic marketing | No Comments

I often have chiropractors ask me this very question. And there are a couple different types of situations that I want to talk about in this post.

The first situation is, are you at fault? Anyone can have a bad day and if you look at the particular situation and decide that it was your fault, then you might want to try to make things right with the patient. Explain your situation, and apologize. Sometimes that will go further towards creating good will then anything else.

The next situation is of course, you didn’t do anything to deserve the bad review and in this case you can go in and write a response to the review. But beware, things can escalate and get out of hand, and your whole page ends up being about a bad conversation.

With the advent of everyone writing reviews on everything these days, most people are aware of the idea of preponderance of evidence, that is, if you have only one review or two reviews and one is bad, well that doesn’t look so good. But if you have 20 reviews and one is bad then the preponderance of social proof is in your favor.

So the bottom line is get a lot of folks that are happy with you to write reviews for you so when the occasional bad review happens, (and it will for all of us) it will be viewed by others as an oddity and not be damaging to your reputation.

Do You Really Need a Chiropractic Web Presence?

Mar 16

Posted by admin in chiropractic internet marketing, chiropractic marketing | No Comments

More Evidence SMBs Need A Web Presence

By Lisa Barone on March 16, 2010

Still not sold on why your small business needs to establish a Web presence? Well, I have some numbers that may finally change your mind. According to the “User View Wave VII” from BIA/Kelsey and ConStat, 90 percent of Internet users search online for nearby businesses, with 97 percent looking toward online media. That’s right. Nearly all of your customers are going online to find out what’s right around the corner. It may sound like fuzzy logic, but it’s a sign of the times. It’s also a sign that without a Web presence, your SMB may find itself invisible.

But isn’t that a lot of work? How can a SMB owner create the needed presence without draining time and resources? I’ll show you.

Claim Your Web site

Your Web site is step one in building and maintaining a presence on the Web. Even if you plan to be really active in social media you need to start here. Your Web site is the place on the Web that you own and can control. You can’t control what happens to all those other sites. Set the groundwork for your online identity by becoming the master of your own domain before someone needs to call a Twittervention.

Once you have it, use your Web site to share your company story and information, target your neighborhood by providing localized content, give answers to common questions, establish your own authority, and to help you grow an on-site community. Your small business Web site should tell the story of who you are and why someone should trust doing business with you. If you need help, here’s a bit more on why your SMB needs a Web site and some tips for creating one. And don’t forget, once you have your site, you’ll need to claim your local business listings Everywhere. These listings are super important in helping the search engines figure out who you are and where you’re relevant to.

Start a Blog

Once your site is up, get blogging. Blogging provides SMB owner with two really great benefits. First, it allows you to talk to, engage and interact with your community the way you can’t do from your site. By giving your audience a voice and talking to them about the issues related to your business, you establish yourself as a thought leader and give them a reason to keep coming back. You make your business the ‘go-to’ place for a particular topic and you help them to become invested in your brand. The more engaged you can make them, the better.

Your blog also allows you to go after long-term keywords to help your site earn rankings for terms you’re not targeting with your main site. Often you’ll find terms that are too niche to warrant a silo on your site, however, by simply writing a few keyword-rich posts on the subject, you may still be able to get your domain to show up.

Invest in Social Media

Creating a plan for how you’ll navigate social media is becoming increasingly important as more customers enter the fold and as the search engines put more weight on social signals. LAST MONTH, Google put Social Search into its search results and changed the way we look at online relationships. You don’t have to be everywhere in social media, but you should pick two or three sites to focus on and create a strong presence on each. If you’re not sure which sites are the best matches for your customers, do a bit of research. That may entail asking them, looking at your site logs to see where people are coming from, checking out niche sites, performing searches for [industry + social network], etc. Don’t just assume that your audience is on the most popular social networks. They may not be.

Once you figure out where you need to be, learn the social media ropes and find ways to integrate your social efforts into your site. Social media doesn’t have to be a crippling time investment. The experts say just 60 minutes a day should be enough to keep the competitors away. And frankly, you could probably do it in less.

Pay Attention to Reviews

Review sites have changed the way that customers discover businesses in their areas. Searchers go to Yelp find a good Mexican restaurant in their area and to do their homework on the place the new dentist they were thinking about using. They look at CNET reviews before they purchase a new television or laptop. They read reviews about potential chiropractors on Google Local. Searchers are seeking out these destinations more often for trusted first-hand experiences and the engines are giving them more weight in the search results, as well. That means you need to manage reviews better so that you know WHERE people are leaving them and WHAT they’re saying about you. By managing your reviews you not only help create a good site-wide conversation about your business, but you earn double the points when users find them in the search results.

The days where you needn’t worry about your online presence are over. Regardless of how big or small you are, customers are going online to do their research, which means you need to be there. The four simple steps above can take your site from invisible to search engine favorite.

Technorati Tags: , , ,

Tags: , , ,

How “Built to Sell” Should Be Your Mantra!

Mar 14

Posted by author in chiropractic marketing | No Comments

This is a post about a great new book by the guys that wrote “37 Signals“. It is applicable to all small businesses in that we all need to run out practices using systems. This book is short and sweet.

Small Business Trends by Ivana Taylor on 3/13/10

I first heard about John Warrillow’s “Built to Sell: Turn Your Business into One You Can Sell” from Anita Campbell.  She had gotten her hands on a super-early preview copy (still spiral bound) and had stayed up all night reading it.  She was so excited about this book, that I begged her to give it to me so I could take a peek too.

Well, I finally got my very own hard-back copy in the mail last week.  Now I can finally tell you all about this short, easy and entertaining book that will get you thinking more profitably about your business.

“Built to Sell” is actually an allegory-style business novel.  Personally, I like these kinds of books.  I have an interactive learning style and reading a book that gets me involved in the characters really helps me to integrate the lessons in the book.  It’s almost like taking a spoonful of sugar to get the medicine to go down.  :)

“Built to Sell” Is More About Building Systems Than Selling Your Business

“Built to Sell” almost reminds me of Michael Gerber’s “The E Myth” series.  When I first picked it up I thought that it didn’t apply to me – because I don’t want to create a franchise, nor do I want to sell my business.  But those frameworks are just there to teach me the much bigger and more profitable lesson that a systematized, turnkey business is not only more valuable in the marketplace, but more fun, easier to manage and less stressful than the alternative.

The primary purpose of any business is to make money.  Another goal for  many is to support a balanced life for the owner – and for the employees of that business.  “Built to Sell” will guide you through the process of creating a business model and system that allows you to do exactly that – create a business and not just busy-work.

Is “Built to Sell” Autobiographical?

John Warrillow is an entrepreneur.  He’s started and sold four companies, so he knows a thing or two about what it takes to build and sell a business.  As soon as you start reading the book, you’ll see that it isn’t really autobiographical.  It’s an amalgam of John’s experiences and the lessons he’s learned over time.

In fact, don’t make the mistake that I did and focus on the “story” part of this book.   There are details in the book; such as the fact that Alex, the main character, was able to sell a logo package for $10,000.  That completely spun me out because I’ve never run into a small business that was eager to spend $1,000 for a logo, let alone $10,000!  But that ISN’T the point.

It’s Not About the Service – It’s About the System

“Built to Sell” succeeds in teaching a most valuable lesson: it’s not about the service, it’s about the system.  Running a business without a turnkey process and system is like taking a 300 pound dog for a walk.  Who’s walking whom?

In the story our hero, Alex Stapleton, owns an advertising and design firm.  He is a “victim” of his business.  He has clients that jerk him around and don’t pay on time.  He loses sleep wondering how he’s going to pay his staff.  He doesn’t always like the projects he gets.  And, just when he’s sure he’s going to make a change – life hands him the opportunity of a life time.  Will he take on a client that’s handing him lots of money for work not in his area of strength or will he stick to the lessons he’s learned and build a life and a business and not just his top line.

Ted’s Tips For Building a System.

Ted Gordon is Alex’s mentor.  Ted has bought and sold several companies and he holds the key to Alex getting everything he wants out of the business.

Here are just a few tips that I got from the character “Ted”:

  • “Being a generalist forces you to hire generalists and your offering will be average at best.”
  • “If you run a service business that’s highly dependent on a single client who depends on you personally to tend to their account and you compete with a lot of other players who provide similar services – your business is virtually worthless.  Make sure that no one client comprises more than 15% of your revenue.”
  • Define your service as if it were a product.  “Productize it”  That means that you describe your unique service process as features that are unique to you.
  • If you’re selling a product, you can create a flat fee as a price and get paid up-front.
  • “Prove that you’re serious about specialization by turning down work that falls outside your standard service.”

I could go on and on because there are many wonderful, practical, easily implementable tips in this book.

Read “Built to Sell” For Sanity and Profits

It might seem counter-intuitive to you to actually focus on a tighter service offering when the economy is on a downward spiral.  But the message of focus, specialization and systems that Warrillow preaches is spot on.

If you’re currently running a service business that totally depends on your being there, then you have a lot to learn from reading this book.  Implement just a few basic principles and you will see immediate improvement in your profitability and your sanity as well.

Technorati Tags: , ,

Tags: , ,

Chiropractic Marketing: Part 3 of How to Own the Internet in Your Town

Mar 8

Posted by admin in chiropractic marketing | No Comments

This is the third part of our three-part local domination symphony. You pay to be on Google or Yahoo. In other words, you pay to play. Let’s look at sponsored links.

They are usually on the right side of the page and sometimes going across the top of the page.

Again, these are not organic or free results. These are the paid results. I have to tell you that the statistics show that searchers are three times more likely to click on the organic results over the sponsored results, but that being said, paid search is still a way to get on that front page. Organic search takes times and energy, while pay-per-click and other sponsored links are quick. But, you just have to pay the price.

How do you set up pay-per-click?

You’ll need to open up a Google or Yahoo account. After that you’ll need to activate the adwords part of it, and fund it. You fund it with a credit card. Then you can start creating ads and designating your daily budget. You decide how much you want to spend on a daily basis. Your ads were assigned a quality score that will determine how much you are going to need to pay to be on that first page. When searchers click on your ad, you pay Google. The clicks can cost you anywhere from $0.05 to $10 depending on what the keyword phrase is you are optimizing for. If you are optimizing for something like “chiropractor in Chicago,” you’ll pay about $1 per click. If you are optimizing for “back pain relief,” you’ll be paying about $6 per click. However, if you are optimizing for “arthritis relief” (sometimes you can optimize for that, but not always), you’ll pay up to $7 or $8 per click for that. So, the cost depends on how frequently the keyword is searched and how good your quality scores are.

Let’s look at pay-per-click a little closer. Back to the first page of Google and our Miami chiropractor. Notice the sponsored links. If you were to click on the link, you would be taken to the doctor’s web page. And every time someone clicks, the doctor is going to get charged. The idea is that by drawing someone to your website, if you have a good website, that person is going to say, “Hey, I want to go to see that doctor!”

Again, if you don’t know anything about how to set up this type of thing, we have a free ten-part course,The Ten Essentials of chiropractic internet marketing. Just go to http://www.chiropracticmarketingtoday.com and download it. It walks you through how to set up your first campaign in adwords. Take advantage of this free course, if you haven’t ever done this before, before you set up a pay-per-click campaign and start spending your money.

Let’s recap: You’ve read about Google maps (the 7-pack), organic search (the free, but time consuming results), on-page factors (the things you can do on your website), off-page factors (the things you can do for your website to give it authority), the links coming into your site, and the age of your website. And, finally we’ve learned about paying to get on the front page through adwords and pay-per-click.

Next Steps: You need to start cultivating your website, developing your property so that it becomes more and more relevant. If you act soon, you are going to be able to rise above those chiropractors that are currently on the front page because most of them don’t know why they are there.

You need to create and continue to create content (quality content), and you need to optimize that content with keywords. Optimizing the content means that you need to make it relevant. You need to have the right chiropractic keywords, you need to have the pertinent topics, and you need to optimize your entire website with the on-page factors you’ve just read about. Then you’ll need to get those backlinks (the more the better).

In future articles and posts I will be going into great detail on exactly how to accomplish these steps and dominate the internet in your town.

Technorati Tags: , ,

Tags: , ,

Chiropractic Marketing: Organic Search

Mar 5

Posted by admin in chiropractic marketing | No Comments

This is part two of my three part series on how to own the internet in your town!

Organic search:

Again, organic search results are the regular search results that come right underneath that 7-pack. They are also called the “free results,” but let me tell you, they’re not free! They take a heck of a lot of work, and it’s going to take more and more work in the future to stay in the organic results. There are two components to organic search, on-page factors and off-page factors.

Electronic Eye RobotLet’s talk about the on-page factors first. Google and Yahoo have these “things” that they call Bots that function somewhat robotically. A Google Bot, for example, will go and search for content on your website. It wants to find out what your website is about. It wants to see if your website is relevant enough to be featured when someone types some keyword, in the google search box. So, the Google Bot goes out and the very first thing it looks at is the content of your website.

Google has decided there are certain words that should be on the website of a chiropractor or chiropractic clinic. The Google Bot will look at the content and then at the title of your website. It will look at the address (the URL that you type into the www part of your website). It is going to look at your headings and the description of your website. It is going to look at your pages to see what’s on them, and it’s also going to “crawl” the text to find out what it’s about. In order to have the Google Bot think that your website is relevant and, therefore, worthy of being put up there in the search results, the on-page factors are one of the things it looks at. Therefore, you want to make sure you have good content on your pages. If you’re a chiropractor, you want to have good chiropractic headings and a lot of chiropractic terms. You want your web pages to match what the Google Bot and the Yahoo Bot think your website should be about. Again, these are on-page factors.

Off-page factors, on the other hand, are all about things that are not on your website, or are off your website. When we talk about off-page factors, we are talking about the “popularity” of your website, the “authority” of your website, and how your page ranks compared to other pages. Google and other search engines determine this by what sites are linking to your website. Which is to say, what links are coming into your website.

Let’s look at an example of a website that links back to another website. If you have a link on your website and it goes out to Super Supplements, you are giving Super Supplements what we call “link juice.” Super Supplements is benefiting from that link. If Super Supplements linked to your website, Super Supplements would be giving your website some “link juice.” So, the “backlinks” that are beneficial to you are the links coming into your website.

Backlinks are very important factors in Google’s decision whether or not to show you on that front page. Google will determine the quality of those links, where they are coming from, i.e., which website, and the total number of the links in order to decide how relevant your website is. Therefore, the more backlinks you have, and the more backlinks you have from “authority” websites, the better.

Another important off-page factor is domain age. The longer you have had a domain, the better. It makes your website more valid in Google’s eyes. Why would Google put up a brand new website on the first page when there’s a website that’s been around for 10 years? Google is looking at domain age as experience. Unfortunately, there’s not too much you can do about that. Either you have an older domain or you don’t. But, it is still an off-page factor that is considered.

offpagefactors

Let’s tie it together. You have your on-page factors, i.e., website title, heading, pages, text. Then you have website #1, website #2, and website #3 all linking in to your website. These are the backlinks. These are the things that are going to give your website authority in the eyes of the Google Bot. Obviously, the more links you have coming in, and the quality of those links, the more relevant you are going to seem to Google. So, we want to develop a system to start creating backlinks and start having people link to us. One of the ways we do that by having great content on our website, the kind of content that people want to link to. Other ways are a topic for another post.

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

Tags: , , , ,

How to Dominate the Internet in Your Town

Mar 3

Posted by admin in chiropractic marketing | No Comments

The first question we need to ask is why is it important to dominate Google, or any of the search engines today?

The latest statistics answer that question. There are over one billion local searches being done every day and local Internet search is going up by 50% per year. This is big news! In fact, it is now estimated that 85% of adults in the United States use the Internet when they want to learn about something and before they purchase a product or service.

In other words, there are a lot of people out there searching and this trend is going to continue.

So, how you are doing on Google? Don’t know? In order for you to find out, type in the name of your city, followed by a keyword, e.g., Miami chiropractor, and then start searching through the results to see where you show up. This is a good starting point because it lets us know where we have to go.

The number of practicing chiropractors will increase 20% over the next ten years according to the projections of The Bureau of Labor Statistics.

This means that the competition for the same patients is going to get even tougher. That’s why it is going to be important for you to start getting your head around this thing called “Internet marketing,” and get really good at it. Otherwise, you are going to be at a tremendous disadvantage. This is a huge trend, and it’s not going to be slowing down anytime soon.

googleforchiroeco

There are three ways that your website can show up on the front page of the search engines. The first is the local search or Google maps (or Yahoo maps or Yahoo local). The next is the organic search. This is the regular search results or the results that come right underneath that little 7-pack of addresses and map locations. The third way to get on the front page of Google and the other search engines is through sponsored ads or pay-per-click ads. It’s basically paying to get on that first page. It’s similar to paying to be in the phone book.

In this article I will talk about how to get your business listed in the local maps.

googlemapschiroeco

Google maps:

What it is? Where it is? And, what are its components? Let’s take a look at the Web and an example of a local map, a local search.

Here is a Google search for “Miami chiropractor.” We’ve already done the search, and here’s what we see first, the Google maps. This is the 7-pack. Each one of the pins represents one chiropractor. So, for Miami chiropractor, these seven lucky doctors are able to be on the top of the first page. Google calls these, local business listings. Notice that it gives the website, the phone number, and a thing called “reviews.” Reviews are very important to google. All other things being equal, the one with the most reviews wins. Optimizing your local business listing is essential if you want to be on the front page of google maps!

In order to optimize your “local business listing” you will need a google account.
Once you have created your account you can claim your business. If you are unfamiliar with how to do this, my company, Chiropractic Masters has put together a free 10 part video course, Ten Essentials of chiropractic internet marketing, available on our website. These videos talk about the 10 essential aspects of chiropractic internet marketing and they walk you through, step by step, how to sign up for various accounts, One of the videos teaches you how to claim your business listing.

Once you have claimed your listing there are three vital areas you will want to focus on to optimize your listing. These are the description of your business, the reviews and the web pages or citations.

The description of your business: This is where you want to put some keywords that are related to chiropractic as well as “yourcity” chiropractor as part of the description. Don’t skimp on the description! The more information you give google the better. Make it long and detailed.

Reviews: Google gathers reviews from all over the internet so start asking patients to give you reviews on various different sites including the google maps site. Some popular review sites are citysearch, yelp, dexknows, and insiderpages. The more reviews you have, the more valuable you look to Google because people are writing about you, local people are writing things about you and reviewing you. To be honest, it doesn?t even matter if you have a lot of bad reviews. Obviously, it?s not good for the business, but to Google reviews are review, and the more, the better.

Web pages: Google looks for one more thing, and that is the number of webpages that mention you. These can be pages from your own site but also pages across the internet that mention you with your address and phone number. A great way to get citations are to apply to local directories. The more you add, the more important you look to Google, and the more authority you have. It takes time for Google to ?nd them, but once it does, Google will add them to your business listing.

To summarize, you want to begin your domination of the front page by getting into and moving up in the 7- pack. To do this you need to be working on these three sections for Google maps: reviews, citations, and the detail section.

In future articles I will be covering the other two ways to get on the front page of google, organic search and pay per click advertising.

Technorati Tags: , , ,

Tags: , , ,

Getting Bloggin’: Customers Trust Transparent Experts

Feb 11

Posted by author in chiropractic marketing | No Comments

via Small Business Trends by Lisa Barone on 2/9/10

Every year Edelman releases its Trust Barometer report (Executive Summary) to measure consumer confidence in business and, if we’re taking a cue from Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, identify the biggest ‘trust agents’ helping them to make their decisions. This year the findings are getting some people wondering about the overall impact on social media.

Social media has always “worked” because people trusted the advice and recommendations of people ‘like them’ over the cold marketing they were accustomed to. They trusted that their friends and people who valued the same things were better able to help them make decisions than the absent CEO or marketing department of a company. However, thanks to the flood of noise and the emergence of large, impersonal social networks, people are losing trust in social connections and those ‘like them’. Instead, they’re leaning more towards experts, with a strong rise in the transparent CEO.

[click to enlarge.]

What these findings tell me is that the huge growth in social networks and “fake friending” have caused consumers to trust these circles less. Trusting your Facebook friends was a lot more certain when your network was made up of everyone you went to high school with. Now, we friend brands and people we just barely know in order to not appear “rude” and grow inflated friend networks. Naturally that’s going to corrupt the circle.

As a result, we’re looking more toward ‘experts’ to help us make decisions and, increasingly, toward the new CEO who has likely embraced the Social Web and become more open.

How do you take advantage of both of these?

You start blogging.

Blogging as a small business owner allows you to make yourself an expert in your field and also allows you to take advantage of the perks of being a transparent CEO. By allowing your customers to see inside your organization and what you’re about, you allow them to trust what you’re doing and become better acquainted with your brand. You bring them into your story and your every day. And that’s what customers are looking for. In the Executive Summary for the report, it’s noted that this year’s finding proved that trust and transparency are MORE important to corporate reputation than the quality of products and services. Yes. It is more important that you are open with customers than how well the product actually performs. Chew on that for a moment, will you?

If consumers are looking less at one another in order to build that trust…then it’s up to you as the small business owner to build it yourself by establishing yourself as an expert and letting people inside your organization. What better way to do that than with a blog?   If you need some blogging ideas, we can help you with that, too.

The survey does cast an interesting picture on social media, in general. If more and more users are becoming distrustful of the medium then it’s going to be interesting to see how this will affect the medium as a whole. Will review sites start to fall out of favor and become more suspect? Will people be less accepting of marketers in social media? Interesting implications all around.

From Small Business Trends

Getting Bloggin’: Customers Trust Transparent Experts

Posted via email from chiropracticmarketing101’s posterous