Should you be building links to your website from your Facebook and Twitter accounts? How important are these to your Google ranking?
This is a question that I’ve been asked in our ChiroPatients Online program.
Here’s the short answer, straight from Matt Cutts (of Google). Matt answered this question in response to this article:
December 14, 2010
If you’ve been putting off all the internet marketing your practice should be doing, today’s post is going to speed things along nicely. In fact, you could have everything up and running in a matter of days if you follow the advice below.
When it comes to internet marketing, there is a lot of technical stuff to know. There’s building websites, handling email, recording and producing videos, tracking statistics, and more. It can fell like you need a degree in computers just to do it all. This is where you have to make a decision. You can either do the work yourself, or pay someone to do it for you.
Most chiropractors will choose to hire someone else, and that’s a wise decision. This is what’s called “outsourcing”, finding someone else to handle the things you don’t want to.
Why Should You Outsource
There’s no rule that says you personally have to do everything in your practice. You can hire out for someone to answer the phone, clean your office, and even hire another doctor to see your patients if you wanted. It’s even easier online to hire or outsource your work.
Here are just a few reasons you might have for outsourcing your online marketing…
How much is your time worth? I’ll bet it’s worth more than the $10-35 an hour you would pay someone else to do all the internet marketing for you. By hiring someone to do it for you, you bring on a “team member” that can help you build the marketing system you’ve always dreamed of. Two chiropractic systems that do it all for you are Get New Patients and The Chiropractic Dashboard.
Where To Find A Team Member
Outside of these Chiropractic-focused programs, you may want someone you have direct control over what they create and make for you, like an employee or independent contractor type setup. Here I’ve listed my most favorite to least favorite places to find a team member for outsourcing work to.
1. Friends and family
I prefer to have team members I know and trust already, instead of going out to find someone I don’t know. If you have a child or relative that’s good with webpages and blogs, they could help you put together the steps we’ve already covered.
2. Your own staff members or patients
If your current staff has the ability to help you in developing your chiropractic internet marketing plan, you should use them. Patients can also be a great source of finding help. Some of your patients will have the technical skills to help you and do so for very little pay. Be careful of the professional “web designer” though, as they are likely to charge you thousands of dollars and change your blog/landing page to their own liking.
3. Any of the following online outsourcing companies
4. Craigslist.com
This site can be an easy way to find an outsourcer or “part time” work at home person to help you with parts of your system.
“What Can I Outsource?”
Here are just a few things you could outsource to the above companies, including the chiropractic specific ones.
Other internet marketing tasks you might consider outsourcing are things like press releases, writing articles, blog and forum commenting and other link building strategies. A chiropractic specific service that does this is ASN Solutions. A popular general link building site is Linkvana.
As you can see, there’s plenty of work for an outsourcer or virtual assistant to do. You may like delegating your work so much that you find other things around your office to outsource like compiling patient data, making a mailing list, or doing research for health talks. Who knows, you may even cut back on staff and payroll as a result.
November 17, 2010
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A few months ago I met an super-successful Australian physiotherapist that shares many of my marketing insights and values. (Physio’s in Australia have been dealing with a cash market for years…much like where our market is currently heading.)
When he told me he was giving away 214 marketing tools, a worldwide marketing with hundreds of health practitioners (including many chiropractors), and a monthly marketing CD for less than $100 a month, I thought he was joking.
Click here to see what I mean.
Paul Wright is living proof that a dream lifestyle is possible. He owns 3 successful “Get Active Physiotherapy” clinics in Australia, spends more time at home than his wife likes, never misses a school concert or sports carnival, and visits his clinics for only a few hours each week. He no longer even lives in the same city as 2 of his clinics.
He prefers spending time with his family and friends, at the beach, or at home working on teaching other health professionals how to succeed in business.
How would you like to have the last 20 years of Paul’s best posters, newsletters, articles, lectures, MP3 recordings, handouts and tools that focus on conditions like back pain, neck pain, shoulder and knee injuries and more?
You can grab all 214 of them and much more in his Profit Club Membership Program. All for a measly $67 AUD ($65 US right now) per month.
Here’s what you’ll get…
#1. Unlimited access over 200 marketing resources on the “Member Only Profit Club” website. This includes…
- 14 Medical Doctors Letters and Promotional Materials: Just cut and paste the all or part of these letters to increase referrals and relationships with local doctors.
- 24 General Business Development Items: Includes templates, clinic systems and marketing materials that will increase your clinic productivity and business results.
- 27 Business Building Audio Files: Over 20 hours of MP3s including popular recordings like The 10 Biggest Sales and Marketing Mistakes, The Get Published Interview, The Marketing Triangle and much more.
- 56 Patient and Client Newsletters: Paul and his team currently spend more than 2 days a month specifically writing these newsletters to send to patients and referrers – you can have access to them all. Simply cut and paste the text that you like to build your own newsletter.
- 30 Posters and Signs: Swipe all these high-quality, graphic design marketing materials that Paul’s Get Active has used over the years. Simply add your clinic details to these professional templates.
- 22 Protocols and Procedures: The best business protocols including front desk scripts, sales measurement tools, and cross referral protocols that will immediately increase your revenue.
- 23 Seminar Outlines, Posters and Handouts: Includes seminar handouts, outlines and posters – use these seminars to build your business NOW.
- 13 Vouchers and Other Marketing Materials: Paul’s most effective, creatively designed coupons and flyers that have brought thousands of dollars into Get Active over the years. Simply inserts your contact info and use.
- 5 Financial Tools to Track your Health Business Success: Paul has included here a few of his favorite excel spreadsheets that he uses every day to measure the success of his clinics.
Component #2. Each month you will be mailed an interview with Paul on CD, including topics like: marketing, website search engine optimization, getting more clients, increasing doctor referrals, leadership, customer service and other current issues and opportunities for health care businesses owners.
#3. Marketing Forum. You can instantly access a forum where you and other like minded health professionals can share marketing ideas and thoughts that will benefit everyone – including request signs and posters that our design team can add to the site.
How much for all this?
Only $67 (AUD) a month – and you can cancel at any time. That’s $65 US right now, but the exchange rate changes vary daily so sign up now and lock in this low price.
Join here:
http://www.netofficetoolbox.com/app/?af=1247001
Join now and grab these Three Special, Limited-Time Bonus Offers: Special Bonus #1: Your choice of one of Paul’s “Million Dollar Health Professional” DVDs. (Valued at $125 AUD)
Special Bonus #2:FREE CD Interview “The Biggest Mistakes of Health Business Owners –How They are Costing You Thousands” with Health Business Coach – Anthony Capiaghi, D.C. (Valued at $75 AUD)
Special Bonus #3:FREE CD “How Your Website Can Make Money for Your Health Business” with Web Guru – Derek Recsei (Valued at $75 AUD)
Click Here to Get Everything Listed Above
Yours for greater success,
Michael Beck, D.C.
P.S. Paul has a 30 day money back guarantee so you really risk nothing by joining now. Grab the 214 resources, monthly CD’s, marketing forum and the 3 bonuses now at:
August 24, 2010
Every chiropractor wants to get new patients from the internet. As they should. It’s easy, inexpensive (compared to other marketing) and relatively easy when you know what you’re doing.
After getting a website, the first question to ask yourself is “where does my website rank on Google?”
I speak to many chiropractors who have had a website for years, but they still do not know where they rank on Google’s “organic” search results. The term “organic” simply means natural, as opposed to paid ads.
In this picture to the left, the area marked in red is the section for paid advertising. The middle section of the page that is not marked in red is the organic search results. These results are based on Google’s complex algorithm for determining which website is most relevant to the searcher.
If you pay someone to run your website, the first thing you should measure is how many new patients you are getting from it. The second thing you should be tracking is where it ranks in the organic Google search results.
To do this, go to google.com and search for the term “chiropractor”. As long as you’re in the area you practice in, your practice should come up. You really need to be in the top 3 search results to get new patients from your website. If you’re in the top 5 results you’re doing well. Below #5 and your website is not effective at all (except for a yellow page type listing for existing patients to look up your phone number.)
If your website is not in the top 3 listing, let’s look at the top 5 reasons why?
1.) Your website is new (under 6 months old).
Google is not simply about first come, first serve. But they are a wary of new websites. I’ve worked on sites that rank highly within 2-3 months, but this took a focused effort of giving Google exactly what it wants to see. So it might take a few months for a new website to rank highly. But you should still be doing everything right that in 3-6 months it will rank. It’s easier to set things up right from day 1 than it is to go back later and fix it.
2.) You are in a very large city (1 million+). Not a suburb, which in this case is considered a small town, but your practice is physically in a city like New York, Dallas, etc.
You can still rank in the top 3 in a larger city, but everything has to be done right. The competition is obviously much bigger. Sometimes you can choose a specific neighborhood and rank well for that, like” North End Boston” or “North Dallas”. If your prospective patients are typing in these terms when they go online, you would be better off setting up your site for that neighborhood. Also, many patients are not going to drive across miles of traffic to see you, so it may be a better use of your time and money to focus on your local neighborhood.
3.) Your site is not optimized for certain keywords.
Keywords are what people type in when searching for help. The most obvious ones are chiropractor, chiropractic, etc. But there is a long list of keywords you want to rank for. Some others would be back pain, sciatica, decompression, and so on. Many chiropractors will pay thousands to Joe Computerguy to “optimize” their websites. Problem is that Joe Computerguy is optimizing the site for 1999 standards, messing with meta-tags and met-keywords. This is website basics. To rank high on Google you’ve got to play in the big leagues and optimize using the newest technology.
4.) You’re still using an old website layout
Moore’s law says that the amount of computer technology out there doubles every 24 months. But you wouldn’t know it looking at some chiropractor’s websites. Many doctors have websites for their office that look exactly like websites we all ad in the late 90′s. Technology has drastically changed with regards to websites, making it not only easier to build a webpage but much more inexpensive. Google loves a dynamic interactive website with regularly updated information. In areas where all the other chiropractors have outdated sites, you can just straight to the top of Google simply by updating yours.
5.) You don’t have enough backlinks
Google keeps a count of the number of websites linking back to yours. The site with the most backlinks, taking into account #4 above, will usually rank first on Google. To see how many websites you have linking to you, use a free checker like Backlink Watch. Run a few of your top competitors through there too. Do they have more backlinks than you do? If so you need to start building some more.
By constantly working on these, you’ll have a website at the top of Google in no time. Then you’ll be ready for some heavy duty chiropractic Adwords campaigns.
March 3, 2010
This is a final post of a 2 part series. The first part is Chiropractic Video Marketing, Part 1.
Now that we’ve looked at how to market you video for new patients, what kind of equipment do you need?
Here’s a list of the inexpensive equipment you need to make your video look like it was made in a million dollar studio.
Webcam or digital video recorder.
Almost any webcam will work, but I recommend a higher quality recorder if possible. I use the Flip Video Ultra which is extremely simple and easy to use. It’s small enough to fit in your pocket, records up to 60 minutes, and requires no software or wires to upload to your computer. It only has a few buttons, like play, stop, power, fast forward and rewind, so it’s not complicated at all. You simply flip out the USB port and plug into your computer, then the video you just recorded will upload.
The biggest problem with the Flip Video is that the sound quality isn’t that group. It would be nice if you could plug in an external mic, but the Flip Video series does not offer this. However the new Kodak Zi8 is a small HD camcorder that does have an audio input port. This one comes highly recommended so I’ll likely be upgrading soon.
Microphone for quality sound.
Bad sound can totally ruin a good video. This is why the Flip Video mentioned above has it’s drawbacks. To get good quality sound, I recommend the low cost Audio-Technica ATR35S lapel mic. This mic is normally less than $30 and can be plugged into the Kodak Zi8.
Video Screen Capture
This type of software allows you to capture what you are doing on your computer while talking into a microphone. You might choose to record a workshop on screen with power point presentations or do a staff training video on how to use your practice software. This is the software I use to make training videos for this blog and ChiroMarketing Academy. On doctor I spoke with is using it to record his new patient class and having it duplicated onto DVD’s to hand out to his patients for referral purposes.
The software I use is called Camtasia and costs about $300. I recommend you try the 30 day free trial and see if you like it. You can find it here:
http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp.
For recording with Camtasia or editing my screen capture videos, I use the Logitech USB headset which works great and is very affordable (less than $35).
Editing Camcorder Videos and Creating DVD’s
When you use the camcorders mentioned above for patient testimonials, your orientation class, etc. you want an easy software to edit those videos and/or make DVD menus/titles. While Camtasia works well for editing screen capture videos, it is terrible at handling videos imported from a Flip Video or Kodak HD. For editing and creating DVD’s the best software is Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9. This is a reasonably priced (currently less than $99) software that allows you to create DVD menu titles, edit audio and video, and much more.
It can do a lot more than you’ll likely ever need, but it’s great for non-AV people like myself. I just import the video from the camcorder, cut out what I don’t like, and export it in a format for youtube.
Using it to make DVD menus, titles, et. is really beyond the scope of this post, but if you’re interested in learning how I recommend you check out Terry Dean’s Internet Lifestyle System. In this set of DVD’s, he spends quite a bit of time on how to easily use Sony Vega for DVD production (plus there is lots of other very valuable internet marketing lessons in this set.)
October 20, 2009
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Personally I love Google Adwords, but many doctors have shared concerns about paying for every click to their website.
But we agreed you need more than just a website.
This is why my online marketing team and I have put together a system you can get started with now, without using Adwords.
http://www.chiropatientsonline.com/website.htm
Here’s what you’ll get…
-A chiropractic specific website with well written copy that brings in new patients. This includes a homepage done right, condition specific landing pages for fibromyalgia, neuropathy, decompression, & more. Plus…
-A WordPress Blog on Website with ten 500+ Word Articles, optimized with the right keywords and wordpress plugins.
-Link building campaign to get links pointing back to your site, increasing your authority on Google.
-Monthly management of your website and email list.
-3-Step Autoresponder sequence to all leads who visit your site and leave name and email.
- 1-2 new blog articles posted on your site each month, to keep you website ranked high on Google, Yahoo, and MSN.
Grab your area here…
http://www.chiropatientsonline.com/website.htm
Remember, this requires no time on your part and is a completely done for you system. There are no long term contracts required. If you aren’t getting what you want, you can cancel at any time.
You’ll get everything completely set up for you, by an actual chiropractor who’s Google Certified (which means I’ve spent quite a bit of money with Google Adwords and passed their exam).
The Internet is only going to get bigger. More and more chiropractors will be using this type of marketing, making it harder and more costly to get started – more competition with keywords, , higher bidding on Adwords, more difficulty getting local Google rankings, etc.
And the longer you wait to get started, the longer it will be before you see results. The flip side is also true: The quicker you get started, the quicker you’ll see results.
Get started with your automated marketing system now by simply clicking the button below.
September 29, 2009
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Would you like to discover the secrets of generating 60% to 80% of your new patients using the Internet? And do so on autopilot, without any time on your part?
You’ve likely hired out your internet marketing to someone who doesn’t understand both chiropractic and online traffic. It may have even cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars to design, but it can fail at doing the most important thing – getting qualified new patients into your office!
Click here to find out how to really get new patients on the internet…
Here’s why chiropractor’s are struggling to get new patients online…
Mistake #1. Not enough qualified traffic to their website.
In the early days of the internet, all you needed was a static brochure type website. This worked well because there were so few chiropractic websites online. Your competition was slim.
But today you can no longer use technology designed in 1998 to run your internet marketing plan.
You can’t just put up a static website and hope someone finds it. You must use the latest online advertising and marketing to drive traffic to your site. Qualified traffic that is hungry for a solution to their problem.
Mistake #2. They lack a conversion process to get the prospect to call and schedule an appointment.
What are potential patients supposed to do when they arrive at a website where there’s no clear purpose?
It’s crazy to think potential patients will just browse around and somehow stumble upon the action you want them to take. I see this all the time.
Most chiropractors and web designers have not taken the time to map out any kind of a process for conversions on their website. It just confuses people and they use the back button or get lost poking around without taking any kind of action.
The first thing internet searchers are looking for is not an education about chiropractic history, where you went to school, or what technique you practice. They want to know how chiropractic can help – specifically how you can help them with their problem.
How to Get New Patients from the Internet on Autopilot
You’re about to discover how any chiropractor can turn the Internet into their number one new patient generation tool…in terms anyone can understand…without a lot of technical mumbo jumbo.
The biggest mistake you can make with your practice is to simply hand off the most important piece of your marketing without at least knowing the basics…including how to get qualified local visitors to your website and convert them to paying new patients.
Find out more:
www.ChiroPatientsOnline.com
You’re About to Discover:
-Finally see how to dominate PPC Search Marketing and bring in more qualified new patients.
-The 7 most common mistakes chiropractors make with pay-per-click advertising. Correct these and drive tons of qualified patients to your website.
- Apply a proven, scientific system to generate limitless traffic to your website.
- The single most important strategy to get you at the top of Google, MSN and Yahoo’s Search listings! (I used this one to get ahead of websites that had been around for over 10 years.)
- How to use email marketing to build powerful rapport with new patients before they’ve even met you – and why having a follow up campaign is vital to getting new patients to call and schedule.
It’s not a matter of “if” you will get into internet marketing, it’s simply a matter of “when”.
More and more chiropractors are using these advanced internet marketing strategies, making it harder and more costly to get started. There’s only going to be more competition online, which makes it harder to get local SEO rankings and more competitive with pay-per-click advertising.
And the longer you wait to get started, the longer it will be before you see results. The flip side is also true: The quicker you get started, the quicker you’ll see results. Start getting more new patients on autopilot now and get ahead of your competition.
Click here to watch a free video on chiropractic internet marketing…
July 14, 2009
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Today, I wanted to give you a free training video on getting free traffic and links to your websites. This video is one of over 20 lessons contained in ChiroMarketing Academy, with new videos, audios, and articles being added every month.
January 18, 2012
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