Chiropractic Marketing | Chiropractic Advertising | Chiropractic Ads

1. Get More Links
The number of incoming links to your website makes a big difference in where your website ranks with the big search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Links to your website are a way of measuring its authority in the industry. The big question often debated by SEO gurus is whether it’s the quality or the quantity? I would say both. Two years ago, Google appeared to put more weight on link quality (how important is the website, where your link is found). But with the new Panda update, it appears quantity is once again a big factor.

Here are three easy strategies to get good links:

A. Provide guest posts on other people’s websites, which includes a bio of you and a link back to your website.
B. Visit other blogs and leave comments, making sure to give your website link when asked in the comment box.
C. Register at popular forums, making use of the website links offered in your signature and profile features.

2. Increase the Content on Your Website.

The more pages of good content you have, the higher your rank will be. When Google comes to your website, do they see it as a massive university library for your subject, or is it more like a toddler’s bookshelf? Two factors to keep in mind with content is the number of words on a page and the total number of pages on your website. Every time you post a new article to your blog, you build a new page on your site. 500-700 word articles work best for good content. But any words on a page is better than nothing. Obviously you want the content to be readable, not just gobbledygook spit out by a software program (this will actually penalize your website.)

3. Make Sure Your Keyword is Mentioned

A keyword is simply the words or phrases people are typing in to find your business. For most of you, that will be “your town + chiropractor” or “your town + spinal decompression”. Other examples of keywords are “neuropathy treatment”, “sciatica help” and “back pain”. If you live in MyTown, USA, how often is “MyTown Chiropractor” mentioned on your website?

Now you can overdo this. If you’re keyword is mentioned too often, that’s called keyword stuffing. And it will cause your site to be penalized. So make sure your keyword occurs naturally in your articles and website.

4. Use Content Management Software

This sounds a lot more technical than it is. The most popular and common website software nowadays is called WordPress (WP). Many of my websites use this software. Originally it was designed for blogs, but not any type of website can use it.It makes pages out of our content, categorizes them and has tons of plugins to easily customize your site. WordPress is highly favored by search engines too!

The best thing about WP is that it is extremely easy to use once set up. I don’t recommend you set it up, so have someone else do that. We do this for a limited number of clients as part of my ChiroPatients Online program.

http://www.chiropatientsonline.com

5. Included Contacts Us, About, and Privacy Pages

The big search engines want to make sure you are a real business and that customers have a way of contacting you. This contact page should have a Google Places map in addition to your address and phone numbers. You should also have a page on your site that gives a bio of yourself: where you went to school, special services you offer, why you do what you do, etc. I’ve also heard that Google likes to see a privacy policy somewhere on your site, describing how you will protect your users.

Other “legal type” pages that you often see may be needed are Terms of Use, Warranties and Earnings Disclaimer. Your business may not need all of these, but ask an intellectual property attorney, as I am not qualified to tell you one way or the other on legal matters.

In 2009, a chiropractor can not rely on simply having a website to bring him new patients from the internet. It’s simply not enough anymore (and likely hasn’t been for a few years.)

Now if it was still 1999, and you were the first to get a website up in your town, then you could expect to get new patients from it over the next few years.

But by 2004-2005, just about everyone had a website in your area. This brought up a new problem, since there was now quite a bit more competition online.

So what happened?

Overpriced SEO services happened. Web designers came to you and offered to “search engine optimize” your site for around 2,000 dollars or more! For this amount, they would go in and “tweak  your code”, essentially stuffing keywords and meta tags on your site, somewhat optimizing it so you would come up high on Google and Yahoo’s free listings. (Turns out it’s not so “Free” if you have to pay someone $2,000 to do it!)

This worked for a short while, until search engines like Google figured this out and developed a program to detect all the fake “stuffing” that was going on. (Believe it or not, there are still SEO companies out there today spending 10 minutes doing this and charging chiros a ton of money.)

So now it’s 2009. What’s changed? Well, quite a lot has changed on the internet. Many industries have implemented new technologies and moved on into the whole Web 2.0 phase. Even many small businesses have realized they can get new customers online at a less expensive cost, thereby cutting ineffective offline marketing.

But where are most chiropractors?

Still stuck in 1999, simply thinking a website alone will work? Or in 2004, thinking if they have a website all they need is some quick optimization to help it out a little?

If you’ve been thinking these things too, it’s really not your fault. No one has really stood up and said…

“No, it doesn’t work like that anymore!”

Instead, website companies just update their graphics and make their site look prettier, knowing they can sell you on looks instead of effectiveness.

But no matter how good you dress it up, a website is not enough (unless you practice in a very small town and you’re the only chiropractor there.)

Let’s look at the offline world. You have a sign on your door or on the front of your building, correct? This sign is important, because it tells people where your office is and if they are driving by they know how to find you. But does this sign magically go out and tell people to come into your office? Does it go 5 miles down the road and find qualified new patients?

Of course not! You have to do other types of marketing first to get people over to your office and come in as a new patient.

Your sign is part of your offline marketing system, but it does not make up 100% of it (unless you are in a really small town). Well the same goes for your website. Your website is not going to go out there and grab qualified prospects for you. Sure, a few people may pass by your site and come in as a new patient, like a walk in would when driving by your office. But do you just want to live off of walk-in traffic?

Look, here’s how internet marketing works. You must have 3 steps running all the time.

#1. Source of qualified traffic. (Pay per click, articles, organic listings, blog, incoming links, press releases, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Some of these work better than others.)

#2. Conversion of that traffic to scheduled new patients. (This is where your website comes in. But just ‘any ole website’ won’t do. You have to have good copy and layout to make it work.)

#3. Automatic follow-up with the traffic that doesn’t call and schedule. (Here you use email autoresponders to do the work for you.)

If all you have is a website, you only have  #2 covered above. And judging by most chiropractic websites out there, they struggle with even doing #2 right.

I know, we are chiropractors. We’re not trained to know all the ins and outs of internet marketing. Nor do we have time to keep up with all this “new fangled” stuff. That is why sometimes I hear the following statement…

“Dr. Beck, I don’t understand all that internet marketing stuff out there.
But I get that you need a website. Can’t I just get by with that for now?”

My answer: sure, you can “get by”, but don’t be upset when you don’t get many new patients from your website.

And not understanding how internet marketing works is no excuse not to learn it or pay someone else to do it for you. Most patients don’t understand chiropractic when they first come in to see you. But it doesn’t take them long to appreciate the benefits of your care.

The same goes for all the components of internet marketing. You don’t have to understand it all the mechanics of it to reap the benefits of having tons of new patients come in to your office from it.

We know people are searching everyday in your area for a chiropractor, or solutions to problems that you can help (they are because we can see that with Google’s keyword tool), then why aren’t they finding your website and causing the phone to ring off the hook?

Do patients find your website when someone types in “fibromyalgia treatment” on Google? What about “neuropathy”? Sciatica?

I can make that happen with ChiroPatients Online. There are still a few spots left for October, as long as your area has not been taken already.