1. Real content is more than just announcements or advertisements. That means taking time to create well-written or interesting pieces that include information people genuinely have a desire to know. People searching the web for “Sciatica relief+your city” are hoping to understand more about their condition and find ways to relieve their pain. You can explain how chiropractic and natural health can help them achieve that, all while creating a personal connection, demonstrating your expertise, and boosting your SEO. If you produce quality posts, people will naturally want to share the information with their friends and family. (This will create some back links to your site and further help your SEO).
2. Include options for people to share posts via email or social media site. The other half of tip #1 is making it easy for readers to share articles or videos with their friends by including share and “Like” buttons for Facebook, Twitter, and Google +1. Try searching the plug-in options on the Word Press admin page or ask the ChiroHosting team for more help.
3. Stay focused and brief.  Blog posts don’t have to be full-length articles. When people are surfing the web, there’s a million things pulling their minds in different directions. Getting to the point quickly and making your post easy to scan can help you capture their attention. Longer posts aren’t necessarily bad, but there’s more of a chance that people won’t make it to the end of your piece unless it’s particularly well-written, fills a specific need they have, or is captivatingly unique. If you have a long post, try breaking it up into smaller parts. You can also keep your post brief by focusing on one topic per a post, instead of trying to cover multiple topics.
4. Include key words like city and condition names. To ensure your blog posts are visible in local Google searches, sprinkle your city name and key words like condition names or “chiropractic” throughout your posts. Don’t over do it though as that will come off as fake or pushy.
5. Make use of categories.Word Press allows you to create categories for your posts. Every time you make a post, make sure to check off applicable categories. That way someone can quickly find all your posts about “Auto Injuries” within seconds of visiting your blog instead of scrolling through months of old posts to find a specific topic, which they’re unlikely to do. To create a category, just go to the “Categories” section on your Word Press admin page. To place these categories on your menu bar of your blog, go to “Appearance” and “Menus” section to click, drag, and rearrange categories into your blog menu.
6. Avoid duplicate content. If you see an article you love somewhere in the Internet universe, don’t just copy and paste it onto your blog. Copying the exact words of another web article will have dire consequences for your SEO because Google sees that as plagiarism and will penalize your website’s SEO. A better way to go about sharing the ideas of another author is to paraphrase what the author said, cite your source, and/or provide a link to the article.  If you’ve written an article or blog post that is already published somewhere else on the Internet, Google still won’t be able to tell you’re the original author and will penalize your site just the same. Instead, you could write a short paragraph describing what you wrote about in the other article, and then link to the original article.
7. Use your email newsletter to link to your blog. If you happen to send out monthly newsletters, considering linking to a specific blog post about a relevant idea.
8.  Link back to an article or video on your site. If you find an article or video you like on the ChiroHosting data base, you can always write a post about the topic and link back to the article on your site. (Even if you’re not a ChiroHosting customer, the basic idea of linking to other articles still stands). Once you’ve found the article or video you like, just insert the link into your post using the menu options on Word Press. Just ask us if you have any questions on how to do this.
9. Consider following other similar blogs on chiropractic or wellness. Comment on these posts when you honestly have something to add to the conversation, and this may gradually draw more public attention to your blog’s web presence. Don’t link to your blog on other people’s blog just for the purpose of getting back links though; there’s bloggers detest more than spam comments.

Most of all, have fun and write about what interests you! You can always check out our blogs on Chiropractic Wellness and Back Pain Natural for more ideas. Also, check out our accompanying article on 10 Chiropractic Blog Post Ideas.

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1. Weekly Wellness Tips/ Weekly Health Tips: Every week, choose a simple step patients can take to prevent pain or improve their overall health, and explain why it helps.
2. “How to __ .”People are always searching for how to do things on the Internet. Try these ideas: “How to kick your reliance on pain medication”, “How to relieve headaches naturally”, “How to explain chiropractic in an elevator.”
3. Patients Frequently Asked Questions: Highlight ONE question or topic per a post. Is there something that patients always seem to ask? How do you respond?
4. Your commentary on health news: Regularly follow health news and write your commentary from a chiropractic perspective. Check the health section of in your local newspaper and national/international news sites. Or try visiting health news sites like Dynamic Chiropractic, Medscape, Medpage Today, Health News, and Medical News Today. Don’t copy and paste sentences or paragraphs though because Google will see that as duplicate content and penalize your site’s search-ranking.
5. Summarize findings from a recent scientific study. Highlight the findings first, then include a little about the researchers’ methodology followed by your commentary. Remember to not be overly technical; this writing is for your patients who might not be aware of all the terminology. To find a scientific article, search Google Scholar or Pubmed, or make alerts for a specific topics like “back pain” on Google Scholar and Google News. Sometimes websites like Medpage Today or WebMd will include links to their original sources as well.
6. “Take home” message of the week. Describe a positive interaction or experience you had with a patient this week. Did one of your patients have a big break through moment? Or perhaps they asked you a question or said something that made you think. Why is it important for other people to know this? What can people learn from this question or experience?
7. Weekly stretch or exercise. Describe a strength-training exercise or stretch, include pictures or a video if possible. Talk about why it’s beneficial.
8. “Ask the Doctor” Emails: Include your response to a question a patient emailed you. Or you can tell readers that if they send you a question in an email, you’ll post the answer to your blog (without including their name or identifying characteristics of course).
9. Demystifying chiropractic. Choose a common or foundational chiropractic term or concept, and explain it an approachable way. Explain why patients should care.
10. Major events and holidays: Write posts inspired by major events and holidays that relate to wellness or chiropractic. When it’s around Veterans’ Day you can write about an experience you’ve had treating a veteran, and link to ChiroHosting’s video on chiropractic for veterans. Or when it’s the start of football season, talk about how athletes can prevent sports injuries and concussions. Around the holidays, write a holiday office update or make a holiday letter video.

You can always visit our blogs on Natural Back Pain Care and Chiropractic Wellness for more ideas. For more blogging tips, read our post on 9 Ways to Maximize Your Chiropractic Blog Potential.

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Original content shines in the search engines while duplicated content is like a dull rock pulling you down.

The issue of using original or duplicate content for chiropractic websites may sound like a simple one, but in this case, the easiest way is not necessarily the best. Though website writers may want to cut corners and save valuable time by using copied content from another site, it could actually hurt the site more than help it. This is because search engines are able to see the difference between copied content and original content. In scanning millions of sites in a matter of seconds, search engines will reward websites with original content by bringing them into the results first. Search engines will also penalize websites with duplicate content by placing them further down in result listings or not even listing them at all. It is therefore essential to have original content to make your chiropractic website visible.

The difference between original and duplicate content is not so straightforward either. It is true that duplicate content is anything that has been copied from somewhere else on the web, but this includes statements in whole and in part. Even if a sentence is changed slightly in one or two words, search engines will still pick up on sentence structures that are the same. If using a direct quote from an expert, it is necessary to always cite the original source on your site to avoid plagiarism accusations. Many sites may even have a copyright on their content, making copying from that site a legal issue. Avoid trouble with the law and low visibility on search engines by always using original content on chiropractic websites. Duplicate content will only hurt the site and the reputation of the practice it is representing.

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There are a couple of things we’re seeing:

1. It’s changed the look quite a bit. Personally, I think the contrast is too low on the text. The description of the site pages used to be black, now it’s a shade of gray. I guess the designers must have taken over.
2. No link to the Google cache anymore. That’s kind of a pain, because the Google cache is a handy tool for getting info from older versions of a site.
3. Visited links in the search results aren’t changing color. This makes it very difficult to see what sites you’ve visited.

Right now, we’re not seeing any major changes in search results, just the layout and look and feel.

Let us know if you’re seeing anything different and your thoughts on the changes.

Mike Melton

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The easiest way to find your listing is to go to Google Maps and type in your phone number. This will bring your listing up, if you have one, and will allow you to edit your listing’s content. Optimizing the content is important because it will allow you to control your public image and it will allow you to target specific keywords. This last part about the keywords is important because your Google Places listing with have a tangible impact on how your website ranks in organic search engine results, especially if you include keywords that relate to your industry and have a bunch of positive reviews.

Google Places listings are divided into a few different pieces: categories, description, details, photos & videos, and reviews. The easiest way to describe everything will be by breaking it into small chunks, so I’ll tackle each of these pieces separately.

Categories

When you initially setup your Google Places listing, you’ll be able to choose which categories best describe your business. Try to choose as many categories as you can and try different permutations. For instance: restaurants, bars, night clubs, bistros, fine dining, and steakhouse. All of these categories could describe a single restaurant and choosing all of the variations is much better than just choosing “restaurant”.

Description

This is one of the most important chunks of your listing and it’s where you get to describe, in your own words, what your business does and why people should choose you. The difficult part is that you can only use a certain number of words, so you’ll have to choose them carefully. I recommend choosing the most descriptive words and words with clear visual associations and I recommend avoiding abstract qualitative words like “best” or “premier”. Better word choices could include “award winning” or “distinctive” because they have more specific connotations.

Details

This is the least understood aspect of Google Places listings and the most frequently botched. Google basically allows you to enter whatever information you’d like, but in a very specific format:

Category: Information

This tightly monitored format is designed to prevent people from actively gaming the system for better search engine rankings, but with a little creativity you can come out ahead! Try to think of categories that’ll allow you to use important keywords. For instance, if you’re a chiropractor, you might want to use keywords like “chiropractic”, “acupuncture”, and “spinal decompression” or maybe specific keywords like “migraines”, “whiplash”, and “low back pain”. When you reach the Details section of your account, you’ll be faced with two empty boxes with a colon (:) in between. For example:

_____ : ______

The field on the left will appear in bold format and should be very concise, preferably one or two words. The field on the right will be in normal text and can be a bit longer, up to 15 words or so. Here’s an example of how you could target some very specific keywords:

Conditions Treated: Whiplash, Migraines, Back Pain, and Sciatica

This nifty little trick just allowed you to target 4 important keywords without doing anything shifty or looking strange. You should add at least 4-5 different fields to your Google Places account.

Photos and Videos

This is another often neglected piece of the puzzle. It’s an area where you can upload photos or videos that relate to your business and I recommend filling it to the brim with high quality content. This part of your listing is going to get a lot of attention and will determine whether or not people continue on to your website or turn back and check out your competitors. The best kind of content would be high quality photos of your business or videos of you introducing your business or talking about your services. Google provides easy step-by-step instructions for how to upload content.

Reviews

You’ll have very little control over this part of your listing and Google is notoriously difficult when it comes to removing negative reviews. My recommendation is to ignore the nasty reviews and focus on having your clients fill the listing with positive reviews instead. For the amount of time you’ll spend having one negative review removed, you can easily have 5 positive reviews added. If you end up getting a really nasty review, you can report it to Google and request that it be removed.

And there you have it! My quick introduction to how to optimize Google Places for your business. If you have questions, shoot me an email at Rod@ChiroHosting.com and I’ll be happy to provide answers!

Rod Campbell
Marketing Director
ChiroHosting

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These search “robots” see websites very differently than we do. For instance, when they look at this blog, they only see a series of letters, numbers, and symbols (the source code). Interested in seeing what they see? Depending on your browser, you should be able to view the source code by either going to “view” or by right clicking on an empty part of this page and clicking “view page source”. These letters, numbers and symbols are the only thing search engines can see. They have no ability to “see” images, videos, or most embedded documents. This means that the most important part of SEO is the text on any given website. Google reads this text and determines what the website is about, how valuable the information is, whether or not the information is original or duplicate, and how well it is written. For these reasons, it’s important that you avoid Flash based websites or creating pages that focus too heavily on images and video.

Also, start blogging! Writing short, frequent blog articles about your industry is the best way to quickly improve your rank on Google. Creating a steady stream of information is a great way to demonstrate your expertise, fill your website with organically generated keywords, and keep search engines interested in your site. In my experience, blogging is the most powerful SEO tool and the single most important tip I can give you to improve your search engine ranking.

Another, increasingly important aspect of SEO is the amount of time people spend on your website and where they come from. We’ve recently seen evidence that search engines like Google are incorporating things like Facebook into their algorithms, which means that generating buzz about your content on social media sites may have a significant impact on how your website ranks. This means you should focus on producing content that will engage people and keep their attention for longer periods of time — videos are a great way to do this! By embedding a 1-2 minute “welcome” video on your home page, you’ll keep people engaged for longer periods of time, improve your conversion rates, and boost your search engine rankings.

There you go — a few more SEO tips for your arsenal! As usual, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to give us a call or send an email!

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