Chiropractic Marketing Research and Services» Google

Google Search Changes

Mike Melton — Sat, 07 May 2011 05:28:19 +0000

Google is a company that doesn’t sit still, and tonight (it least in parts of the country) Google has rolled out some new changes to it’s search results.

There are a couple of things we’re seeing:

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.
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.
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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How to use Google Places

Roderick Campbell — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 00:10:16 +0000

As a business owner, Google Places in one of the easiest marketing tools in your arsenal. It’s easy to setup and absolutely free, so you’d be crazy to ignore it. Google Places is basically a free business listing on Google where people can find more information about your services, find your location, and leave reviews for other people. Many of these listings are generated automatically but you’ll want to claim your listing and optimize its content as soon as possible.

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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The problems with duplicate content

Mike Melton — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 19:42:41 +0000

We build a lot of chiropractic websites and one problem that we see every day is doctors “borrowing” content from other websites. There are a few problems with this.

First, it’s illegal. Taking content from another site without permission is copyright infringment, and the last thing you need to do while running a busy practice is deal with a lawsuit.

Second, Google has recently made some adjustments to their search algorithm that is designed to eliminate duplicate content from its search results.

Taking content from another website is going to create red flags for Google that will lower the overall search ranking of your site, making it harder for your patients to find you online.

The solution: original content.

Writing up short pages for you site relevant to your patients will provide useful information AND get you the extra search engine boost that will help your site in the long run.

Some doctors don’t have the time to add this type of content, and we understand that. So, if you need some help with this, we have access to freelance writers that can create this content for you.

Just give us a call at (800) 295-3346, and we can help you out with this.

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Google SEO Starter Guide

Mike Melton — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 17:54:39 +0000

With our ChiroHosting sites, we take care of the basic search engine optimization for your website, but there are a lot of things that you can do to boost your search placement when you add your own content to your chiropractic website.

Google provides a fantastic, free guide to doing exactly that, and we recommend that you read this book. You can download it here.

Some of it might be more technical than most of our clients will need, but there are some great tips on adding content to your site.

Here is a quick summary of the key p0ints:

Think like a patient. What do you think your potential patients might be searching for? Create a page on your site about that exact topic.
Write easy to read text. Don’t fill the page with gigantic masses of text. Patients won’t read it, because people skim online text. Write a few short paragraphs about the topic.
Stay organized around the topic. Write about one topic so that it’s easier for the search engines to index.
Create fresh, unique content. Try to add a page or two of content to your site each week. Blogging is fantastic for this, and it takes just a few minutes. A great way to come up with topics is to look at Google News for health and you’ll find lots of news articles to write about.

Good search placement isn’t difficult, but it does take a bit of work.

We’re here to help you out with this. If you ever have any questions about how to boost your rankings, give us a call at (800) 295-3346.

Mike Melton

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Chiropractic Marketing Bonus – $100 Adwords Coupon

Roderick Campbell — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 23:49:24 +0000

We’re giving away $100 Google Adwords coupons to new clients! Chiropractors often ask us about the benefits of Pay-Per-Click advertising, so we’re giving you an opportunity to try it out for yourself by giving you $100 of advertising credit and free Adwords setup. Our goal is to provide the best chiropractic website service in the world by providing our clients with the best resources and tools on the web — without all the extra fees. Sign up for a website and we’ll setup your Adwords account, teach you how to use it, and credit your account with $100!

The trick to running a successful Adwords campaign is selecting the correct keywords, writing clear ad copy, and targeting the right locations. Our Adwords specialists can fine-tune your account and teach you the ins and outs of search engine advertising — for free!

New clients also have access to free consultations with our web marketing experts. We can help you design an effective social media strategy, perfect ad copy, and expand your visibility online! Our experts are trained in all aspects of web marketing: social media, search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, review sites, and blogging.

All of these services, and many more, are included in our $50 website service!

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Google Places Scam

Roderick Campbell — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 20:40:18 +0000

Thank you for your interested in our service.
We are pleased to help you get more clients to your business.

We guarantee to get your website rank on page 1 of Google in 3-4 weeks
for 3 keywords of your choice.

We have been providing our service for a while with 100% success rate.
The price of our service is $599 one time fee.

If you have any question, please don’t hesitate to let us know by
phone or email at jsitt*******@gmail.com

We are looking forward to get your business to the next level in 2011.

Sincerely Yours,
Joe Sitt*******
Name: Joe Sitt*******
Email: jsitt*******@gmail.com
Phone: 604 *** ****

Yet another scam to avoid. This one involves charging $600 for less than an hour of work.

Ranking on the first page of Google isn’t a mysterious science and, for most cities, it’s not that difficult. It’s as simple as writing occasional blog articles, having a well programmed website, registering a Google Places account, and encouraging your patients to leave reviews.

Using “black hat” search engine techniques, cheats, or loopholes will eventually get you banned from Google. It’s not worth the brief gratification or the short burst of traffic – do things legitimately and it’ll pay off in the long run!

Have you run into other chiropractic marketing scams? Send them our way!

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Grabbing the long tail of search

Mike Melton — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 15:08:47 +0000

There are many misconceptions about search engine optimization among chiropractic website companies. For instance, one company advertises a “gold package” where you can have “10 Search Terms” on your site for an extra fee.

This is a scam, pure and simple.

Why? Because no website is limited to any number of search terms. The number of search terms you rank well for is dependent on the content on your site. Not a silly list of keywords you pay for.

A great article on WordTracker describes the idea of “long tail search optimization, but here’s the gist:

Most chiropractors are fixated on the idea of targeting the big key phrases: “Chiropractor in Arlington Texas” or “Schererville Indiana Chiropractic.”

And those are important search terms to target, because quite a few people search for those terms.

But did you know that a larger number of people are search for more specific things, such as:

Arlington TX headache treatment
Arlington TX sciatica treatment
Schererville IN back pain treatment

These non-primary key phrase searches are the long tail of search, and it’s very easy to optimize your website for these searches.

How? The thing to keep in mind about Google is this: Google wants to provide the best search result for the searcher. The better the search result, the more likely it will be for the person to keep using Google, and the more money that Google will make.

So, if you have a page on your site about “Schererville IN carpal tunnel,” guess what? You’re going to rank highly (probably #1) for that search term. (Test it out for yourself. Go to Google and search for “Schererville IN carpal tunnel” and you’ll see one of ChiroHosting client sites pop right to the top.)

This technique is very simple. All you have to do is come up with a list of conditions you work with, and then create a little mini-page on your website for each of those exact key phrases you wish to target. Make sure you use the proper title tags and description tags, too, which helps Google index your page.

“What if I don’t have the time to write a dozen articles?” Check out Craigslist or Elance.com and find a freelance writer. They can write up a dozen articles quickly for you for a reasonable fee. (Just make sure to get some examples of their work first.)

If you have any questions about chiropractic search optimization or how to exploit the long tail effect, give us a call at (800) 295-3346 and we’ll be happy to answer your questions.

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Shortcut Marketing: The Darkside of Chiropractic Marketing

Roderick Campbell — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 23:31:36 +0000

For some reason, chiropractors seem to be bombarded with snake oil selling “marketing experts” who claim to know a mysterious secret that will boost your website to the top of Google rankings. If you’re not running for the hills, you should be. These internet outlaws prey on folks who are relatively new to the web. They make promises of first page Google ranks, huge website traffic, hordes of new patients, and just about anything else you may want.

The truth is, there aren’t any marketing shortcuts or SEO secrets. The only way to make it to the top of Google (without eventually getting banned) is to create high quality material, optimize your keywords, and create inbound links- all of which you’re capable of doing on your own and for free!

These are some common scams to beware of:

“You can cheat Google by joining our website. We’ll create fake reviews for your practice and cheat on Google Maps. This will put you on the top of Google overnight!”

Frankly, this is terrible advice. Because 1- it doesn’t work and 2- when Google finds out you’re cheating, they will stick you on the bottom of results or ban you permanently.

“We’ll optimize your website keywords by inserting keyword rich content.”

This is usually a nice way of saying, we’ll cram your website with hidden keywords and temporarily boost your website’s search rankings- at least long enough to make off with your hard earned cash. Of course, they’re long gone by the time you start getting de-ranked or banned by Google.

“We’ll automate your patient newsletters and bring in new patients by targeting people in your community.”

Always be careful with newsletter services. You need to be 100% certain the newsletter service is legitimate, legal, and conforms to the CAN SPAM laws. If the newsletter service sends emails to people without their explicit permission, you can be held liable for violating the law. Additionally, I’ve spoken to several DC’s who have paid $75-$150 per month for automated newsletter services, only to discover that newsletters were never being sent. Take time to verify that newsletters are being sent and are high quality!

“We can set-up an optimized Facebook profile for you with 500 friends for only $250.”

First off, Facebook profiles are free and incredibly easy to set-up. Second, the 500 friends you receive will be largely fake accounts, which provide no real benefit. Third, these scam artists often charge a monthly fee to maintain the profile. Getting a professional to maintain and contribute to your profile isn’t a bad idea, but you can’t do it on the cheap without getting ripped-off. A qualified Facebook specialist will typically run $200-$300/month, this kind of person creates content specially for your Facebook profile and targets only potential patients- so don’t expect to see explosive results and overnight sales increases.

Here’s my advice: if you run across a service and aren’t 100% sure if they’re legitimate, give us a call or send us an email and we’ll try to help you out. We’re full of chiropractic marketing ideas and provide professionally written articles, search engine optimization advice, how-to videos, and social media tools for free. You might as well take advantage of them!

Rod Campbell
Marketing Director
Chirohosting.com

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200 Keys to Improving Your Google Search Placement

Mike Melton — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 21:35:04 +0000

Every doctor wants their chiropractic website to have a higher placement on Google. The trick to great ranking is…well, there isn’t a trick: great placement depends on having content that’s focused on what your patients are looking for on Google.

Did you know that Google uses 200 different factors in determining how to rank a website?

Matt Cutts from Google describes some of these ranking factors and how you can use this information to optimize your website:

If you have questions about how to optimize your chiropractic website for Google search, we’re here to help. Just give us a call at (800) 295-3346 or email me at mike@chirohosting.com, and we’ll give you some useful tips that will help you boost your site ranking.

Mike Melton

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Matt Cutts explains how to succeed on Google

Mike Melton — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 18:52:47 +0000

Here’s a fantastic interview with Matt Cutts, one of Google’s search engineers. Matt explains how to boost your chiropractic website in Google rankings- which will drive new patients to your practice. These free chiropractic marketing tips are fantastic!

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