Full Access: Personalize and Rise 4 Cost Effective Ways to Rank Higher on Google

Video Transcription:

Daniel: Very good. Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for joining us and welcome to the Tuesday webinar series, Chiropractic Economics Webinar for Doctors of Chiropractic. I’m Daniel Sosnoski, editor in chief of Chiropractic Economics. Today’s webinar, Personalize and Rise: Four Cost Effective Ways to Rank Higher on Google, is sponsored by Online Chiro. And as always, our program is being recorded and will be archived at Chiropractic Economics’ website, chiroeco.com/webinar for one year. Our expert is on board here today to speak with you, and when his presentation is complete, we will follow with a question and answer period.

You can submit questions throughout the presentation by clicking on the appropriate icon on the right side of your screen. We will do our very best to get to all of your questions. But if we run out of time, we will forward the remaining questions to our expert and then notify you via email when the answers are posted on our website, chiroeco.com/webinar. Our presenter today is Scott Zaleski who’s been helping doctors develop their websites and web presence for more than six years. He is currently an online marketing expert at Online Chiro which helps medical professionals develop their websites. He is here to share his expertise and help you enhance your web presence and online marketing strategies.

Scott, thank you for taking the time to participate in our webinar, for sharing your expertise with website design and online marketing, and helping our audience understand how they can implement industry best practices in their practices. Before we get started, Scott, please give us a brief background on yourself and your work with website design.

Scott: Sure thing, Dan. You know I started my first business at 25 years old and I paid thousands of dollars for a website and then crickets. No action, no rankings, nothing. So I set out to find out why and how to win the online marketing game. Now the long story short, I’ve been around the block, I’ve been on the business side, I’ve been on the marketing side and I’ve learned a ton and know how to get the results, and some of those things I’m going to share with everyone on the presentation today, so I’m really excited to be here, Dan. Thanks.

Daniel: Wonderful. Well, okay. If you’re ready, would you like to go ahead and begin the presentation?

Scott: Okay. A call came into my office a few weeks back, “I’m very concerned about my website,” the doctor said, “It’s on the third page of Google, and I know that nobody goes to the third page of Google, most people don’t even make it past the first page.” “Okay, doc,” I said, “Let’s take a look at it.” As I combed through his website, I noticed something. Actually I noticed nothing. Nothing unique that is. The site had stock model pictures on the home page, it had generic copy, and my first impression of the practice, it sounded like every other practice out there. Just a list of some of the services and a very generic wording.

I could also tell that the doctors’, his bio was written by someone who probably never even met the doctor. When I asked about his picture and what year it was taken, he admitted that it wasn’t even him. Now, many doctors, they want to rank higher in the search engines to find more patients, but a few doctors understand that a website is a direct reflection on your business. It’s the first impression that people get of your practice, as well as a marketing tool to help you reach new patients. Now here’s the exciting news. Personalizing your website which is what this webinar is all about, giving it a personal feel, giving it that great first impression, will also help you rank higher in the search engines and help your marketing.

So, why should you personalize your website? We personalize to give us the great first impression we deserve, and we personalize to rise on the search engines. I want you guys to remember that. Personalize and rise. Now, a website is very much like a needle in a hay stack. There are billions of websites out there, and most business sites are looking to connect with their clients, or in this case, with their patients. This can leave your site lost among the crowd. So personalizing it will help your needle stand out of the haystack and be found on the search engines.

Now, there are many ways to personalize your website, and we’re going to go over a few different categories today, four specific categories. The first is your homepage. The second is the content on your website. The third are the back links, and we’ll get into exactly what back links are a little bit later down the line, and the fourth are your inner pages, how they connect with each other, and how you can use those to personalize and rise. Let’s take a look at each area, and I’m going to show you guys ways to personalize your site, and I’m also going to explain how it’s going to help your rankings. By the end of this webinar, you guys are going to have some action steps that you can take home with you and make changes immediately to start getting better results.

Let’s get started. How to build a great homepage. It’s important to remember that you want to get the foundation built right. It’s extremely important. Now, I’m a sports guy, and virtually all great sports players, or even if they’re musicians or someone looking to master any skill, they have to be fanatical about the fundamentals of their craft. So while some of these suggestions that I’m going to say to you guys are, some are basic and some get on the more advanced steps, they’re all very important. And you need to have those basic steps down so it doesn’t hurt your rankings and so it doesn’t hurt your first impression. I can’t tell you how many times each day people aren’t getting the basics right. This is stopping them from building a successful website.

So, let’s get the basics right and let’s start with your homepage and the header. When we talk about the header, let’s talk about something that’s called “above the fold” of your website. This is an old newspaper reference. You see, in the past in the newspaper business, if where the newspaper was folded, if above the fold, the part that everyone could see, didn’t look good, if it didn’t have a catchy title, wasn’t attractive, well people wouldn’t buy that newspaper. So it’s the same exact thing with your website. If the first page of your website, your homepage, before scrolling down, with the main picture of the headlines, doesn’t grab peoples’ attention, well they’re going to walk by just like those people walking by the newspaper that doesn’t catch them with above the fold information. It’s the same with the website.

So we’ve created an acronym to help you remember what you need to keep above the fold on your website. Very simply it’s called SPAN. The S stands for your social media links, the P stands for the phone number, the A is for the address, and the N is for the practice name and the logo. It spans across your fold, right above the fold on your website. Let’s look at each one individually. Number one, your social media links. So many times we see social media links that are hidden at the bottom of the page or they almost seem to blend in with the page to where it’s hard to see.

You definitely want to encourage people to communicate on your social media platforms, and you need to put those links on the top of your page, above the fold where it’s easier for people to see and connect with you on social media. This is a big part of a homepage. Makes your social media links very accessible. Also this seems like a no-brainer, but the phone number, right? I can’t tell you how many times we’ve seen a phone number that’s at the bottom of a website. Most people or a lot of people don’t even make it to the bottom of the site.

So have your phone number right at the top of the site. If someone’s looking for a chiropractor, they probably have an ailment or an issue that they want to get fixed. Most likely they want that phone number, they want to be able to call you to see, can you actually fix the issue. So it does seem obvious, we do need to put the phone number on the top of the page along with your social media links. And getting a little deeper, I want you guys to start thinking about your website in terms of mobility as well. Now, 50% of all searchers are searching via their phones, so you definitely want to have, on your mobile website, the click to dial feature. Again, the phone number above the fold, and you want to have those clicks for directions, the address above the fold, which is our next point. So, guys, these homepage above the fold suggestions, are really essentials is what they are, are things that you guys need to do, not only for your desktop website, but also for your mobile site, so keep that in mind.

Mobile searchers want to just push one button to dial directly into your office, and you want them to be able to do that too. So get the phone number above the fold, make it push to dial, get the address above the fold as well, make it push for directions for your mobile device, and also your name of your practice and your logo, having the name of the practice above the fold and having the logo makes you feel like a real business. You also want the colors to match with your logo, with your website, it should all feel seamless. This builds credibility and is pleasing to the eye. So these are some of the basics for your homepage, get those right at the foundation for building a great homepage. The next thing you need are menu items, and you can see on this page here that the menu items are in green so they stand out from the blue title. Right?

These are extremely important. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen like 25 or 30 menu items all scrunched together. We don’t want that. You what to keep the menu items very simple and easy to navigate. The key here is make it easy to see, and when they hover over each item, it has drop down menus. So you want to limit the menu tabs to about 6 to 10. On this example site here, there’s actually eight different items that they have. Remember that each item can have a number of multiple drop-downs.

Again, like I said just last week, I did see a website with a ton of headers, and you want to stay away from that. Keep it clean. Having all those headers scrunched together is the equivalent to having like a dirty waiting room in your practice. Keep it clean and easy. Not too many tabs. Getting on to visual, what should your homepage look like? Well, how your website looks is extremely important.

Think of this as your first impression to new patients. Make sure that the first impression is going to be a good one. Here’s a few things that you guys should think about. Ask yourself these questions, what type of practice do you run? What type of feel do you want to portray when people come into your practice? What is special about your actual practice? What is your brand? Ask those questions and then make your site a digital visual representation of who you are in person.

When someone sees your site, they should get a feeling for who you really are when they come into your office, they should be seamless. Make sure the branding is exactly the same as who you are. Now here are some things to include in your website that make it visually appealing. Number one are images of the practice, if you have happy patients, in a healthy active lifestyle pictures.

Make sure that the pictures you want to use for your site are pictures of the real doctor, of the real office so people can feel like and see your practice before they even come in. They can see the doors, what the building looks like, this is a way to get people to kind of see your business before they even come in. Now, there’s a new trend in visual, and that is when it comes to videos. Videos are really the new trend. YouTube is quickly rising as one of the top search engines out there, and they get a ton of traffic from people just searching for videos. Now, a quick five minute video is really, really great for your website.

A video is a quick way to differentiate your practice from all the others out there. I’ve seen some great homepage videos and the key is to make them as professional as possible with high quality camera but to be short and informational. Think about a video as your recorded first impression. People process information in many different ways. To get in the psychology of it, there’s visually, auditorily, and kinesthetically oriented people. A great video will handle the visual and the auditory senses, and through those two, they will leave the patient with a great feel for who you are.

This is why video’s so powerful. It handles your eyes, your ears, and your body. You get emotions from what that video leaves you with. So learn how to use video for your practice, and definitely get one on your home page. And also from this slide, you guys can see that 60% of people prefer watching a video over reading a text, and video causes users to stay on their webpage up to seven times longer than text. The end result from this is that the visitors are likely to schedule an appointment, your bounce rate is going to go down, for those of you who don’t know, a bounce rate is when someone comes to your site and then quickly leaves.

A video is a way to get them learning about your practice, more likely to come, more likely to stay on your page. So it’s extremely important and I highly recommend you guys keep that, or if you don’t have it, add it. Homepage content. Another thing, we’re going to switch back here to homepage. We want to talk about the content on your homepage. People ask me a lot, “How much content should I have? Are people really going to read if I have 2000 words on my page?” and I’ll give you guys a couple of statistics to help shed some light on this topic.

Number one is that according to Search Metrics 2015, websites that are on the first page of Google, this is across all industries, have an average of 1015 words on their homepage. I’ve been working with chiropractors for some time, and though the total average for Google was 1015 words, for chiropractors it’s actually a little bit less. The average is between 500 words to 700 words for a chiropractic website that’s on the first page of Google. What does that tell us? That tells us that if your site isn’t ranking well and you only have 200 words on the homepage, well it’s time to add some copy. Here, I’m going to give you guys some great ideas on what to write on your homepage, what type of copy to add. And if you want to know how many words that’s on your site, please don’t count them. Just give us a call, we have a program that can actually do that for you and let you know where you’re at for the word count.

Also, as you learn about these next few items, know that I’m intentionally leaving something out that’s very, very important. It’s one important piece of the puzzle. Don’t worry, I’m going to get to that in the next section. But I am leaving something out. So if you guys are like, “Hey, he’s missing something,” trust me, I’m going to cover it, just not right in this section. For now let’s take it the surface level. Number one, when you’re talking about homepage content, we want a brief welcome to your practice. This is where you introduce yourself to the patient. This is some basic information about the practice, the chiropractors, and the staff.

Let the people know about how you’ll serve them. Focus on what the patient will get by coming to see you, put yourself in their shoes. The first paragraph is what you want to do, is put yourself in their shoes. What are they going to get from coming into your office? Also for those of you who want, I have created like a homepage checklist where you can go through and answer a set of questions, which is going to cover all of these. If you want that, you can send me an email, and I’ll give that out to everyone for free. I’ll provide my email at the end of this webinar.

Number two, the mission statement. It doesn’t have to be long, actually shorter, and briefer, and to the point is best. It should be short and have it include the practice principles, who you guys are, what the doctor’s mission is for becoming a chiropractor. And a few well-chosen sentences can give the patient a feel for how the doctor thinks and how he helps patients in the community. Another thing you want to add for content is special services that they might offer. Make sure that you talk about the areas you serve. I live in Geneva, my next door towns are Batavia and St. Charles right here outside of Chicago.

I would put those towns, “Proudly serving Geneva, St. Charles, Batavia,” into my homepage content. There’s another reason why you should do that which we’ll get to in the next section as well. Then you want a few sentences on each of the services that you provide, with a couple of internal links which would take you to get more information if you want to learn more about that particular ailment or service. Also a sub-menu of pages, where they can redirect to the patients too. Such as a “Contact Us” page or a “Services” page, those are also great to have on your homepage as well.

For content on your homepage, here are some questions that you should be answering. Guys, make sure you answer these. Like I said, I have a whole document designed to walk you through step-by-step what questions to ask and answer on your homepage. That will get you exactly where you want be with those 4 to 500 words for rural areas, and closer to 700 words for the big cities. I can email that to anyone who wants it at the end of the presentation. But for now, answer these questions and make sure that at least you have these answered.

Number one, who are you, what’s the practice name, the doctor’s name, the practice name, general information about the practice. Who do you serve? When it comes down to who do you serve, what’s your ideal patient look like? What locations are you in? Many people leave this out, they don’t talk about the locations where they’re at which actually can hurt their SEO, I’ll get into that in a minute as well. If you have XYZ problem, whether it’s back pain, or neck pain, or fibromyalgia, we are here to help. Definitely, answer those questions of what services that you guys provide and who you can help.

We also want to state why your practice is unique. In most towns, there’s a couple chiropractors. There’s some competition. Why should patients come into your practice versus the one down the street? Of course, how to find out more by calling this number or emailing us here. You want to have all that information on your homepage. Now there’s also another section you want to have on your home page, which is called the “call to action.” First off, what’s a call to action? Well, let’s think of a call to action as an invitation to connect further with you. It’s just an invitation, people like getting invited. So let’s invite them. It should prompt the viewer to take some type of action, like giving us a call, or clicking on a link, or sending an email.

Again, call to action is just an invitation to connect or visit the practice. Make it unique, make it something that stands out. Make it visible, it should be prominent on your homepage page. And also offer a solution to the patients. For example, one of the ones that I recommend one of my chiropractors to use, she’s outside of Richmond, Virginia, is, “Free consultation and 15 minute spinal health check.” You could also use, “Click here to make adjustments for a better future.” Or, “Pain free chiropractic services.” Or, “Call now to find the hidden cause of your problems.” These are all telling people to call, to click, to send us an email.

Many websites are missing this, and let’s get it right so that you can invite people to come in. The next thing I want to talk about for your homepage and for your website are reviews and testimonials. Guys, this is continuing. This is a hot topic for online marketing right now. Testimonials and reviews really build your credibility online. They are positive things that your patients are saying about you, that you can put not only on your website but also many other sites. Currently, with more people finding solutions online, the customer review has become much more important. Now I have a question. Why do some people or a lot of doctors only keep these reviews on a special tab? If you have reviews, guys, use them on all of your web pages and use them strategically.

Here are some pointers for how to get reviews and how to use them. Number one, to get reviews, guys, there’s three different ways I advocate getting reviews. The first way is when you hear someone say something positive… Excuse me, I’ve got a little cold here, guys. Please bear with me. But when you hear someone saying something positive feedback such as, “Hey, Dr. Pollex [SP], thanks, you really helped decrease my pain levels.” You can just say, “Oh, great, I really appreciate it. Do you mind if I quote you on that?” when they say, “Yeah, sure. What do you mean by that?” You can say, “Well, I’m getting some reviews for my new website. I’d love to just shoot you an email with what you said and you can reply back with approved.” What this does is it takes the work out of giving a review. Then someone can reply to you and you can use that review on your website.

Another way is I have a doctor who actually has a video camera and a tripod. It is not a video camera, it’s an iPhone. He’s got a little tripod that you can get at Target set up in his office, and when people say positive things about him, he asks them for a review and records it right there and puts that on his website. Guys, this is so powerful. This doctor has actually attracted people to come into the practice from 30 miles away, based on his reviews and his website. The third way to get reviews is to have a widget on your website that are getting you reviews. It prompts people to ask for reviews. There’s a lot of services that do this, our company has one, it’s called Review Guard 360.

I could tell you guys more about it a little bit later. But it goes directly on your site, and it’s designed to prompt people to give reviews, and also sends out emails to them where they can send a review right via email, to all your patients after they come into see you. So get reviews, get testimonials. Use them and don’t just keep them on a reviews page. Take some short powerful reviews, short questions such as like I mentioned before. One example is, “Dr. Pollex’ care has decreased my pain levels significantly,” by Janice Elliot. That’s a great review to put right on your homepage. So while you have all your reviews on your website, you cherry pick some of the best short ones and you put them on your website.

Now your website becomes, you know, kind of like a cheering section for the doctor, and each page has some positive statements from the patients about the doctor. Reviews, guys, do not underestimate them. Now, a lot of people also ask me how content can affect search engine optimization. Remember when I said we were going to get deeper and a more important piece of the puzzle was missing? Well, you’re about to get that piece now. And it is keywords. Now keywords, let me just give you guys a quick definition of keywords. Because a lot of people think that they have keywords, but they really don’t on their site. There’s three places you can have keywords, but first the definition. When I’m talking about keywords, I’m talking about phrases and words that you want to be found for. Think of keywords as your GPS for Google. By having back pain in your keyword and your coding, it signals Google what you want to be found for.

So when someone searches for back pain and you have back pain keywords on your website, you’re more likely to be found, you’re also more likely to rank higher in the search engines. So the first thing is you guys definitely want to add keywords into the coding of your website. My previous webinar shows how to get keywords in the coding, how to check. If you want that information, let me know, and we can help you out with that as well. But just know that these are called meta keywords, and they go into the coding behind your site, and there’s a very simple way for you to check to see if you have those. But you should ask your programmer, ask your web developer if you have them. And then also check with me and I can show you if you actually do have them.

The second place to put your keywords besides your coding and the meta keywords, which is what you can actually do yourself, is putting keywords into the content. So if you’re looking or you want to be found for back pain, on that homepage you should talk about how you help people with back pain, and those words should be repeated. Also, the keywords should match in your titles. These three places are really important, the meta keywords behind your site, keywords in the content, and also keywords in the title. When you have all three of those, it’s like ringing a dinner bell. Ding, ding, ding. It’s saying to Google, you really want to be found for back pain and then with whatever city that you’re being found in. For example I live in Geneva, Illinois. I would have Geneva in the meta keyword section of my website and the coding, and then I would be talking about how Dr. Scott has proudly been serving Geneva, Batavia, St. Charles for the last 15 years.

Now you see it’s in the coding, right? And in my titles, I would definitely have those services that I want to be found for as well in those titles. So match those up for the keywords. Also, just another pointer. Your content should be talking about the keywords in your coding, the meta keywords. So everything kind of starts with your meta keywords, these are the words you want to be found for. Then you’re putting those words into your coding, and then you’re also taking and writing about those on your homepage. It’s what people are searching for, it’s very congruent, and that’s what builds you a website that helps you ranking higher in the search engines.

Now let’s talk a little bit more about copy for the website. By copy I just mean words on your homepage or words throughout your site. The copy, the quality is very important, and you want pages that are well written and have substantial quality content. Quality means relevance, and you don’t want to get too scientific with it, guys. Keep it at an eighth grade reading level, and you want it to be keyword rich. The word count, remember, the average first page of Google has about 1,015 words across the Internet, in chiropractic realm we want to be 500 to 700 words. Also keep it unique and relevant to your practice and update your content. Update it by adding hot topics or adding something to your site every month, it really helps with your rankings.

Here are some suggestions for great content. Number one, use a blog. Companies that blog get 55% more traffic and 70% more leads. Number two, update your site each month. Actually most people don’t know this, but by updating your site and making changes it shows Google that your site is more relevant and it will increase your rankings. Number three, add what your doctor thinks about certain topics. So add the doctor’s opinion about the topics, the content on the website. Use it as his voice for things that you tell most of your new patients, have some of that content definitely on your website. And also find a flexible company to work with. So I know that some companies charge you for changing your content and making updates.

Find a company that’s going to allow you to change your content as much as you want so you’re not penalized for it, because changing your content and your copy will actually help you rank higher in the search engines. Now we’re getting into some of the last parts here. Number one is backlinks on your website and also internal pages and internal links. Guys, know that your local directories, which are places like Angie’s List, Yelp, Yahoo, Bing, that link back to your website, you want to also have personalized content on your backlinks. So if you guys have a Facebook link, a Twitter link, an Angie’s List, a Zocdoc, a Merchant Circle, all of these local directories, not only do they help you being found on the Internet, but they also, you want to have great content in there that links back to your website.

That content connects with your website along with that backlink and helps you rank higher on the search engines. The exact same is true with your social media page, your Facebooks and your Twitters. Have great posts that have the same keywords that are in your coding, that are on your content, that are also in your titles, on your social media page and your local directories. Again, the blog is one of the best solutions to help you educate your patients on current techniques. It also gives you great keyword rich content for your website.

Get a blog, like I said before. Companies that blog get 55% more web traffic and 70% more leads. Keep a blog, keep it current. Now with internal pages, and images, and other content, your menu items are pretty important. You definitely want to have a home page, an About Us page, New Patients, PDF forms that they can fill out. A list of your services also helps with your keywords, and also Testimonial page, but we don’t want to limit our testimonials to one page. Again, promotions and specials are a good page to have or you can have those on your homepage as well and a Contact Us page. So when it comes down to the inner pages linking together, you want to have each page linking to the next one. Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words. So make sure beside the video, you guys also have a bunch of pictures on the site.

So, recap real quick on the inner pages, have an About Us page, an approach page, Our Practice page, Meet the Doctors page, Meet the Staff, Payment Options, a virtual tour, pictures. A virtual tour of pictures is really important and also a Testimonial tab can be included on your website. So, the ABC’s of inner pages. A, always personalize. B, be easy to follow, easy to flow. C, choose a variety of pictures, and videos, and copy. Here’s the conclusion, guys. How do all these aspects work together to make your website unique, personalized and how does it help your search rankings? Here’s how it comes together.

Excuse me, please bear with me, I do have a little cold today. Number one, personalize your website, adding these content. All of these elements work together to make your website unique and personalized, and your attention to detail is really going to help your rankings. The content, that personalization, the pictures, all of these things are factors for helping you rank higher in search engines. Remember, guys, Google’s goal is to serve the end-user, the searcher. By personalizing your site, you help the end user understand who you are and you also educate them on relevant topics and keywords that are keyword rich, to help solve their problems. Excuse me.

When Google sees this, it’s going to help your page rank higher. So when you find out about your keywords that you want and you implement that into your website and you personalize it, it’s going to set your site apart, and it’s really going to be a win-win for Google, a win-win for you guys because you are finding the patients you’re looking for, and a win-win for your patients. So at this point, Dan is going to take some questions, I apologize for a little bit with my voice here. I do have a little bit of a cold, but I can take some questions starting at this point. Dan?

Daniel: Hey, thank you, Scott. This has been so informative up to now, and whenever you’re giving a presentation, that’s when you get a frog in your throat. I’ve been there many times. Okay, and yeah, everything that you had to say about Google is congruent with everything that we know at Chiro Eco as well. Google wants quality, and if you can serve it up, they will usually treat you very well. We were just looking at a few questions that have come in, and I was going to go ahead and ask those to you now.

Scott: Okay.

Dan: All right. When it comes to putting pictures on your homepage, you mentioned that some people use stock pictures. Do you think there’s any advantage to using stock pictures or should you be using real pictures of the practice?

Scott: Okay. When you’re getting started, the stock pictures are something that can kind of hold the place for you if you will. There’s nothing, you’re not going to be penalized for stock pictures, but think of it like a place holder. When you do have a real picture of the practice, of the doctor, of the staff, you want to keep that as up to date as possible. So while stock pictures aren’t going to hurt you, you definitely want to add real pictures on there to make your site as unique as possible.

Dan: Okay, very good. What about talking up your own academic credentials? Your accolades, how many years you’ve been in practice. Your specific certifications, diplomates. Anything of that nature do you think is good to put on the homepage?

Scott: Oh, it definitely is, so the best thing… Instead of like talking about it, definitely put the logos of the associations that you’re on. So we have a partnership with the ACA. If you’re a member with the ACA, you definitely want to put that logo on your website, on your homepage. If you have a Reader’s Choice award, you want to have those accolades on your homepage as well. They definitely go pretty far to help you build credibility, and it’s great to have, definitely the doctor’s background, where he went to school, how long he’s been practicing. I advocated to put on like, “Proudly serving this area for 20 years.” All of those things definitely can help you guys out.

Dan: Very good. I’ve got one more for you too. If a doctor wants a new website, if they’re like you know either go back from scratch, or if they’re launching a new practice, how long do you think you should plan on building out a new website? I know those can take quite a while.

Scott: How long to plan for a site? Well, you know, it’s funny you say that, Dan, because actually nowadays it can be pretty seamless. Don’t think of it as a one and done right? So when we’re building new websites, we can get the new sites up and running in as quickly as about a week’s time. But you always want to be adding a little bit to it. So think of it like a house, if you build a house and then you don’t do anything to it, the grass overgrows, here in Chicago, the leaves get in the gutters. You want to keep updating your site so it’s building overtime, and that’s really the way to do it. A lot of people think of a website as a one and done. Think of it more like you can get a good start in about a week, and then you can be adding to it with the blogs and with the content. Then of course adding with your keywords and your call to action as well.

Dan: Okay. Oh, and another doctor wants to know, he says, “How do I get my business on my local map and in the local business listings?” Because we’ve all seen those. When you Google something, there will be that little side map that pops up, and he wants to know how to get… How do you get your practice on there?

Scott: Well, you definitely want to subscribe to what’s considered local directories. It’s a service that you can pay for, and it depends on which company you’re with. We actually put you on to the Google Maps, and we have our codings basically opt into that on Google. It’s not something that I actually personally do, our whole team does that for us. But getting on Google Maps, you want to make sure that your address is correct, you want to make sure that you have linked with them, and really it’s something that I would hire a company to do for you. I’ve seen people try to do it themselves and they get it wrong, and then the map doesn’t have the pin on it. Find a company that does local directory services, and usually you can get it for not much more than 20 or 30 bucks a month. You can just subscribe to those map listings as well as a whole bunch of other places, but that’s a good question. That one, I don’t recommend you do it on your own, I recommend you get a company to do it for you.

Dan: Got you. Another one, it wasn’t exactly a question. But the viewer asks, he says, “I’m still confused on backlinks.” Maybe just one more word of clarification on what you mean when you say backlink.

Scott: Sure thing. So I do a whole webinar series on backlinks, but I’ll give you the simple definition. A backlink is really another website that has a link that someone can click on, that leads back to your website. So if you have a Facebook page, you would want your website link to be on your Facebook page, and when they click on it, it goes directly to your website. So backlinks are… If you think of your website as a city, think of backlinks as how many roads are coming into your city from other places. So you want to have about 20-30 backlinks, and I actually have a free report for everyone who wants to see what their backlinks are that I can give you guys at the end of this presentation. We can do a diagnostic to see exactly how many backlinks you have on your website.

Dan: Okay, very good. Yeah, I think Google likes to see if there’s a lot of traffic heading in your direction, that probably means you’re a significant site. Okay, we have one minute left. You know, the word keywords comes up so much when there’s discussions of search engine optimization. But I know that there have been some tweaks to the Google algorithm and so they’re being a little sensitive. Any tips on, you know, should you be putting the word chiropractic, pain, traction, anything of that nature? How many times should those be on a webpage?

Scott: Okay. That’s a great question and because it is constantly changing, you don’t want to try manipulate the system if you will. There’s a place for meta keywords in your coding, you don’t want to write, “Chiropractor, chiropractor, chiropractor,” all over there. Then you can get in trouble and actually have what we call keyword stuffing. Right?

Daniel: Right.

Scott: So in the meta keywords, you want to put the top seven to eight services that you’re looking for, and then in the top three to four locations, or you can say towns, your surrounding towns that you want to be found in. So that keeps your meta keywords to anywhere from 10 to maybe 15 at the high end, right?

Daniel: Yeah.

Scott: Now I’ll tell you, you can go out and try to figure out Google’s algorithm. But from working with chiropractors, I noticed that the ones who were on the first page, they have words like chiropractic and their town name repeated somewhere between 12 to 15 times on their website. That may sound like a lot, but think about it. If you can have your address in two or three places, at the top and then the address at the bottom, there is your location already twice.

Then if you have “Proudly serving XYZ location,” Geneva, Batavia, and St. Charles, now you have the location three times. So if you have about 700 words in a metropolitan area, and you have your location on there about 14 times, it’s not going to be redundant. It will be enough to signal people where you are and signal Google that you need to be on the first page for that location, along with chiropractors, chiropractic, back pain. Now some of the minor keywords you’d want to probably have repeated four times on your site, three, four, five times on your site depending on how much copy you have.

Dan: Okay. Those are all good rules of thumb and certainly clear enough to follow. That brings us to the end of our Q&A session. Scott, I understand you have a special offer for those attending today’s webinar.

Scott: Yeah. I do have a special offer for you guys, and it’s actually two or three offers. One is that one I mentioned during the presentation. If you guys want to see how many backlinks you have, if you want to see how many keywords you have and get a whole diagnostic, we can give you a 15 minute…and I’ll do it with you, one-on-one personalized website review, and I can also send you a report with all that information. This is all totally free to you. It’s educational, designed to help you guys rank higher in the search engines and take control of your web presence. If you want that report, you can give me a call, the number is right at the bottom, 888-932-5560, and press two and that will get you to me.

Or you can send me an email, and my email is scott, S-C-O-T-T, @onlinepracticemail.com. I can say that again for you guys at the end. But if you want to find out your keywords, give a call and ask for me, and I’ll definitely be able to walk you through and give you a free report. The other thing is we do those local directories to help you get on the map listings, we do the keywords to help you rank higher on search engines. We do take care of your social media. We can build you a fantastic video and give you the widget to put on your website to help you get reviews. If you’re looking for any of that stuff and a great website and a company that’s been around for 13 years, we will build you a website and give it to you all for free for two months.

You won’t have any contracts, there’s no setup fees. It’s really the highest value for the lowest risk in online marketing for chiropractors today. You get any one of our websites, anyone of our services, or all of them for two months free. There’s no contracts, there’s no gimmicks. Test us out, let us show you what we can do. Let us earn your business overtime. If you don’t like us after 30 or 45 days, you can totally quit, and it will be zero dollars out of your pocket. That with no contract and no set-up, it’s a pretty awesome deal for people who are on the webinar. All you got to do is give us a call at 888-932-5560 and press two. Or you can email me at scott@onlinepracticemail.com, and tell me that you’re looking for a free website, or the free review, or the free report. We’re really bending over backwards to help serve you guys here. So that’s the offer, Dan.

Dan: All right, well, okay. Thank you, Scott. At this time we would like to thank our sponsor, Online Chiro and Scott Zaleski, for today’s webinar, and thank you, everyone, for attending. Remember, this webinar, including our speaker’s PowerPoint presentation, has been recorded. If we did not get to your question during the webinar, the questions will be posed to our expert and the answers posted shortly at chiroeco.com/webinar. We will alert you when the webinar is available online. Thank you again, everyone, for attending, and we look forward to seeing you next time. Have a great day. Bye.