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Just a funny advertisement that I thought our cosmetic dentistry clients would relate to.

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www.nataliedee.com

I admit that, as a communications major, I have a vested interest and tainted perspective about the role of communication in business. If anything, I prefer to err on the side of too much communication with my clients. So what happens when a communication junkie, like myself, can’t get in touch with a client?

I email.
I email again.
I try calling and, when I get voicemail, I email again.
I call again, leave a voicemail and email.
I start feeling like an over-clingy girlfriend.

And then I go talk to Bill, our Sales manager.

The advice he gave me was in my opinion, priceless, so I'm sharing it with you.

Bill told me to stop giving information away to clients.

Before your jaw hits your keyboard, let me explain. He said that every day we give away all our best work by sending it to our clients with a nice email attached. "Here you go. Please enjoy the fruits of my toil. Tell me what you think at your convenience." What's wrong with that? The client is then at their leisure to respond with their opinion whenever they find convenient, which all too often is not at all.

The strategy Bill described to me is much like the proverbial donkey with the carrot in front of his face. As long as what he wants is just out of reach, he'll have to go the direction his rider wants. So by waiting until you have a client on the phone before sending that coveted information, proposal, comp, new content...you finally get the client going in the direction you want, before he has even had a bite of that carrot.

Now, before you start thinking I view my clients as barnyard animals, let's look at it from the perspective of a potential patient or client.

The potential client calls and requests information from your practice. Rather than taking down information, and then sending an email with all the information he or she could want, you send it while you are on the phone together, going over the information at that moment. Show the potential client how to read your material. Explain why you offer the services you offer. Answer any questions he or she may have on the spot. Then ask when you can schedule an appointment to talk in person.

The potential customer thinks, "Wow...they didn't just shuffle me off the line as quickly as possible. The other practice I called just took my name and address and hung up on me with hardly a 'thank you.' If this is the quality of service they give someone who just randomly calls, their clients must be really pampered."

At first, this may seem off-putting to someone who is "just asking for information." But the extra time up front will help the process go more smoothly down the road, and by the end of the call you will have a good idea of whether the person is a serious shopper or just killing time during a dull work day. And you will probably have an appointment to show for it.

As a wise man once said, "It is not enough to give the customer excellent service. You must subtly make him aware of the great service he is getting."


* If you are interested in finding out how to implement this strategy at your practice, or finding out other ways you can turn leads into clients, contact your Account Manager.

Everyone in the world of search engine optimization is aware of the importance of Inbound Quality Links to on-site optimization but what about Outbound Links?

Outbound links include all hyperlinks on a webpage that point to a page on another website. While it's still not clear exactly how search engines deal with external links we believe that search engines assign a higher value to web pages that include links to authoritative websites. This makes sense because it indicates that you are more interested in giving high quality information to your readers rather than trying to hoard them and keep the readers exclusively on your website. To ensure that your site benefits from external linking it is important to follow certain guidelines.

• Point your visitors to useful information; this makes your site more valuable to the user. In fact, search engines often use these links to determine the topic of your website and to verify how relevant the information on your site is to that topic. For example if you are a Cosmetic dentist and your site links to websites like http://www.lviglobal.com/ and http://www.aacd.com/ as well as other important Dental and Dentistry - related websites, it will be clear to the search engines that you are a part of the Dental industry and that your site has some legitimacy.

• Link to quality and authoritative websites. Quality outbound links from your site can improve your search rank because these links indicate that your site is an "authority" on your particular topic.

• Some examples of beneficial outbound links are:
--Links to .Edu sites like Colleges and Universities that you have attended (Can be linked from the About or Bio pages on the site)

--Links to Non - Profit Organizations, Bar associations, Medical associations and so on. (Can be linked from bio pages or about pages)

--Links to authoritative .Gov sites like the FDA, CDC, NHTSA, and NTSB –(Can be linked from practice area and procedure pages)

--Links to Informative sites like Wikipedia, Medlineplus, Webmd, Abanet, GLIN - (Can be linked from specific medical or legal terms within the body of the content)

--Links to related research articles on other sites.

• Outbound Links To be avoided:
Avoid linking to unrelated sites and industries, as this will make it difficult
for search engines to determine exactly what area or theme your website
belongs to and may potentially hurt your ranking.
Avoid linking to competitor’s sites or Spammy sites.
Avoid Linking to sites that have a low PageRank.

In the end, the most important factor while working out a External Linking Strategy is your user. Place external links in a way that benefits your users by providing further information to them as they browse your site.

The best place for links is within the context of the page so that the flow of information is natural. If the linked content is significant enough, you may consider writing an article or creating a new page that covers that type of information. Update information regularly to maximize your search engine results as well as the overall user experience.

By following the guidelines above, you can gain the trust of both the search engines and the users and you can succeed in getting your site to be seen as an authoritative, quality site.

The Mini Many-Contact Form

We all know what a call to action is (if you don’t, ask your Account Manager!), but I was surprised to see how many clients, despite having great designs, messages, content, and calls to action, lacked that one little piece to bring it all together: a Mini-Contact form on the home page of their site.

Would you send out a wedding invitation and not include the RSVP information?

You might have a contact form under the “Contact Us” page of the site, but think about this: The average visitor may never click on any page links inside your site, particularly if we’re doing our job and getting search engines to post your relevant pages on page one.

It seems that most web marketing site designers have learned their lesson and begun including a full contact form. But what about the potential clients who don't want to or can't take the time to fill out an entire contact form?

Some reasons a visitor may not fill out a full contact form:

- It takes "too much time."
- It asks for information the visitor may not want to give.
- The visitor just wants more information, but may not have a specific question.
- The visitor may have a specific question and wants it answered quickly, instead of taking the time to fill out all the information in a full form.
- The visitor never clicks on the link to the full contact form.
- The visitor isn’t internet-savvy and doesn’t realize they can look for a form deeper in your site through which to contact you.
- The visitor is browsing your site at work and doesn’t want to be too obvious about filling out online forms. (Hey, it’s possible!)

Reasons to have a Mini-Contact form:

- It provides your visitors with a way to contact you—on your home page, and every page.
- It only takes a moment to fill in 3-4 fields (boxes).
- It may be what your visitor is looking for to begin with—how convenient to have it on the first page!
- Mini-Contact forms can appear much less intimidating and invasive than full contact forms to a visitor who wants to reveal as little information as possible about him or herself.
- Every lead is a potential client.

Does it seem like a waste to have two separate contact forms on a site? Believe me, as a minimalist, I have thought about this! But the real question is: If a potential client is looking at both your site and your competitor’s homepages and your competitor has a contact form on their homepage, but you don’t, who will get the client?

One of my clients forwarded me an interesting email today. It was from a company offering to create a “Google Sitemap file” for his site for just $125. They also offered an MSN, Yahoo, and General file, each for the low, low cost of $125. That’s a whopping four files for just $500. What a bargain!

Or not.

What is a “Sitemap file?” It is basically an .html file describing the contents of a website which, converted to an .xml file, offers easy skimming for search engine spiders. Is this something your website should have? Absolutely. In fact, it probably already does.

In my client's case, as soon as his website went live Page 1 Solutions created a sitemap file which we submitted to both Google and Yahoo, and that the other search engines are free to spider at their own convenience. (This is something we include for every client.)

Do the other search engines spider those files? Let’s do an experiment. Go to www.msn.com and search for “Page 1 Solutions.” It probably isn’t a big surprise that Page 1’s homepage shows up at the top of the list. When I scroll down, though, I find four more pages that belong to Page 1, which means the search engine spiders have found them and recognize that they pertain to my search phrase. All without an expensive additional sitemap file or four. (Dare I mention that there are sitemap-generating programs which can be downloaded for free...?)

The moral of the story is, if you receive an advertisement for something pertaining to your website – particularly if the company wants to charge you big bucks – call or email your Account Manager and ask if it is something we recommend or provide. If we don’t offer it, we can let you know if we think it would be worth pursuing. You might find that your website has already been optimized in that respect.

Labels: Search Engine Optimization