Jonathan's Web Marketing Blog

If people call your office and get a busy signal, you have to know that it sends a bad message. Don't kid yourself, thinking that they will call back. The vast majority of people won't. They'll just move along to the next listing, be it in a phone book or search engine. And if you're saying to yourself, "Well, if they're not going to call back, then I didn't want to talk to them anyway," here's a little tough love for you: Anyone who is investing in marketing of any kind can't afford to turn down phone calls.

PLEASE don't send the message that you are too busy for their business. Be sure to have several phone lines before you invest money in marketing your practice. Build new phone lines into your marketing budget if they aren't present in other portions of your budget.

A busy signal = An unanswered email = Lost opportunity

The same goes for putting people on hold for extended periods of time, and for practices that are too busy to answer the phone and let calls go to voicemail. You could be investing hundreds of dollars just to get that phone call. Do your part to get a return on that investment by taking care of the leads that your marketing will generate.

You may have heard of Content Management System (CMS) websites. Some are heralding this technology as the latest and greatest thing to hit the web. Another catch phrase that is popular in web marketing is Web 2.0. So, with CMS, Web 2.0, SEO, SEP, PPC, and all of this whirling about, I worry that many doctors and lawyers who are out there in search of the answer to their web marketing woes will be sold a catch phrase instead of a long term solution, based on their needs, that will provide a good return on investment. So what is the answer?

You need to do a little research. Reading this blog entry is a good start.

What is a CMS or Content Management System?

These are handy systems that organize information and dynamically build websites using back-end programming. The allure is that a person with little or no website design knowledge can log into a control panel-type interface and manage the website; adding pages and modifying content just as they would in Microsoft Word or some other editing program.
Some companies even promise that you can do your own SEO work through their WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors. Uh huh. That's why there is an entire SEO industry: because it's so simple, you can do it at the click of a button (pardon the sarcasm).

These things are cool, but in general, they don't work out as a good web design solution for the average practice. The main reason is that the programmers who create these content management systems don't typically understand the search engines, and they don't program them with SEO (search engine optimization) in mind. This creates a variety problems, but they typically revolve around the template system that the program uses. Search engine optimization requires the ability to optimize each page of the website. You can't just optimize the CMS system and have it spit our carbon copies of that once-over optimization. That makes SEO an uphill battle, and the sites rarely make it off the starting block.

Having said that, yes, CMS websites can do well on the search engines if they are constructed properly and/or have the proper search engine marketing behind them.

Even beyond search engine optimization, CMS systems end up being another gadget that the practice buys and then rarely uses. Your practice hires electricians, cleaning help, and plumbers as needed. So why would you assume that you need to be able to edit your own website? Sure, website updates will typically cost you money, but as long as you hire a trustworthy web marketing company, they won't charge you exorbitant fees just to do a little update.

What is Web 2.0?

Web 2.0 is an umbrella term that refers to dynamic, interactive websites. Web 2.0 sites are cool, but the typical reasons why a surgeon, dentist, or attorney wants to build a website don't necessitate Web 2.0 technology. It's overkill. It typically won't hurt anything in terms of search engine optimization, but most practices are trying to watch their web marketing budget and Web 2.0 programming is pretty pricey.

Another warning about "Web 2.0": make sure that you're just not getting a 2.0 sales pitch. A lot of web companies are throwing the "Web 2.0" phrase at potential buyers to inspire fear that, "Unless you buy Web 2.0, you're buying old web design." The web still uses HTML as a standard language. It's not going away anytime soon. At Page 1 Solutions, we're adopting Web 2.0 technology, but only to the extent that it benefits our clients, both present and future.

Before you rush into a Web 2.0 or CMS website, be sure to weigh the product against other providers out there and against your needs. You will likely find that CMS and Web 2.0 are costly and irrelevant buzz words as far as your website is concerned.

Keyword selection can be a tricky thing. First of all, what is "keyword selection"? Well, have you ever heard the phrase, "Pick your battles"? That's essentially it. Before beginning a web marketing campaign, you have to figure out what your search engine positioning goals are. Is your goal to show up on the 1st page for "plastic surgeon"? That may be an ultimate goal for you, which is fine, but if you're really no where to be found on the search engines at the moment, you need to pick a more realistic goal for the immediate future.

Here's an illustration:



So, with over 1 million searches for the word "dog," if you were a poodle breeder and had a website, would this be a good keyword for you to target for a 1st page search engine listing? No way! You would be competing with too many other types of businesses in addition to other breeders. Just look at the list: training, boarding, grooming, "Dog Pile" which is a search engine, hot dog, lost dog, jack russell terrier dog, even SNOOP DOGG and on and on. You really have zero chance at this point to show up in one of the 10 - 20 slots on the first page of the search engines for "dog", without spending tens of thousands of dollars every month.

The same strategy for keyword selection (also called keyword discovery) applies to doctors and lawyers. Instead of trying to compete with plastic surgeons worldwide, you need to narrow your sights. Depending on where your practice is located, a statewide goal may not even make sense. If you're a brand new practice in California, I would probably suggest not targeting California because people are generally unwilling to drive from L.A. to Redding, C.A..

Another part of keyword selection is making sure to include other phrases that can drive quality traffic to your website. For the sake of argument, let's say that you're a cosmetic dentist in San Francisco. Simply targeting "san francisco dentist" and "san francisco cosmetic dentist" would be an overly narrow list.

Let's look at the list again. Let's say that I'm a dog trainer. I would want to target "dog trainer denver", but there is also "dog traning", "dog behavior", "barking dog", and we could probably pick some others too. But it's also a balancing act. It would be a mistake to target "labrador duck retrieval trainer denver" because that's overly specific.

Overly specific phrases weaken your website's keyword density and optimization for more important phrases, diluting your positioning efforts in favor of lesser terms that will deliver fewer conversions (read patients or cases).

You can do some keyword selection on your own using the Overture (Yahoo!) Keyword Selector tool. Just know that this tool is only good at giving approximate numbers. It's not entirely accurate, it doesn't include searches done on other search engines like Google, and it's becoming a bit outdated. One theme that you'll pick up on right away is that much of keyword selection is common sense once you get the hang of it. The important thing is to remove yourself from your situation a bit and try to think like a consumer - not a medical or legal professional or even a marketing person. Contact me today for help in figuring out which keyword make the most sense in your situation.

Our IT department ran some numbers on when people are filling out our clients' websites' contact forms. You'll notice that most of the emails come around the lunch hour and thereafter. This is the time when most people are at work, taking advantage of the free, high-speed internet access.

This is an email that I sent out to some select doctors in Orange County. Perhaps it will persuade you to send me an email!

Over 9,300 Searches For A Orange County Ophthalmologist Last Month. Can Patients Find You Online?

Before working with us, our clients (and I’d wager that you fall into this category), weren’t showing up on 1st-Page search engine results and so potential patients landed on their competitors’ month after month.

>>In your case, 9,300 potential Orange County patients are going to your competitors every month.

After partnering with Page 1 Solutions, 100% of our clients saw their traffic increase, their websites became visible on literally hundreds of 1st-Page searches, and they finally started to see more patients as a result of web marketing.

We will only work with three Ophthalmologists in Orange County total, which enables us to GUARANTEE YOUR SUCCESS BEFORE YOU PAY A DIME.

WARNING: We don’t work with everyone. Please email me or call to schedule a 15 minute telephone consultation to see if we can work with your website.

Need proof we can deliver? Do a search on Google for "Los Angeles LASIK". Our client is KhannaInstitute.com.

We’re sold out in LA, Denver, San Diego, Oklahoma City and many other markets. We only have one slot left in Orange County. For a free analysis of your website and a free online consultation, click on the link below:

http://www.page1solutions.com/JF/lasik.html

Thanks,
Jonathan

Internet Marketing Consultant

Page 1 Solutions

Phone: 800-916-3886

http://www.page1solutions.com

PS. Secure the lasting opening for first page search engine positioning for LASIK surgery terms in Orange County by Page 1 Solutions. Call today: 800-916-3886 and ask for Jonathan.

This was a voicemail that one of our clients received. I'm not sure how he exported it to a .wav file, but he emailed it to us so that we could investigate it. "The Webpage Authority Society" has no website that we can find, so that's laughable enough, let alone the name, "Fitz Fitzpatrick!?" Hah!

Don't be fooled by scams like this. Play the video below. The rat-like telemarketing nerd is just for effect.



I think that what bothers me the most is that this guy's voice kind of sounds like me!

These scams also come by fax. If you get a "renewal notice" just pass it along to your "web guy". We can authenticate it for you, but most of the time, they are just domain pirates trying to steal control of your domain name.