seo Archives - Doctor, Dental SEO Consultant in Salt Lake City, UT

Four SEO Mistakes That Are Costing You Thousands

September 7, 2016 By Tyson Downs

By now, most people know that SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. More people every day are looking for local services, therefore when building a website, or having a website professional build a site for you, it is important to know the hints, tips and tricks that will give you better placement in the search engines.

If you don’t know what you are doing, the mistakes you make while building your site or having it built could actually hurt your site and prevent you from ranking for your main keywords. I have seen this myself when dealing with clients that want more traffic to their site, or need a site redesigned.
Are you making one of these seven common mistakes?

1. No Keyword Research

When having your site built, or designing it yourself, be sure to choose the right keywords that relate to your products, services, or company. There

are numerous keyword tools that you can use to help determine appropriate keywords. A good, basic one to use is simply the Google Keyword Tool. You may think you know the best keywords that your potential visitors are using, but it’s always best to do the research first.

2. No Citations

Citations and are extremely important part of local SEO, and as a result your website ranking results. This should therefore be one of the main components that you focus on. The easiest way to get citations is to begin claiming the citations. You can go to a website such as GetListed.org to get an idea of what you need to claim, however I have found that websites that show the citations that have been claimed, aren’t the most accurate. I recommend starting with the bigger, more popular directory listings. You may want to check out a recent article I wrote on local listing optimization best practices.

3. Bad Web Design

A poorly designed website can ruin your online presence. Common mistakes include using flash, getting too fancy, using overbearing colors, hard to find contact information, etc. Be sure your web designer knows what they are doing. Look at examples of their work to see that their past work has the components of an effective website.

4. On Page SEO Issues

On Page SEO is an extremely, extremely important component of your website. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I’ve had websites that I have redesigned and properly optimized them for the search engines and had them go from nowhere to be found to page 1 for their main keyword. Don’t make the mistake of hiring somebody to build you a pretty site, only to find out they have no clue about how to code it properly. What good is your investment if it isn’t making you money?

These mistakes are a few of the ones that I see more often. They often cause a website to be completely lost in the search engine rankings, resulting in lost revenue and lost market share.
Not sure if your website has any of these issues? Contact me, I’ll provide an in depth analysis of your online presence and where you stand against your competitors.

Is your practice missing the boat by ignoring these best practice? Is your current online marketing company properly handling your healthcare marketing? Grab the free report below and find out for sure.

The Smart Way To Use Local SEO

July 26, 2016 By Tyson Downs

The planet is big. And the Internet is bigger. Unless you have founded a truly global company, like Yahoo or Google, you need to find a way to use local SEO to target your true market. You know that you want to ensure that your marketing strategy is speaking to the right people. How do you, as the owner of a local business in, say, Utah, do this?

This article points to some strategic steps that you can take to create a local SEO plan that works for you.

The first thing that you should do when building a local SEO strategy is to review your website. Is it engaging? Does it present your business in a way that is easy to understand? Is it visually inviting? Your website is the final destination for those customers that your smart SEO strategy attracts. If it does not capture a visitor’s attention, you’ve put energy into attracting new customers only to lose them –potentially – when they finally land on your site.

It is also important that you know which words are used by potential customers searching for businesses like yours. You want to target your local market, not the entire planet. (At least for now.) There are

some free online tools that you can use to identify these key words. Like the “Local Marketing Source-Kit”. You can create a list of popular local search terms with such a tool. Having located these key words, you can then include them in your website, hence bumping up your number of hits.

Check out your Google + listing.

First, make sure that you have one. If you are new to Google +, you should know that it is a button that can be added to your website. (You should also know that the Google + iPhone app became the most popular free app at the iTunes Store on the day it was released.)

Then, make sure that you’ve properly checked off all categories relevant to your business. One of the things it does is allow your website to be shared and searched with the Google+ social network.

In conclusion, the reason to build a solid local SEO strategy is to make sure that your local customers find you, when they are looking for a business like yours. Taking some simple steps like those described above can get you on a path to profit.

SEO: Why You Should Include It In Your Marketing Plan

July 18, 2016 By Tyson Downs

Fortunately, in this day age more and more people are turning to the internet to sell their goods and services. For you and I as consumers, this is great. It makes the internet a wonderful place where nearly anything can be found. Nearly anything in the world that we want we can find it online, usually within a few seconds. However, this also means the Internet is becoming a very competitive for both online businesses and local business. So, if you are a business owner, establishing an Internet presence, you’ll need to understand that SEO, or Search Engine Optimization is just a piece of the puzzle, just one of the many irons that you should have in the fire when marketing your business.

You see rarely does a business become successful if they have only a one legged stool. Oh sure you’ll have some exceptions to the rule, but it doesn’t make much business sense to only perform one marketing strategy. It is just isn’t smart. If you are a small business with a storefront, Local SEO should be one of the elements — an important element to be sure — of your complete and comprehensive marketing program. That program may include other effective elements such as PPC, Direct Mail, Social Media, TV, Radio, Print, Cold Calling, etc.

If you are new to operating your business or are trying to manage all aspects of marketing and daily business management to yourself, you may want to consider hiring an SEO professional to assist you in developing your SEO plan for your business. Of course the advantage of hiring a professional is that they work that business each and every day. They are staying up on trends in the industry. You are paying them to perform. Just like they likely couldn’t just sit down and do your business with no formal training and without a strong learning curve, you likely can’t do the same SEO. SEO is an art. SEO takes patience. SEO can be very complicated and ever changing. You may want to hire somebody that you feel comfortable with, somebody that is deeply committed to growing their own successful business as well as helping you grow your own.

In the end, by developing a solid SEO plan and program — as part of an overall Internet marketing program — you will be able to boost the traffic that visits your Internet website. The goal of the increased traffic of course is more calls and more sales. If you treat SEO as a long term marketing strategy, then over the long run you will become a recognized market leader on the internet. Once you understand the importance of small business SEO in a marketing plan, and the advantages of hiring an SEO consultant you will be much better off in regard to growing your business than you previously were.

Remember, SEO isn’t the end all be all. It is simply a piece of the puzzle.

Four Ways You Can Improve Your Search Engine Rankings

July 5, 2016 By Tyson Downs

Whether you own a local business or a national or global enterprise, chances are you want to increase your market share. You can increase market share by getting the word out about your company, by bringing awareness to your brand. One way that you can increase awareness is by showing up higher in the search engines for relevant keyword terms. So, let’s talk about 5 ways you can do that.

On Page SEO.

On Page SEO is basically how well the search engines can read your website. Are you using header tags? Alt Tags? Anchor Text? In a previous article I discussed how I’ve seen websites make a huge jump to the first page of Google for their keyword terms simply by having their On Page SEO fixed. Make sure that this is properly set up and the chances are you’ll notice improvements in your rankings quite quickly.

Updated Content.

Simply updating your content on a regular basis will increase rankings. When the search engines crawl your website and see that you have updated it, they will find more, fresh, relevant content that they want to share with readers, so they will rank you higher. Not only that, but the new content that you added can help you rank for more keyword terms.

More Keywords.

Say that you are a Dentist in Las Vegas, which happens to be a very competitive market. You are working with a small business SEO company to improve your rankings in the search engines. Because you are brand new and just opened your practice, just don’t have the budget to go up against the big guys that are paying thousands per month to rank for competitive terms such as ‘Las Vegas Dentist’ or ‘Dentist Las Vegas’. So what do you do? You target keywords that are less competitive. Perhaps ‘Sedation Dentist in Henderson’ would be one to go after. Or maybe ‘holistic dentist Las Vegas’. Do you get the point? Optimize your webpage for those less competitive keywords and then possibly blog about those keywords as well.

User Experience.

Don’t do stuff that is just plain silly like having multiple annoying pop ups, or music playing or an auto playing video, or overwhelming colors. If your website has these features or if it looks amateurish, chances are people will ‘bounce’, meaning they will leave your website without looking at any other pages. The search engines take into account the bounce rate in their algorithms to determine who to show up. If you have a higher bounce rate, your website will be seen as subpar and you won’t show up as high as you could if you would a professional, well optimized website that gives user a good experience.

This is just the tip of the iceberg as far as improving your rankings in the search engines. If you want to improve your organic or Google Places rankings in the search engines, be sure to follow these tips. If you need help implementing any of these changes, contact me and let’s see what I can do for you. I work specifically with small businesses each day to optimize their local listings and improve organic rankings . All with the goal of getting their phone ringing, improving revenues and profitability. Contact me, you won’t be disappointed.

SEO Myths You’ve Probably Heard But Shouldn’t Listen To

June 17, 2016 By Tyson Downs

Many business owners are so busy and wrapped up growing their company that it is often hard to keep up with the latest marketing trends, including Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Unfortunately what happens is that they often hear bits and pieces about SEO and believe it to be the truth. Let me explain a few things about SEO that are NOT true.

SEO DOESN’T WORK

This is often what I hear from people that hired a less than reputable SEO Company, or unfortunately had a bad experience. Does expanding your presence online work? YES. Does making it easier for your clients to be found online work? YES. Here are excerpts from emails I received from 3 of my SEO clients this week:

HVAC Contractor: Hey Tyson, things are great the phone is starting to ring got a couple of calls in the past five days (I’ve been working with the client 1.5 months)
DENTIST: Had a patient come in this morning who said she looked us up online and we had some good reviews and she lives close, no other contact with existing patients. That’s a “cold call” type of patient, which are rare for us. But that’s the kind we would be pursuing with the internet presence.(Been working with this client 3 months)
LANDSCAPER: Things have been very busy around here the last few days. Overall, things must be working since I have been running around meeting people and cranking out bids. Hopefully, someone will sign a contract soon.(His organic traffic is up 50% in the past month). (Been working with this client for 3 months)

SEO done incorrectly or using ‘blackhat’ methods doesn’t work long-term. SEO done by incompetent firms or scammers doesn’t work either. But SEO done by a professional that knows what he or she is doing? You better believe it works.

SEO IS EASY

The perception is often that anybody can do SEO and get the same results as an SEO Professional. While it is true anybody can ‘do SEO’ if they put in the time it takes to learn. To be truly good at it takes a serious amount of dedication that most people don’t have the time and desire that it takes. Anybody can paint a house right? Yes if they undergo the proper training. Anybody can fill a cavity right? Yes if they go to the right amount of schooling.

It is the same with SEO. To learn it yourself be prepared to spend hours and hours learning and implementing, and then hours and hours keeping up on the latest algorithm updates and the latest trends, etc. Or, hire a pro
fessional SEO consultant and you’ll most likely get better results AND you’ll free up your own time to build your business using the strengths that you currently have.

ALL SEO IS CREATED EQUAL

Just because you received a quote for SEO in the past for X amount of dollars, that does not mean that that is necessarily the appropriate price for SEO for your business. SEO prices vary so greatly and SEO methods can vary greatly.

I’ve worked on clients sites (the HVAC and Landscaper above) who have previously worked with SEO companies. They paid considerable amounts of money ($500+ per month) and weren’t getting results. They moved over to my business and both of them within a couple months were seeing the effects of the work I am doing. So, don’t think that just because one company offers SEO, that they speak for all companies and you will get the same results with each company.

Need some help with your local SEO? Mention this article and I’ll give you a special discount.

3 SEO Best Practices You Should Know About

June 4, 2016 By Tyson Downs

If you run a local business and have decided to invest in a better online presence by starting a website, you should know from the start that the use of on-page SEO techniques may not be enough. Even though factors such as the quality of content and use of keywords are important for helping search engines to better detect your presence on the web, in competitive markets, it can take more effort to boost your site in the first page of search engine results. The following information includes some useful advice on this matter, based on the three optimization pillars: profiles, citation and reviews.

1. Build a Strong Profile for Your Business

Establishing profile authority will undoubtedly boost your website in search engines, especially with the latest changes in the algorithm used by Google for raking pages. In order to help you, Google has come up with a document explaining the best practices for SEO from the company’s perspective. This guide is available at here and is a great way to get started.

Another useful resource that you can employ in the process is Get Listed. This tool will assess the online presence of your business, and will tell you if your potential clients can find you easily enough. Other suggestions that you can consider in terms of your business’s profile are the following:

Focus on more than one search engine. The market share of Bing and Yahoo, for example, is not to be ignored.
All descriptions and contact information for your business should be thorough and clear and if enough space is provided, a compelling reason to choose your business.
Upload photos of your business to the Google Places website. In addition, YouTube videos of testimonials or walk-throughs can also make a difference.
Make use of QR codes, and definitely include the real address of your business, you typically don’t want to use a PO Box or a virtual address.

2. Reviews – Getting Feedback from Your Customers

The second pillar of SEO is reviews. In this regard, it is important that you invest in the implementation of a good Review Funnel for your business, and encourage your clients to use it. In addition, you should train your employees to always look for positive feedback that has been posted online from customers, and to promote it on your own page.

If possible and appropriate, link the names of your reviewers to their social network profiles—ideally, their LinkedIn accounts, for a more professional image. This will provide authenticity for the feedback, and will make it look less like a spam message.

3. Citations

Last but not least, it is crucial that you acquire citations from trusted sources if you want better exposure for your business. Some of the most popular sources you can consider in this matter are the following:

Newspapers and business magazines (especially local ones, if you own a local company)
Yelp, infoUSA, InsiderPages, Citysearch and other valuable online resources
Annual reports, governmental websites and public sources in general
Review websites and services that are used for providing data about different businesses
Services in direct connection with search engines (Google Places, Yahoo Local, etc.)

Focus on these three strategies and you will no doubt be able to extend your online reach and be able to get in front of your target customers at a greater rate.