On paper, search engine optimization (SEO) is an amazing tool that can build organic search ranking. But when you go head and start doing it yourself, it might seem more overwhelming than a cool tool.Continue Reading
Increase Targeted Leads To Your Healthcare Website With These 4 Steps
As any experienced SEO consultant can tell you, you don’t just want traffic coming into your site, you want targeted leads that will result in conversions. It’s fine and dandy if everyone and their brother are getting referred to your site, but if they are getting there and then leaving right away—no matter how good a job your web designer did—that spells bad news for you in the rankings.
This is called a bounce rate and search engines use it to see how relevant your website is for the keywords people are searching for. That means that even if you have the healthcare SEO company working on your site, if you’re not retaining those visitors, you’re shooting yourself in the foot with your own keywords. To avoid this, you need targeted leads.
Targeted leads are simply visitors that are more likely to convert—that is, stay on your page for a while and eventually retain your services by performing the call to action. For instance, a dentist’s targeted leads would be locals seeking dental services. It will do you no good as a Salt Lake City dentist to get a New Yorker looking for car repair on your site. Unfortunately, poorly thought out SEO tactics aim to get the most leads whereas quality SEO aims to pull in quality leads. This is why it’s so important to hire a qualified and competent SEO Company for doctors or Consultant.
Here are four tips that are guaranteed to bring in more targeted leads to your website.
1. MAKE PAGES PEOPLE WILL LINK TO
In order to properly market your content, you need to create a website that establishes you as an authority in your geographical market or industry. One of the best ways to do this is through informative blogs and landing pages that are tailored for your audience and optimized with keywords. By providing a useful database for your potential clients, they will be more likely to bookmark and link to your site, bringing in powerful SEO rankings that attract more targeted leads. To take this one step further, compile links onto one landing page that is optimized as a “how to” or “tips” page. This will generate even more links and thus, targeted leads.
2. KEEP BOUNCE RATE LOW WITH GOOD, FRESH CONTENT
Old content leaves you with higher bounce rates, something that indicates a low-converting page. We’ve all done it before. Went to a website that we thought might offer a good result for us, and it looks like the site hasn’t been updated in ages, or the dates of the blog posts are years old. Search engines can read this as low-quality content and can lower you in the search engine result page (SERP) rankings. This spells disaster for your business, especially seeing how a doctor SEO company is supposed to be working to keep your rankings up. The easiest way to add new content is through either blogs or updating your existing content. You could also link to newer content on old pages, though this isn’t quite as effective since it lowers the viewer’s overall experience (by having to click to more pages, thus potentially losing them as a visitor)
3. WRITE WELL
Put quite simply, a conversational tone with proper spelling and grammar not only reads better, it ranks better as well. Write at about a 5th grade reading level (general rule for most local busineses) and keep your tone, grammar and spelling in check to attract more links and thus, more targeted leads. Don’t think of this as dumbing down your content, but rather keeping things simple, clean, clear and concise.
4. PUT KEYWORDS WHERE THEY MATTER
Keywords are a simple concept, but very easy to foul up.
While most people know enough to avoid keyword stuffing, there’s still many so called ‘professionals’ that don’t get it. It’s generally understood that your keyword density should be between 1% and 4% (I really suggest between 1% and 2%, but main thing is; it flows well, makes sense to the reader, and it has appropriate keywords), but having all of your keywords at the front or end of your content negates any positive gains you may have won with the proper keyword density. Keep them scattered throughout the article in an even and natural manner and make sure they are in the title as well as the H1, H2 and H3 tags. Also, try to have your keyword at least once in the first and last sentences, or at least paragraphs.
The Dangerously High Price of Falling for Cheap SEO
Cutting corners. We all do it, especially when the economy is still recovering and we’re venturing into a new market to try to pick up sales. For small business owners, this often means testing the waters of the Internet and eCommerce websites. While this is a smart business move, being even smarter about the venture is what we like to call “Small Business Smart.” And while there are many ways you can go about being small business smart, one way that bears discussion is avoiding cheap SEO.
The Importance and Value of Good SEO
For those not in the know, SEO stands for search engine optimization and involves a number of techniques that prepare your website in such a manner that search engines find them more easily. Essentially, if Google searches are Prince Charming walking around with the glass slipper, SEO makes sure that your website is Cinderella, the wicked step-sisters are out of the way and there are neon lights bringing Price Charming straight to your foot so you can live happily ever after.
In other words, SEO makes sure the people who you desire to find you, can find you—your customers. Without good SEO, your website is next to invisible, lost in a sea of sameness. It doesn’t matter how good your products, ideas, goods or services are—without SEO, you might as well not even have a website.
Don’t Cut SEO Corners with Poor Firms or You’ll Be in the Poorhouse Yourself
Unfortunately, good SEO comes at a cost. Just like with any type of advertising, you have to pay to play. Unless you’re lucky enough to have somebody on your staff that does SEO you’ll likely have to outsource the work.
There are essentially three tiers of SEO that you can choose between: low end, high end and the middle of the road. Each has its pros and cons:
1. High end SEO
High end SEO doesn’t come cheap, and by that, I mean it isn’t uncommon for these to start in the $2500 per month range and go on up to as much as you can spend, meaning in the 10’s of thousands of dollars per month. Like anything else, do your research because quality can vary greatly.
2. Middle of the road SEO
Typically in the $1000-$2500 per month range.
Of course there will be good and bad in this price range, some will get great results, and some won’t get any results. It’s best to check out reviews of the prospective company.
3. Low end SEO
Results may vary, but the prices are very low. One major con is that these types of low end SEO companies can wind up costing you big in the long run. It isn’t uncommon to see them charging $99-$750 per month for 25-50 keyword terms. They charge this rate because their quality is extremely low, and if they even are doing any work at all (and that is up for debate), the quality of it is in question.
From those choices, it’s fairly obvious that firms charging SEO prices right in the middle of the road are going to give you the best bang for your buck. The prices won’t be exorbitant and the quality of work and results will be on par with that of higher end SEO firms. In fact, if more small business owners were educated about SEO, they’d run the higher end firms out of business because they’d understand those firms are only charging what they can get away with.
Paying for SEO Twice
Still, that’s not the major issue here—it’s that the lure of low prices constantly calls to small business owners who are looking to cut corners. One word of advice when it comes to cutting corners on SEO costs: don’t.
SEO is the one place that you can wrack up major fines and penalties for on the Internet. You see, cheaper firms still have to produce results for their clients, otherwise they wouldn’t retain any customers. In order to get results on their budget, they’ll resort to what we call “black hat” SEO techniques.
Black hat SEO consists of doing things like keyword stuffing, planting false content and generally trying to trick the search engines. And despite the fact that Google and Bing are constantly finding ways to eliminate the SEO black hat bag of tricks, some still do get through and will produce some results.
That’s how theses cheap SEO firms get their foot in the door with clients—they show initial results and then lock them into long term contracts.
Fines, Penalties and Bans
But just like all cheaters, getting caught in the end is pretty much inevitable. With search engine giants constantly staying atop black hat techniques and finding new ways to eradicate their effectiveness (e.g. the Panda and Penguin updates from Google), when your cheap SEO site is flagged, your whole website is fined and banned.
That means that not only will you have paid for the SEO, but you’ll now have to pay the fines and either wait to get unbanned or create a whole new site, paying for more SEO. This doesn’t even speak to the hit your reputation as a business owner will take. Customers typically don’t flock to sites that have shown unscrupulous tendencies—it destroys consumer confidence and tarnishes your brand reputation.
Getting the Right SEO Company the First Time Around
As you can see, when you make the choice to go with an SEO firm based solely on the cheapness of their prices, you really aren’t saving anything. You’re putting yourself, your reputation, your brand and your company at risk with cheap SEO and that’s a gamble not too many small business owners even know they are taking.
Choosing an SEO firm that has competitive prices, uses “white hat” SEO techniques and will build your customer traffic based on morally sound and search engine approved methods is smarter than smart—it’s small business smart. If you’re ready to find out what SEO can do for your small business, click here right now and don’t get caught in a cheap SEO trap.