The biggest factor in website ranking is the number of back links to your website.  A back link is simply a link on another website that points to your website.  The more you have, the higher your website will rank (but with the following guidelines– read on).

You see, a link to your website is seen as an internet “vote” for your website, in the eyes of Google.  After all, the website with your website’s link is essentially encouraging it’s visitor to leave the website for your website.  And it wouldn’t do so unless it thought highly of your website, or at least that your website content is important enough to check out.  That’s how the Google algorithm interprets it.

So, now you’re thinking, “Great!  I have two other websites.  I will just place 100 links each on those websites and point them to my chiropractic  website so it will rank#1!”

Not so fast.  If it were that easy, everyone would do it.  And, Google isn’t that stupid.

Here are the basic guidelines for good back links:

• the anchor text of the link should be the keyword you’re targeting.  For example, for my chiropractic website I would like to have many links like this:  San Francisco Chiropractors pointing to my website.  This is the keyword that many people search for to find chiropractors in my area.
• the website that your back links are on should be related to your website.  So, good back links to a chiropractic website would come from health-related websites, including other chiropractic websites (more on this later).  The Google spiders analyze the content of the linking website will place more value on the back link if it is from a website in the same industry or niche as yours.
• websites with the .gov and .edu domains hold greater authority in general than .com websites.  So if you can somehow link to your chiropractic website from a government or school website, you’ll get a leg up on your competitors.
• If you have other websites in different niches, it still wouldn’t hurt to link to your chiropractic website.  But if you do, you can only do it so many times.  And make sure you link out to other websites.  For example, my San Francisco Chiropractor website has a link to Mercola.com, the biggest natural health website on the internet.
• reciprocal links aren’t as powerful as one-way links.  A reciprocal link is a “scratch my back, I’ll scratch your back” set up:  you contact a website owner and offer to put his link on your site if he puts your link on his website.  Google views reciprocal links as artificial and perhaps gives them 50% weight as a one way link.

So how do you get all those one-way back links?  There are several ways, but the best way to get natural one-way back links is to write great content for your site so that other people find it informative, and link to it.  This is why blogs are so popular.  You have more artistic freedom with blogs and can write interesting and fresh content.

You can write articles about chiropractic topics like back pain, neck pain and carpal tunnel syndrome, and submit them to article directories like Ezine Articles.  You place your URL in your signature box (remember to use your keyword for the anchor text!) and submit the article to the directory.   Webmasters from all over the world browse these article directories and use the articles as content for their sites.  They are required to keep the author’s URL intact.  If you write enough articles (good ones) and they are picked up by many webmasters and added to their sites, you’ll start building up a lot of one-way back links.

A third way is to visit other blogs and forums related to health.  Create an account as a commenter, and include your website URL in your signature box (not all blogs/forums allow this, though).  Every time you post a comment, your URL will stay on the forum and you’ll have a one way link to your site.

There are several other ways to get back links to your site, including some stealth ones that most people don’t know about.  If you like to know what they are, click here.

Till next time,

Dr. Dan

Having a nice looking chiropractic website alone is not good enough.  After all, if no one sees it, it might as well be a blank page in the internet abyss.

Your website needs to:

1) be visible in the search engines (Google) for multiple keywords that reflect what people search for when they need chiropractic care; i.e. (Your City) Chiropractor, Chiropractor (Your City), back pain doctor, etc.

2) be able to convert; i.e. cause the website visitor to pick up the phone and call your office.

3) be able to capture leads and market to them over and over again.

Ranking high in the search engines involves creating a lot of good content in your site (perfect job for a blog) and attracting back links to your site.  Integrating several tools to increase your chiropractic website’s conversion rate will insure that your website will be doing what it’s supposed to do:  sending you patients.

Having a good email marketing software like GetResponse is critical if you want to make life easier for yourself.  Don’t be one of those chiropractors who get lazy and email their patients announcements or newsletters by manually typing in their patients’ email address in their Outlook, Yahoo or Gmail accounts, and send crappy looking emails, many of which to straight to the spam folder.  Why not let GetResponse  automate the whole process where the software receives the prospect’s email, adds them to the database, and sends them a nice monthly newsletter automatically?  It can also handle unsubscribe requests behind the scenes.  All you have to do is set it up, and the thing runs by itself.   You can even check your stats, like how many people received your email, and how many clicked it to open and read.  This will tell you if your marketing message needs tweaking.

It starts with installing an Opt In form in a highly visible spot on your website, or have it fade in or pop under from the screen.  The purpose of a pop up form is to get the visitor to notice it.  Many times they miss the static opt in form because it blends in with the rest of the web page.  GetResponse can generate the code for your opt in box (static or pop up); or, you can use an advanced one like Ultimate Footer Ad, the one this blog uses.

So, to recap:  Get your website an Opt-In box to capture website visitors’ email address and connect it to an email marketing software like GetResponse so that you can market to them periodically.     If you don’t wish to deal with the technicalities of it, I can do it for you; just shoot me an email.

Remember, it cost you money to get your website built and maintain it, so it needs to be getting you new business every day.  Demand it!

Till next time,

Dan Perez DC
Guerilla Chiropractic

Hey Chiropractors,

Let me introduce you to what I believe is one of the best website builders out there.  Bear with me for a moment, even if you already have a website.

The biggest problem for most people when faced with building a website is where to begin:  What should I say?  What colors should I pick?  How should I lay out my website?  How do I add video and other elements to it?  And, the most important– how do I get my website to be SEEN by people so that it actually DOES something; i.e. BRINGS IN PATIENTS?

There is one website builder that knocks all of these concerns down, and it is called SiteBuildIt, or SBI.  SBI has been around for many years, and it was actually conceived by a doctor (I believe from New Zealand) who has a natural understanding of the challenges of making a viable commercial website.

SBI is a web-based (no software to download) website builder that takes you, step by step, through all the important processes of building a website.  It’s loaded with useful tools designed to accelerate your website’s visibility on the internet.  It even has a way to tell you if your pages are fully optimized for the search engines before you publish them.

If you’re one of those people who wants to dispense with the techie details of building a website, and be able to produce an attractive AND search engine optimized site without having to study too hard, then check out SiteBuildIt.  Once you see how powerful SBI is, you may be tempted to use it to build other ecommerce sites to supplement your chiropractic business!

Dan Perez, DC
Guerilla Chiropractic

Dear fellow chiropractors, are you doing enough with your inactive files?  Are you convinced that these people are never going to come back to your office so it’s not worth your time to try to contact them?

You spent a lot of time and money to acquire all those patients.  And, those files are taking up space in your office.  You need to “squeeze” some money out of these files, especially during these times.

Here’s what you do:  you hire someone to call them (go through your inactive files yourself first and filter out the ones you don’t want contacted).  The phone script is simple.  Have your marketer say something like:

“Hi, this is Debbie calling from Dr. Jones’ chiropractic office.   It’s been __ months/years since you were last in to see us, and Dr. Jones wanted to check in and see how you are currently doing.”

From there, she is likely to  get all kinds of responses, such as

• I’m ok, thanks for calling
• Oh, we moved away last year…
• I’ve been so busy and I know I need to get in…
• My insurance changed, do you take___?

and others.  Make sure to give your marketer specific instructions on how to steer the patient to make an appointment.  The best way is to ask leading questions that convince them that they need to come in, and make it easy for the patient to come in (flexible days, hours, no waiting, etc.).

Just post an ad in Craigslist for a part-time telemarketer.  The person should have a good phone voice and confidence.

As an alternative, you could have this person prepare direct mail to go to these patients:  Sign the letters, stuff them in the envelopes, hand-address them, affix stamp, and take to the post office.

You can go bonkers and have the marketer do BOTH– send the letter to warm up the caller, then call three days later.

This can be very effective when done right.

For those who have been following this blog, you know that the premise I operate from is that the chiropractic patient of today has changed dramatically, thanks to lightning fast information exchange courtesy of the internet. Not just emails, but Twitter posts, FaceBook comments, Yelp, and of course, online news sites.

The result: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of the chiropractic profession are in broad daylight for all to see, including your current and potential patients. The miracle stories, the good PR coming from the sports world and other positive chiropractic human interest stories are competing with the stroke comments, chiropractor insurance fraud stories (who among us hasn’t read such an article in our local news?), and witch doctor comments. Yes, some of the Bad stuff out there isn’t true– after all, anyone with a heartbeat can post anything online. We can cry foul when these things occur, but by that time it has influenced a lot of minds. This is the information age, and we’re in a fight to win over the minds of those who need our services.  And everyone knows the old adage that bad news spreads more quickly than positive news.  So, you’ve got to operate as your own PR agency.

In 2010 and beyond, chiropractors should consistently put out positive PR for their practices. And you’ll need to do it via the internet, because the internet and its many veins is a huge well of influence at this moment in time. This means you’ll need to set up:

• a website. Not just any ordinary website, one that is conversion optimized, incorporating all the psychological triggers that keep visitors interested.   A self-playing welcome video is a nice, powerful touch as people are used to seeing video online.   If you currently have a crappy site, get rid of it!  It could be costing you a lot of business.  You have three (3) seconds to convince the online shopper that you are worth looking into.  Nothing scares away a visitor more than a website that looks like it was made in the 1990s; or one that takes too long to load because of fancy flash animations (I do not recommend flash for chiro websites).
• An email opt-in box for your website visitors.  This is a special graphic visible on your site that gives visitors an option to receive email promotions from you.  Here’s an advanced one that I use, but there are more simple ones.  Make sure you offer something of value in exchange for their email; like health tips or a free eBook on exercises and stretches for the office worker, etc.
• a blog. Place the blog inside your website; i.e. www.yourwebsite.com/blog. Post daily to your blog. It should have an RSS feed, which enables your patients to subscribe to your blog and receive posts in their email or feed reader. The blog posts will essentially make your website bigger (more pages) and will drive it higher in Google’s natural search.
• SEO activities (search engine optimization).  You’ll need to learn how to get your website ranked naturally in the major search engines.
• Google AdWords listing.  Get your site on the top of Google by paying for it initially.  Be careful, you need to know what you’re doing here, or you’ll be wasting money on clicks.
• an automated e-newsletter delivered by an email marketing software such as GetResponse. The system takes the emails you gather from your website visitors (see email opt in box above) and sends them monthly newsletters (that you write ahead of time) that promote your services, with a link pointing back to your site or an appointment sign up form.
• a Twitter identity. Don’t use your personal Twitter account to promote your business; create a new Doctor identity. Tweet every day, with your website URL in your tweet (Tweets now show up on Google search results, so obviously use the word “chiropractor and chiropractic” in your tweets).
• a FaceBook Page. This is your online presence on the huge, 300 million member FaceBook. You’ll post news about your clinic periodically, and link your FB page to your Twitter account so that when you post something on your FB page, a tweet to your list is automatically generated.
• a YouTube branded channel.  It’s like having an online TV channel for your clinic, for Free.  You’ll make short videos of things like a short commercial of your clinic; how to stretch, how to lift, how to set up your workstation ergonomically– you get the point.  You’ll include your clinic phone number and website URL in your videos.  These videos get indexed in the Google search results.  Don’t sweat video; it’s real easy to do.  The lazy (but good enough!) and easiest way is to use this: Flip UltraHD Camcorder, 120 Minutes (Black).  You point, press record, stop, and plug it into your computer’s USB slot and edit the video.  Then, upload it to YouTube.  You can literally put a video on YouTube in less than 30 minutes from start to finish with the flip phone!

So these are the minimum things you’ll need to get going.  If you need any help on any of these steps, I can offer you my web consulting services for a modest fee.  Just contact me via this blog’s contact form or give me a call at (925) 788-6253.

If you want to give it a shot yourself, a good place to start is my Internet Marketing guide (70+ pages) that gives you the details on all of the above, as well as a lot more underground stuff that will give you a head start over your competitors.

Dan Perez, DC

Ok, it’s January 2010 (it’s going to be a while to get used to writing “2010″ !) and your practice is in a slump.

There is so much to do in so little time.   This is the time to be extremely focused.  You need to turn yourself into a highly-concentrated efficiency machine.  This means that the majority of your time should be spent on actions that result in a measurable, immediate result.  The lesser priorities need to wait for now.

Here’s a book I highly recommend  that will help you get you into this mindset (trust me on this): Ready, Fire, Aim: Zero to $100 Million in No Time Flat (Agora Series)  It’s been around for awhile and is lauded by experts in the marketing field.  In a nutshell, the theme of the book is to take action now and not wait until everything is perfect.  Because perfect may never come, and opportunities are short lived.  “Speed to market” is another term that describes this philosophy.  This is the information age, and with the speed that information becomes available and dispersed, the winner is usually the one who gets his stuff to the market first.

So, invest a few bucks in this “secret” book and get the edge you need.  It’s available for cheap at Amazon.com:

Go for it!

Dan Perez, DC

P.S.  Did you know that I can have a customized blog set up for you, and a lead capture system with automated marketing messages to bring in more website visitors in your office?  For more info, send me an email at dan(at)webventuresinc.net

Fellow chiropractors, a lot of us are under siege.  It’s not new to us; we’re chiropractors after all.

This time, it’s big.  We are amidst a paradigm shift.  Health care consumers (patients) are more informed, thanks to the power of the internet.  Remember, the number one reason people use the internet, according to polls, is research in some form or another.  And, many of these searches are research on a service the web surfer is wanting to buy in the near future.  They get their information on news sites, RSS feeds, YouTube, blogs, forums, Twitter, FaceBook, Yelp, and too many others to mention.

Unfortunately, chiropractic has not managed to get its act together; not only from the organizational standpoint.  We are still fighting internal battles on what constitutes chiropractic.  Chiropractic has failed to build and nurture its brand over the years, and the repercussions of this failure are about to hit us like a tsunami.  We are in desperate need of Madison Avenue-level brand management.  But that isn’t coming any time soon.  In a world where the average person is exposed to over 600 advertising impressions in a day from morning to night, chiropractic has no chance in forming a solid image, due to our disheveled state.

So, in 2010 we face the moment of truth:  adapt to the times, or close our doors.  Spinal screenings in the mall just won’t cut it any more.  Neither will nightly spinal care class.  People are just too busy or are uninterested.  After all, they need to get back to their computer to surf the web for more interesting stuff.

So what do you do, chiropractor?  You assess your situation.  Be honest with yourself.  Sometimes it may be better to follow your Plan B.  Sometimes it’s worth pursuing Plan A.

Start by doing what other businesses do in tough times:  shed the baggage, find ways to lower overhead, overhaul your procedures to reflect our modern times, and nurture your patients so that they will stay and refer.

My Guerilla Chiropractic ebook has more detailed information on how you can transform your practice into one that has a better chance of withstanding these difficult times.  Check it out, it’s a small investment that can potentially save your career.

Good Luck in 2010,

Dan Perez Dc

For those chiropractors who have been following this blog, you all know by now how much importance i place on having a professional-looking, search engine friendly, and marketing-configured website.  It should be TOP PRIORITY in your marketing efforts.

But that’s just half the game.  The other, equally-important aspect is your search engine optimization activities to drive your site to the top of the search engine listings for your primary, secondary and tertiary keywords.  After all, if your $2,000 website isn’t visible to your prospective patients, it isn’t worth a hill of beans.

The exciting part of it is that it should be VERY easy for a chiropractor to rank in the top 3 listings for the search phrase your city chiropractor.   And this includes cutting in front of the current #1, #2, and #3 listings.  The reason is that only about 5% of chiropractors are following the rather techie and bland field of search engine optimization.  All you have to do is to be astute enough to realize and accept that consumers are increasingly turning to the internet to research before they buy; therefore, you should do all you can to get your website in front of your prospective patients’ eyeballs.  Do it while the rest of your colleagues move like brachiosauruses ( the largest dinosaurs that ever lived).  After all, it’s business.  The strongest and sharpest will survive and thrive.  In a couple of years, the secret will be out and the number of SEO-savvy chiropractors will be about 70%+.  But, if you get to the top now and chug away with your SEO efforts to stay there, it will be difficult for someone to strip you from the #1 spot.

Today’s post has to do with adding content to your website.  First of all, you should install a blog on your website.  A blog is the best way to add pages to your website.  You don’t have to, but it’s easier.

What you should do is sign up for an account in Google if you don’t have one already.  If you have a gmail account, you log in with your username and password.  Then, go to Google, find the more link, and select Google Reader.   Google reader is an RSS reader.  It gathers RSS feeds from websites that you select, that have this publishing feature, and displays these feeds (basically news syndication, or dissemination) for easy reading.

In the left hand column, you will see a rectangular button labled “Add Subscription.”  Click it, and a search box will pop up.  Enter a term related to chiropractic, like “back pain” or “disc herniation” and click Add.  Then, a series of feeds containing that phrase will appear to the right.  Scan them, and click the Subscribe button for the ones you want to add to your reader.

What you’ll be doing is reading these feeds, summarizing them as a post on your blog (like this one), and insert a link back to your website’s index page.  This way, you’ll never have writer’s block– Google will find you material to write about.  Add your own comments, too.

Do this daily for a year, and you’ll have 365 additional pages on your website, increasing your web real estate.  Your website will climb up the rankings every week as the Google spiders crawl the web and reorganize sites based on changes since the last crawl.

If you’re too busy to set up your internet marketing infrastructure, I offer this service for a fee.  I will set up your website, blogs, social media sites and accounts, and give you a list of instructions and secret strategies to make the plan work.

I can be reached at dan@webventuresinc.net.

Dan Perez, DC

Chiropractor San Francisco

Despite the huge impact the internet continues to make on consumer purchasing behavior and the growing use of email in marketing, many chiropractors still have the marketing mindset of the 1980s and 1990s– yellow page ads, spinal screenings, health fairs, postcards and so on.  They still fail to realize just how vitally important being seen online is to their business.  Chiropractors understand that it’s important to have a website these days, but it ends there.   This is a huge mistake that is costing chiropractors thousands of dollars a year, and they aren’t aware of it.

Case in point:  there was a recent thread on my chiropractic email list (several hundred members) about marketing.  One of the list members who used to be a chiropractor went to work for AT&T Yellowpages, and shared some interesting stats.  Many members chimed in that they were STILL spending money on yellow pages and most were not happy (lost money, or broke even).  One member even quoted a chiropractic journal study done in the 80s that showed dissatisfaction with yellow pages advertising among those chiropractors sampled, even way back then when there was no internet!

The ex-chiropractor member said that about 31% of consumer goods/services searches in 2008 were done through the yellow pages, and about 33% were done via the internet.  My estimate, based on my marketing efforts since 1998 is that it’s more like 20% or less on yellow pages and 70% or more via internet (search engine) search.  But maybe that’s because I’m in San Francisco, a major metropolitan region with heavy tech use among its residents.  But I doubt it.  These days you can find internet access in even the most rural areas of the U.S.

I shared my experience with the email list, saying that over 60% of my new patients found me via internet search (Google or Yahoo).  I also extended an offer to the list to share some tips that I learned over the years that helped me get the #1 Google listing for the search phrase “San Francisco chiropractor.”  Well, only a handful were interested.   That surprised me, because it is so evidently clear to me that people are using the internet to research and buy products and services, ESPECIALLY professional services like doctors, lawyers, accountants, auto mechanics, etc.  The internet has made it very convenient to research businesses and COMPARE THEM to others, in seconds.  You CANNOT do this with the yellow pages because there is only so much information a business can squeeze on a 4″ x 4″ space, whereas a website can have a hundred or more pages to help  the visitor make a decision (not that you need that many). 

Also, people spend a lot of time in front of their computers– at work and at home.  Many surveyed said they sometimes shop online during their lunch break; or research on Google a product or service they intend to buy within the next two weeks (such as chiropractic services!).

For many people, the yellow page book is usually still wrapped in plastic and is being used to support something like a computer monitor (that is, if it wasn’t thrown into the recycling bin).  Plus, it’s very heavy and cumbersome to use.  People prefer using Google to find businesses because it’s faster, more convenient, more relevant and timely (updated), and provides a means to compare other businesses.

So, are YOU one of those chiropractors who is failing to see this?  Each day that passes where your website is not ranked within the TOP 3 listings for (your city) chiropractors, you are losing potential business.  If you lose just two (2) potential patients a day because your site is on Page 2, with an average case value of $500 per patient (if you are losing auto accident patients, make that $1,000), that’s 2×12x$500 = $12,000 a year in lost revenue.  And we both know that two lost patients a month can easily be $20,000+ lost each year depending on your style of practice.

So, take the test.  Google (your city) chiropractor, for example Denver chiropractor.  Where is your website listed?  You need to be in the Top 3, because statistics show that the #1 spot gets the most clicks, and the click rate drops sharply after that, even for the #2 spot.  You can forget it if your site is listed #6 or beyond.

My site www.sf-chiro.com is ranked #1 for my keyword and has been for the last couple of years.  I invite you to confirm this yourself.  Just Google San Francisco Chiropractor (it may be #2 in some areas, depending on which Google server you’re closest to).

If you want YOUR website to rank #1 in Google, I can help you accomplish this.  Very soon, I’ll be publishing an instructional book that contains all my tricks on how to make your chiropractic website rank #1 on Google for all your primary keywords.  If you wish to be notified when it comes out, make sure to add your name to the opt in box that pops up at the bottom of the page.  If you closed it, refresh this page and it should pop up again.  IF it doesn’t, email me at dan@webventuresinc.net and I’ll put you on the notification list.

So if you no longer wish to lose $12,000 or more a year because your website is not in the Top 3, make sure to take action.  You are losing patients every day if you don’t secure your position!  And, you’d better act sooner than later because rising to the top in Google takes time (even with hard core search engine optimization efforts it can take six months or more, depending on your competition).  The bottom line:  the sooner you take action, the sooner you’ll get to the top.

Dan Perez, DC
Chiropractor San FranciscoTechnorati Tags: chiropractic, chiropractor, websites, Google, internet marketing, yellow pages

Building a nice website is not enough, you need to have your website work for you 24/7, converting visitors to patients or at least selling something related to chiropractic.

Most web designers know how to turn out a very decent looking website with all the works including flash animation (spinning spine, anyone?), embedded videos and nice graphics and layout.  But most web designers are not familiar with the subtleties of marketing.  It’s like how a Fortune 500 CEO would not necessarily make an excellent instructor for an MBA program.

I don’t care how great your website looks, if it doesn’t rank in the top 10 listings in Google for the search phrase (your town) chiropractor and derivatives of it,  and/or it doesn’t compel the majority of visitors to contact you for an appointment, your website is a failure.

You have five seconds to form an impression on your visitor.  If  your website doesn’t have the necessary “marketing layout”, visitors will leave and not come back.  They’ll move on to the next one listed in the Google search results page or internet directory.

Did you know that you can check stats on your website, such as how many hits/views it had per day and per month; what keywords visitors used to find your site; what links referred visitors to your site (where they came from), and– very important– how long the visitor stayed on your site.  If 90% of your visitors left your site within 3 seconds, you need to know this!  This could be costing you a lot of business.  Now, don’t be too alarmed if you see a lot of visits between 10-20 seconds.   What people usually do is scan your site, make a mental note of it, and then check out the next site for “comparison shopping.”  A typical visitor will compare at least three businesses before making a decision.  If your site wins the battle of impressions, and is within the distance the visitor is willing to drive, she will return to your site and call your office.

I am coming out with a very comprehensive ebook tentatively titled  “Internet Marketing for Chiropractors.”  It will reveal the essential elements of a business-generating website:  what to include, what not to include, where to place it, and more.  It will cover just about every single internet “trick and tactic” under the sun to attract and keep patients and it will be easy to understand.    If you want to add yourself to the waiting list, just enter your name and email in the opt-in box at the bottom of your screen, and you will be notified when it comes out.

In the meantime, I do offer free  website analysis:   Send me your website’s URL and I’ll send you my comments.

Dan Perez, DC

Guerilla Chiropractic