Well, a new guide from a prominent internet marketer has come out that guides you, step by step on how to increase your chances of getting one of those prime spots.  It is well written, and has screen shots of each step so you can’t flub it up.  It contains some stealth advice that you most likely haven’t thought of, to increase the chance of claiming one of the seven spots.  Get there, and you’ve basically got free internet advertising!

I will send a copy of this Free Guide to Google Local Listings (.pdf file) to anyone who posts a comment below.  Don’t just post one sentence, mention what you hope to accomplish with this guide, and what steps you have taken to generate more internet traffic to your site.  If you find this post late, still post your comment.  If you don’t get the report, contact me via the Contact form, link at the top of this page.

One of the pitfalls of marketing is that there is so much out there in terms of products and services that it can be an expensive ordeal, buying them and testing them to see if they work.  Well, the products listed on this page are the creme de la creme– the most reliable, dependable products I own that deliver as advertised.  And, I have bought tons of stuff before, much of them a waste of money.  You won’t be disappointed with these.

Well, news is out that Google is going to add more features to its local business search.  According to CNET:

Google is rebranding its Google Maps listing service for local businesses as it continues to try to organize–as well as sell ads against–a seemingly inexhaustible supply of local search results.

Google’s Local Business Center will henceforth be known as Google Places, the search giant plans to announce late Monday. All in all, it’s mostly just a name change, although Google plans to roll out a few new features for local merchants that have claimed their “place page” on Google Maps.

One of these features is having little yellow notepads that pop up that have a couple of lines about your business, instead of the red pushpin graphic.

If your clinic is not listed in a local search for your business (just enter “chiropractors” in the search box, and see if your clinic is listed– Google knows your computer’s physical location and will display seven-ten local chiropractors next to a regional map of your area), there is a service that offers a guarantee that they can get your clinic listed there.  Check it out; just one new patient referred by your local listing can pay for a year of this service.

Good Luck!

• accountants 94582
• nearest dry cleaning store
  
• chiropractors in san francisco
• carpet cleaners

You’ll notice that the last example (carpet cleaners) doesn’t reference a zip code or city.  There doesn’t have to be a geographic modifier for these searches because Google has indexed that keyword as a geo-targeted keyword, and will display seven carpet cleaning businesses close to the IP address of the computer where the search was initiated.

So, how DO you get your chiropractic office’s URL in one of those top seven spots?  It’s not easy, believe me.  The problem is that there isn’t much you can do in terms of search engine optimization to guarantee a spot, as far as I can tell.  But apparently, some internet marketing consultants have been successful in getting their clients’ business in the top seven box for their main keyword.

Google Business Listings allow you to target over 109 million local customers who are searching online! Get your business onto the first page of Google without the hassle of SEO or cost of PPC!
 

	Get Your Business in the 1st Page of Local Google Search Results – Guaranteed!
	Drive Unlimited Free Traffic to Your Business from the first page of Google.
	You Don’t Even Need a Website - Free local profile page included!
	Make Your Phone Ring by targeting excited customers who are ready to buy.

So, why not give it a try? If your site isn’t on the first page of Google’s natural listings for your main keyword, or if you’re spending a lot on Google AdWords pay per click, you have shot in getting in the top seven Local Search listings, with the help of INeedHits.

I strongly advocate that chiropractors and other small business people learn how to build, or at least edit their own websites.  There are two distinct advantages to this:

1. You force yourself to learn a skill that will save you money and make you money (not just in chiropractic).
2. You will personally be in control of the content, functionality and creative aspects of your website and will be able to make changes on the fly, rather than have to translate to your webmaster what you want, and then have to wait for him/her to actually do it.

Let’s say you notice that you get a lot of website visitors but they only stay on your site for less than a minute (this is referred to as a high “bounce” rate).  Chances are, something is unappealing about your website.  Could it be your headline, your header, your opening paragraph?  If you had the knowledge, you could change any one or all three of these factors within minutes and stop the bleeding.  Perhaps a very positive story on chiropractic came out in the media.  Wouldn’t it be nice to mention this on your homepage the next day, while its fresh in peoples’ minds?  You can do it quickly if you knew how to edit your website.  You’ve really got to “own” the knowledge of website creation in order to quickly adapt to your constantly changing business environment and keep one step ahead of your competitors.    As the saying goes, ownership has its privileges.

There are many website creation software applications out there, some of them free.  They have a basic “WYSIWYG” approach:  what you see is what you get.  You design them by clicking buttons and dragging elements around with your mouse, and the software codes it in the background.  Then you upload it, and presto, you have your website.  But, the more cookie cutter you go, the less sophisticated your website will look, and that, too can be a problem.

The website creation software that I highly recommend chiropractors consider is SiteBuildIt, or SBI.  Actually, calling this thing a “website creation software” is a big understatement.  SBI is veritable self-contained business creation application.  In other words, once you buy it, you won’t have to buy anything else related to your website.

SiteBuildIt has all the tools necessary to take your website from concept to money maker, and it does so in a user-friendly, fool-proof, systematic way.  It’s main selling point is that it has many software tools within it to tackle the critical elements of building a website:

• keyword research (very important, it is the foundation of your site and will determine how well it ranks in Google).
• search engine optimization
• form builders
• graphics design
• email newsletter creator
• rss syndication (automatic notifications of your site on the web)
• sitemap builder (helps with SE rankings)
• social media tool
• monetization tools
• link exchange (exchange links with other SBI owners to increase SE ranking

Best of all, SBI contains all the support manuals you need on design, content, traffic generation, niche selection, advanced tips and tricks, and so on.  SBI also boasts an active online forum comprised of motivated business owners who help each other out.  SBI is really like one, big happy family!

There are people who quit their day jobs because the income they generated through their SBI-built websites replaced and exceeded their 9-5 income.  Imagine being able to work from home, or from your hotel room in Maui!  That’s what you can achieve if you have a website that brings in money without you having to be there.

So where is all this going?  Listen, I think we all know that running a chiropractic business is ten times harder than it used to be.  Every chiropractor knows the story:  reduced insurance reimbursements, patients dropping out of care, sharp decline in new patients, PR battles, internal/disorganized leadership problems, having to cut fees while the fixed costs of running a practice– rent, malpractice, business insurance, payroll, advertising, etc. continue to rise.  All of this has the effect of sapping your energy, time and money.

The new world order for chiropractors is to start a side business to make up for lost revenue, and the best model is an internet-based business– low start up costs, minimal risk, enables you to keep your day job.  Yes, you can use SiteBuildIt to create an entirely new business that can make you money on the side, and quite possibly exceed what you are making in chiropractic!  Just take an inventory on your skills, interests, hobbies, and training.  Chances are you can monetize all of them in one form or another, online, and the SBI video will show you how.

If this all makes sense to you, watch this  SiteBuildIt video.   But only do so when you are relaxed (preferably at home) and have a clear mind so that you can absorb the concept.  It does a great job explaining how to turn your interests/skills into money by using a carefully planned and proven online business model.  This video could very well be the start of a highly profitable, (dare I say) life-changing journey.  It has already done that for many people before you.  Go ahead and check it out, you’ve got nothing to lose.

 Technorati Tags: chiropractic websites

I’ve been following the evolution of Google for over ten years, studying the different services it offers to business owners.  AdWords, which is Google’s “classified ads” service is a great way to get immediate exposure (as in within five minutes of setting up your ad) for your business.  Bid high enough, and have a good enough site and you can put your business at the very top of the search results page for various keywords; primarily (your city) chiropractor.  If you opt in to my email list in the bar below, you can get a free copy of my Google AdWords for Chiropractors ebook.  It reveals the tricks to make an AdWords campaign that will outrank your competitors.

But now, Google Local Business listings is getting a lot of attention and causing a lot of dismay and gnashing of teeth among chiropractors (and other local small businesses).  Whenever anyone types in a keyword that Google identifies as a business, it will take note of that person’s computer IP address (physical location) and will show a map of business listings close to that location.  It usually shows seven businesses at the top (SEO people call this the “seven box”), under the top AdWords listings.  Here is a snapshot of the GBL  7-box for the search term “San Francisco chiropractors” (one doesn’t need to type in the city for the GBL 7-box to show):

It’s frustrating because it is not known how Google selects which businesses get to appear in the 7-box.  The best you can do is create a good listing:  describe your services well, include your hours, upload pictures and videos, etc.  I thought that the number of reviews may play a part, but if you look closely at the snapshot above, you have a business with 46 reviews, and one with one review.  If your business listing is buried in page 3 or more, you can forget about being seen.

One thing that I believe can hurt you is if you post multiple listings for your location; for example one under your clinic name, and one under your own name.  Google may see this as trying to “game the system.”  I have three businesses within my suite (I sublease some of my space), so the other businesses have their own GBL with the same address.  I believe it is for this reason that my GBL never shows in the seven-box.  Google wrongly thinks I’m trying to cheat the system.

So, if you haven’t created a Google Local Business Listing for you clinic, make sure to do it now, and cross your fingers!

Dr. Dan

P.S.  Join my email list and get periodic notices of the latest tech-related ways to promote your chiropractic business.  See previous posts to the right, and the products listed in the upper right corner to get my latest recommendations.

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

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

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

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