If you haven’t noticed, many people are abandoning the old hard copy Yellow Pages and are doing their business searches online.  They are either using an online directory like Yellowpages.com, using an internet search engine like Google, Yahoo Search, or Bing; or are using a social media site like Yelp.com, FaceBook, LinkedIn and Craigslist.

Why?  Because these days people spend a lot of time on the internet because  it offers many conveniences.  People are paying their bills online, shopping online, doing price comparisons, researching products and services, and even finding their future spouses online.  Who knows what’s next?

Chiropractors as business people sometimes are slow to keep up with marketing trends, and this is understandable– there are a lot of issues to deal with when running a chiropractic business.  They’re like a big oil tanker chugging along, then trying to make a 90 degree turn into port.  Such big vessels need to travel a whole mile in the same direction after the rudder is turned, before they start turning due to their mass and inertia.  Are you one of these ships?  Doing the same kinds of marketing you did in the 1980s, like free chicken dinners and spinal care class?

After you read this post, Google the phrase “[your city or neighborhood]chiropractors” and see what listings come up.  If you live in Atlanta, Google “Atlanta chiropractors.”  If you’re not on the first page, you are missing a lot of potential patients.  The chiropractor listings you see at the top are taking them away from you– ouch!

So what do you do?  You make sure your website is search engine optimized.  Search engine optimization (SEO) is the tedious process of doing things to make your website rank high for your business’ keywords.  It’s very time consuming, but rewarding.  Get a #1 or #2 listing for your main keyword, and you don’t have to deal with expensive directory listings and Google AdWords pay per click ads.  It  becomes free traffic, which has tremendous value.

I made an SEO ebook especially for small business owners that explains all the techniques I use to get a top ranked website (Google San Francisco Chiropractor).  It’s written in plain English, is easy to understand, and is very concise.  All you have to do is follow the steps, and you can’t lose.  In actuality, it should be very easy to get the #1 or #2 position for your main keywords because speaking in terms of search engine results, there are not too many listings for [city]chiropractor or variations of it.

If you spend a couple hundred bucks on a website but it isn’t listed on the first page in Google, then it might as well be invisible.  Most people looking for businesses make their selection from the first page.