Home | About Us | White Hat Story | Testimonials | FAQ | Contact Us | Blog | Press

Dental eMarketing: World Wide & Local

August 12, 2008 – 10:50 am

According to surveys over the past year, more than 74% of US households go to the internet search engine when looking for local goods and services.

It used to be the yellow pages that dominated this market. But with the advances in search technology, faster internet connections, and better computers, why would we page through a thick, poorly organized book when we just have to type in a few words and click ’search’?

You need to be aware of these trends as a local service provider. While word of mouth and other traditional forms of media marketing, like the trusted yellow pages, are still viable, the bigger area is now online.

If you’re website isn’t designed to rank well in search engines, especially for local terms, you might as well not have on at all.

It’s there to be found by natural searches, people looking for your service in your area.

You don’t need to have an online store, fancy graphics, expensive content management systems, but you do need to have the right content, written the right way, to become a relevant site in Google and other search engines’ eyes.

If you’re still holding out on putting up a website, consider it for what it is: a more advanced and powerful yellow page entry that has the potential to become your number one source of new leads and patients.

Convinced yet?

Get online!

Greg | Dental and Medical Marketing | Comments (0)

Google Tips: Site-Wide Links

August 12, 2008 – 10:33 am

A site-wide link is a link to an outside website that appears on each page of a website.

For example, if my site www.whitehatfirm.com linked to Google.com, on every single web page.

When trading links it can sometimes seem like a good idea to get your link on as many pages as possible, but there’s evidence to the contrary.

Google, when it sees a link, in the same area, with the same properties, on every single page (like a links area on a sidebar), is suspicious that the link is artificial, not really there because its relevant to that page’s content, but because the webmaster just wants it to be there.

This is where it hurts. If it isn’t relevant, Google doesn’t care, and your ranking will go down, or most likely just not benefit very much from the inbound link.

Keep this in mind when you talk to other webmasters to trade links. Pick the places you want your site to appear. Make sure its relevant and not just a pasted link that appears in the same place on every page.

And of course, return the favor.

Greg | Google | Comments (0)

Lawfirm Marketing Online: Be Personal

August 11, 2008 – 11:06 am

Legal issues are heavy, serious, and personal. Meet your client face to face on your website.

When visitors land on your website looking for your help, they need to know who you are right away. We need to instill trust and reputation almost instantly in order to get them to keep browsing and see your services, history, etc. But first we just need to get them to stay.

Your home page should have a photo of the lawyer(s) in your firm or practice, with a simple subtitle explaining who is who. A photo of the physical location, ie a picture of the building from the street, will help to establish location and trust. You’re a part of their neighborhood, you’re a real person, you can probably help them. That’s the message we want to send in seconds.

Besides these two key photos, the text on your home page should be short and sweet. Reach out to the client, make it personal. Cold, stale and overused copy will be ignored. You don’t need to tell your life story, on the contrary, you need to be short, concise, original and to the point.

Whatever distinguishes your practice, make it known right away. If it takes you more than 300 words, you’ve already said too much, or maybe you need to sit down and distill your law firm’s character then try writing again.

Reach out to these visitors. You’re their friend, you’re going to help them resolve the issues that can be hard to get their head around, and make sure it all ends correctly.

Now that you’ve got their attention and tentative trust, tell them what to look at next, whether that’s your track record, your history, or whatever you deem most important according to your practice and your business style.

But first, you’ve got to be personal and establish a sense of trust and belonging.

Greg | Legal Marketing | Comments (0)

SEO Tips: Page Load Times

August 11, 2008 – 10:58 am

While not exactly an SEO issue, it is so closely related to the converting those visitors you receive from SEO efforts that it bares mentioning here.

Does your page take too long to load?

After all the hard work you put into ranking high on search engines and generating traffic, you could be shooting yourself in the foot if you’re not making sure you site loads fast.

Most of us web browsers are the same in that we have zero patience. If something is taking too long to load, we’ll just click back and look for another site to check. Slow load times look unprofessional, their annoying, and as a result you’re starting off on the wrong foot with a potential customer.

What makes a page load slow?

Load times are affected by the code and the images you’ve got on a web page. If you’re site is heavy with tables, lots of white spaces around code, and superfilous HTML, it will load slower. If you’re site is super heavy on images, it will load even slower. While there are other factors that effect your page load time, these are the major ones.

Whatever page your visitor will be landing on should be as cleaned up as possible, using as few images as possible. If the user wants to see more pictures of a property listing or other item on your site, that should be a secondary page easily accessed from where the traffic will land.

Keep page load times and make the most of the traffic you’ve fought hard to drive to your site.

Greg | SEO | Comments (0)

Be Local With Your Dental Practice Site

August 8, 2008 – 11:52 am

Unless your practice is a cosmetic practice that targets a national clientel, chances are most of your business is coming to you from within 20 to 30 mile radius.

While the internet is a big place, it’s still possible to focus on that traffic thats coming from homes nearby.

ADWORDS

AdWords allows you to target within a radius of your home. This means your ads only show up for browsers with an IP address (the computer’s address) in the region selected. You can essentially only advertise to those that are within a reasonable distance without wasting money on clicks from users far away.

SEO for Local Keywords

The copy, or text, on your website should also be optimized for search engines with a focus towards the local. This means using the town name, city name, major road ways, nearby school districts, etc, throughout your sites copy. Making short articles that focus on smaller sets of these keywords will further raise your relevancy for a search like the following: “Dentist in -town name-” or “-town name- dental services”, etc.

Just keep in mind that the internet can be as big or as small as you need it to be. Using smart strategies and thinking before you write can help make sure your site is most visible to those nearby and within you area of influence.

Greg | Dental and Medical Marketing | Comments (0)

Medical Practice Marketing: Big Issues

August 8, 2008 – 11:43 am

As we’ve mentioned before, medical searches make up a huge portion of search engine traffic. If your medical practices deals with some of the big health issues, like diabetes, for example, you need to be talking about them on your site.

The form in which you talk about them can vary, but short articles are always a good bet. In 500 words or less, discuss warning signs, the history of the disease and what it is, how it is treated, why it happens, etc.

People are actively seeking this information and, chances are, a doctor like you and those are your practice.

If you’re highly specialized practice its even more important that you’re writing these short articles, or having them written for you. People seeking specialized treatments and help will be looking for people just like you. Make sure you can be found.

Once the articles are on your website, consider posting edited versions on free article databases like ezinearticles.com, which can further increase the exposure of your content, website, and expertise.

Greg | Dental and Medical Marketing | Comments (0)

Searching Becomes More Prevalent, Study Finds

August 7, 2008 – 12:24 pm

The Pew Internat and American Life Project reported that the search box and searching have become more common after a surveys results were posted.

According to the survey, nearly half of internet users will conduct a search on a typical day. In 2002 only a third of those surveyed said the same.

Searching has, according the to the report, replaced an older method of browsing that revolved around bookmarking and revisiting favorite sites.

Now users use searches to find what they want, exactly.

This is good news for the search marketing industry and those interested in using online search ad placement. Prospects and impressions will continue to grow as the internet community continues to embrace the search and incorporate it into their daily life and tasks.

Source

Greg | General Marketing/E-Marketing | Comments (0)

Online Marketers Unhappy with Microsoft/Yahoo Fiasco

August 7, 2008 – 11:56 am

Search Engine Marketers are unhappy with the aftermath of the Microsoft/Yahoo talks and failures, which has ultimately led to Google gaining an even stronger hold over the search market share, now nearly 70 percent.

“We always have a need for multiple sources of quality traffic and we don’t see that need going away as Google’s share increases,” Will Margiloff, CEO and founder of Innovation Interactive, an online marketing agency, said during a panel discussion. “Complexity is good, consolidation is bad.” (source)

While online marketing spending has remained rather solid through the economic downturns of the past year, the consolidation of power in Google is hurting some.

AOL’s ad unit reported a weak 2% growth in quarterly ad sales, where as both Google and Yahoo have reported double digits.

Marketers report that Yahoo and other competitors remain attractive and high converting areas to invest in advertising. Users of Yahoo, for example, often spend considerably more time on the site than at Google.

In the end, however, all search marketing companies interviewed had reported an increase in business for 2008, so things can’t be all that bad in the end.

Source

Greg | Yahoo! | Comments (0)

Real Estate Agents: Use Your Traffic!

August 6, 2008 – 11:27 am

Brandon Cornett of Arming your Farming shared a scary tidbit on his blog recently: “The average real estate website gets enough traffic to support the real estate agent’s marketing and business goals, but her or she is not capitalizing on that traffic”.

Can it be true?

I bet it is.

Brandon went on to give 5 general rules about lead generation, but I’m going to give you some specific advice.

  1. Communicate Clearly: Visitors landing on your website or browsing your listings should have a crystal clear understanding of who your business is, where it is located and how to use and navigate your website. This accomplished through smart and direct copy and design and aesthetics.
  2. Be Relevant: Make sure your website is addressing issues outside of the house listings — neighborhoods, reviews of area schools, basically anything relevant to a homebuyer in your area.
  3. Give ‘em the Goods: Make your listings as complete and attractive as possible. Photos are essential, and as many as you can give the better. Videos are even better. You want browsers to get a very strong idea of the property, motivating them to make the call to your office.
  4. Trade the Goods, Too: Some of your best and relevant content can be traded with visitors. Maybe you can put together a few focused articles on home improvement, or a detailed review of a particular neighborhood, something more indepth than the short articles you wrote. Interested visitors will be willing to trade their emails and contact info for the report, giving you a way to follow up on leads and convert interested browsers to buyers and clients.
  5. The Internet Isn’t Magic:

    6. Of course, I wish it were. The reality is that buyers have the same mentality when shopping on and offline. Empty promises, flat copy, terrible pictures and a poor, unprofessional website is the equivalent of opening a shop in a terrible neighborhood with a leaky ceiling and a receptionist that doesn’t know what’s going on. Yeah, I’d walk out of that place, too. Make sure you’re representing your business and your skills to the max online.

Greg | Real Estate Marketing | Comments (0)

PPC Advice: Google’s Vision of a Landing Page

August 6, 2008 – 11:17 am

Google has it’s own list of advice for making a landing page, and as usual, its chock full of good practices.

Google breaks a landing page down into three categories:

  1. Relevant and Original Content
  2. Transparency
  3. Navigability

Remember, the page your AdWords ad links to has an effect on the ranking and relevance of your ad, which in turn effects both placement and cost per bid.

Now, what do they mean by all of these things?

Be Relevant and Original

No surprises here: make sure visitors quickly find what you ad promised. In other words, if you dump them into a homepage for a ecommerce website, thats not relevant. You should dump them on a page made specificaclly for the product(s) in your ad or at least to the catalogue listing of the product(s).

Secondly, make sure the written content is unique on these pages, not to be found anywhere else on the web. IE, don’t use the manufacturers description of a verbatim copy of another page on your site. Create something unique and relevant.

Transparency

Don’t try to dupe anyone.

Unless you absolutely need a form to capture visitors information, don’t put it on the landing page, save it for the second page. Why? Because people just don’t trust forms they land on without doing so on purpose. You want to establish trust by being straightforward about your business, what it does, what it sells, and how its going to interact with the visitors computer to do this.

We’re not talking about a technical treatise on the subject. Just no misleading or empty copy with false promises or other mumbo jumbo. Let the visitor get a quick and clear image of who you are, what you offer, and how you deliver it.

Navigability

Visitors are stupid. Ok, maybe they aren’t, but you have to think about your navigation as if they are. It needs to be super simple, super focused and clear. Too many options are distracting, vague button names and link text leaves us unsure of where to click.

If you want them to click there, tell them to do it!

You can read Google’s full advice on landing pages here.

Greg | PPC Campaigns | Comments (0)