Search Engine Placement and Optimization

Having the greatest website in the world won’t do you any good if no one sees it. Having an attractive, user-friendly and informative website is only half the battle… getting people to your site is the other half of that battle. Obviously, we can't talk about driving traffic to your website without talking about search engine optimization (SEO) in both the realms of 'organic placement' (i.e., your listing comes up in the natural search results) and 'paid inclusion' (i.e., you pay to have your listing come up.) 

Search engine marketing is an art in and of itself. There are literally hundreds of thousands of factors that are considered when it comes to your ultimate rank on any given set of search results. We're not going to get into all of those here. The important thing to know is that there is no silver bullet that is going to get you to the top of the ranks for 'organic' placement. Now, if you have the budget to buy your way onto the first page of search results, that's a different story. But organic results take time and effort. 

Organic Search Engine Placement

Organic SEO happens when your site has content that a search engine (i.e., Google) decides is very relevant to what any given users is searching for. How do search engines know which sites are relevant? Well, that's where those several hundred thousand variables come into play. We can't address all of them, but most of the big ones involve the content of your site. The technical aspects of SEO are usually exasperated by many firms. They'd have you believe it's rocket science that only an SEO firm can handle. Not true. The technical aspects of SEO aren't so bad (not that there isn't some effort in it, but especially if building from scratch, it's not hard to make a website that is properly optimized.) The trick is in what content you have, how you write it, and how it is integrated into the site.

Paid Inclusion

Paid inclusion is simply when you pay for a position near the top of the search results for any given keyword or phrase. This is basically how you 'buy your way to the top.' Different search engines handle this differently, but in terms of Google, the system is a bit like an auction in that you pay an amount per click for every time someone clicks on your ad. The trick to making these campaigns work is making sure you're targeting the right market and using the right ad. For instance, you don't want to simply target 'plastic surgery' because you'll end up spending money advertising to people in geographic areas that have no bearing on a local medical practice. With most marketing programs, you're dealing with a local audience, so it takes a special touch to make sure that you concentrate your marketing budget on the local market and not all over the web where it won't bring patients through your door.

PPC Program Management

We can completely manage all aspects of your campaign for a small percentage of your monthly budget. We've had clients who were using paid inclusion (also referred to as PPC or pay per click) who ended up with 5 times the traffic for 2/3 of their previous budget, even after our fees. We see a lot of mismanaged PPC campaigns. If you want to run your own, that's great. We'll support you. But it may be worth having us give things a look over to make sure you're getting the most you can out of your marketing dollar. 

Honest Answers and Realistic Expectations

There is a lot of hype when it comes to SEO. There are a lot of empty promises and disappointed clients out there. We can't promise perfection. We can't even promise a top 10. What we can promise is total honesty about what does and doesn't work, what things may or may not work, and what you can expect from various efforts or expenditures. SEO programs are as varied as your audience, so there is no set plan. However, we will take the time to discuss pros and cons and all your options with you so you can make decisions that make sense for your practice.  

Traffic Analysis

We also provide you with traffic analysis so that you can actually see the results that we are promising. Everyone talks about how internet 'stuff' is so intangible, but we assure you it isn't. The results we can generate with a properly designed website are very, very real.

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