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Author: Jeff Tormey

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Creating the PPC Campaign for Your Medical Practice

Pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns in healthcare internet marketing yield immediate results in the form of website traffic, interested clients, and patient appointments. Organic SEO strategies are important in building the ranking of your website. But healthcare SEO needs time, patience, and lots of adjustments to succeed. In the meantime, PPC can jumpstart the traffic to your website and place your content and medical practice in front of interested patients. In fact, paid search listings outperform organic search results by double the number of clicks. Here’s how to create a PPC campaign for your medical practice.

Customer Research

This investigative stage aims to find out the search queries or terms your patients are likely to use or have used to find your services. You may already have a few buyer personas in your marketing plan which can guide you in finding these terms. These initial seed keywords will be used to target the right audience and save you from wasting money on too wide a net. Keep all the relevant keywords. Culling comes later.

Check Keyword Demand

Here the go-to tool is Google AdWords Keyword Planner. It will help you narrow down your list to the keywords that have the most weight. On the Keyword Planner, click the option that says “Get search volume data and trends.” Enter all the Keywords you had come up with and Google will supply these metrics 1 Average monthly searches 2 Competition level 3 Suggested bid cost for the keyword Keyword planner is a completely free tool provided you have a Google account. There are many in-depth tutorials on how you can research your keywords on the planner.

Organize Your Keywords

The next step is to group all your keywords according to related subjects. Some examples of these targeted keyword groups are: 1  Brand terms that encompass the practice name and recognizable taglines 2 Competitor terms are specific to your competitor 3 Generic terms which are names of services and procedures 4 Related terms refer to any phrases your patients might use while searching for your services.

Identify Negative Keywords

One of the keys to a successful PPC campaign for healthcare practices is targeting. So far you have found the right phrases and search queries to target. The other side of the coin is negative keywords. Negative keywords flag certain terms or phrases and prevent your ad from showing up for these search phrases. The idea is to consider the user’s search intent and how it relates to your ad. What answer are they looking for? Without negative keywords, your ad might show up for a search query that has the same generic terms as you but is not what you offer. You end up paying for clicks that were not interested in your product. Using negative keywords will improve your click-through and conversion rates as well as saving you money.

Good Ad Copy and Your Call to Action

In a nutshell, the recipe for creating effective ad copy is: 1  Personalization 2 Presenting the unique selling proposition of your business 3 Outlining what you customer can expect to find once they click the ad Your call-to-action (CTA) gets your customer moving. For example, “Schedule a Free Consult Today! Your CTA should be interesting and deliver a clear message about what to do. PPC campaigns are excellent ways to reach out to your patients and convert their interest into appointments. The learning curve may seem a little convoluted and that’s where Guideway Care comes in. Contact us today to discover our patient engagement solutions and how we can help you create PPC campaigns for your practice.
Common Medical SEO Mistakes

Common Medical SEO Mistakes

If you have implemented a medical SEO strategy and you can see the tumbleweed blowing across your desert of a website, something is wrong. There is a mistake in the strategy if it doesn’t lead to an increase in web traffic or appointment volume. At best medical SEO mistakes are a waste of your marketing budget. At worst, they can damage the ranking of your website. SEO is a fast-evolving field since algorithms and ranking rules are constantly changing. An SEO consultant who hasn’t specialized will apply generic techniques to the detriment of your practice’s online ranking. What are the common medical SEO mistakes?

Choosing the Wrong Keywords

Keywords are the access points to your content. They tell the algorithm that the search query typed into the search box by your prospective patients will be answered by your content. If you optimize for keywords that no one is using then you’re basically shouting into the void.

Competing for Highly-Competitive Keywords

The war of popular keywords comes down to who has the bigger budget. Bigger organizations with deeper pockets will outbid your growing practice for these competitive search terms. You will fail to rank on the first page and your efforts will be in vain. To fix this mistake, medical SEO strategies should instead focus on keywords that are low-competition and extremely focused, down to the practice and treatment.

Poor Targeting

46% of Google searches are looking for local information. SEO is less about manoeuvering the algorithm to rank your site on the first page and more about making your content visible to the right user. Google Adwords has tools to help you research relevant keywords to your practice and to discover what search phrases your prospective clients are using. It would be useless to rank on the first page for a keyword that has little to do with your practice or a location far away.

Ignoring Long-Tail Keywords

Long-tail keywords are keyword phrases with multiple words that target users more effectively. Long-tail keywords will often include key additional information such as city, regions, and specialties. It’s the difference between optimizing your website for the keyword “Doctor in New York” versus “ENT specialist in Queens”. The former is too general whereas the latter is localized and specific and will get more hits.

Failure to Note Progress

Medical online marketing has no cut and dried formula. It has to be tweaked based on the specific data collected through multiple runs of keyword research and testing. Data and its proper analysis determine the success of marketing strategies. Tools such as Google Analytics should be used to gauge the impact of content, how the users are responding to your content, and their pain points. Marketers then go back to the drawing board to implement these insights in creating more effective strategies. Failure to track the progress of SEO strategies is pouring your budget down the drain. Experienced medical SEO consultants understand the specific challenges of marketing healthcare services, They have also perfected the right balance between high search volume and low competition. They will help you rank better and reach your target user. For such expert SEO solutions, get in touch with Guideway Care today.
Major Challenges Facing the Healthcare Industry

3 Major Challenges Facing the Healthcare Industry in 2021 & Their Solutions

2020 was a difficult year for all sectors and probably most of all the healthcare industry. Many healthcare providers saw their financial plans decimated. Virtual care rocketed and patient behaviors went through a drastic change. Some of these challenges will carry into 2021 and the solutions for healthcare will mostly focus on finding a new normal.

Adjustments in Telehealth Delivery

In 2020 the pandemic led to a rise in virtual healthcare. Providers had to meet patients where they were. There were mixed results due to the varying degree of telehealth experience among caregivers. This did not hinder the 50% boom in telehealth which grew from an alternative to a primary healthcare delivery method. However, telehealth is not a one-size-fits-all, and therein lies the challenge. Certain medical specialties like mental health and obstetrics benefit from virtual delivery while others don’t. Senior patients with Alzheimer’s or dementia require face-to-face sessions. Additionally, the lack of personal interaction in some telehealth models led to a subpar experience for the patient.

Key Insights

In 2021, healthcare providers will be looking beyond providing basic telehealth. They will need integrated solutions that create a care pathway for virtual patient visits to run smoothly across departments. Industry providers will need to determine which specialties most benefit from virtual visits and which ones don’t. Better customer experience and fewer dropped handoffs facilitated by care coordinators will be crucial targets. Payers will also have to iron out which telehealth services to reimburse and how virtual care fits within the larger healthcare ecosystem.

Building Digital Solutions To Ease Physician Load

Apart from the patient load, physicians’ workload is choked with detailed administrative tasks and the challenge of inadequate electronic health records systems (EHRs). Never-ending drop-down menus and regulatory reporting requirements impair physician’s efficiency and make it harder for them to provide a good experience for their patients.

Key Insights

In 2021, payers will need to invest more in enhanced portals to automate patient handoffs between systems as well as having access to different claims without manual intervention. Nearly, 91% of executives in healthcare and life science businesses plan to prioritize clinician experience in 2021. This will entail investing in healthcare digital marketing technologies to devise targeted outreach strategies for physician liaisons. They will in turn create demand and make the physician referral process better. These marketing solutions will be integrated with scheduling and patient outreach platforms to reduce cancellations and improve the clinician experience.

A Resilient and Responsive Supply Chain Long-Term

One of the biggest problems in healthcare arising in 2020 and rolling over into 2021 was the realization that supply chains had become rigid and were built on outdated frameworks. The medical supply chain needs to be more nimble, transparent and diversified.

Key Insights

Healthcare industry stakeholders will need to triangulate supply chain risks and increase transparency with their suppliers’ suppliers to avert shortfalls and supply interruptions. They will need to secure the supply chain with manifold measures such as 1 Onshoring manufacturing 2 Consolidating data across the network to improve supply chain visibility and capacity 3 Dual sourcing strategies 4 Diversifying geographies and material sourcing The above are only 3 of the biggest challenges facing healthcare in 2021. Providers will need a multi-pronged approach to these healthcare issues. A combination of robust strategies, intuitive technologies, and key partnerships with patient engagement services providers and healthcare advertising companies will help them improve patient uptake and delivery of services.
A Guide to Transitional Care Management

A Guide to Transitional Care Management

Chronic medical conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, dementia, COPD, and others require a transition period between the in-patient phase and the patient settling into care at home. The same is true for major surgical procedures. Transitional care management provides consistent after-discharge care to both groups of patients to avoid a relapse or readmission.

What Is Transitional Care Management?

Transitional Care Management (TCM) services facilitate the hand-off of patients from an inpatient facility to their community or family setting. Designed to last for 30 days, TCM allows the healthcare provider to guide the patient and family on the road to recovery while minimizing the chances of relapses occurring.
  1. TCM usually falls into 3 broad categories:
  2. Interactive communications
  3. Non-face-to-face service delivery
  4. Face-to-face visits
Interactive communications are made within the first two days of discharge to ascertain the status and transitional needs of the patient. Healthcare call centers are key solutions in carrying out this stage of TCM. The results of the call can then be, face-to-face visits are carried out seven to 14 days after discharge. Non-face-to-face service delivery fills in the intervals between in-person visits. They can be carried out via phone call or medical patient portals.

What Is the Purpose of TCM?

The purpose of TCM is to aid the at-home caregiver and the patient in the following areas:
  1. Reviewing discharge information
  2. Management of medicines and assistance with prescriptions
  3. Education and support regarding the treatment regimen and recommended daily activities
  4. Assistance in scheduling appointments for follow-up checks or tests
  5. Assessment of the need for additional tests or treatments
  6. Liaising between patient and the relevant health care professionals

Who Qualifies For Transitional Care?

Qualifying for TCM is dependant on the facility that discharges you and the recommendations of the attending doctors. Examples of qualifying service facilities are:
  1. Skilled nursing facility
  2. Inpatient acute care hospital
  3. Hospital outpatient observation
  4. Partial hospitalization
  5. Inpatient psychiatric hospital
The patient’s medical record must also state that the patient will need aftercare from a physician, clinical staff, or other healthcare providers. The extent of care providers’ involvement in a patient’s transitional care management is contingent on
  1. The risk of serious complications
  2. The complexity of medical records and diagnoses made
  3. The number of diagnoses
  4. Recovery management options

Billing Requirements for Transitional Care Management

Since transitional care management is temporary, the billing is usually submitted by the healthcare provider at the end of the 30 days. To bill for TCM, a care provider must check off the following criteria:
  1. Direct patient contact within two business days of discharge
  2. A face-to-face visit within seven or 14 days after discharge
  3. Moderate to highly complex medical decision making
As regards insurance, the specifics of TCM coverage vary. The patient needs to find out beforehand monthly premiums, deductibles, and copay amounts related specifically to TCM.

What Is a Transitional Care Hospital?

Patients with complex conditions or who need either an extended recovery period or inpatient rehabilitation are often discharged into a transitional care hospital. They will typically stay in such a facility for upwards of 25 days. These long-term care hospitals offer more specialized care than what a patient can get in skilled nursing facilities or home care. Transitional care management is crucial for the seamless recovery of chronic conditions. It improves the quality of life for the patient and prevents costly readmissions. Invest in TCM solutions to help your chronic care management run efficiently.
Instagram Marketing for Doctors – A Guide to Patient Engagement

Instagram Marketing for Doctors – A Guide to Patient Outreach

Instagram Marketing for Doctors – A Guide to Patient Engagement

Instagram has put video content on the front burner. Whether it is IGTV, Reels, or Instastories, video is easy to consume and share. This is ideal for healthcare businesses looking to diversify their content and grow patient engagement. Healthcare advertising companies use video marketing to boost leads by 66% per year.

Internet users spend, on average, 7 hours a week watching videos. With 1 Billion users worldwide, Instagram claims a significant chunk of this watch time that you can tap into to grow your business.

Read on to learn how you can use Instagram to build brand awareness and patient engagement.

Create a Business Account

Your first and most crucial step is to create an Instagram business account. This is different from a personal account for the following reasons:
  • You can add a phone number and email contact button
  • At the 100 follower mark, you can get detailed analytics on who is engaging with your content
  • 10,000 followers and above allows an Instagram business account to add direct swipe-up links
Business accounts have these specific tools and more to help with engagement.

Follow HIPAA Regulations

Some of the most popular medical content online such as patient transformation posts (before & after) can present ethical issues.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) has clear directives on protecting the privacy and security of patients.
  • Always request explicit permission to share patient experiences
  • Blurr out our hide personal identifiers such as patient name, location, age, etc.

Hashtag Strategy

Hashtags are basically a searchable directory on Instagram that will enable your patients to find you.

Healthcare hashtags on Instagram will grow your account since posts with hashtags receive 12.6% more engagement than those that don’t. Additionally, hashtags can also improve your brand’s medical SEO since they are indexed by search engines.

Here’s what you should know about hashtags.
  • You can use up to 30 hashtags in a feed post and up to 10 in your Instastories
  • No special characters or spaces are allowed in your hashtag but numbers can be used
  • You should use a variety of hashtags whether they fall under community, branded, or campaign categories
If you want to know how to grow a medical practice on Instagram, create a flexible and relevant hashtag strategy. Here are some ideas.
  1. Identify the best medicine Instagram accounts or those in your specialty and note their hashtags
  2. Create several groups of hashtags that can be rotated post by post
  3. Engage in the comment section of other related posts that rank in the hashtags you choose for your business

Consistency vs Frequency

These two words are often used interchangeably in the content marketing world. They are different and consistency is superior.

The frequency of posts does not positively or negatively affect your engagement. Clearly, the more sustainable option is to create a content plan and schedule and stick to it.

Consistency builds trust and reliance on the part of your audience.

Automation with tools like Later and Buffer can also help you nail the consistency problem

Create a Style Guide

“Don’t forget that you are using your Instagram account to promote and attract customers to your healthcare business.

“Having a cohesive content style, tone, font, and aesthetic makes your posts highly recognizable and shareable.

“Use branded images tastefully to get more eyeballs on your brand.

A style guide also means you can easily outsource the social media part of your digital marketing strategy

Get Help From Healthcare Advertising Companies

Speaking of outsourcing, consistent posting on your business Instagram account can be a full-time job.

That’s why healthcare advertising companies have honed these digital and social media marketing skills so you don’t have to.

Contact Guideway Care today for a free evaluation and a digital marketing program that will elevate your patient engagement.
Healthcare Marketing Predictions: A Guide to Crushing 2021

Healthcare Marketing Predictions: A Guide to Crushing 2021

Healthcare Marketing Predictions: A Guide to Crushing 2021

2021 will be a rebound year for many businesses. Healthcare advertising is a key area that will help businesses crush their objectives. Whether it is more informative video content, innovative communication strategies, or better native advertising, marketing must prioritize the customer.

Let’s take a look at some of the healthcare digital marketing trends that will dominate 2021.

The Resurgence of Telehealth

The global shift that came with the pandemic in 2020 has forced businesses to change how they work. None more so than healthcare providers.

The telehealth trend will continue into 2021 with physicians carrying out telephone consultations for cases that do not require face-to-face meetings.

For marketers, this trend means creating dedicated landing pages to funnel old and new patients to this new service delivery method.

Most importantly get the word out! Email campaigns, text broadcasts, targeted ads, and content marketing will have to be geared towards letting patients know they can still safely get healthcare.

Reputation Management Will Be Key

Studies predict that 7 out of 10 people will lose trust in brands if they are perceived to be putting profit above people.

Token gestures and poor customer service will be highly scrutinized in 2021. This is especially true for service-oriented businesses such as healthcare providers.

There is a silver lining to this though. The same study reports that 78% of people still believe in the credibility of doctors to communicate about the current pandemic.

Healthcare digital marketing strategies will need to focus on PR that highlights the brand’s support for community-based initiatives and causes.

There will also be a huge emphasis on transparency and authority in all content. Your patients need you to hold the line as a credible and transparent source of information.

Marketers should not neglect to review programs and community engagement on the various platforms since reputations are strengthened or broken online.

Healthcare Marketing Will Rely on Innovative Services

2021 will continue the novel marketing experience of unchartered territories. Most healthcare businesses are discovering new ways to deliver essential services to their patients.

They are all trying to
  • Make patient’s experiences better
  • Disseminate information in a clear, concise, and quick manner
  • Keep the community as safe as possible

New medical care apps, chat integrations, live broadcasts, and AR simulations are some of the tools being adopted by healthcare providers.

To boost the uptake of technological innovations, healthcare marketing will have to focus on creating awareness amongst patients about the how and why of the innovations.

Healthcare Advertising Will Evolve

Many cities have experienced lockdowns and service disruption. All the same, the demand for high-value content and the need for organic search volume and advertising have not disappeared. They have simply changed.

Digital marketing in the healthcare industry will need to shift the marketing spend into content that best supports patients now and builds a brand reputation for the future.

Some of the implications of this trend will be a greater focus on local SEO since more people are using “Near Me” searches. After all, movement is limited and the need for nearby urgent care has increased.

Instead of self-touting ads, patients want rich content that offers guidance, solutions, and alternatives for example back-to-school safety guides or at-home physiotherapy exercises. Before collecting those emails, consider the value-add of your marketing campaign.

As you evaluate your business’s current marketing strategy, don’t forget to be bold and patient-focused. For comprehensive healthcare marketing solutions, don’t hesitate to call us.
Healthcare Content Marketing Strategy: Getting Started & Tips

Healthcare Content Marketing Strategy: Getting Started & Tips

Healthcare Content Marketing Strategy: Getting Started & Tips

Viral videos of physicians dancing while giving health tips are a dime a dozen. However, healthcare content marketing is much more nuanced than that.

From online review forums and social media to healthcare advertising companies, patients and healthcare providers now have a slew of tools to help them find each other.

What’s the first thing you do when you’re unwell and don’t know the cause? You Google it! You and 77% of Americans use online reviews to find medical information and new physicians.

Patients want more detailed information about who they entrust their lives to. They want to make a connection. This is where medical content marketing comes in.

4 Tips for Successful Healthcare Content Marketing

Only if you do healthcare content marketing right.

Here is a quick cheat sheet on getting started and best practices for healthcare content marketing.

Who Is Your Target Audience?

Only Your audience is your first stop. It’s important to understand what makes them tick.

What questions can help you create your target audience persona?
  • What demographics do they fall under?
  • What are their passions, fears, or anxieties?
  • What problem do they need to be solved?
  • What hot topics are they interested in?
  • Do they want technical or simplified content?

Zero In on Quality and Expertise

Healthcare content falls under the YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) category according to Google. The stakes are high for this type of content which can adversely impact your reader if poorly researched or communicated.

These sites need to contain the highest levels of Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness E-A-T to be ranked well by search engines.

Stick to what you know. If your medical practice specializes in dental health, you shouldn’t have content about kidney stones.

Focusing on your expertise will cement you as an authority to both Google and your audience. They will keep coming back.

Make Your Content Interactive and Highly Shareable

The average person online has an attention span of 8 seconds.

Unless they are looking for in-depth information on a topic, they will be in and out of your website by the time you’re settling into your introduction.

The solution?
  • Make your content easy to skim with images, infographics, lists, and tables
  • Interact with your audience through polls and quizzes
  • Diversify into shorter, highly shareable content such as pins, infographics, quotes
  • Make it fun and easy to consume with podcasts and video

Get Digital Marketing Help

We get it. You’re good at delivering quality healthcare but digital marketing feels like an alien planet. PPC, SEO, and inbound funnels might as well be foreign languages.

So why slog through it alone?

As digital marketing experts, Guideway Care has perfected online healthcare marketing techniques. We boost your web presence, rank your practice competitively and handle reputation management. We ensure new patients can find you and that their feedback opens more doors for you. Contact us today for a free evaluation of your healthcare organization and find out how our solutions can take you to the next level.
Guide to Improve SEO & PPC For Doctors in 2021

Guide to Improve SEO & PPC For Doctors in 2021

Guide to Improve SEO & PPC For Doctors in 2021

The first page of search engine result pages (SERPs) receives the lion’s share of clicks and conversions. To improve healthcare SEO and PPC for your practice you need to implement organic content marketing as well as paid digital marketing.

Organic search results rely on a well-optimized site. However, Google also ranks your site according to user experience and how long patients stay on the site.

To improve user experience consider adding supportive off-site tools such as medical call centers and patient engagement solutions.

That said, let’s look at the best practices for improving your medical SEO and PPC in 2021.

Best Practices For Medical SEO in 2021

Evaluate Your Current Medical SEO

You can’t fix what you don’t know. Some of the areas to evaluate for your medical search engine optimization are:
  • Website loading speed on mobile and desktop determines whether patients prematurely click away
  • Google Analytics regarding the traffic to your site
  • Missing content or metadata
  • Inadequate or poor internal and external links

Optimize Existing Content

Improving the content already on your site can increase traffic to your site by over 100%. You can optimize old content in these straightforward ways:
  • Refresh blog posts with new research and better writing
  • Add better quality images and graphics
  • Make the content relevant to your practice
  • Fix 404 errors
  • Change your hosting service to increase website loading speed
  • Update local SEO with accurate business information (Name, address, telephone number)

Develop a Healthcare Content Marketing Strategy

Content is king is an overworked cliche but it consistently proves true. Patients are not looking for a digital salesperson on your website.

Your site content and social media pages need to add value to their lives and create a trustworthy connection with their healthcare provider.

Improving your medical SEO ranking requires you to consistently add new expert, authoritative, trustworthy content with well-researched keywords. You can outsource the content creation if you cannot keep up the consistency in-house.

A great tip is to integrate your website and social media pages so that the content is syndicated across platforms saving you time and resources.

Best Practices For Medical PPC in 2021

Pay-per-click (PPC) is one of the best ways for a website to rank on the first page of search results. PPC and SEO work together to increase the relevance, authority, and presence of your site in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Google collects site interaction and traffic data collected from your PPC ads to helps its algorithm with organic ranking on SERP.

What can you do to improve the performance of your PPC ad campaign?

A Foundation Of Great Content

Just as in SEO, PPC for doctors requires you to have an engaging and cohesive story across your ad copy and landing pages.

The ad should have a clear and captivating value proposition. Your potential patient should see the ad and immediately understand the benefit of choosing your practice.

Lastly, great content should build trust. Think patient testimonials and peer endorsements on the landing pages. Concise but informative doctors’ biographies and credentials add to your practice’s trustworthiness

Well Targeted Ads

PPC works by bidding on the keywords of your choice. When patients search the keywords you bid on, your ad appears in the search results.

Consequently, thorough keyword research and search query mining will form the basis of a successful medical PPC campaign.

Long-tail keywords and specific search queries comprising four to six words are cheaper and perform better than broad, short keywords.

Reduce wasted marketing spend by also compiling a list of negative keywords. These will prevent your ad from appearing to fine-tuning people outside your target group.

Evaluate and Tweak Daily

Successful ads are more art than size. There is no one-size-fits-all. You need to evaluate the analytics of your ads daily and adjust where needed. This fine tuning of your bidding strategy is done to achieve any or a combination of the following aspects.

  • Lowest possible cost per click (CPC) for maximum clicks
  • Enhanced CPC to enable Google to automatically increase or decrease your keyword bid
  • Automatically adjust the cost per acquisition (CPA) for maximum conversion on landing pages
Boosting SEO and PPC performance can be a complex undertaking especially for the technical aspects of website backend and keyword bidding. Schedule a consultation today to take your pick of the medical marketing services we offer.
Bariatric Digital Marketing Services: To Help You Compete and Grow

Bariatric Digital Marketing Services: To Help You Compete and Grow

Bariatric Digital Marketing Services: To Help You Compete and Grow

Bariatric marketing is the competitive edge you need to put your practice in front of an online audience of 1.3 million searching the web annually about bariatric procedures.

The bariatric surgery industry in North America is expected to hit $1.84 billion in value by the year 2024. To get a piece of that pie for your practice, traditional referrals methods and the overworked before and after testimonials are insufficient.

To get new patients and retain old ones, you need a balance of passive and active marketing strategies for bariatric surgery practice.

Why should your practice hire a bariatric Digital Marketing agency?

Balance Your Caseload With Elective Cases

Elective, cash-paying bariatric surgery cases yield more revenue than their HMO and Medicaid counterparts.

Achieving the balance of more high-revenue patients is the sweet spot for bariatric surgeons. To this end, bariatric marketing experts can help to vet and onboard insurance verification services companies. The purpose of these companies is to eliminate the headache of figuring out which patient’s insurance will fully reimburse and which one will not.

You will be able to say goodbye to reduced reimbursements and welcome higher revenue.

Reputation Management

Bariatric surgery has been repeatedly flogged over the years by the press as an unnecessary or dangerous procedure.

Bariatric marketing strategies must factor in for re-educating patients and referring physicians as well as debunking misguided information about bariatrics.

Reputation management refers to building a high volume of patient reviews online that are positive. This healthcare marketing strategy also addresses any negative reviews and turns them around to grow the online ranking of the practice.

Search Engine Optimization and Paid Search

SEO and paid search and two sides of the same coin. Search engines crawl your website and rank its content and user experience.

Search engines also monitor the response of your audience to paid ads. Metrics such as click-through rate, bounce rate, and conversions all supplied by paid ads help your site to rank favorably. Google makes thousands of changes to its search algorithm every year. This makes successful SEO and paid marketing a specialized field.

It is a game-changer to partner with digital bariatrics marketing experts who have already built tried and tested strategies for medical online marketing.

Social Media Marketing

43% of adults in the US find it appropriate to follow and contact their doctor on social media. Even more surprising is that 80% of social media users use these platforms to search for health information.

Social media is a powerful tool for brand awareness and creating direct engagement with potential patients.

A robust and precise social media campaign is much more effective than Google ads because it allows you to specifically target prospects by interest, location, and past behavior.

Medical online marketing is what word-of-mouth referrals have morphed into. While you focus on your core business, hire bariatric marketing experts to build an effective marketing strategy for you.
A Computer With A Graph On It

15 Best Chiropractor SEO Steps To Find Your Patients

You’re the best chiropractor and you know it? But are your potential patients aware of it?

Chiropractor seo ranking success relies on a combination of tools such as healthcare call centers, patient portals, and Google My Business among others. All these tools and tips aim to improve your patients’ experience.

Let’s break down 15 steps you can take to improve your SEO and get more chiropractic patients

1. Have Accurate and Consistent Business Information

The most important information for SEO ranking is:
  • Business name
  • Address
  • Phone number

Local search engines will use these three as a yardstick to ensure all your data aligns and that your chiropractic practice exists.

Search engines will look at the
  • Relevance of your details to the patient’s search query
  • Distance from the location term used in the search
  • The prominence of your practice

Ensure your website’s information is identical to all other listings such as Bing Places For Business and Google My Business.

Inaccuracies will result in a negative ranking

2. Improve Local SEO

There are further steps you can take to improve local SEO.
  • Add a Google Map to your contact page
  • Use local images and optimize with location metadata
  • Create a separate page on your site for each service
  • If you have multiple locations, list them on separate pages

3. Encourage Online Reviews From Patients

Manage your reviews. Responding to both positive and negative reviews demonstrates your care for your patients. It also improves your SEO rankings.

Encourage new patients to review your chiropractor services on Yelp and Google. You can also use new customer surveys and discount incentives.

Reviews are regulated and impart social proof to your business. Dedicate a page on your website to reviews.

4. Upgrade Your Website

A clunky static website is as bad as no website at all. You have 2-8 seconds to make a good impression on a potential new patient.

Ensure your website is well designed and your WebHost offers you excellent speed and bandwidth. Your website shouldn’t hang mid-query.

Once you’re done with the basics of location, contact, and service information, you can add some upgrades.

Chatboxes that can be linked to your Facebook Messenger gives the patient a one-on-one experience. Include social media widgets

5. Optimize for Mobile Devices

As you revamp your website don’t forget the visitors on mobile devices.

There is nothing as jarring as clicking onto a website not optimized for mobile. Having to zoom in and out or scroll left and right is takes away from the website experience.

Considering 88% of consumers who will search your chiropractor practice will do so on a mobile device, you must prioritize them.

6. Do Your Keyword Research

A huge part of chiropractor SEO is keywords. Which terms are your patients searching for? Research the terms applicable to chiropractic services specific to your locale.

I hope by now you know to not stuff your blog posts with keywords. Keyword usage must always be organic.

7. Show Your Appreciation For Your Patients

The personal touch is a great differentiator for businesses in almost any niche. Here’s how you can make your patients feel catered to.
  • Personalize your emails by patient name
  • Offer discounts, coupons, giveaways to show appreciation
  • Birthday messages also make the patient feel seen

8. Focus On Expert Authoritative Trustworthy Content

Colin Powell said, “Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate, and doubt, to offer a solution everybody can understand.”

Cut to the heart of your patients’ problems and give them solutions or direct them to your practice for relief. They will be thankful and Google will reward you with positive rankings.

9. Get Peer Reviews and Referrals

A great way to do this is to collaborate with local businesses that offer complementary services. Think hospitals and rehabilitation centers.

Strong community involvement and sponsoring causes in cash or kind will make you a household name in your area. Your practice will be the first name that comes to mind.

10. Capture With Social Media

With nearly 4 billion people using social media platforms globally, your chiropractor practice can only benefit from engagement on social media.

More than 80% of patients trust and rely on online reviews to find medical services. Take advantage of social media to engage with your patients and understand their interests. Read more: 5 Benefits of Social Media in Healthcare

11. Video Is the Future

According to 74% of marketers, videos have a better return on investment than static images.

For chiropractic services, video can be a great way to get the necessary information to your patients about procedures and aftercare.

Videos are also highly shareable which is a great benefit for your business.

12. Maximize Pay-per-Click Ads

SEO is a long game. Its short-term counterpart is pay-per-click ads. As you dedicate a chunk of your marketing budget towards content marketing and building your SEO ranking don’t forget your immediate goals.

Google and social media ads can be customized according to your budget, target audience, location, and customer behavior.

13. Cohesive Digital Marketing Strategy

Marketing strategies for chiropractors should be interconnected across all online platforms.

The PPC ads, social media content, email marketing, and Google Business listing should all work together to funnel curious potential clients to patronize your services.

14. Analytics Are Your Friend

All the above steps would be ineffective if you failed to check the numbers. Analytics tell you what is working and what is not.

Google Analytics tells you where your website visitors are coming from, how many they are, and how long they are staying. By tweaking you can improve your ranking and customer satisfaction.

15. Embrace Healthcare Call Centers and Patient Portals

The world is moving towards remote delivery of services. For your return patients or those too far, this is a great option. Give clear instructions on how they can use telehealth on your site and the eligible services.

Outsourcing the design and management of your patient portals and telehealth will free up your staff to focus on customer service and your core offerings.