townsend.bunksite.com

Tag: marketing

Marketing Must-Haves: What to Look for When Hiring an Online Marketing Firm

You may be worried that outsourcing your online marketing efforts will mean losing control of your company’s voice.

You are the expert when it comes to your company’s unique selling points, after all. However, a good online marketing firm will want to work hand-in-hand with you to make sure your story stays intact and works for you. Remember, they are also experts! A good marketing firm can help tell your story on multiple platforms and ensure it stands out above the competition, whether it is local or industry-driven. Here are some tips for hiring the right online marketing firm.

Find a firm that provides a full arsenal of services.

An effective marketing firm will offer a full range of services. To be competitive online, you need to reach your desired audience wherever they may be, and they may be on multiple platforms. Search engine optimization, social media, and advertising are all important elements to a successful marketing effort. Remember, it’s not enough to plop a website online or create a Facebook page and hope for the best. A marketing firm should be able to do keyword research, write compelling content, and handle your advertising investment.

Check testimonials and read successful case studies.

When you’re hiring an individual, you always ask for a resume, conduct an interview, and check their references. You should follow the same rules when hiring a marketing firm. Think of their website and online presence as their resume. What do they have to offer? How do they approach their job differently than others? Then start a dialogue with the company. Get on the phone with them. Ask questions, learn more about the company culture, and evaluate whether or not their team can help you achieve your goals. Finally, check references. You want to make sure their other customers are satisfied. Read their testimonials and case studies, such as the Success Stories showcased on the Search Influence website, to get an understanding of how they measure success.

Make sure the firm utilizes analytics and lead tracking.

One of the most important aspects of a marketing plan is analytics. Without solid and consistent analytics set up on the front end, you won’t be able to see the fruits of your marketing efforts—and most importantly, your return on investment. A good marketing firm will be results oriented and will be able to talk you through their analytics and lead tracking process. When hiring a marketing firm, make sure they are able to track how a visitor came to your site, whether it was through paid or organic search, a referring site, or an email marketing campaign; which search engines are being used to find your site; what keywords you’re ranking for (and what keywords you SHOULD be ranking for); what page of your site is generating leads and conversions; and your audience’s physical location.

Follow these three helpful tips to hire the right online marketing firm for your company, and see your traffic increase and your leads turn to conversions.

July 20, 2015
Reconstruct the SEO Strategy of Your Medical Practice

A referral by a physician used to be the most common way people chose health care specialists. However, now patients are turning to Google and other search engines for health information and to select a physician. In fact, 62 percent of smartphone owners used their phone to search for information about a health condition, according to the latest statistics from the Pew Research Center. Among those who look for online reviews to shop for doctors, roughly one-third reported choosing a physician based on good ratings, according to a national survey on the use of online physician rating sites published just last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

To make the most of this trend, your practice must show up in Google search results prominently. If your practice is getting lost in a sea of search results, implement some of these medical search engine optimization tips to attract more patients.

Create Great Content

As demonstrated by the Pew Research Center’s facts on Internet use and health care, consumers today are hungry for health information. Your practice can benefit by providing the information consumers are looking for, but there’s a strategy to this. The days of simply putting the most common medical keyword strings all over your web pages are over. With Google’s new algorithm updates, websites that have consistent, quality content are the ones that will get the bump in the rankings.

For a medical SEO campaign, create distinct web pages for related topics that prove your practice is an authority on the subject. For example, an orthopedic practice that wishes to bolster its search engine rankings, should create separate web pages for a diverse range of topics such as pediatric orthopedics and sports medicine. To offer more detail about specific treatments or procedures, these pages can then be broken down further into subtopics. On the sports medicine page, for example, include a subtopic about ACL reconstruction surgery or muscle tear prevention tips. Unsure what topics and procedures potential patients are interested in? With a personalized SEO package, Search Influence can help determine what topics your target consumers are searching for the most.

Infographics are also great content to invest in for medical SEO because infographics can help grow website traffic. Research by AnsonAlex, a tech company focusing on tutorials, found that publishers who use infographics grow website traffic 12 percent faster than those with no infographics. In fact, the popularity of infographics has surged in recent years—increasing by 800 percent from 2010 to 2012, according to research from Web company Unbounce.

Image Optimization

Along with infographics, you will want to include other images on your website as well. As we’ve said before, Google rewards websites that have interesting and relevant images displayed. Images keep people looking at your site longer, which gives you website more authority in the eyes of the algorithm.

Help people find your pictures by optimizing them to include alternative text. For example, say your practice has a diagram of what happens when a person suffers from a pulmonary embolism. If you optimize your diagram, it will likely appear when people perform a Google Image Search for pulmonary embolisms—possibly appearing as one of the first images they see. When they click on this image, they are giving a hit to your site and increasing your overall medical SEO ranking.

Mobile Websites

As evidenced by the whopping 62 percent of smartphone owners who use their mobile devices to look up health information, a mobile SEO strategy is crucial. Google’s recent “Mobilegeddon,” or mobile-friendly update, was a move to further demonstrate just how important mobile websites are for SEO. It is imperative your medical practice has a mobile-friendly design users can easily access on the go.

But, be warned. Just because your Web developer tells you your site is mobile-friendly does not make it so. To see if your medical website passes the mobile-friendly test, use Google’s testing tool.

Where has your medical practice seen the most success with Healthcare SEO and content marketing? Let us know in the comments.

Image source:

Infographic from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons

June 12, 2015
Return Of The YT Channel: Moving YouTube Channels Between G+ Pages In 2015

In the early ages of YouTube and Google Plus connections, disconnecting and reconnecting channels to the correct G+ page was not an easy feat. I once wrote a blog about this lengthy workaround for LocalU. Not long after that blog post, Google released a support form that allowed you to have a YouTube support specialist do the reconnection for you. While this support was amazing and usually reconnected channels within 24-48 hours, it required a middleman to get the work done and wasn’t immediate.

Now, Google has released a way to reconnect your channel to another page within your account in the Advanced Settings section of YouTube! If everything is in one account, then this reconnection takes mere seconds. Often, however, we find ourselves in a situation where the channel is connected to a personal Google Plus page in one Google account, and we want it connected to a business page in another login.

So I’m here to walk you through how to handle both of the aforementioned situations.

Reconnecting A Channel Within One Account

We’ll start with the simple one. You’ve got a YouTube channel connected to one page (probably a person page, maybe a random brand page), and you want it connected to your official business page on Google plus. Whatever shall you do!?

Step 1: Go to YouTube.com and log in to your Google account. In the top-right corner of the page, click on the circle that shows your page icon to see a list of pages and their channels within this account.

Usually, when you first log in to YouTube, you’re automatically managing or acting as your personal Google Plus page (the profile listed first in the dropdown is the one you’re currently acting as). To manage another page, which is what we’ll need to do to move channels, you’d just click the page you wish to manage from the dropdown.

Deleting Unnecessary Channels Side Steps:

Before we can proceed with moving channels, however, note that in the screenshot above, both of the extra pages have “subscribers” listed under their page names. This means that channels have been created for both of these pages already (otherwise we’d see “Create a Channel” below the page names). So if we want to move a channel to the page “Mary Silva Photography” in this account, then we’ll have to free it up for receiving a channel by deleting the unwanted channel that is currently connected to it.

This can be done fairly easily by clicking the “YouTube Settings” gear from that top-right dropdown while managing the page from which you want to delete the channel.

Then click “Advanced” under the page name in the “Overview” tab.

At the very bottom of the page, you’ll see the “Delete channel” option. Once you click that, you’ll probably have to re-enter your password. Brace yourself.

You’ll see a verification page to confirm what you’re about to do. Check the box and click “Delete channel” to get one more verification dialogue, then click “Delete channel” one last time to complete the process.

Now we can get back to moving the channel. In this example, we’ll pretend that the channel connected to “RedHeadedRabbit” needs to be moved over to “Mary Silva Photography.” As you can see in the next screenshot in Step 2, “Mary Silva Photography” now shows “Create a Channel” in the dropdown, so it’s free to take on the channel from the “RedHeadedRabbit” page.

Step 2: Click on the page that has the channel you want to move in the top-right dropdown to manage the page (in this case, “RedHeadedRabbit”), and then the aforementioned “YouTube Settings” gear should appear for that page. Navigate back to the “Advanced” settings page from the “Overview” tab just as you would have to delete the channel.

Step 3: This time, however, you’ll want to click the “Move channel to different Google+ profile or page” option just above the “Default Channel” header. Google will probably make you enter your password again, so brace yourself.

Step 4: Now you’ll see the “Move YouTube channel” page. Under “MY CHANNEL (AFTER MOVE)” click the “Select desired page or profile” button.

Step 5: Choose the page you want to move the channel to from the “Available profiles / pages” section.

Step 6: Confirm where you’re moving the channel (you can click links on this page to double-check that you’re moving the right channel to the right Plus pages) and click “Move channel…” to complete the transfer.

Step 7: Click “Move channel” in one last confirmation dialogue box, and you’re done! You’ll see one last confirmation screen about the successful channel transfer.

Reconnecting A Channel With Two Different Accounts

As previously mentioned, we often find that we have a channel connected to a personal Google Plus page in one Google account, and we want it connected to a business page in another login. The steps for moving the channel will be the same as above, but first, we must get the pages all set up properly within one account.

The account that has the channel has to be the OWNER of the page that we want to move the channel over to. So we need to go through adding the YouTube channel account as a manager of the business page within the other account first. Then we can go back and transfer ownership of the business page over to the channel account completely.

Step 1: Log in to the account that the main business is claimed in and go into your Pages.

Step 2: Choose “Manage this page” for the listing that you want to make the YouTube account a manager of.

Step 3: Go to “Settings” in the dropdown. Then, choose “Managers” under the “More” tab and add the email address for the YouTube account as a manager by clicking “Add managers.”

Step 4: Log in to the email for the account with the YouTube in it. Look for the email that says “Person Name invited you to become a manager of the Business Name’s Google+ page” and click “Become a manager” within that email.

Step 5: The link from the email will take you to the Google Plus page and automatically open a “Become a manager of Page Name” dialogue where you’ll click “Accept” to complete the managership setup.

Here’s where we wait…Unfortunately, for security reasons, Google requires an account to be a manager of a page for at least one day (as seen in screenshot below) before ownership of the page can be transferred over. So wait a day and come back to me when you’re ready to wrap this up. 😉

Step 6 (One Day Later): Now log back in to the account that owns the page and follow steps 1-3 again to get back to your “Managers” settings page of your official business page. When you click “Manager” under the account name, you’ll see a dropdown with the option to “Transfer ownership to Person Name” where you previously saw “Must be a Manager for 1 day before becoming the Owner.” Once you click that, you’ll click “OK” to verify the transfer of ownership, and then the transfer is complete!

You’ll get an email in that new owner account saying something like, “Person has made you the owner of the Page Name Google+ page.” Unlike the managership process, you don’t have to click anything in an email, so the ownership has been transferred completely, and you’re done!

Now that you have everything set up properly, you can proceed with steps two to seven in the “Reconnecting A Channel Within One Account” section above.

Hopefully this extensive tutorial helps you through all of your YouTube woes. To learn more about the ins and outs of Google Plus pages in Google My Business, you can read more on the blog here.

June 2, 2015
Googleplasty: How to Reshape Your Search Results (Part 2)

As more businesses begin to take efforts to improve their online presence, standing out in search results of highly competitive markets and areas becomes even more difficult—and nowhere is this perhaps more true than in the cosmetic medicine industry.

In order to reshape your search results through the art of “Googleplasty,” you must know what factors make your business rank high in a Google search. Since we now know all about the different types of search results from part one of this two-part blog series, let’s talk about the most important factors that play a role in how high your practice ranks.

The following three “Top 5” lists of factors are from from Moz’s 2014 Local Search Ranking Factors survey. The information came as a result of surveying 40 industry experts to determine what had the most influence on ranking in Google search results.

As you can see, all of the factors that are integral in competitive markets also play a part in either localized organic or maps pack results. Due to their repeat importance, I think they’re the five factors most worthy of discussing in detail.

1. Domain Authority of Website

First up on our list as the most important factor in competitive markets is Domain Authority, which isn’t much of a shocker. Domain Authority is a proprietary measurement (created by Moz geniuses) of a domain’s power within a 100-point scale. This score can be used to predict if a site is likely to rank in Google’s search results and can also be used to track a site’s growth and increase in strength.

It is a metric that combines other metrics such as age, number of links, and quality of links, so it’s not easy to manipulate through singular or direct efforts. As it is directly put on Moz’s site, “The best way to influence this metric is to improve your overall SEO.”

Using Moz’s MozBar to see domain authority of pages in search results, you’ll see that the top five business sites in the localized organic results for “plastic surgeon albany ny” have Domain Authorities of 31, 32, 22, 21, and 26, respectively. As you can see here, having a score that is higher by a single point won’t guarantee that you rank above your competitor, but in this search example, business sites past the first page of results tended to have Domain Authorities lower than 20.

2. Consistency of Structured Citations

While this factor isn’t as high ranking for localized organic results, it is third for the top maps pack factors and second here in the top factors for competitive markets. One reason for this is that in many competitive markets, such as plastic surgery or cosmetic dermatology, you’ll find maps packs in search results.

To start, a citation is a place on the Web where a business’ name, address, phone number, and often website can be listed (sometimes referred to as the NAP of a business – name, address, phone). Any combination of the NAP, with or without all parts, listed on a site is considered a citation. A structured citation in particular is a listing of business information found on a directory website (e.g. YellowPages.com and Yelp.com). On the other hand, an unstructured citation can be business information on non-directory sites like newspaper sites, press release sites, and blogs, to name a few.

By increasing the number of matching information sources (and therefore matching signals) to Google, you also increase your chances in having Google match this information to search queries, according to a recent webinar with Google’s Heather Wilburn. So if you want to be matched with potential patients searching for businesses like yours in your area, consistent business information across the Web is one of your best bets, especially in competitive industries like cosmetic surgery.

3. Quality/Authority of Inbound Links to Domain

An inbound link to your domain (aka inlink or backlink) is exactly what it sounds like, a link leading to your website. The relevance to your industry or location and the authority of a website linking to yours in and of itself are the two best traits for quality links. Buying links or having links from random, spammy sites will hurt, not help you. Links from local sites and popular sites are a pretty safe bet. You can seek out local sponsorship opportunities as a good link-building effort or help other sites clean up their broken backlinks by using your working ones.

To differentiate between natural link building versus spammy link building, remember that it’s all about user experience and what makes sense to the user. If your efforts don’t uphold the ideal of providing the best user experience possible, then they’re probably not good.

4. Quality/Authority of Structured Citations

As mentioned above, a structured citation can be any directory site that lists any variation of your business’ NAP or website. While consistency is most important, you also want to make efforts to build high-quality, authoritative citations in directories.

Just like there are many factors to improve your own site’s authority, there are also many factors to determine the quality of a directory. You can delve into Whitespark’s blog on how to identify quality citation sources for a detailed breakdown, but basically a good rule of thumb is to look for high domain authority and human moderation in directory sites. Examples of human moderation include how DMOZ requires submission review by its team before a link goes live or how Google Plus, Yelp, and Bing listings all require verification via phone call or a postcard sent to the business.

Google also considers niche directories highly authoritative. A niche directory is an industry-specific or location-specific directory. Since the Pigeon algorithm update, this kind of citation building has become especially important, and searching for your industry’s keywords will often help you identify these niche directories. If you search for “plastic surgeon columbus oh,” you’ll see that the directories healthgrades.com, vitals.com, and smartplasticsurgery.com appear on the second page of search results. Often, these types of directories require either verification or payment for those seeking to be listed on their site. If you understand the concept of barnacle SEO, you know that being listed on these types of big, authoritative sites is a great way to improve your own visibility to potential customers. Use your discretion to decide if the opportunity cost of getting on a directory isn’t too high to be worth the effort.

Warning: If a site ever requests a “reciprocal link” to its site on your site in order to be listed, this is NOT A GOOD practice, and they are not worth your time.

5. Proper Category Associations

Having proper category associations is another important factor for ranking in the maps pack that can set you apart from the rest in a competitive market. It’s a pretty simple concept, and it basically boils down to the part of the guidelines for representing your business on Google that tells businesses to “Choose categories that are as specific as possible, but representative of your main business.” A cosmetic surgeon with the primary category on the Google Plus local listing set to “surgeon” is less likely to rank above one with a primary category set as “plastic surgeon” in the maps pack, for example.

Though this is a lot to grasp and take action on all at once, having the foundation and understanding of best practices to improve user experience and to better your business online will greatly improve your successes online in the long run.

April 23, 2015
Googleplasty: How to Reshape Your Search Results (Part 1)

As businesses grow more in touch with their online presence, it becomes more and more challenging to stand out in the search results of highly competitive markets and areas—and nowhere is this perhaps more true than in the cosmetic medicine industry.

First things first, let’s make sure we’re on the same page about the two major kinds of results that we see in desktop results for plastic surgeons. “Localized organic” search results and “maps pack” results typically appear together in what is referred to as “combined” search results. The factors that determine what appears in these two areas are not the same, as you can tell by the the difference in results and by the appearance of a site more than once between the two. Maps packs can come in a variety of forms and don’t show up for all search queries, which is also important to note.

In the screenshot below on the left for the search “plastic surgeon columbus oh,” you’ll see 10 localized organic results below a 7-count maps pack. In the screenshot on the right for “plastic surgeon albany ny,” you’ll see 10 localized organic results, but the 3-count maps pack appears below the first organic result.

Stand Out in the Maps Pack

In the maps pack itself, the most striking features are the review stars and rating display. The data in the maps pack area is pulled directly from Google Plus local listings in Google Maps. So, to make your practice stand out in the maps pack, you should claim and verify your Google Plus listing via Google My Business.

Once you’ve claimed and verified your listing, you’ll want to get reviews from your patients. It’s important to understand that one or two reviews a month over a few months is better than 15 reviews in one week. As with most online marketing strategies, natural behavior is the best behavior.

Stand Out in Localized Organic

The most obvious way to stand out in the localized organic results is to be ranking as high as possible and to AT LEAST be in the top 10 so that you’re on the first page. As the age-old SEO joke goes, “The best place to hide a dead body is on the second page of Google search results.” Hardly anyone looks past the first page, and—according to eye-tracking data—not many look past the top half of the search results page.

The Google PageRank algorithm that determines these rankings takes into account somewhere around 200 factors, so it’s not as simple as pinpointing one or two efforts to be made.

Now that we’ve got a better understanding of what we’re looking at in search results, we can start to understand the major factors that affect ranking in each of these sections. Stay tuned for my next blog, where we’ll talk about the top five ranking factors in the maps pack, in the localized organic results, and in competitive markets!

April 14, 2015
Sweep Away The Competition By Spring Cleaning Your Backlinks

So you want to do link building the white-hat way, but it seems these days most link building practices are pretty sketchy. One Google-friendly way to do link building is through identifying and fixing broken backlinks to redirect to pages on your site. Spring backlink cleaning, here we come!

While there are many ways to approach broken link building, the method I find most doable is scanning relevant, authoritative sites for broken backlinks to pages for more info. Once you find a broken link and determine that a page on your site will adequately replace it, you’ll want to reach out to the owner of the site with the broken link to help them recognize the issue and take your opportunity.

This practice is best for businesses with sites that already serve as a resource and that have many informational pages regarding various aspects of their industry. It is, however, totally doable for businesses that don’t meet these ideals, but said businesses will have to build out resource pages on the identified subject areas as they identify broken link opportunities.

Finding Sites

So first, you’re going to have to find the best and most authoritative sites in your industry. Moz’s MozBar extension allows you to easily see Domain Authority and Page Authority of sites you’re on and sites in search results, which can be helpful in the hunt for good sites. Think of products and services that complement what your business offers to find more opportunities. For example, if I were trying to find a complementary business or service to Search Influence, the first type of business that comes to mind is a social reputation management service.

Once you find one or more authoritative reputation management sites, you could use them to find MORE opportunities! To do this, you could use Moz’s Open Site Explorer and find backlinks to the sites you’ve already found that are also authoritative and relevant to your industry. You can use any backlink-finding tools you prefer, though. Other tools that can do this include LinkResearchTools’ Quick Backlink Tool and Majestic’s Site Explorer.

Finding Broken Links

Once you’ve got the list of sites you’d like to scan for broken links (I’d suggest at least 20 to 30, but it’s up to you), you’ll need to find said broken links. Internally, we use a tool (Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider) to find broken links for all of your sites, but any tool you find will probably do the job just fine.

If you’re using Screaming Frog, you’d go to “Configuration,” then “Spider” to make sure your settings are set for an internal crawl. Enter the domain you want to crawl, and then click start. Once the crawl is complete, go to “Bulk Export,” then “All In Links.” Open the file, and we’re ready to get organized!

Since we only want links, the first header you’ll want to filter is “Type” to only show HREF. Then filter “Status Code” to show everything but 200s, since 200 links are O.K. Finally, sort the “Destination” column alphabetically so that you can easily see and prioritize rows with off-site destinations. The site owners are most likely to be willing to replace broken off-site links. They might prefer to fix rather than replace broken internally directing links.

Once you’ve followed the above steps for finding broken links on your chosen sites, we’re ready to take action.

Finding Opportunities

Here’s the tedious (but worth it) part of the whole process. Now that you’ve got lists of broken links, you’ll have to look through them and see if you can find the new page on that site that it should link to. If you can’t find the page and your site has links that will fulfill the objective of the original links, note that replacement link as one of yours instead of one on the original site. Sometimes this means looking at the “Source” column and checking out the context of the broken link. It also might mean creating content on your site, if it’s relevant to your business, to fulfill the needs of the broken link objective before moving forward.

The last thing you’ll need is a list for each site you’ve investigated that includes the page that has the broken link (“Source”), the broken external link (“Destination”), the fixed URL, and the corresponding page on your site that could replace the broken link or be added to that page.

Reaching Out

Once you’ve got your lists of opportunities organized, you can reach out to the site administrator to have the broken link(s) replaced with your good one(s). You can find contacts to sites in multiple ways. The obvious way would be by finding a contact email or form in their “About” or “Contact” pages. I like this option because most times, if a site has created a way for users to contact them on-site, they’re responding to outreach through these mediums. If you’re unable to find any obvious way to contact a site, you can also use a whois lookup. I use the terminal emulator iTerm2 to do whois lookups, but you can also just use a web hosted whois lookup like whois.domaintools.com to find an email for the site Admin or Registrar.

Here’s an example of a whois lookup for Wikipedia (You probably don’t even want to try to communicate with them, by the way. Possibly too big of a fish to fry.):

For time-saving purposes, I’d suggest creating a template you can use to email all of these prospects. In doing manual link removal requests in the past, I found some bits of information to be more fruitful to provide than others. You want to seem natural and authoritative (not spammy) while providing clear information, but you also want to be as concise as possible to avoid losing the attention of the receiver.

You’ll want to include a short intro to introduce your authority and what you do, say that your message is intended for the site’s webmaster (as they would be the one implementing your suggested fixes), and note the Source page, the broken Destination URL, and the recommended replacement URL. If the replacement URL is just one you found originally linked to the site, now is your opportunity to share that you might have some additional information on your site that their readers might benefit from. Send all your messages, and then wait!

While I’d say to make your own templates to sound more natural and fit your needs, here are two of mine for both use cases.

Replacing URL With Same-Site URL

Hi,

My name’s (insert name here), and I am an industry specialist and was doing some research when I landed on your site…

I was hoping to pass on some information to your webmaster or web developer, as I found a broken link on your site that your readers might need.

While looking at this page on your site (source URL), I clicked on the link to this site (broken destination URL) and found that it didn’t work.

Once on the site, I found that they must have moved that information here (replacement URL).

While you’re working on updating this page, I was wondering if you’d be interested in including my page about (insert summary of page here) as a resource that might also be beneficial to your readers: (insert link to your site’s relevant URL here).

Replacing URL With Your-Site URL

Hi,

My name’s (insert name here), and I am an industry specialist and was doing some research when I landed on your site…

I was hoping to pass on some information to your webmaster or web developer, as I found a broken link on your site that your readers might need.

While looking at this page on your site (source URL), I clicked on the link to this site (broken destination URL) and found that it didn’t work.

I tried finding the correct page on their site for this info, but it seems that it might be gone altogether.

My site happens to have some similar information, so I was wondering if you’d be interested in including my page about (insert summary of page here) as a resource that might also be beneficial to your readers: (insert link to your site’s relevant URL here).

Hopefully, this helpful, good link building practice will aid in your efforts. Let us know your favorite, white-hat link building practice in the comments!

March 30, 2015
Social + SEO: Better When They’re Working Together

Modern search engine optimization has become inextricably linked with content marketing. Yet in many companies, social media strategies are developed separately from the SEO and content marketing plan. This can work—but you’ll realize optimal results by aligning social media with SEO for an overall strategy that boosts brand awareness, improves domain authority, and increases your rankings.

Here are some tips for social media strategies that can fuel your SEO and help you rank higher in all types of user searches.

Grow your Following

In the early days of social media, building a massive following was the number one goal for most marketers. Today, the emphasis has shifted from quantity to quality—but the number of followers you have is still an important factor for domain authority.

Of course, it’s equally important to develop an authentic audience. Google, in particular, can tell when most of your following is made of spam and bot accounts, so “buying” likes or follows doesn’t help—and in fact can harm your online reputation. Instead, grow your following naturally by posting interesting content on a regular basis. Engage your followers with interactive content and by responding to comments or starting discussions.

Share your Other Content

Posting links to your content—such as articles, blog posts, and downloads—along with brief commentary on social media, is a great way to repurpose your content and boost your SEO. Of course, sharing on social media will give you more eyes for your content, but the benefits to SEO go beyond that.

In addition to extra traffic to your website or blog, which is a peripheral SEO benefit, social media sharing encourages others to share your links. The more often your links are posted on other social media accounts and websites, the more domain authority you’ll build. This type of inbound link-building is much faster than traditional or manual methods.

Optimize Social Media for Search

It’s important to know that your social media posts can show up directly in search results—if they’re optimized. When you’re composing posts, be sure to apply basic SEO strategies such as including keywords, placing them strategically and naturally, and tagging image, video, and infographic posts with relevant keywords. Even if your posts don’t make it into search engine results, they’ll still increase your brand authority and contribute to a stronger online reputation.

Increase Social Shares with Viral Content

The more shares and retweets your posts have, the greater your domain authority—and the higher your search engine rankings. In order to get your content shared more often, you need to create content that people want to talk about.

Of course, every marketer wants to release the next viral sensation. There is no guaranteed strategy for making something go viral, but you can increase your chances of catching lightning in a bottle by creating content with a strong visual component (either a visual medium or a blog post that’s heavy on images, for example), and make sure it has the following characteristics:

• Informative
• Relevant
• Entertaining
• Practical
• Surprising
• Unique

Of these characteristics, the last one is the most important. Create content your audience has never seen before, and they’ll be eager to share it with friends.

Connect with Similar Companies

In the world of social media, your “competition” can be your friend—and that’s good for your SEO. Engaging with similar businesses, particularly local companies or those in similar industries, can help you grow your audience and your relevance, which in turn increases your search engine ranking.

Share content with other companies like yours and comment on their posts. Usually, they’ll return the favor by engaging with you, which will attract their audiences to your social profiles. Google will also start associating you with other brands when you engage with them, which improves your overall authority.

When it comes to online marketing, social media and SEO should go hand-in-hand. How does your social media strategy complement your SEO approach?

March 25, 2015
Defibrillate Your Clinic’s Social Media Plan in Five Steps
Over the past decade, there have been steady increases in the acceptance, usage, and number of social networks. With membership in the hundreds of millions and even billions, social media networks like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter have become excellent platforms for businesses that want to reach and engage their audiences. Because they form part of a more niche industry, it is crucial for hospitals, healthcare practitioners, pharmaceutical companies, and others in the healthcare industry to have a detailed online strategy in place across various social media platforms. Below are five steps to designing a comprehensive social media plan that take into consideration the challenges and specific needs of the healthcare industry.

Challenges

Healthcare providers face a number of unique obstacles when entering the world of social media. Businesses in this industry typically have multiple stakeholders, from existing patients to future patients to other physicians. Each stakeholder has unique expectations regarding communication standards and topics, and a fully fleshed out plan that follows these steps should take these expectations into consideration.

The healthcare industry is strongly regulated by organizations like the FDA. However, in the recent surge of social media outlets and usage, the healthcare industry has faced a unique challenge: the reigning regulatory offices have not cited clear guidelines regarding the use and management of these social media platforms. Seeing as some information on the topic has been released, it is important that you review these sources before creating a social media plan for a business in the healthcare industry.
- US Food and Drug Administration
- Office of Prescription Drug Promotion
Creating Your Plan

1. Define Your Personality

As a business and as a brand, you will need to define your online social personality: how do you want your stakeholders and audience to perceive you? Thinking of your brand as an individual will allow you to adopt a more coherent voice across your chosen social media platforms. To help define your voice, ask yourself questions like the following:
- What color would you associate with your brand?
- If your brand was a person, what kind of clothes would they wear?
- What type of car would this person drive?
- How would his or her friends describe him?
- Does this person have likes or dislikes?
Although it may be difficult in the beginning to uncover the personality of your practice, carefully designing this aspect of your social media strategy will allow you to create a more concrete tone and voice.

Along with defining your voice, take the time to study and understand your stakeholders. Decide which groups you would like to reach: existing patients, future patients, other healthcare professionals, insurance companies, or any combination of these. This decision will impact the tone and purpose of your social media campaign, as each of your audiences will react best to content that is specifically designed for them. By keeping your target audience in mind, you will enhance your ability to focus your social media updates, allowing you to promote audience engagement and build a stronger, more trusting relationship.

2. Listen

After you have settled on the tone and audience of your social media strategy, pause to listen to the existing conversation. Determine how your audience and competitors interact within the social space, monitor conversations about your industry, and track the ways in which your brand is discussed online. Using tools like Google Alerts and hashtags, Sprout Social, monitoring forums and other online spaces to understand the existing conversations.

Listening to the discussions that are in place across the spectrum of social media platforms will allow you to gain a sense of which healthcare topics are currently trending. It will also help you to identify the concerns, questions, and interests of your target audience, allowing you to build a strategy to address these topics during your social media campaign.

Example using Google+ to review similar hashtags and industry competitors

Example of using Sprout Social to understand how consumers are talking about your brand.

3. Find Your Voice

Next, begin your own conversations! Look for areas in the industry that lack a strong voice. Use that space to make a name for your brand and to demonstrate your expertise. Also, provide topics and the secure space for conversations regarding the health industry and health issues. Help moderate conversations to keep the discussions moving and the connections building. Encourage your audience to converse with you and with each other to foster a sense of community.

To make use of your influence on social media, you can use a number of strategies:
- Add personal, authentic stories: Depending on your goal, these can consist of success stories, anecdotes of achievement, or triumphs over a disease or disability.
- Facilitate conversations and actions: Give healthy-eating challenges or build a place to help raise awareness for widespread health issues.
- Wow the crowd with numbers: Build credibility by showing your audience the bigger picture. Share statistics, infographics, and other information about your industry or practice.
Example from the American Medical Association using numbers to engage in a conversation. Only 2 hours after being tweeted this post received 39 retweets and 21 favorites.

Example of Twitter healthcare community discussing heart health online via #heartmonthchat and how the American Medical Association was able to find their voice in the conversation giving advice and statistics. Both tweets were retweeted and favorited several times.

4. Collaborate

Social media has become a frequent place of feedback for companies, and you can take advantage of this fact by using the social space to collaborate with your audience and with others in your industry. Do not be afraid to talk to your audience about their experiences and how to improve them in the future.

Use social media as a place to work with other practitioners and organizations to raise awareness regarding healthcare topics. By working with others, you can increase your audience reach and further your message.

Example of Gail Zahtz (expert in patient-doctor relationships, offers advice to healthcare industry) collaborating with others in the healthcare industry to make information more readily available.

5. Measure Your Success

Although the last step in this plan is to measure your success, it is important to review your achievements on a regular basis and throughout each step of the process. Measure growth and success in the online space by an increase in followers, consistent interaction, and rising mentions across social media platforms.

Example of growth of likes on Facebook using these steps. Prior to this campaign beginning, The Plastic Surgery Institute of Southeast Texas ~500 page likes.

Consider the steps above when designing your own social media strategy. For more inspiration, check out some of these healthcare companies that have successfully created an empowering online presence!
March 3, 2015
Five for Friday: The Analytics Glitch, Google’s Beginnings, Mardi Gras Madness, & More!

1. Google Analytics Data Drops Off On Monday, February 9th – SEO Roundtable

Did you notice that all of your customers suddenly decided to boycott your website this past Monday? You’re not the only one. Luckily, this is not an issue with your website or your business; it’s actually a brief glitch in the data of Google Analytics. This problem appears to have affected thousands of websites. Though Google has yet to give an official statement on the matter, they have assured us that they are looking into the problem.

2. Your Guide to Everything Mardi Gras – New Orleans Online

Mardi Gras celebrations are in full swing this week, and New Orleans Online has released an infographic to help us navigate and understand the chaos! Filled with tidbits on the history of Mardi Gras as well as helpful hints for making the most of this year’s events, this infographic can guide both newbies and veterans through the Carnival season in New Orleans.

3. Lessons Learned from the Early Days of Google – Matt Cutts

Today, we know Google as the wooly mammoth of the Internet—large and in charge. Whether we are aware of it or not, no company has had a greater impact on how we navigate the World Wide Web. But it wasn’t always that way. Google, like all huge companies today, had humble beginnings, with a lot of blunders and a lot of lessons learned. Matt Cutts revealed all in his presentation at UNC Chapel Hill last month.

4. Is Yahoo Stealing Mobile Search Share from Bing? – Marketing Land

Yahoo is beginning to make its first divergence from its search alliance deal with Microsoft. The search engine has its eyes set on the mobile market, a segment that was not part of the search alliance deal made five years ago. The search engine has gained traction on mobile devices not at the expense of Google, but at the expense of its ally Microsoft.

5. 8 Sure-Fire Ways to Beat Out Your Top PPC Competitors – Hanapin Marketing

Yesterday, Jamie Smith and Cassie Oumedian of Hanapin Marketing presented a webinar on the eight ways to beat out your top PPC competitors. Some of the expert tips included competitive intelligence and monitoring insights, why location targeting is a must, and bid strategies to outrank your competitors. If you weren’t able to catch the webinar live, you can go to the Hanapin Marketing website to get the full recap.

Image Sources:

Dog Typing Image

Mardi Gras Parade Image

Google Doodle Image

February 13, 2015
You Talk Pretty Today: Drop Crutch Words To Improve Your Communication Skills
You know, talking to clients and colleagues can be really, like, intimidating, right? That’s why, like, crutch words are sometimes used by, um, people who are nervous or, like, looking for the right words to use.

Although the above sentence looks odd written out, almost everyone is guilty of using crutch words in everyday speaking. Whether you are caught up in your words when speaking to a client on the phone or nervous about speaking in front of a group, you’ve probably heard yourself using crutch words as you speak. Follow the tips below to break the habit!

What are crutch words?

Everyone has different words that they use in conversation when they need time to gather their thoughts. These words, called crutch words, include placeholders such as um, like, definitely, really, uh, etc. While you wouldn’t normally use these words in writing, people tend to rely on them more heavily when speaking.

Crutch words are most commonly used when people are thinking of the best or most appropriate answer to a question. However, using these words can be distracting to your listener, and it can also make you seem less knowledgeable. Clients may not trust what you’re saying because the crutch words can make it seem as though you’re not confident about what you have to contribute. There are much better alternatives to using like, um, uh, etc. when pulling your thoughts together.

Break the Habit

What is our #1 tip for getting rid of your crutch word habit? Take a breath and pause before speaking! Quickly go over what you want to say in your head, take a breath, and then speak confidently. Your thoughts will come across much more clearly to your audience than they would if you stumble over your words and sound shaky or unsure.

Practice this habit of pausing in your everyday life. Once it becomes a habit at home, you will be able to use it much more naturally at work in situations where you would normally use a crutch word while you gather your thoughts.

Still stuck on a question? If the pause is a bit long, say something like, “That’s a great question…” before continuing. This tactic gives you a few more moments to think of an appropriate answer to the question at hand.

More Useful Tips to Improve Your Spoken Communication
- Use voice inflections. This conveys what is important in your message, and it also helps keep your listener more engaged. No one wants to hear a monotonous speaker who puts no inflection on the important aspects of what they have to say.
- Avoid using casual language. Exclamations like “awesome!” or “totally!” can make you sound young and less authoritative to your audience. Although these words may be in your everyday vocabulary, work on limiting your use of them in a professional setting.
- Avoid using ma’am or sir (to a client or colleague). This is a Southern staple (thanks, Louisiana!), but try to avoid using these words to address clients or coworkers. It can make you seem young and inexperienced, rather than an equal to your peers. Still use it when you go see grandma and grandpa, though!
- Avoid over-explaining. We tend to try to explain things over and over again, continuing around the same circle while the question at hand has been long answered. Answer the question as best as you can without backtracking and wait for feedback from your listener. If they need more clarification, they will let you know.
- Know your audience. Are you speaking with the decision-maker of the company, or are you speaking to a secretary? Your communication will differ based on the person you’re communicating with. The CEO of a company will want to hear about the bottom line, while a secretary might want more detailed information to pass along to whomever she’s reporting to.
Effective communication is an important skill to learn, regardless of what industry you work in. We hope these tips help you improve your spoken communication and break the crutch word habit!

Image Sources:

Office Space Gif
January 19, 2015