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How Do I Improve My Clinic’s Website Rankings?

The number one question we’re asked is, “How do I improve my website’s position online?” It’s a great question and you may be surprised at how simple some of the steps are to rise in Google rank.

Today, we’ll scratch the surface on how you can start improving your ranking through some common SEO (search engine optimization) best practices. Free, organic traffic is the goal, we want to help you achieve it!

In this episode, we’ll go over:

Some SEO basics
Why organic website traffic is important
The three critical parts of SEO
Why keywords, target audience, and user experience are important
Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business)
And, more!

If you want to learn how you can take non-techie steps today to gain momentum on the Google ladder, check out my podcast by hitting the link below.

Are you ready to propel your practice? Let’s do it!

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Transcript - SEO 101: How Do I Improve My Clinic’s Website Rankings?

How do I improve my website's position online?

That is the number one question I get asked time and time again.

And it's the question that I'm answering in today's episode of Propel Your Practice. In today's episode, we're going to start to scratch the surface on how you can start to improve your website's presence online through SEO (that's search engine optimization), giving you more of that free organic website traffic from Google and the other search engines.

I’m your host Darcy Sullivan from Propel Marketing & Design. In today's episode, I'm answering the number one question I get asked time and time again: How do I improve my position on Google and those other search engines?

While I get asked this question time and time again, it comes in different forms. I get asked:

How do I get more free organic website traffic?
How do I optimize my website for search engines?
How do I get started with SEO?

Well, that all falls under the same umbrella. And it's what we're talking about in today's episode.

In today's episode, we're going to go over some basics of SEO (search engine optimization). And while they might be basic, they're definitely not boring, especially when they bring more traffic to your website.

Now, before we dive in, I just want to let you know that some of the stuff that we're covering today, I pulled directly from my latest free training,.

Now, we're not going to cover everything that's in that free training, so if you want to sign up for that free training, you can visit propelyourcompany.com/learn or look for the link in the show notes.

In that training, we cover how to put together a winning SEO and content marketing campaign. Ways to improve your website performance, we talk about optimizing your Google business profile listing. That's the listing that controls your Google Maps listing and used to be called your Google My Business listing.

We go over all of that and so much more. So, I invite you to sign up for that by visiting propelyourcompany.com or clicking on the link in the show notes.

Okay, on with today's show. Today, we're talking all about the three key elements for SEO success. So, let's start at the beginning.

What is SEO, exactly? SEO is short for search engine optimization.

It focuses on proven strategies and tactics to maximize the number of visitors to your website by positioning your website high on the organic list. That's the non-paid results in Google (and those other search engines). So again, today, we're not talking about paid ads. That's a talk for another day.

Today, we're talking all about organic website traffic.

And I have to tell you, SEO is more important now than it's ever been before. Why? Well, social media reach is down, and it's rented space.

As I'm recording this, Facebook is continuing to decline its daily active users. And we all know that Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, I don't care what social media form you are using, there's a chance they could go down. And what happens when you don't have the ability to connect with your target audience?

We also know that the cost of advertising is continuing to increase. But the moment you turn off those ads, that's a heck of a lot of website traffic you're going to lose. Whereas, if you take the time and energy to invest in SEO, you reap the rewards for not only days, months, but it can be years to follow.

And we're going to look at how that comes to play in today's episode.

Now, before you say “SEO sounds scary” or “I'm not a tech whiz,” I'm going to tell you it's okay. The whole point of today's episode is to start to look at it in the non-scariest way possible.

See, it used to be that to win big at SEO, you had to do all these crazy things behind the scenes. It took tons of time, and it was a headache.

But here's the thing, Google's gotten smarter, people have gotten smarter, and with the evolution of technology, we now have these amazing website platforms that make it easier than ever for you to either put together a website, maintain your own website, or make modifications to a website that you have.

And as you're listening to this, I'm guessing that you probably are even on one of them like WordPress or Squarespace, Clinic Sites, Wix. You know, the list goes on and on, but the nice thing is, is that they're a good solid foundation, that again, allows you to make modifications.

Well, no matter what website platform you're using, things are about to get a little sweeter. Why? Because we're about to talk about Oreo cookies. Yep. You heard me right. We're going to chat about Oreo cookies. See, I have a huge sweet tooth. And this one day, I was biting into an Oreo cookie, and I thought, huh, you know what? This seems like a really good, simple way for me to explain SEO to someone.

And right now, you might be scratching your head going, “Darcy, you sound kind of crazy.” But stick with me. Okay, so you have your Oreo cookie; it has a top wafer, a bottom cookie wafer, and the sweet stuff in the middle. This sweet white stuff in the middle of an Oreo cookie is literally called stuff.

Except it's with one F. And it is D-licious.

Well, just like there are three critical parts to an Oreo cookie: the top wafer, the bottom cookie wafer, and this sweet stuff with one F that hold it all together, there are three critical parts to SEO. And that's what we're going to be talking about in today's episode.

You have on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and that sweet stuff in the middle that holds it all together. These are the three core elements of any winning SEO campaign.

On-page SEO includes actions that you take directly on your website to improve your website rankings.

Off-page SEO refers to strategies you put in place outside of your website to help drive more traffic and improve your position online.

And that sweet stuff in the middle that holds it all together, well, that includes identifying your target audience and connecting with them. So, there you have it.

On-page SEO, off-page SEO, and (just like Oreo cookies) that sweet stuff in the middle that holds it all together. And we're going to start by talking about that sweet stuff in the middle.

A successful SEO campaign and truly any type of successful marketing campaign is rooted in the foundation of identifying your target audience, how your brand can connect with them, your place in the market, and making sure that you're using the words that your ideal patients are searching for.

If you haven't taken the time to clearly identify your target audience or your buyer personas, you'll want to look at the show notes for this episode. It'll have a link to the free training, where we dive into this in more detail. And I'll also link to a blog post that we wrote on this subject.

Now, we have an upcoming episode where all we do is talk about how you can connect with your target audience. So, I don't want to go into too much detail about that today, but I do want to make sure that you have taken the time to clearly identify these personas.

If you haven't taken the time to do that, your messaging is going to be off, the words that you're targeting online are not going to match your target audiences’ searches, and your images might be off as well.

Everything is going to miss the mark. So if you haven't done this yet, please promise me that you'll take time to sit down and clearly identify your target audience.

And ask yourself these two simple questions: What is it that brings someone in to see you for the first time, and who is your ideal patient?

These questions will help direct you to identify your target audience because there's that old saying that when you market it to everyone, you market to no one. So, you want to make sure you're crystal clear on that.

And we want to make sure that we're using the words that your target audience is using. In the realm of SEO, we call these keywords.

Keywords are words or phrases in your web content that make it possible for people to find your site through search engines. Listen, if you're not using a keyword on your website, it's going to make it more difficult for Google to rank you for that keyword.

I can't tell you how many times I sit and talk to chiropractors, physiotherapists, physical therapists who think that they've got specific keywords throughout their website, and they're just not there.

So, we want to identify who our target audience is, then we want to identify the search phrases they're using to make sure that we're using those throughout our SEO and content marketing plans.

I know we're only on episode two of the Propel Your Practice Podcast, but I want to tell you we've got some exciting things coming up, and in one of those episodes, we'll be doing a deep dive into keyword research. But for today's episode, I just want to make sure that you have a list of those most common words that you think that your ideal patients would be searching for and make sure that you're actually using them on your website and on your social media and other content marketing efforts.

We talked about identifying your audience. Identifying the words and keyword phrases that they're using or might use to search for the services that you offer. We also want to pay attention to your location. We want to look at how far somebody would drive to come to see you? Because we want to make sure that our content lines up with targeting those areas. You might need to target more than just your local city because somebody might drive 15 to 20 minutes to come see you.

So that's it for step one, that sweet stuff that holds the SEO campaign together. Now let's talk about your website.

The second element of a winning SEO campaign is on-page SEO. Again, these are the actions that you take directly on your website to help move it up the list on Google and the other search engines.

We want to make sure from the get-go that your website has a quick load speed and that it looks good on mobile.

People don't like slow websites, and Google doesn't like a slow website. So, let's make sure that your website loads at a proper speed.

We want to make sure that you're following best SEO practices on your website.

And again, if all of this is new to you. I strongly recommend that you take that free SEO training because it'll walk you through a lot of this in a lot more detail than what we're going to go through today.

But you want to make sure that you're following the best on-page SEO practices. This includes making sure that you're using title tags and meta descriptions.

You want to make sure that you're leveraging those keywords that we talked about earlier. That you're including header tags, that you're using internal links, that your images are optimized, meaning that you're not using an image, the size of a billboard for the place of a postage stamp, that your content is easy to scan.

And again, with the evolution of these website platforms like WordPress Squarespace, etc., it's easier than ever to make small adjustments that you're going to see big rewards from.

When somebody comes to your website, we want to offer them an amazing user experience in the world of SEO; we call this UX. UX for user experience. We don't want your visitors to have to overthink. We want easy navigation. We want to make sure that all of the important pages are just a few clicks away and they can find the information they're looking for.

The truth is, you don't need a million blog posts about nothing. You need key pieces of content that are going to align with what your target audience is searching for.

And the one thing you can do today to make sure that you start seeing better results on your website is to make sure that your call to action to book an appointment is clear as day and is really easy for somebody to just click on and make an appointment right then and there.

After all, that is the main goal of your website- for somebody to click the book now appointment and make an appointment with you.

We talked about a few fundamentals when it comes to on-page SEO. And again, we'll be diving into more detail on specific elements in upcoming episodes, but just to revisit what we covered for on-page SEO:

You want to review your website and make sure that you're offering your visitors an amazing user experience
Make sure that you're using the keywords that your ideal target audience would be searching for
That your content on your website is in direct alignment with the content your audience would look for and connect with
We want to make it as easy as possible for somebody to book an appointment with you

But to win big at SEO, it doesn't stop there. You also need to take action outside of your website. This is the third key element of SEO, your off-page SEO. Off-page SEO is the actions you take outside of your website to increase website traffic and move your website up in the search engine results.

And this all starts with your Google Business Profile.

Your Google Business Profile is what used to be called your Google My Business listing. It’s what controls your listing in Google Maps.

In an upcoming podcast, we're going to dive into Google Business Profiles in more detail. But all I want to say about it right now is that you have to have it claimed.

Your Google Business Profile and your listing should be optimized. So, if you haven't taken the opportunity to claim your listing and optimize it, please do so. And I'll include a link in the show notes to some resources on that.

And again, tune back in because, in an upcoming episode of Propel Your Practice, we will be diving deeper into the Google Business Profile. We'll be talking about Google Posts; we’ll be talking about Google Maps, and so much more.

But to really own the first page of Google and the organic section, you can't do that without having a Google Business Profile.

We also want to make sure that all of your listings online for your citations- we call these NAPS for name, address, and phone number- that they all match. And we want to do this for a number of reasons. One, it's a solid signal that you have a quality company in business. And two, nobody wants to end up at the wrong location or calling the wrong phone number for your business. So, if you've moved or if you have a new address, a new phone number, a new website, a new company name, make sure that all of your listings online are congruent and that they match.

Now there's a couple more key elements that I just want to start to scratch the surface with today when it comes to off-page SEO. One, your online reviews. I think we all know how important online reviews are for your business.

If you haven't put a plan in place to start collecting online reviews, you're going to want to do that.

There are a couple other things that you should consider with off-page SEO. These can be link building, putting together a content distribution plan, maybe consider running press releases.

There's so much more that you can do outside of your website, from promoting it and events that will, in turn, help with your SEO and help with your website rankings.

Today, we started to scratch the surface of how you can start to get more organic, free website traffic to your website.

Now, if you want to take things to the next level, I strongly recommend that you sign up for that free training, You can sign up by visiting propelyourcompany.com/learn or looking for the link in the show notes. In that training, we cover so much; we go into more detail about how you can put together a winning SEO and content marketing campaign, ways to improve your website performance, we talk about optimizing your Google Business Profile, and so much more.

Again, I invite you to sign up for that free training by visiting propelyourcompany.com/learn.

Okay. That's it for today's show, you guys. So, we talked about those three key elements of SEO success: on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and that sweet stuff in the middle that holds it together.

If you enjoyed today's episode, I would love it if you could please leave a review or share it with somebody that you think would gain value from listening to today's episode.

Until next time, please feel free to send in any questions you have or topic suggestions by visiting propelyourcompany.com/podcast-topics.

As a reminder, this podcast has been brought to you by Propel Marketing & Design.

At Propel Marketing & Design, we help chiropractors, acupuncturists, physiotherapists, physical therapists, wellness practitioners, and other clinic owners improve their website rankings.

If you're interested in learning more about how we can help you improve your website rankings, please visit propelyourcompany.com, where you can book a discovery call.

Darcy’s SEO strategies are easy to implement and effective. She’s the #1 SEO expert I refer to whenever I need help with my rankings.

- Nicholas Scalice, Growth Marketing Podcast // Growth Marketer

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This episode of the Propel Your Practice Podcast is brought to you by Propel Marketing & Design. Propel Marketing & Design helps Chiropractors, Acupuncturists, Physical Therapists, Wellness Practitioners, and other clinic owners improve their website rankings.

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Propel Marketing & Design, Inc.2024-04-08T15:22:01-04:00