Chiropractic SEO: How to Immediately Rank Higher in Google | Podcast Ep. 52

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Hello and welcome to the Evidence Based Chiropractor. I AM your host, Dr. Jeff Langmaid. This week we have a great episode. If you did not tune in last week, I would encourage you to do so. We talked a little bit about the safety of chiropractic care and that was featured in this month's member research brief. So it's a great episode. Check back at that one if you haven't had the opportunity to do so again last week. Last Monday, in the time it takes to get to your office, we talked about the safety of chiropractic care. But today we are going to talk about chiropractic SEO Search Engine Optimization. It is how patients find your office in the year 2015, 2016, 2017 and beyond. So if you're not high or ranking on Google, you are missing out on a ton of patients. And how does this tie into research? Well, there are some very tried and true techniques and there is research actually behind how you can build your brand and how you can excel and be found in your local market. So this week we are talking about chiropractic search engine optimization and it is something that everybody listening to this podcast should be familiar with and what it means when we talk about search engine optimization. It is when you type in, for instance, your town chiropractor or your town chiropractic who comes up because that's a very keyword hot search. In other words, there is nobody that is just going to be casually searching that term. They are looking to take action. I live here in Tampa, Florida and if somebody types in Tampa Chiropractor or Tampa Chiropractic, you really want to be in the top few choices that come up. That's what we call search engine optimization. It is how people are finding you online. And there's a couple key items. This is a deep topic, but there's a couple key items that I want to make sure you know when we finish today's episode that you can implement immediately onto your webpage to make it rank higher and more people be able to find your practice. And when I talk about this, I'm not talking about paid ads at all. I'm talking about the fact when there is a town and chiropractor typed in, there is what we call organic search results. And you want to be as close to the top as possible. And the major thing on why is what we find and the research Shows From Google, about 65 to 70% of clicks go to the top five search results. So if you are page two or page three deep on that search, good luck, nobody's finding you. You really need to be in the top three or the top five because that is where a vast majority of the clicks are going to. So how do you do that and how do you get there? We're gonna talk about three items today that you can improve upon immediately to make sure that your page is ranking higher and more people are able to find your practice online. One, and what we're gonna start with is title tags. Title tags are custom kind of headers or title tags truly said that identify what the topic is that your website or that individual page is about. So a title tag, it's important. Again, getting back to our example of your town, chiropractic, you want to make sure that you check your title tags and make sure somewhere on your homepage and really probably on every sub page that you are having some title tag that indicates your town, your community, your city and, and chiropractic or chiropractor, because that is going to hint Google that that is what your page is about. And not only that, that's what your page is about, but it's what your page is predominantly about. And that's going to help greatly. There are no items better than title tags for Google to index, which means that index is how people find your webpage. So title tags are exquisitely important. And if you have a website and it's based off of a monthly service, let's say, and that website is kind of a done for you website, don't take this for granted. Make sure that you either email your web host provider or your developer or whoever it may be, your sales consultant, and make sure that your title tags, ask them what your title tags are and make sure they are aligned with the keywords that you would like to be found with when searched for. So title tags are number one. Number two is what we call alt tags, A L T tags. That sounds interesting and funny, but what alt tags are are they are how Google sees pictures. So when you post pictures, we have all these great websites nowadays where there's awesome graphics, cool pictures, maybe there's some video mixed in, but the truth of the matter is with that Google can't see pictures. So your alt tag is the tag that you place upon your images. And, and that tag or that title, that alt tag is how Google sees that picture. So again, having those pictures tagged appropriately is unbelievably. Important. And again, when I say this, keep in mind you don't need to stuff junk into those tags. So if you have, you don't need every picture on your homepage to say, Jeff Lang made Tampa chiropractor, chiropractic back pain. You don't need to go that far. But take a look and make sure that, number one, every one of your pictures does actually have an alt tag. You're actually dinged if they don't, meaning you're going to be pushed down in those rankings. So make sure that every image that you put on your website on every page has an alt tag and just make sure that you spread those tags appropriately. So you're certainly going to want to make sure you have your name. You're certainly going to want to make sure that you have your town and chiropractor or chiropractic mixed in amongst those images. So if there's a picture of you, of course it could say, you know, Jeff Langmaid, Tampa chiropractor, something of that nature. And if you're the picture of you adjusting somebody, it might say back pain or chiropractic adjustment, Tampa, something of that effect. But check those alt tags. And with both title tags and alt tags, when you put in the text separate with a dash or a hyphen, so make sure that you are separating the words again that dash or that hyphen. So J E F F. For instance, for myself it would be J E F F hyphen Langmaid, Tampa jpeg. Let's say that's important because that hyphen is again how Google segments those words. If it's all one long word, it becomes much more challenging for the search engines to understand and for them to kind of see that image. So alt tags are very, very important. Again, if you have built your own website, double check on them or if you have somebody else have built your website, make sure that your alt tags are all squared up and all in line with what you want to be found for. And number three we'll touch on briefly is inbound links. So the days of buying hundreds of spammy links just linking to your webpage is over. So the quantity game is over. It is all about quality with inbound links. So the way that Google does this is that there are every website has kind of a domain authority and a page authority, and that dictates how trustworthy that site is. And when you build a new website, it's basically zero. Not too many people have heard of it. You might not have much traffic and even your website, if it's been around a while and your traffic is low, you still might have very low domain authority. And the best way to build domain authority is to get links back from other, other trustworthy websites. So this gets back to what I just said. You don't need 200 links from non existent, bought and paid for junk websites. That actually is going to hurt you. But if we looked at the flip side of the coin, if you were able to get a link from Wikipedia, let's say, or a link from cnn, these websites have unbelievably high page or domain authority and they count for a ton. So if you think of it like circles, not every link is created equal. A link from a high domain authority site is worth much more than a link from a low domain authority site. So now you might be thinking, how the heck am I going to get a link from Wikipedia or cnn? You don't need to. Again, remember you are competing in the keywords for your local market. So getting links from your local newspapers, getting links from perhaps your county or state chiropractic organization, getting links from any multidisciplinary or any other healthcare site run by other people in your community will all help bolster and boost the domain authority of your site. And consequently you will show up higher in the Google search rankings. So an easy way to go about finding this is to get your finger on the pulse of the local community. Find out if your local newspapers, if your local online news sources have health and wellness stories and where you can contribute, be sure to do so and simply ask for a link back to your website. They'll do it all day long. And another way to do that even is you don't want to go overboard with this, but you can even just add value in the comment section. So even if you feel a little bit intimidated or you're not at the point where you can really contribute in a big manner to these websites. You can simply look at daily the comments or the news stories and kind of input your items where input your insight where you see fit and occasionally link back to content on your website that provide value for that user. So it's all about user experience. But if you get those links coming back to your website, you are going to be doing a one, you're going to be doing wonders for your SEO for your search engine optimization. So remember, there are three items that you can look at today, literally today to make sure you are ranking as high as possible for your local search for chiropractic. And that is looking at the title tags on your website, so looking at the alt tags on your website and making sure that you are doing a great job with those inbound links. And also remember 65 to 70% of that traffic is going to those top five results. So as soon as you finish up this episode, search your town in chiropractor or chiropractic. See where you come up and if you need to do some improvement. Now you have a few ways to know how to get started. So I hope you enjoyed this episode. I had a great time talking about it. If you've been enjoying what we produce at the Evidence Based Chiropractor, I would love if you take a moment and give us a rating, give us some feedback or comment or review on itunes. It helps us reach more and more chiropractors each and every week. It helps us expand our message and it certainly helps us keep the message of chiropractic alive and well. So I hope you have a fantastic week in practice. Doc and I will talk to you soon.

We appreciate you joining us for this episode of the Evidence Based Chiropractor. Learn more tips for explosive practice development@the evidencebasedchiropractor.com youm can also join the Premier MD monthly membership, enabling you to use what you just heard to maximize results in your office. We look forward to providing you with more dynamic communication tools for immediate growth right here on the Evidence Based Chiropractor.