In yesterday’s post I discussed the first piece of successful marketing, clarity. Today our topic will be visibility. This may seem obvious as no marketing is successful if it is not seen, but marketing using social media on the internet is very different. When we utilize direct mail for instance it becomes visible because we push it out to the addresses on the list we purchase. The internet is more of a “if we build it, they will come” construct, the modern terminology is “Inbound Marketing”. Visibility is about building something that meets the technical criteria to become highly visible, and then making it so appealing people will want to visit.
The first piece of visibility is optimizing your position with the search engines, so that when potential patients go on the internet and search you appear at the top of the list. Despite what you may have heard, there is no way to trick the search engines, so don;t try. Getting to the top of the list is about choosing what searches you want to lead in based on a type of service of a location, having your web site built using a platform that is search engine friendly ( this is a question for the people who built or are building your site), and then content. When it comes to websites and search engines content is king, as they say, and a very specific type of content, the written word. Search engines crawl over the written content on websites and look for relevant words, topics and use this along with the frequency of the content to create the order of search results. You do need video and images to make your site appealing, but it does not help with SEO. Many of the websites I visit have lots of written content, but it was all written and put up when the sire was built and new content is rarely if ever added, and edits are just as infrequent.
When it comes to visibility on the web the mantra is “write,write, write, write…….”. The content should be based on how you answered the clarity questions, so write about subjects that share who you are as a dental office and are targeted at the type of patients you are trying to attract. Remember to focus the content on a few areas, or key words, that you are trying to win. If you try and go after too broad a range of topics, you will not be at the top of the search results for any. Of course some general dental content is fine, but you will not win the search engine battle for how often to replace your toothbrush, nor could I imagine your answer being so phenomenal that someone will come to your office as a result of reading it. This type of information is designed as internal marketing and information for your already existing patient base, who you have to direct to the site as a resource. Do not fall into the trap of copying content from other sites, the search engines look for this and don;t count recycled content, so yes you have to write it!! Now,if your team members understand the goal some of the content generation can be delegated, but if more than one person is contributing make sure you have clear agreements on delivery dates.
Lastly, remember you are not the only one out there playing this game, so once you make it into the top five you will have to work to stay there!
Thanks Lee Ann.