The more effective you can be with your local internet marketing program, the more your business can grow.
Sounds pretty basic, doesn’t it?
And it is a simple concept. The execution is what involves time and money (the investment) on your part. And the investment is either one you personally execute (possibly with your staff) or outsource.
There are two components of your local internet marketing program, online presence and conversion.
Online Presence includes your web site, how highly ranked your website is on Google (both organically – what most people term “normal search” – and in the local business section), and your various social media accounts.
Both the organic and local business sections require specialized knowledge (yours or someone else’s) in order to achieve high rankings.
Briefly, your organic ranking is tied directly to Google’s proprietary ranking algorithm and includes the age of your domain, the on-page factors of each page on your website (keywords, title tags, meta description tags, and much more), the off-page factors (the number and types of websites that “link” to your website – also known as inbound links), and more.
No one outside of Google knows all of the factors that comprise the ranking algorithm.
Your local business page ranking is influence by your website’s organic ranking, the number of patient reviews you have showing in Google, the number of citations you have (a citation is nothing more than your NAP – name, address, phone number of your practice), and the completeness of your Google Business Page, among others.
The challenge with your local business page ranking is that Google seems to continually “tweek” things, and Google normally doesn’t release it’s “tweeking” details until they’re already completed in the Google database.
Social media includes sites like Facebook and YouTube – these are the two most important – along with about a dozen other websites.
Conversion boils down to one thing: how many website visitors take your desired “call to action” as a percentage of your total visitors. You want to continually measure and improve your online conversion.
What are some of the factors that influence conversion?
- How user friendly is your website? Is it easy for visitors to navigate. If you make it difficult, visitors will quickly leave, never to return.
- How clear is your desired call to action? If you want people to call your office, is your phone number on every page at the top in larger than normal text. Don’t make it hard for your visitors to contact you.
- Do you have valuable content on your website that points to your credibility and authority in your marketplace?
- Do you have customer, client or patient reviews on your website and across the internet? Remember that a review is really nothing more than an online or public referral.
In summary, your local internet marketing program can help or hurt your business and how you’re perceived in the marketplace. The decision is up to you.
