Epic Marketing knows competition.  To prove it, we headed to the track to find out who would dominate in an all out battle royale.  Our track cams were there to capture the action.

In the end, everyone showed their merit and tenacity in addition to having a great time.  At Epic we work hard, we play hard, and we always come out on top.

Today they sent a list of keywords that they would like to target for SEO, but the list didn’t match the types of “local SEO keywords” that a local business or medical practice should be interested in.

They wanted to target the same keywords that they are targeting for their Adwords PPC campaign – here is the short version of the list: neck pain treatments, sciatica pain, treatment for bulging disc, degenerative disc, herniated disk, back treatment for herniated disk, treatment for herniated disc, herniated disc treatment, herniated disk pain.

This was my reply (location has been changed):

These are great keywords for Google Adwords because you can geotarget your campaigns (make your ads available only to users within a defined geographic region, like within 20 miles of San Diego).

Keywords for SEO are another beast though, I’ll try to explain as briefly and easily as possible what the most valuable SEO keywords for a local San Diego business would look like:

Google has over 1 trillion web pages to try to rank every time someone does a search for ‘back pain’ and similar keywords, with a goal of giving users the most useful website possible. For example, a local chiropractic website wouldn’t be a good fit for a keyword like ‘back pain’ – users in foreign countries and other regions wouldn’t be interested in your website, so Google’s algorithm  makes sure that websites like Wikipedia, informational sites, and prominent online medical resources rank highest for broad keywords like that.

It’s also a waste of your money and time to try to rank organically for those keywords, because San Diego users make up only a tiny percentage of the global traffic that is searching for those keywords.

It is wiser for local businesses and locations to target SEO keywords that include a “local qualifier” (e.g. city or state), that targets your local target market exclusively, for example, “back pain San Diego” or “chiropractor in San Diego, CA.” San Diego users are more likely to search for local pain management and spine relief searches by including “San Diego” in the search term. Try searching for those terms and you will see your biggest online competition appearing high in search results – they are probably getting all kinds of business from those rankings.

I recommend using Google’s keyword tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) to research keywords like “chiropractor San Diego,” “spinal decompression San Diego,” and similar keyword phrases to find which key terms get the most searches per month, and those are the ‘bread and butter’ keywords that you’ll want to rank for because they can get you the highest, and best qualified traffic possible.

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To learn more about making your spinal decompression website or your chiropractic website rank well in search engines, call us today! (801) 947-5595.

While Youtube videos can a valuable part of an SEO campaign and in driving traffic and online exposure to a website, they are hardly the most valuable SEO technique.

Here was my email response:

Youtube videos can be very effective in SEO campaigns, but shouldn’t make up the only component in an SEO campaign. A website that is optimized well for search engines should include high-quality content on a well-built, search-engine-accessible website, and should be supported by inbound links from other websites. For example, a website with a Youtube video could potentially have errors that prevent search engines from finding the website, or a lack of links and valuable content on the website could prevent search engines from ever finding the content on a website.

Youtube videos can contain useful keywords and usage data that help a website rank well for certain keywords, but aside from helping a website rank, Youtube videos can be effective as content on the website, and can even attract high volumes of web traffic if the video itself is popular on Youtube.com, ranks high on search engines, or is embedded on popular websites or blogs.

A comprehensive survey completed periodically by SEOmoz ,an industry leading SEO training company, polls leading SEO experts’ opinions about the most important and critical factors in getting a website to rank well in search engines, and is useful in gauging the usefulness of Youtube videos in comparison to other on- and off-site SEO practices. Source: http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors.

Our experience validates the findings of that survey, and we model our SEO campaigns in the same way, giving the most effective SEO practices the highest priority in our campaigns. Some of the most effective SEO practices include link building (building links using keywords as ‘anchor text’ from external links), using the keyword in the page title tag and content, and building links and references from quality, trusted websites.

We have been hired to help work some magic with this practice. Their goal is to expand into several areas within Seattle, Washington. We will being with creating a new website and performing market research for the area. They will quickly see the success that we have brought to other practices across the country.

My business begins to grow and we are now actually making money…

Let’s look at where this business is and why it now is starting to make sense that I hire a full service advertising agency:

• because marketing is more important now then ever and this is not your area of expertise
• because you see the need for someone else to fill the marketing position in you business and you know that a dedicated employee is going to cost you between 35,000k-60,000k annually and this person still cant touch what you would get from us. Not to mention that you aren’t hiring just one person from our firm, you are getting an entire team of marketing professionals.
• because you see that it makes sense for you to spend time on other areas of your business instead of dabbling in the unknowns of marketing
• because you are tired of every newspaper, radio, tv, direct mail sales rep telling you that they are the perfect fit for advertising your business. You begin to realize that you have been listening to these reps for years and at the end of the day, all they want is for you to spend your marketing budget with them (thinking…why did I ever look to them for marketing advice in the first place…)
• because you want to improve your companies image with better creative and design work
• because you want to take advantage of the sale and marketing experience that we have gathered over many years, working with businesses across the country
• because you have always wanted to hire a utah advertising agency that is fun to work with and that gets the job done
• because we don’t have contracts and we earn our business month after month, knowing that you need to see an acceptable return our your investment with us
• Because you know that an agency will do a better job handling your marketing, you just need to weigh the increase and costs associated vs. continuing to do it yourself.

The crazy thing is that a lot of businesses just need to get one or two more patients/sales each month as a result of our marketing to more then cover our services. Take a few minutes to evaluate where your business is and if you can connect with some of the things that we listed above. Marketing is our passion, it’s our expertise, it’s what we do better than anyone else… ask my mom.

I only bring this up because it is important that business owners know the difference between what we do and what others are doing. Let me give you an example of one of our clients in the mid-west, let’s call him Dr Smith.

When we met Dr Smith he was spending 20,000/mo in marketing, he was buying a newspaper ad from one guy and  buying an infomercial from another guy. Dr Smith was referred to us by another client of ours and after a conversation or two he hired us. Yeah, he was paying 3 different people for marketing consulting…

Dr Smith wanted to see if we could actually out perform his other ads and we were up for the challenge… easy because we knew who we were up against. We implemented a tracking system that tracked the phone calls separate from each other to see which ads pulled the best cost per lead (CPL). At his request, we tracked this information for several month to see how everybody stacked up. The results are in and we came out on top with the lowest cost per lead (by a substantial margin). And that’s not all, we also have the best customer service, and we handle all of  the marketing for his practice. Not to mention now he doesn’t have to pay $6500/mo in  consulting/licensing fees from the other 2 companies.

What I am tying to point out is that we are a full marketing solution for your practice. Our fees our minimal and the results you will see make it a win win situation. No Contracts! We are a professional marketing agency that completely understands sales and marketing strategies. We are capable of give your practice what it needs to succeed.  Don’t try and “piece meal” a bunch of constants together when in the end,  you just need us for you marketing.

We are excited to begin building our new clients marketing campaign and already have the ball rolling. Their first Ad will be running in 3 weeks.

Happy New Year!

That is the topic addressed in a Marketing Experiments web clinic today that demonstrated how one website achieved a 201% increase in conversions. In the web clinic, the presenter emphasized the principle that clarity trumps persuasion. Be clear and to the point, and users will be much more likely to convert than if you barrage them with endless ’salesy’ talk.

The web clinic addressed three questions that users face when they arrive at a website, and the importance of answering those questions as clearly and effectively as possible:

1. Where am I?
2. What can I do here?
3. Why should I use this company?

1. Where Am I?

When users first land on your page, they are in the ‘orientation phase.’ In a couple seconds (or less), they decide whether the landing page is relevant to what they are looking for. If there is any clutter, a lack of a clear headline or theme on the website that could cause confusion, then the easiest way out is the back button.

You can reduce confusion by making the purpose of the website very clear in the logo, headline, and supporting text. Don’t barrage them with ’sales talk’ before they’ve had a chance to orient themselves and decide that you are a credible source of what they are looking for.

2. What can I do here?

Those users that haven’t hit the back button now feel confident enough to stay on the page and determine its usefulness.

The purpose of the page could be to generate a phone call or email, a checkout, a sign-up, etc. This is important: don’t leave the user’s thought process unsupervised. Use the copy and web design to guide the user to what you would like them to do – explain the benefits, value, and reasons why it is worth it for them to commit to converting.

Why should I use this company?

Finally, tell users clearly and simply why they should use your company instead of continuing their online search in pursuit of another alternative. Make sure that your value proposition (Marketing Experiment’s enhanced version of your USP, or Unique Selling Point) is clearly stated. Remember, clarity trumps persuasion.