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5 Major Challenges Doctors Have With SEO (And How to Fix Them) Posted by Tyson Downs on 10/28/14 5:34 AM Find me on:
Let's face it, if you are a dentist or other Doctor, SEO probably isn't the first thing on your list. Do you really want to be doing a backlink analysis and looking at hundreds of rows in a spreadsheet to try and determine a good place to get a backlink? Or perhaps you want to be hunting down citation opportunties? Whatever it may be in regards to SEO for dentists you probably would prefer to have somebody else do it for you. Let's face it, it isn't the most exciting thing to do in the world. BUT, if you hire somebody that truly knows what they are doing, it's almost like having a wizard work for you, no joke.
So let's look at 5 of the major challenges that I see with Dental SEO and how you can fix them. 1. Thinking it isn't important or won't work. 2. Thinking that it is too much or isn't worth the money. 3. Hiring the lowest bidder. 4. Focusing on the wrong metrics. 5. Not listening to their dental SEO company.
Let's go into each of them in detail and discuss them further.
1. Not believing SEO is important or will work. I see this on a regular basis. Usually the culprit is that the dentists either has no knowledge whatsoever and because he isn't educated on online marketing for dentists, he doesn't have any reason to believe it will work. It is these same people that think it isn't important because they've always gotten business from word of mouth or yellow pages. What happens when one of those dries up? What happens when something that you have no control over changes dramatically and your business has to do a complete 180? What happens when you put all your marketing dollars in one basket? Take a guess. It isn't good. How to fix it? Read some case studies about dentists and others using SEO to get results. Read some tech or industry blogs that discuss what it is and how it can help. Have an open mind. Read the Google SEO starter guide and see all the things that they recommend doing. Are you doing those?
2. Thinking that SEO isn't worth the money. It's just too expensive. It can be too much, sure. It can be too expensive, you bet. But are you looking at it from an ROI point of view? If you are able to get X amount of new customers then it pays for itself and the brings you in additional revenue. Or you may think I'll do it myself and save the money. Sure that's possible. But do you want to? How much do you value your time? Do you want to save money so bad that you'd rather spend at a minimum 20 hours every week studying it? Is it worth it so not spend that time with your family, but instead in front of your computer reading computer code, and the latest from the best SEO blogs out there? Figuring out how to implement Schema? If you bill at $100-$200 per hour, then isn't your freetime worth at least every penny of that? That $1500 you are saving on SEO by 'doing it yourself', is costing you $8000 a month for subpar results ($100 per hour x 20 hours per week, x 4 weeks). How to fix it? Have an open mind. Google: dentist my city (of course replace the 'my city' with your actual city). Give him or her a call, ask them how they got on the first page of Google, and if it has helped their practice. Ask them if they'd
recommend doing it on your own or hiring a professional.
3. Hiring the lowest bidder. So you're determined to save some money and you hire the lowest bidder. After all, it's SEO so it's the same no matter where you get it, right? Wrong. I can guarantee somebody charging the lowest anount isn't spending the necessary amount of time needed to improve your rankings. After all, why would they? They aren't getting paid very well for it. Think about it, they are charging such a low price because they either don't have the skills and can't get good results, they will do no work anyway and just con you, or they are using cheap, cheap tools and labor to get the least amount of work done to get short term results. How to fix it? There's no convincing somebody of what they need to pay. If they believe something, chances are no amount of explaining will get them to change their mind. Think about the cheapest dentist in your area, is there a reason he is the cheapest? Do you get the best service, and highest quality, and the lowest price? You can have all three, but not at the same time.
4. Focusing on the wrong metrics. This is a common one. A dentist keeps looking at his rankings in Google, not knowing that there is multiple factors that come into play that can impact those rankings. And not knowing that he can be geting traffic for other keywords. Yes, everybody wants good rankings, and good rankings are nice and will usually make you more succesful, but that's only part of the story. How to fix it? Focus on incoming calls. Focus on website traffic. Focus on new patients. You can't track every single possible word that somebody may type in to find you in the search engines. But you can track all the calls and traffic and new patients. Focus on what is most important.
5. Not listening to your Healthcare SEO company.
Why is this so important? Easy, let me explain. Without proper communication, it will be impossible for your SEO company to have the necessary information for your campaign. Sure, there's all the info they need at the beginning about your company, but on an ongoing basis they will (should be at least), making recommendaitons, asking you for more information, trying to get you involved. How to fix it? Communicate with your online marketing company. Talk to them. Give them the information that they need. Are they giving you inside tips on how to get more links? Follow those tips. Are they asking you to fill out bio sheets on your team members? Fill them out and get them back. The more information they can have and the quicker they can have it, the better results they can get for you, and the more new patients you can be getting.
CONCLUSION: It isn't easy letting go of long held beliefs. But keep an open mind and you'll be on your way to success.
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