Website SEO Software - Frontdesk SEO

Saturday

Jul242010

Choosing Keywords For Medical Spas & Laser Clinics

Jeff, Frontdesk SEO in

Do It Yourself DIY SEO,

SEO Software,

Website SEO

We're getting a growing number of full-service website SEO accounts from Medical Spa MD Members and additional do-it-yourself SEO accounts popping in all the time.

Read this review of our SEO software by a Medical Spa MD Member.

Since we've had so many Medical Spa MD Members sign up and begin using our SEO software or outsourcing their SEO to us, I though I'd comment on one of the most common questions that we get from plastic surgeons and medical spas that are just starting; keyword selection.

What are keywords?

Keywords (or key phrases) are what someone who is looking for a laser clinic or medical spa types in to the search engine. For many, selecting the right keywords can be onf of the most important decisions they'll make. If you select the right keywords your marketing efforts should see some pretty significant results after just a short time, but select the wrong keywords and you're going to be banging your head against the wall with little to show for it. So, lwhich keywords are going to be the most useful for Medical Spa MD Members?

Most Medspa MD Members are individual physicians who have a single medical spa, laser clinic, dermatology or plastic surgery practice. As such, they're targeting potential clients based on geographical location; a certain 'radius' around their practice that they typically pull new patients from.

This one single piece of info gives you the ability to be especially effective by using your geography in your SEO efforts. And since 85%+ of your potential clients are now using the web to find local businesses it's more than just a 'nice to have', it's imperative for success if you're looking to grow.

Selecting Your Medical Spa's Or Laser Clinic's Best Keywords

There's some good news here. If you're offering Botox, Dysport, laser hair removal, or photofacials, or you're using technology that clients might be searching for like Fraxel, Thermage, or IPL treatments, you can just stick your area code or location on the end (which is how people commonly search) and you're set; so 'Fraxel' now becomes 'Fraxel Manhattan', 'Thermage' becomes 'Thermage NYC', and 'laser hair removal' is now 'laser hair removal 90210'.

Of course there's a hitch. Just because you're being ranked for 'Fraxel NYC' doesn't mean that you'll rank for anything else. So, you'll need to keep up your marketing efforts on all the keywords that you're targeting at the same time. (This can be pretty difficult if you don't have a system in place.)

If you've got any existing website SEO efforts in place, you'll do better with just adding your local city or zip code to your normal process.

Website SEO: Where to start

OK, here's the plug; if you've got a business web site you should run a free SEO website report and see where you're ranking on the search engines and how you might improve. We offer this service (and it's a valuable one) so that you can see exactly how your site's performing at any given time.

Post a Comment | | tagged

Keywords,

Medical Spa MD

Saturday

Jun262010

Website SEO & SEM For Local Business Search

Jeff, Frontdesk SEO in

SEO + SEM,

Website SEO

Smaller Businesses Aren't Marketing Effectively With SEO & SEM!

According to a recent study by the Center for Media Research (As outlined by studies by Nielsen) although 63% of individuals and small business entrepreneurs utilize the internet first for finding nearby merchants and 82% choose search engines to do so... only 44% of small businesses have got a web site and 50 % of those spend less than 10% of their own advertising budget marketing online.

The investigation discovers an increasing tendency towards multimedia designed for developing local SERP listings. Nonetheless, the study uncovers a noticeable
problem between how small company owners act as shoppers vs the direction they promote their own businesses on the web.

The study found that search engines are the most well known resource for finding local information by all potential buyers:

82% use search engines (Google and Yahoo)
57% use Phone Book directories (Yellow Pages)
53% use regional or local newspapers
49% use internet based Yellow Pages
49% use the local TV stations
38% use paper mail (postcards)
32% use the White Pages directories
50% stated search engines were the first place they looked when trying to find a nearby business.

More than 92% of individuals (potential buyers) say they're satisfied with results they end up getting when selecting search, although many potential buyers report commonly not being able to locate a specific known local business. This means, says the report, individuals may very well pick a equivalent company which has a more robust online profile.

The report determined that internet search (and email newsletters) are the only types of local marketing which are increasing for individuals that need to locate or track down a local business. Compared with the metrics from just 2 years ago, consumers use search engines and news letters a lot more, while they utilize newspapers, magazines, mail and radio stations much less...

However, in spite of the growing utilization of internet based search engine marketing for local searches, just 41% of businesses report turning to online search engines initial, whille 31% select phone book print ads first. In addition, it's still the case that only 44% of small businesses use a website.

When utilizing the search engines to chose a business they know is out there, 39% announce that they repeatedly have trouble finding a local business they're searching for (just 19% of survey participants said they rarely encountered trouble locating nearby business).

Despite the fact that less than 50 % small businesses have a web site, the ones which do are generally unsatisfied overall with their own internet advertising and marketing. Among small businesses which have a online presence:

51% believe both the quality and ability of their website to help find new customers is just "poor"
30% of business owners feel they commonly do a superior job of marketing and advertising in comparison with a rival
78% believe they advertise in the same spots as competitors
7% of local business owners state their leading marketing and advertising goal is to have more visitors to their websites
61% dedicate much less than 3 hours a week advertising and marketing their site
99% of small companies are closely involved in the actual advertising and marketing
65% believe it is very important to know where their new customers come from
9% will be pleased with their own web marketing efforts
78% of small company owners give 10% or less of the budget to advertising and marketing

During the previous 2 years, 43% of businesses say they have elevated the use of website seo - sem in their marketing efforts. In contrast, use of old-school marketing sources is decreasing rapidly:

Just less than 23% use the Yellow Pages less
Over 42% employ the newspaper less

*The term (local business) pertains to any kind of retail company within a participant's community, like theaters, bars etc. and services such as medspas, plumbers and real estate agents. The term "Internet Yellow Pages" pertains to internet Yellow Page web pages such as yellowpages.com, superpages.com, etc.

So what precisely will we all extrapolate from this if you own or run a small business and are trying to drive local traffic?

Search engine marketing and SEO is the fastest developing kind of selling for a very good reason. It positions your marketing message right in front of potential customers at the very point in time they’re hunting for your services or products.

There's no better, more efficient, or more cost effective way to market your business. It’s that simple.

Post a Comment | | tagged

SEO Answers,

SEO SEM,

website SEO

Friday

Jun252010

The Whitehouse + Website SEO

Jeff, Frontdesk SEO in

Website SEO

Whitehouse.gov is a beautifully designed site for sure, but how do they handle their internal SEO?

Let's take a look at what they're telling the search engines that the site is about, and what keywords they're targeting. Here's the description and 'keywords' from the site:

You'll notice that description is pretty straightforward and reads like a somewhat long sentence. That works because this is what the search engings will use as the description when the list the site, and what readers will see.

The keywords content is a little more interesting. They've entered a number of what are probably common misspellings of President Obama's name to tell the search engines that if someone types in a search for 'Barrak Obma', that this is probably what they're actually searching for.

Whenever you're performing your own website SEO you'll want to use both of these examples.

Who says the government can't do anything right?

Post a Comment | | tagged

website SEO

Thursday

Jun242010

DIY Or Outsource Your Website SEO?

Jeff, Frontdesk SEO in

Frontdesk SEO Clients,

SEO Software,

Website SEO

Frontdesk has always had quite a few accounts that start with our do-it-yourself website SEO software, and then switch to use our outsourcing community. I'm asking myself why that is?

Outsourcing your SEO to Frontdesk starts at just $179 a month for five hours of dedicated work from one of our SEO experts. That's a screaming deal by the way. There are are quite a few dedicated SEO agencies that use this software for their internal teams to do exactly the same thing, but they charge $100 an hour. In effect, outsourcing those tasks to our team is like getting a 60% discount. (And that's currently the most expensive hourly account we have. The other accounts are all at lower price points per hour.)

Of course we have quite a few freelance professionals and individuals who are just starting their business... and Frontdesk is a perfect solution for all those kinds of businesses... If you have the time to commit to five, ten, or twenty hours a month doing SEO instead of running other aspects of your business.

Most larger businesses, but not all, take a look at the time/money aspects and immediately take the outsource route. Some of these also start with a DIY account.

It just leaves me wondering what the though process is for starting with a DIY account?

My best guess is that new accounts want to see the actual process, and guage how the entire process works before turning it over to us. (Of course there are a number of clients who are having thier 'Frontdesk' staff doing the SEO so that makes some sense too.)

Either way, using our DIY SEO software or outsourcing your SEO to us, we love all of our clients and we know we offer the best value and results you can get.

Post a Comment | | tagged

DIY SEO,

Outsource SEO

Saturday

Jun192010

Frontdesk SEO: Modifying Your Linkbuilding Action Settings

Jeff, Frontdesk SEO in

Frontdesk SEO: How to

Frontdesk has some really awesome built-in workflows that include linkbuilding actions for competitive keywords, social bookmarking, directory submissions and the like. Of course you can change your workflow settings at any time as this video shows.

Post a Comment | | tagged

Link Building

Saturday

Jun192010

Website SEO Client Q&A

Jeff, Frontdesk SEO in

Frontdesk SEO: How to,

Website SEO Q&A

A thread of a recent email exchange from a new client asking questions about how Frondesk's SEO software works.

The Q&A below gives some pretty good answers about why SEO agencies are actually switching their clients over to Frontdesk and oursourcing their work to our experts. I've posted it here since these are exactly the kinds of questions that every business has around their own SEO efforts and how they can actually see what's going on. You can get a lot more insight an information in our website SEO software videos.

I've italicized the questions for clarity.

Laurie,
I will check out the login info later, thanks for setting us up.
Some more info regarding moving forward: Attached you will find some files with more info that is noted below. (Client sent Excel reports from the SEO agency they were using and asked us to take a look at them.)

Question: As to keyword research - You will notice they specialize in pre-existing health insurance coverage, these are the ideal / realistic terms we could target as trying to compete with "health insurance" I'm sure is not realistic.

Answer: Keyword research is of the the utmost importance as we've stated. Since this is time intensive and something of an art, without expending time it's difficult to asses where the 'bang for the buck' is that crosses the line between traffic (good) and competition (bad). However, there are always long-tail keywords that can be found in every niche. You're right that 'health insurance' is not going to be one of them.

If you're a local plumber, restaurant, or medical center the competition locally is probably not too great unless you're in a major metropolitan area, so keywords and phrases like 'plumber 84060' or 'plumber Jackson WY' that are pretty standard should work just fine.

That being said, we have very sophisticated programs that can analyze every competitor, every keyword, and every phrase to find where we can compete and where we should be expending time and resources. If we're asked to generate possible keyword lists we can go into real depth. Each keyword is a completely different campaign though. Getting to the top of the listings for 'pre existing health insurance' does not mean that we will rank for 'pre-existing health insurance'. For each keyword we will need to generate backlinks. That's why keyword selection is so critical, and why the cost to go after everything at once is usually prohibitive.

Note: 'Health insurance' is very deep water. It will take considerable time and cost to become a real player in this area. Since we can see that Yahoo only has something like 164 back links indexed to the site there's a long way to go. The good news is that we can show some real traction within the first few months. That being said this is a race that you have to continually run since all of your competitors are.

Question: As at 05-2010 - if you look at this backlink report - curious your opinion on if these can be considered back links in anyway. Also what is your overall opinion on the quality of this work, also compared to what your business plan will / can deliver.

Answer: The report provided is a general report in an Excel file. It's the way that most agencies work and they tell you that 'links exist'. Frontdesk differs in that you can see each and every task in real time and track everything that's done, and what the results are. We also offer individual keyword tracking so you can see where you rank for every keyword in real time. (I've included the video above.)

There's really not a comparison with our solution and the generic monthly Excel spreadsheets when it comes to reporting.

Question: Regarding the client I already signed up with. If you view - BV Monthly Report as at 04-2010 - these are some good keywords the client wants to target locally. My question is within your system, how do we distinguish these to be targeted local vs national - without including the local (city / county) keywords? Is it done by default with geo-ip - or?

Answer: The difference between local and national distribution in Frontdesk takes place on the back end. This is part of the back end special sauce. Frontdesk analyzes a all the competitors and sites and builds a workflow that maximizes both the speed, and efficacy of the campaign.

If you choose 'local', the software feeds different links into the work flow than with a national campaign. For example, if you're 'local' and you're in Dallas, TX, Frontdesk will place special emphasis to find relevant links (blogs etc) that are also local to that area. This means that the competitive and keyword tasks can be dramatically different. (Frontdesk accounts do not support the ability to be both 'local' and 'national' at the same time, but you can switch between the two easily.)

If the client is outsourcing the work to us, this is all include in the workflow automatically so our team is automatically using the correct settings and not just creating 'generic' links. Every link has the highest possible Google Juice.

Post a Comment | | tagged

Link Building,

website SEO

Tuesday

Jun152010

Frontdesk SEO: Modifying Your Keywords

Jeff, Frontdesk SEO in

Frontdesk SEO: How to,

SEO Software

Keywords are the linchpin for all of your website SEO efforts. Here's a new video on how to modify your Frontdesk SEO keywords if you're already using Frontdesks' SEO software for your site.

If not... it's a great example of just how easy Frontdesk is to use.

Social Sites Are Sharing Profile Info Without User Consent

Jeff, Frontdesk SEO

It's no surprise that social networks and other popular sites are sharing this kind of content with advertisers.

A report in the Wall Street Journal indicates that Facebook, along with MySpace, Digg and a handful of other social-networking sites, have been sharing users' personal data with advertisers without users' knowledge or consent.

The data shared includes names, user IDs, and other information sufficient to enable ad companies such as the Google-owned DoubleClick to identify distinct user profiles. Some of the sites in question, including MySpace and Facebook, stopped sharing the data after the Journal asked them about it.

The surreptitious data sharing was first noticed by researchers from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and AT&T Labs in August 2009, who brought it up with the sites in question. It wasn't until WSJ contacted them that changes were made.

Not surprisingly, Facebook appears to have gone farther than the other sites when it comes to sharing data. When Facebook's users clicked on ads appearing on a profile page, the site would at times provide data such as the username behind the click, as well as the user whose profile page from which the click came.

Post a Comment | | tagged

Social Media

Tuesday

May042010

Website SEO Tips From A Frontdesk Client

Jeff, Frontdesk SEO in

Frontdesk SEO Clients,

Website SEO

It's great to get emails on website SEO tips from our clients like those below.

Glow Medical Spa is a Frontdesk client that came through Medical Spa MD and offers cosmetic medical treatments and services like Smartlipo, laser hair removal and Botox in Irving Tx.

Glows been a Outsource SEO client of Frontdesk for only about 30 days, but they're already making great progress and have obviously gained a much greater understanding of what their internet marketing and website SEO needs are.

Of course we just got copied on the email that this physician sent to their website developer, but it's clear that this is one MD who understands that the internet is where the future of his medical spa is.

Here's the email.

As I mentioned to you before I have begun working with a med spa Internet marketing group that specializes in SEO. We are working on such things as blogs, social media, pod casts, and back linking to aggressively increase our Internet presence. Their name is Frontdesk SEO and I am working with Alex and Laurie. I am writing this to you to serve as an introduction to them. Obviously much of what you and they do overlap with respect to Glow and they may need to work with you in some capacity in the future. Their emails are included above. Certainly most of what we ask you to do will come through me, but I still want you to be aware of them if there is any need for communication between you.

Currently we have come up with a few things that I would like to accomplish as near term goals.

1. It appears that a site map will help a lot with web crawlers and bots in indexing our site. We need to have one created. I see that there are some automatic site map generators. If they are appropriate, they may save some time and effort. Let me know what you think.

2. I have registered for google analytics and we need to install tracking code on each page of our website immediately before the </body> tag to aid with that. Instructions from Google are as follows:

3. Would you please let me know the key words and tags that we are using for each page. I would like to carefully comb over them and refine them for our purposes.

4. I now understand that a static website does not generate as much interest with search engines as one that changes regularly. To that end, I would like to incorporate my med spa blog within the website. From Frontdesk "Jeff suggested that for optimal results, we host the blog on your website. Can you ask your webmaster about her preferred method for doing so. It is pretty straight forward to embed a blog on a website (many ways to do it), so whatever method works best for her is fine with us." Perhaps you can come up with a way for me to upload blogs without having to bother you weekly to do so.

5. We have created a Facebook fan page. I would like to create a link specifically to that. The text for that should emphasize the frequent prizes, give aways, and beauty tips.

6. The following is some text that I am having Alex include with all of our press releases, blogs, etc. Would you please include something like this on the contact us page. Also, I would like to include a map and a link to a map site with our address pre inserted.

Glow Medical Spa and Salon is located in the Las Colinas area of Irving. It's close proximity to Highways 183 and 114 as well as I-635/LBJ and the George Bush Tollway make it very easy to get to from many areas of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. It is just a half hour drive from Fort Worth and less from other surrounding areas such as Grapevine, Coppell, Mid-Cities, Lewisville, Arlington, Grand Prarie, North Richland Hills, Hurst, Euless, Bedford, Southlake, North Dallas, Plano, Frisco, Carrollton, Addison, Farmers Branch, Richardson, and Garland.

7. Under the book a party page would you please add a heading for med spa parties.

These are the things that have come up as most important in my discussions with Frontdesk. If you have any other suggestions, I would welcome them Thank you so much in advance.

This email has had identifying information removed.

Post a Comment | | tagged

Medical Spa MD

Tuesday

Apr272010

Smartlipo in Irving Texas?

Jeff, Frontdesk SEO in

Frontdesk SEO Clients,

SEO Software,

Website SEO

One of our fantastic clients is Glow, a medical spa that offers IPL, laser treatments, Botox and Smartlipo in Irving Texas.

All medical procedures performed at Glow are under the supervision of Rizwan H. Bukhari M.D.

Dr. Bukhari attended Johns Hopkins University, Southwestern Medical School and trained as a general surgery resident at St. Paul Medical Center in Dallas as well as a vascular surgery resident at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio. Dr. Bukhari is a board-certified vascular surgeon who has extensive experience in inectable cosmetic therapy and has published work on vein schlerotherapy.

Glow is a perfect client. They know enough about what the need to know that it's a job for experts, and they know enought about what they want to make our job much easier.

Over the next few months you can expect to see Glow's internet presence and search engine rankings rise. (Dr. Bukhari will be able to log in to his Frontdesk account and watch this in real time of course.)

While plastic surgeon PPC campaigns have their place. SEO is a lasting presence that gives over time.

Post a Comment | | tagged

Glow,

website SEO

Monday

Apr262010

Shmula

Jeff, Frontdesk SEO in

SEO Review,

Website SEO

Shumla, Pete Abilla's blog give his take on technology, business, operations, The Toyota Production System / Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma, Queueing Theory, operations research, building software, the customer experience (especially ethnography and design thinking and word-of-mouth marketing), and you’ll see bits of family stuff too.

This blog is a personal blog. Despite that fact, the articles on this personal blog have been quoted by the Asian Development Bank, CIO.com, PCMAG.com, Harvard Business Review, Internet Retailer, & have been used at leading business schools such as The Harvard Business School, The University of Virginia Darden Graduate School of Business and Carnegie Mellon University.

Post a Comment | | tagged

Shumla

Monday

Apr192010

Website SEO For Medical Spas

Jeff, Frontdesk SEO in

Free SEO Report,

Frontdesk SEO Clients,

Website SEO

Medical Spa MD (who by the way uses Frontdesk SEO) is launching a great new series of website SEO videos for plastic surgeons and dermatologists who own or operate medical spas.

Here's what Medical Spa MD says about the series:

Since we get a lot of inquires around online marketing and conversion, I'm planning to do these as something of a regular series that breaks down common mistakes and how to implement some simple tactics that will improve your search engine rankings and visibility, and your site's conversions.

If you've got any questions after watching the video, please post a comment and I'll try to answer it there, and address it in future videos. The goal is that these will start out fairly broadly, but get much more specific. After watching just a few you should be much better equiped to make better decisions that could really impact your business.

And of course, Medical Spa MD includes a link to our free website SEO reporting tool.

1 Comment | | tagged

SEO SEM,

SEO Software,

website SEO

Saturday

Apr172010

New User Manual & SEO Answers

Jeff, Frontdesk SEO in

Frontdesk SEO Clients,

SEO How To,

Website SEO

Hey! We've added a new area that includes a new user manual and FAQs for Frontdesk SEO sofware.

Getting Started (2 entries)

Step-by-step guide to getting started with Frontdesk SEO.

Linkbuilding (2 entries)

Best practices & answers for building relevant back links to your web site.

Website Optimization (1 entry)

Best practices for optimizing your existing web site to make it search engine friendly.

What Should My Site's URL Structure Look Like

Post a Comment | | tagged

SEO Answers

Saturday

Apr172010

Nice Review Of Frontdesk SEO

Jeff, Frontdesk SEO in

Frontdesk SEO Clients,

SEO Software,

Website SEO

There's a really nice review of website SEO and frontdesk over on Medical Spa MD.

We love it when our clients sing our praises!

If you haven't taken the tour or run a free SEO report on your website, now's the time. Your links are getting any younger.

Here's just some of the review... the parts that deal with us of course:

Link building can be very time consuming, but the FrontDesk SEO tool can really help you go out there and find the sites you should be listed on. This saves you a tremendous amount of time.

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is changing in it's effectiveness all the time. In social bookmarking websites, users save links publicly (not personally on their own computers) to web pages that they want to store and/or share with others. Usually, these bookmarks are shared within an individual "group" someone may subscribe to (such as "Laser Hair Removal"). You can add descriptions to your bookmarks in the form of metadata, or meta tags, so that other users can understand what the content is of your bookmark without having to download it beforehand. Different types of "descriptions" can include comments or even reader's votes (favorable or not - like on YouTube or Digg). Again, FrontDesk SEO makes this process relatively easy.

Blog Commenting

MedicalSpaMD is a blog and, like most blogs, it is highly susceptible to spammers like we have all seen and Jeff so diligently tries to eliminate on a daily basis as it can be a true nuisance for people like us who use this site as a valuable tool for your practices.

If you want to find blogs to participate in and comment on, try to find quality blogs that are related to what you do as a profession. Again, FrontDesk SEO can help with this. And when you add your comments, try to make them content-relative because not only do your comments add value to the blogpost in general, they also have greater chance of staying on the blogpost with a link back to your website.