In the June issue, I explained the importance of classic search engine optimization, or SEO, and gave you some tools to do the job for your website yourself. Now that you have accomplished the basic SEO and placed keywords and phrases in your home page content, you can now move on to new and more fun ways to drive traffic to your site. It is called dynamic marketing or content marketing. Ever since Google bought Blogger.com it has started giving higher rankings to sites with dynamic or ever-changing content. You should still set up basic “phone book marketing” such as Merchant Circle, Yelp and Google AdWords. These small-fee systems will definitely help to get you found. The real trick is to have fresh new content going onto your site at least three times a week. Google’s artificial intelligence “reads” this and sees it as active and engaged and will give you a higher ranking. Some experts say that if all you did was write a short new article about your subject several times a week and post it to your site, you would rank higher than sites with highly paid SEO techno-wizards on staff constantly changing their key words. So the name of the game is dynamic. Fresh, new (not recycled) articles or video (especially video) content is the highest single value thing you can do to get Google’s attention. What does that mean for you? Blogging Now before you run away saying “I don’t have time for all that,” blogging in this sense means any new content that is relevant to your locale or service and is either placed on or linked to your site. This can actually be “micro-blogging” such as simply posting Twitter links, Facebook links, or even actual blog links. It can even be links coming in from an answer forum. Many of the doctors who answer questions at our Veterinary News Network forum at PetDocs OnCall.com use links to their websites in their signature block. If a user follows this link back to the doctor’s site, this is seen as a very high value back link, because forum content is highly dynamic. Video is especially highly ranked. Video blogging is not as hard as you think and definitely worth a try. Remember that your social media efforts are seen as content that is relevant and fresh and are used to drive your social audience back to your site, which is seen as high value and dynamic. Bingo—content marketing. In the old days we simply called that client education. Educated clients came in more often and have more work done, right? Today education is just tweeted instead of typed. These “high value back-end links” are seen by search engines as pointing to an active, engaging site that all the search sites strive to serve up to their users. The good news is you can make that happen yourself. Use your Facebook page or, better yet, one of the nice control console sites such as HootSuite, TweetDeck or SproutSocial. You can do one update a day and have it post to your site, your blog, your Facebook page, Twitter feed or even LinkedIN page. These can even be scheduled so you can tweet even when you are not there. This consolidated distribution of original content is now the key in being found. At VNN we produce two great stories per month. We have always encouraged our members to edit these stories to make them personal, local and relevant to their practice. This is a time saving way to get the foundation of an outstanding story, Facebook posts, tweets and even videos. On your site, these make your site a high value dynamic site the search engines will love. VNN stories can even become your very own personalized video blog. Another key issue is that content must be “value added.” It must be relevant to your users and contain real advice, expertise and comments that could even stimulate social conversations. It must NOT be “pick me,” “call me,” “buy mine,” etc. Selling-style content will be seen as self-serving, and even artificial intelligence hates that! So, the best way to get found is to stop worrying about people finding your website and start concentrating on teaching, educating and informing clients using the free tools available to everyone. Then make sure all those tools lead home to your site. That is the new SEO, and makes for a fun social experience for you and the users who are now engaged, interactive and can be turned into your best Class A clients. Once at your website, the user needs to find a map and photos of the hospital, doctor and staff. Make sure your contact numbers are easy to find and especially be sure you have outstanding, friendly people on the other end of the phone. At this point, Internet users will want to hear a real person who will make them say, “I want to go there, because they care and want me and my pet.” A bad receptionist can turn this entire path to purchase from dynamic to flat in an instant. Because your time is so limited, content marketing can be accomplished with trusted staff who understand this process and clearly know what kind of micro-blogging needs to be posted daily. You now have active and passive marketing systems that take advantage of many free tools to drive traffic to your beautiful website. Now you can let your superior client service take over. Dr. Humphries is president and founder of the Veterinary News Network and executive director of the American Society of Veterinary Journalists. Contact Dr. Humphries at Dr.Jim@MyVNN.com. <Home>
