And that’s what I’m going to do today. I’m going to give you some tidbits on how to market your practice. Of course you’re going to have to continue your research, try and test on your own but at least you’ll have a foundation to go by – a marketing foundation that’s not hard to go by nor implement and will definitely help your physical therapy practice take off.

Some Background On Physical Therapy Services

Physical therapists provide a valuable service in local communities. They treat a range of painful conditions, and are instrumental in restoring mobility after patients have been involved in accidents. It is often the case, however, that the important services which they provide go unnoticed due to a lack of effective marketing.

It’s Imperative That You Market Your Practice

It is imperative that a physical therapist has a properly planned marketing campaign for their practice. To be most effective such a campaign will have many individual facets. For example, it has traditionally been the case that the majority of physical therapists’ referrals come from doctors in their local area. For this reason it is important to foster good working relationships with local healthcare professionals.

However, physical therapists should not be dependent upon this as a source of income or new patients. They should also be seeking to raise their practice’s profile in the local community by networking with a wide variety of different professionals. while handing out business cards can be a useful way of attaining referrals it is typically much more effective to employ targeted marketing techniques with specific groups. For example, a physical therapist could enter into agreements with local sports clubs for any injured players to be referred to them.

A physical therapist can entice new patients with a range of special offers, but this is only effective if their customer is retained. A practice must be able to make patients feel welcomed and properly looked after. Relationships should be cultivated between therapists and patients to ensure that the latter make use of the practice again.

Filling Out Questionnaires

It can be a very useful marketing strategy to have patients fill out questionnaires to gauge the standard of service being offered. This can also be a good way to discover patients’ ideas for any improvements that they would like to see being made. Questionnaires also give you the opportunity to make changes to your company assets like your website or email marketing campaigns. Either way, patient feedback – whether positive or negative – can be used to make your services much better and more inclined towards fulfilling your patients’ needs.

Making Your Patient’s Feel Valuable

Patients must be made to feel valued. Not only will this ensure that they keep coming back and spending money whenever they require therapeutic treatments, but it also increases the likelihood of them sending new referrals to your practice. Positive word of mouth recommendations are among the most powerful of all marketing methods and very few people know or harness this method. People who receive a recommendation for a particular practice from a friend or family member will be very likely to become newly referred and long term patients.

Having A Website Dedicated To Your Physical Therapy Practice

It is vitally important from a marketing perspective that you’re practice has it’s own website – for so many reasons. I’ll list a few of them below. You can take these tidbits with you and can rest assured that you’ll see a difference within a matter of weeks – especially if your site already has a regular user base. Here are some of the elements your website should have:

• testimonials
• place to leave testimonials
• privacy policy
• terms and conditions
• a contact form
• a directions to your practice page
• a list of your services
• a list of prices for said services
• calls-to-actions on very important pages

With respect to testimonials, a collection of positive experiences from previous patients will build confidence and trust in your practice. There’s nothing more true than this. When you’re searching for products or services on the Internet, do you not enjoy reading testimonials and reviews by previous buyers? I do and doing so allows me to make a much more informed decision as to whether I’d like to purchase a product or service.

But what about leaving a testimonial? I cannot count how many times I’ve looked through websites to find a place to leave a comment or review but was unable to do so. Those particular websites not only lost my business but they also lost what could have been a great review.  Make sure your visitors can find reviews but most importantly leave them too!

Then there’s the privacy policy. A lot of people simply won’t do any business with someone unless there is a distinct privacy policy on the site. I personally don’t want to sign up or give my private personal information to a website that shares my details with others. This is a simple way of making sure your visitors trust you.

The terms and conditions of a website is also very important element of a successful website. Why? Well think about it from this perspective; if you don’t list your terms and conditions on your website, you may be turning away thousands of potential customers. Why? Well personally I don’t like doing business with a website of which I know not what will take place if something goes wrong with the product or service I purchased. As an informed consumer I need to know exactly what I’m getting into and what to expect if something goes awry.

The contact form is another very important element on a website for obvious reasons. All I really have to ask you is would you purchase a product or service from a website in which you can’t contact the owner? What about refunds? Who do you call? It’s clear, a contact form is essential to your online success and in building your conversion rates.

A Call To Action

The Call to Action is one of the oldest Internet Marketing strategies to take advantage of. I cannot tell you how many websites I have visited where I know not at all what to do when I get there. What is a call-to-action? Well click the link in the last sentence and it will give you a clear idea of what a call-to-action is – and remember, that link is now a ‘call-to-action’ too.

The Take Home

Well, there’s quite a bit to take home but don’t worry. I’ll be back in the next few weeks with more detailed information as to how to market your physical therapy practice effectively. The Internet has millions of users and there’s no reason a physical therapist shouldn’t harness the Internet to attract these users and turn them into gold.

Stay tuned…

But how do you find Twitter users in your area? Should you use Google? You don’t really need to.

The Tip To Finding Local Twitter Followers

OK I’ll just get to the point. Finding local Twitter is easy and here’s how you do it: simply search Twitter (or your favorite search engine) for “twitter, city-name, state/province”.

What you’re hoping to find is the official Twitter page for your locality. Once you’ve found it you’ll notice that most of the followers are in your area. Well, start following them. It’s common sense that people from Albakurky aren’t going to Folow Toronto on Twitter right? Right!

So that’s it. Follow the people who are following the official Twitter page of your local area/region/town and province. If they people you follow appreciate your goods and services they’ll follow you too!

Google Can Read Ajax and JavaScript

Well, I know this means little to the day-to-day business owner but if you talk to your Internet marketer or technical SEO you’ll realize this is a big deal. Rather than get into a long-hauled explanation of the benefits of this to almost all websites and if not then their blogs, I’ll just point form it out for you. Oh but before I do, let me tell you that the Ajax and JavaScript we’re talking about here is in relation to Facebook comments and their Facebook Commenting Plugin that can be installed on any website – now Google can crawl the comments people make. But why do you care?

• Google loves comments. To Google comments on a webpage indicate importance (for lack of a more technical explanation) or even popularity – something interesting, something even outrageous.
• Facebook comments is the easiest way of leaving a comment on someone’s website, article, blogpost etc. There is not need to log in, no need to register and no need to type anything other than your comment. Talk about conversions.
• The comment goes to the users wall and his friends and family can see the comment, click the link and pay a visit to your website which can, in the end, turn into dollars. Do you see where we’re going with this?

Google’s Releasing A New “Freshness” Algorithm Change

OK here’s another update – and an another important one at that. Google is releasing a new improvement in their algorithm related to “fresh content” that will impact 35% of the search results. What does this mean for you as a business owner or SEO? It means fresh new content is the way to go. Don’t get me wrong here though. In my opinion fresh content has always had preference in the search results (not for every single search) but the number of search results this algorithm change effect is what’s important. This new improvement will probably last a few years until they upgrade again. Take home? Blog, share, Tweet and write articles – and make sure they’re useful to their users too!

The Not Provided Keyword In Google Analytics Up To 14%

And finally, we all (should have) heard that Google’s new privacy policy with respect to logged in users (these are users who are logged into their Google account) is that they won’t be sending their search statistics to Google Analytics anymore. This means your web traffic analytics will not show a portion of what your users searched for when they found your website.

At first it was though that only a small minority of the keyword reports would be affected (less than 10%) but a report showed that upwards of 14% of the information has been skewed.

So there you have it. Take this information and share it with your friends but most importantly if you’re not an SEO or Internet marketer, send this page to the people who take care of that for your website just in case they’ve been too busy lately and missed the news.

Good luck!

Right Way Directory Submissions

It may seem that doing directory submissions is easy – many people believe all you need to do is purchase decent submission software, setup your accounts and click submit. Well, they’re right in thinking so. To the willy nilly SEO, putting your directory submission software on auto-pilot is the way to go. That’s not so for the meticulous SEO. The meticulous SEO can sense advantages when the present themselves – moral and ethical advantages that they take advantage of.

OK Let’s Get To It!

OK! OK! Aside from the most popular directory submission tip, that of ensuring your automated directory submission software allows you to have multiple title and description fields (in order to your link profile), the next best tip is to try your very best to submit your listings at the top end of the directory categories as possible.

It’s a fact that some pages and websites take longer to show up in Google’s index, especially low-end ones like common link directories. The closer your link is to the first few pages of a directory, the higher the chance of it getting crawled by a search engine spider.

Remember, most directories have multiple categories and sub-categories. Sift through the sub-categories to find out if there is one you can submit your business to. It’s worth a try.

That’s the take home with this article: try to submit your listing to the first category if possible. This means you’re going to pretty much only depend on your submission software’s auto-populate-fields function but the end result is a higher change of your listing getting found. Take it or leave it but think about it just for a minute and feel free to share your thoughts.

Attack Of The Pandas

Some time last year Google notified the world that they’re releasing a new aspect of their algorithm that basically checks web pages for quality – they called the update Panda. As we know, quality can be a relative term and in the case of web page copy we can safely ask the question “what constitutes quality?”.

Well as we know there’s been a lot of speculation and one of the most popular ideas floating around is the problem with Panda and a website’s duplicate content. Google even reduced the rankings of a few sites citing each of them with low quality content scores. As an extra bonus we had thousands of website owners hitting the forums complaining that their rankings have gone down – and they should have. So what’s my point today?

Is Duplicate Content Really That Dangerous?

Well that’s a great question. Our answers will depend on a lot of speculation but will be based on a few facts. Here’s one of them.

• We don’t know the exact way nor the full extent as to what Google uses to determine the quality of a page

Simple isn’t it? We all wish it was but when it comes to Internet marketing and SEO we’ve got to be on top of our game. So let’s delve a bit into the speculation part of this and see if we can find some answers. Does duplicate content for local listings matter? Let’s find out!

For starters let us try to determine if duplicate content would really matter to a user.In the following scenario we’ll list out what could be completely possible with respects to how a searchers uses Google and your website.

Scenario#1

1. A user searches for a local dentist in Toronto
2. A user sees several dental listings in Google places or in the organic search results
3. One or even some of those dentist listings have content on them which was taken from a popular dental site in Florida
4. The user clicks on one of those listings
5. The user reads the duplicate (stolen) content and finds it informative enough to make a decision
6. The user decides to either call the dentist or use the contact form to do so

Now do you see what I mean? Well if you don’t my question now is does Google (the world’s TOP search engineers)? In this case we could speculate that Google can determine if a page (even though the content is duplicate) is still useful to a user and I would venture to say that I believe Google has taken the above scenario into consideration and that if there is a filter with respect to it, it’s a very minor one.

Scenario#2

1.  A user search Google for a local auto-body shop in Oakville
2. A user clicks on the first listing which happens to be a virtual duplicate of the content of an Ottawa body-shop
3. The user likes the information, finds it useful and information
4. The user makes a call to the website
5. The website owner makes a sale and a new customer and the customer finds what they’re looking for

As you can see the above two scenarios clearly illustrate situations where duplicate content wouldn’t negatively affect the user. But when would duplicate content become an issue, not only for the user, but for Google? Let’s see if we can figure this one out.

When Duplicate Content Does Matter

Well there’s been so much talk of Panda, webpage quality and duplicate content over the past year that there’s got to be something important on the matter correct? Well you’re right. The Panda update isn’t a joke – it’s real and many sites are suffering from it.

So when does it matter?

• if you’re a news publishing website that publishes aggregate news information from across the web and displays  that news content on your website then you may see a reduction in your rankings
• If you’re scraping content from other sites and republishing their content on yours you may have a more difficult time ranking in Google.
• discussion forums that can generate both regular and stripped-down pages targeted at mobile devices
• store items shown or linked via multiple distinct URLs
• printer-only versions of web pages

The last three bullet points where taken straight from Google’s explanation duplicate content but now we have a problem. Take a look at Google’s quote below:

Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar

OK so what about our above two scenarios with the two businesses that have taken content from other similar sites? Well as an experienced SEO I can attest to the rankings of a current client of whom I’ve discovered did contain large chunks of duplicate content on their regional service website but are, after a lot of off-page SEO (link-building and article submissions) ranking on the first page or number one on Google for many keywords related to their industry with regional search parameters appended to the search.

How Does Google Feel About Duplicate Content On Regional Service Sites?

Well that’s a good question and I answered it above. It’s not a definitive answer but we’d be very safe to speculate that Google doesn’t care about duplicate or stolen content on local sites. I stress the word speculate but the speculation is based on facts – the fact remains, the site in question (the client mentioned above) is ranking high all over the place.

What If You Own Several Websites With The Same Content?

This could be a whole other ball-game. Before the Panda update came out, people were calling it the Farmer update. Why? Because apparently Google was targeting websites that farm content – uses the same content on a number of owned websites.

What’s The Take Home?

OK I’m going to be really careful here. For one, if you have content on your website that was taken from another site or still resides on another site and have seen a drop in your rankings you may have been hit by Panda and should re-write your content. After you do so check your rankings within at least a few weeks to see if there’s been a ranking increase. If you haven’t seen any ranking changes for the worse, you’re probably in good working order and need not worry about your content – again most especially if you’re a regional service site.

That’s it. If you’ve experienced otherwise or something similar to my above conjecture please feel free to comment below and share your experiences.

Has duplicate content really affected you or your client’s website?

Either way, let us see. Another joke that was floating around what the Google blocked Google Places from it’s search results because Places was deemed as a content farm. I’m not fooled! Are you?

April fools everyone!

It’s simple. As most of us who use Gmail know, we’re a part of a larger social group of friends who have Google accounts as well. Well, if friends in your Social Circle of Google friends decides to +1 a page or link in the search results, you’ll see their plus-sites too!

Here’s an excerpt from their Blogspot:

But the +1 button isn’t just for search results. We’re working on a +1 button that you can put on your pages too, making it easy for people to recommend your content on Google search without leaving your site. If you want to be notified when the +1 button is available for your website, you can sign up for email updates at our +1 webmaster site.

Google has also said that in the near future we’ll be able to interact through the Plus 1 system with our friends on Twitter and other social networks. That’s good news.

So it’s finally here, SEOs across Canada and the rest of the world it’s time to adapt again, get on it! Business owners, talk to your SEOs and webmasters and get them prepared to submit your website to Google +1 system as soon as they open, which I predict will be pretty soon!

Search engines don’t like 404 errors either

If you don’t know why the search engines don’t like 404 errors, read on!

Take this scenario as an example: a user decides to open their browser and search Google for ladies shoes, they perform the search and find a whole list of search results – the regular I know but there’s your listing in the search results and the user likes it. What do they do? Of course click on it and when they arrive at your site they experience one of two feelings – Like or Dislike.

What can contribute to a dis-like?

A 404 page not found. Why, well it’s a complete waste of their time! Does a 404 page have to happen? No and absoulely not! As a part of a webmaster’s job, the task of generating an .htaccess 301 file which will redirect users (and search engines, and page rank)  is something that’s taken seriously. If a user clicks on a link in the search engines and arrives at a dead 404 page that hasn’t been properly redirected, that same user will associate this (terrible) website search result with the search engine itself – the fear of search engines is that a user will go and use other search engines instead!

Does that make sense? It should. if at least once a day a user searches with a search engine and finds a 404 page not found page, what do you think they’ll do? They’ll find another place to visit where there aren’t all these errors.

The affect on SEO?

I won’t say that a single 404 page will adversely affect your rankings – right away but in the long run a site that’s running users away won’t do you any good from a user perspective and most likely from a search engine perspective as well.

Check your Google Webmaster tools account for 404s at least once a month, especially if you have a large number of pages and update your content regularly – errors always creep in.

So if you allow people to join your WordPress blog website and contribute you will want to add the following code to the functions.php file in your theme directory:

if ( current_user_can('author') && !current_user_can('upload_files') )
add_action('admin_init', 'allow_contributor_uploads');

function allow_contributor_uploads() {
$contributor = get_role('author');
$contributor->add_cap('upload_files');
}

Very simple. For clarity, open functions.php in your theme directory, add the following at the bottom of your code blocks and from here on it contributors/authors will be able to upload images for their posts.

Enjoy!

function remove_medialibrary_tab($tabs) {
unset($tabs['library']);
return $tabs;
}
if(!current_user_can('edit_others_posts')) add_filter('media_upload_tabs','remove_medialibrary_tab');

That should work. Enjoy!