Recently we were asked to give a presentation at a convention here in town put on by the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery. We wanted to provide a way for the listeners at the convention as well as any of our followers to be able to see and hear the information again if they wanted. Audio file is located at the bottom of the page, transcription of audio as follows:
Our next guest is Joseph Stevenson and Kenny Eliason they are the co-founders of NeONBRAND and they are going to talk to us a little bit about ten little don’t things to help you with your website.
Alright [inaudible] because I am not much good at the office [inaudible] so I just want to thank everybody who talked before that actually was perfect introduction of what we are going to talk about so I wanted to kind of just do a really quick activity if everybody wants to stand up just a second. Everybody stretch something like this so if you or the company you work for depending on your positions if you own a website stay standing. Okay so everyone.
Okay good if you guys have a facebook fan page then stay standing and twitter YouTube okay perfect if you contribute to a blog that is your own or somebody else’s on link basis just stand. Fit if you have a webmaster tools profile for your website. Okay good this one might kill everybody if you contribute to wikipedia so we are going to talk today [inaudible] known things that you can do to improve your website rankings we are talking about rankings in the search engines and [inaudible] we had started the #1 thing you can do whenever you are doing SEO or search engine optimization [inaudible] keep the system no matter how smart your SEO guy is or you are there is always somebody who can do this smarter and figure out what you are doing as soon as they do they will just [inaudible] your site so don’t ever cheat just keep it clean keep it simple do everything rightly and then you will never have to worry about getting bad.
Google Plus
So we kind of want to they will actually be pretty familiar with some of them we will try to kind of go into some details that hopefully might be and if you are [inaudible] so the first one is Google plus. A Google plus is not really that new any more it has been new in the past couple of years and everybody is familiar with Google maps and the Google map listings if you go into Google something like [inaudible] mythology if you see the results that come up that has a little [inaudible] your google maps and if you click on the link it will take you to google plus page and so the easiest way to know if you are good to go on Google plus is to go find yourself and if you go to the page on the right hand side the bar that says matching page to the content if you already set up it will just take you right to the page and if you are not they will just call your phone number right then verify they will see you and then you get to go.
The biggest thing that you want to make sure you do with Google plus is make sure that is 100 percent complete and it will tell you that little bar on the right hand side it will tell you how complete the profile is so you need to go upload like about ten pictures five videos your office hours things like that they will walk you through it is really simple and once you have a completely 100 percent completed profile then you can start print things on your emails things like that [inaudible] with your site. We had some previous presenters talk about reviews and so as you do that they will actually help your rankings in google directly with places.
I get feedback he is Joseph I am Kenny we appreciate the way you are dressing up today we dressed up too you just say this on casual Friday so I am going to talk a little about facebook sorry you can talk about [inaudible] some of the power of facebook and so some of the things that we do when we talk about facebook and SEO is to make sure that you have a page in that set up and make sure you have good engaging profile pictures and things that are colorful and are branded according to your marketing scheme it will affect the things so that at least you have a [inaudible] and beyond that moreover Google knows because more like search engine optimization google has got about 70 percent market share so if google don’t the optimal thing the other ones that are following it so google knows the source of the port while google is important they want to deliver the best results to the people who type in the keywords and how do they that well they don’t know you personally so they can only see what is on the internet and try to the site whether or not it is good enough and what a better place to do that been on social media.
So Google is looking at social media they are looking at all your facebook pages and they see your post and they see if they are engaging with people are liking you if you have just a good presence and they are going to give you points up in the scale [inaudible]. Now you don’t want to overdo the facebook and SEO as far as trying to target special keywords and in your post that Google they don’t care about that any more they want to see good relevant information given to your clientele and like Dick also mentioned the 80:20 rule it is so important people do not like people to talk about themselves all the while so talk about kind of where your market is and facebook gives you really awesome insights on who and likes your page and all those people like and type tailor your content that your delivering to those people to things that they like other your own brand and 80:20 rule is very important in facebook so. Alright thanks very much like what is contributing to related websites and so these could be health journals this instance for like I talked about earlier wikipedia now quality is going to be the most important thing anytime you are [inaudible] so if you are just trying to spam then obviously nobody is going to want your content and is not going to work.
But if you have some good quality content maybe even just some journal excerpts or things like that that actually is valuable to other people they will actually ask you usually don’t come to you and ask you to make a blog for them on your site or you can contact them if they are related and so doing that most of the time really they will link back to you which is valuable or even though just talk to you they will give [inaudible]. But at this stage your search engine optimization I am sure you’ll heard get back links get back links all the time it is not as important as it used to be it is still important but it is not it is not like it used to be. So as you are contributing to the sites make sure you have high quality and everything else will follow. The next thing Google is looking forward is relevant content on your website and new content on your website and what has been decided and you probably have one [inaudible] as you have blogs is the best way to keep new content on your website and Google is looking for that all the time.
They want to see that you are not some or website that has been forgotten or maybe you closed and maybe you are not even opening more so Google looks at that and they say well if they aren’t doing anything on the website well it would rank those people as important because nobody is going to look at your site anymore so keep in a relevant blog that talks about things that are going on in your practice maybe they are talking about things that are just relevant in your industry. Keep writing good articles they can be later used [inaudible] things like wikipedia and you write something that is really intense and really good about some new service you are offering you can go and link to yourself on wikipedia and wikipedia is open source anybody can contribute. There is approval process but if you are writing good relevant content on your blog then Google pastes that gives you more points in the search engine rankings.
YouTube
So next is YouTube. YouTube is a great place for your videos especially testimonial videos so if you have your patients coming to your practice get a video [inaudible] if you have got video put it on there. We have had a lot of clients that is all they actually do is just takes out their phone video and at the time when they have referrals coming. Earlier I was on YouTube I was looking for something completely different and I saw a testimonial video and they came in because they saw it and it was real and was an [inaudible] so you can do really testimonial videos if you do commercials if anything you do media related they can be posted on it just post it on your YouTube page. You can really build a following and create your own voice link on top of that and we have actually talked about [inaudible] your IPhone and all these mobile devices have cameras [inaudible] video it is no longer a big deal to shoot a quick video of your testimonials.
There is actually a little thing for the IPhone [inaudible] it is a little tripod for your IPhone to stick in you can use your IPhone right there and they will lock up a door and take a quick video and upload to YouTube channel it is a great way to include links and get more feedbacks for your site. The next thing I am going to talk about is the online directories so there are thousands of online directories and some of the most popular ones being the yellow pages, Google places, Yelp is an online directory that is the major one but then there is also tons of thousands smaller online directories. Well the purpose of going out and listing yourself on directories is building those backlinks almost that is where you are listed all over the place. Google is scanning every site that exists out there and when they see you your site popped up in different places and with different directories it is a simple most of the time free way to get your link out. There are some directories that cost money and they cost a lot of money sometimes especially for darker practices and things like that it can cost $250 one time or monthly it can get expensive. Those are type of high ranking so if you have the budget to invest in those kind of directories it is usually worth it but just the free ones having your web address out there on the different directories out that will help you just increase your rankings.
A kind of side door rankings too a directory could be yelp obviously is a good example and Google will actually track your views and yelp and take that into account as they are ranking your facebook page so I have actually seen them track reviews from sites like [inaudible] just all kinds of good places so as you get out there in the directories and things like that they will actually [inaudible]. So web master tools I mentioned that I don’t really stand up if you don’t have webmaster account you can get one it is free it is just Google webmaster tools or the first one obviously and it is super easy to set up they will just give you a code snippet you can put it in your website or have a little [inaudible] do it and basically what that does is it tracks the output of your site overall so they will tell you if your pages are loading too slow that is why you are facing pages that are broken now what you are seeing with the site maps that is about your pages and we have seen sites just for submitting site maps that are gone on two or three pages in ranking just because they like don’t know exactly the importance of some of the pages which ones they won’t index which ones they didn’t list [inaudible] so if you don’t have it get it, it is free it is a great tool.
Just set the site maps and if you don’t really have your site maps when you google sometimes and there is the top results and then usually there is like six sub leads underneath there those are called site maps and really people get [inaudible] submitting site maps to webmaster tools and like somebody else mentioned previously that can be a big deal because the first result can take a fourth of the page and if you have one of those you want to make sure you are the one taking up a fourth of the page so nobody else [inaudible]. Another really good thing another real good way of promoting your site views search engine optimization is new sites. Now twitter falls under the umbrella of social media but also it falls under the umbrella of news releases also people follow on twitter for that very reason alone and like Joe he was just taking a picture for our twitter account because this is kind of an exciting thing.
Some people that we do so it is an easy way simple it is not like facebook it is a different release completely and you can post short little updates and the way it was going on today it can be relevant or irrelevant to your practice it is just a way to release quick information quick updates about what is going on in your practice [inaudible] the mentions as well or press releases and there are fancy ways of doing press releases which we talked about how you can have your own portal on somebody sites where you can track all your press release and that is free it is lots other sites out there where you can submit 300 word article or maybe real blog review or rehearsing about a blog post which has been mentioned before. You submit those press releases out there and again it is another thing where google is out there scanning the internet and they are looking for where you are at and when they find you on these different press release sites they count these points in your favor and punch you up the rankings for those news that are important to your news. News is a relevant way of increasing your SEO ranks and obviously time investment is something to do because they tweet it in about 10 seconds can you present you right now and get your picture source and not a big deal alright.
So the one last time that I want to talk about is just good quality content so we have all been there at blogs and sites before we were able to site these and just copy and paste something that they saw somewhere else or they didn’t take anytime actually and you can always tell when somebody is putting effort into something or they have so it is really tempting especially when there is so much to do to achieve and some there to kind of not put very much effort into it so like one of the biggest things that we will try to stress when we are talking to people is put the time in that it takes to get the best quality when we can. It is like [inaudible] website and with a practice when you put a lot of time into something and you ran making sure that it looks nice. If you are going to look good from every angle then it is going to completely pay off so that is one of the hardest thing we just want to search on that because it is so hard as we get going to not want to try to just bring it up a little and cut the cost cut the time down and you don’t want to do that.
And then the last thing along with repeating it all is consistency making sure that you are doing the stuff alright we have lots of clients that sign up for search engine optimization and just be clear and for those who may not be clear search engine optimization is dealing with google search results that are in the white and things in the yellow people are paying for [inaudible] so we are talking about organic search results these are not paid people you cannot go to google and say hey I want to be #1 in the white space it is not going to happen. That is all again and that is what we are talking about we have lots of clients too we have helped them get all the way ranked at the top and they say great I am done that is not how it works. It is a thing that you have to constantly keep up on do the stuff every month and every piece of that every month you have to be constantly doing more because your competitor is out there doing the same thing. The second you stop the second they are going to exceed your ranking and then take over and just on the last leg we kind of broke down the hours it might take somebody to do all those things we mentioned.
You see it is pretty significant and if you are to take time out every month and spend this amount on each of the different things we have talked about and looked in three hours give or take on how fast you are and when you think about that in terms of maybe paying an employee to do something like that maybe you hire a $15 an hour employee to run the show or something to run all these different things for SEO or when it is $15 an hour and it is 53 hours comes to something like $700 or something all this month so if you think and that might be your budget then you just count on every month you say okay this is what I need to this is the money that I am going to invest in my search engine optimization it is going to be done every month I am just going to counter this as part of my marketing fare and it is going to help increase my rankings.
It works as we have seen it numerous times and when you are doing these things right like we mentioned you can see google they know everything and they have so much more data than any of us know there is no way to cheat we can’t go up and buy a bunch of links to your site which used to totally popular just a few years ago and you go buy a bunch of links for $20 and all of a sudden you jump at the top of rankings well that doesn’t work anymore google knows and they know better and they want you to be doing relevant good things they are looking for the best results for the search and these are kind of the many things you can do with it they are definitely top things to start with. So if you guys want any of these notes are in our blog please go to neonbrand.com the whole thing is transcribed.