Why does the chiropractic clinic a few blocks away from your office rank higher than yours?
It's a common question that we hear from doctors, and we'll show you how to compare your site to other chiropractic clinic sites in your city and find out where you need to do some work.
Ranking Factors
There are a lot of factors that go into determining how Google ranks your site; Google doesn't let us know exactly how their formula works, but they have said that there are more than 200 different signals that they use to determine the rank of a site or web page. Of these 200+ signals, some have a higher value than others. These include:
- Relevancy of content. Do your site users find your site informative? Does it include information your patients can't get elsewhere? Copying from Wikipedia is not going to help you! You need to actually answer your patients' questions about how you can help them in your office.
- Quantity of content. If you're a chiropractor in Los Angeles and you want to rank well for "Los Angeles chiropractor," you aren't going to be able to get away with having a single page on your site loaded with the keyphrase, "Los Angeles chiropractor." Google is going to want to see a lot more original content than that!
- Quality backlinks. Do other reputable sites link back to yours? (You don't want a link from just any site, though. Poor quality sites can actually hurt you if they link to you. Read more about the dangers of buying links.)
- Local citations. Since your chiropractic clinic is a local business, you want to rank well in the Google+ Local listings. A key component of ranking well here is having a good number of citations from directory listings. Google looks at these citations to help determine if your local business is actually a local business.
- Google+ integration. Make sure that your site is linked to your Google+ page. It's just another way to verify your location with Google.
- Regular updates. Which is Google going to rank better? A site with regular updates or one that hasn't been updated since 2008?
Checking Out the Competition
When we're doing analysis for our VIP Marketing clients, we use a lot of different tools that enable us to look at different ranking factors. These tools are available to anyone, for a fee, even though some of them have limited functionality on a demo basis.
- Spyfu - This tool is really great for checking out your competitor's site and looking at which keywords they're ranking for. It also has some great intelligence on Google AdWords campaigns, so you can see what keywords they are paying for and how much of a monthly budget they have.
- SEMRush - Another great tool that we use every day at ChiroHosting for our clients. With SEMRush, you can add a domain and get a wealth of information on the site, including ranking quality, AdWords history, and keyword research.
- ahrefs - This is probably the best tool available for checking backlinks. If you want to see what sites your competitors are using for links, this is the tool to use.
- BrightLocal - A very good local search research tool. One of the best features of this tool is the Citation Tracker, which enables you to see what citations your site (and your competitors) have and which ones you need to sign up for.
- RankWatch - This is a good tool that enables you to get a good overview of your local search ranking and how you're doing for specific keywords or phrases. This tool has a function that enables you to add your competitors so you can see how you match up for keyword rankings.
Knowledge is power when it comes to SEO, and these tools enable you to knowledgeably see how you compare to other chiropractic sites in your area.
If you don't have the time to boost your chiropractic site, let us do it for you. We have a track record of getting better ranking for our clients, and we can help you, too. Check out our VIP Marketing Service or call us at (800) 295-3346 for details.
