Because a good Google presence is so critical to your office's chiropractic marketing, it's important to keep Google happy. That means doing the right things to help Google index your site properly, but it also means not breaking the rules.
In a recent article on Search Engine Journal, the author discusses some of the ways that Google can penalize your website. This penalty can range from making it harder for patients to find you to outright removing your site completely.
We first starting building websites for chiropractors in 2000, so we've seen some ways that doctors get into trouble with their online marketing. Fixing the problem after a penalty can be time-consuming and expensive. Here are some of the things you definitely don't want to do;
- Don't pay for backlinks. Link building is a real thing, but it takes real work to do successfully. Some people are tempted to boost their link portfolio by buying backlinks. This is a terrible idea! First, the backlinks are poor quality blog links, and will offer no benefit to your site. Second, if Google sees that you suddenly get a bunch of poor quality links, they can penalize you. (If you want to learn about real link-building strategies, see our article here.)
- Don't pay for reviews. Online reviews are critical to your online success, and some people get tempted to pay for reviews as a short-cut. Google can see where your reviews are coming from and can determine if they're real or not. If you pay for reviews, you run the risk of having your account flagged.
- Don't stuff keywords. Twenty years ago, you could upload a web page with a bunch of keywords and the search engines would immediately rank you #1 for that page. Google's algorithm is much smarter today, so adding a bunch of keywords to the bottom of your web page will only hurt you.
- Don't steal content. This is a common problem we see: doctors know that they need to have content on their site, but they don't have the time to write it themselves or hire someone to do it properly. So they go online, find an article that works, and then they copy and paste that into their site.
Google knows when you do this, because they can match your content to what's already been indexed. Google might index your site, but it won't rank well, because they'll see it's just a copy of an existing page.
Real chiropractic SEO isn't rocket science, but it does take some work. Don't cheat and break the rules, because if you get a Google penalty, it can hurt your search placement for years.
If you need some help doing your online marketing correctly, we're here for you. We take care of site optimization and content management that will help you show up in Google without the risk of any penalties.
For more information about our services, give us a call today at (800) 295-3346 or schedule a 1-on-1 appointment with one of our marketing experts.
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