What is ASEL?

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Automatic Search Engine Listings (ASEL) is an optional complimentary service we provide to our members to help promote their businesses by submitting your information to over 100 online directories.

Instead of having to research on where to list yourself, and then figuring out the various processes of each directory, we do most of the work for you. Not only do you save time, but you benefit from teams of experts who have been researching directories, listings, and local search best practices. All you have to do is fill out one simple form in our editor and we’ll take it from there. And if your business happens to already be listed, we’ll make sure the listing is up-to-date.

Measure Twice, Submit Once

Like your website itself, what you get out of ASEL is based on what you put into it, and it only works if all the information is accurate. As exciting as it is to submit your listings as part of your website launch, it’s best to wait until your website itself is complete before promoting it. Take the time to make sure all the important information about your business is on the site, and double, or even triple check to ensure for accuracy.

It’s best to take the time to ensure that your website has all the important information about your business before you start promoting it. It’s also important to make sure you’re promoting it accurately. As self-evident as this may seem, you really want to make sure that you spell everything correctly, have the accurate information showing, and add any details that are important to publicize (including, but not limited to, languages you speak, how a client would set up the first appointment, anything unusual about your location or parking, etc). In addition to paying attention to quality and accuracy, since the whole point of ASEL is to promote the website, it’s really worth making sure that you’re website is promoting your business. Once information goes online, it becomes harder to properly update the info later. So when submitting the ASEL you should follow a “measure twice, cut once” mindset; it’s better to wait to submit accurate information than to submit erroneous information and edit it after the fact.

Remember, we have a whole team of support staff eager to help you, so please let us know if you have any questions or requests.

How it works

When we receive your information, we do a quick cross-reference between the ASEL submission and your website.This helps us to ensure the businesses main information, the Name, Address and Phone Number (NAP) is correct, that the website is up and running, and allows us to review for other issues. If we notice any problems, we contact you by email before publicizing your information.

Please note: while we do our best to double check your submission; the best way to ensure that we submit your information accurately is to provide accurate information. There is a $35 resubmission charge if we need to resubmit your listings to correct erroneous information submitted on your part.

Depending on your location and business model, we submit you to one of two major internal databases. Many online directories require a physical “brick and mortar” office in the United States, so our main database is based on working with this largest batch of directories, many of which include maps to your business. This database includes Yahoo Local, Bing, Localeze, numerous online Yellow Pages and many more. If you don’t already have a Google Places Listing, we create one and help you verify it.

If you don’t operate in the United States, want to keep your address private, and/or your business model is not based on clients coming to your office, we submit you to our web-based database. This connects to over a hundred listings, but focuses exclusively on driving traffic to your website. For businesses in Canada and some other countries, and for businesses that provide service at client’s locations, we also work on Google Places Listings.

Google Places

Google Places (also known as Google Local) is Google’s business directory, and is connected to Google Plus and Google Maps. It is connected to, but distinct from, Google’s Search Engine tool as well. Google’s Search Engine is what most people think of when they say “Google”, such as when someone says “I’m going to Google something,” generally meaning, “I’m going to look something up on Google’s Search Engine.”

Google Places is arguably the best known and most popular online business directory. The downside of this popularity is that it’s the most exploited by spammers, scammers and assorted online ne’er-do-wells, so Google has created a notably labor-intensive and inconvenient way to verify that all listings are for a legitimate and existing business.

When a member signs up for ASEL with a physical location in the US, Canada, and certain other countries, (and in certain cases where businesses go to clients) we first check for an existing Google Places Listing for each office location. Some existing Listings are created by the member or another third party. Some are “organic” listings, which are created by Google using other sources. If the information is clearly inaccurate or needs to be updated, we edit it to match the ASEL submission and website. If the Listing’s information raises questions, we contact the member. If we don’t find an existing Listing, we create one using one of our Google Accounts.

Once we create this Listing, Google sends an actual paper letter via USPS, to the business address with a verification PIN. This is how Google confirms that the business physically exists at that location. Members then provide us with the PIN so we may verify the listing and get it online.

You can learn more about Google Places in detail here.

Editing and updating information

We are happy to update your listings if you move or otherwise change, update, or add important information to your website. Please contact us via Support@DoctorSites.com with questions or edit requests.

More you can do

While we do as much as possible to promote our members’ businesses, there are some directories that are difficult, if not impossible, for us to work with as a third party. Some of these may or may not be relevant to you and your business:

Superpages.com; we highly recommend creating a free account and listing your business here. Superpages listings require a great deal of information, much more than we can realistically collect for all customers.

Yelp.com and Citysearch.com; These review-based directories tend to be more focused on bars, restaurants, hair salons, etc., but are worth considering, depending on your practice and focus. These are likely to be very useful for vets, massage therapists, and dentists, but less so for therapists, counselors, and psychiatrists.

Yext.com; Yext is a good service which some of our customers ask about, however, many consider it to be very expensive, and much of their service is redundant if you’ve submitted to our ASEL service, and created listings in Superpages, Yelp and Citysearch.

Other listings services; If you’ve read this far, you’ve gotten all of our recommendations specific to listings. There are other companies and services out there that do good work, but many of them charge for what you’re already getting as part of your DoctorSites membership. We don’t want to steer people away from anything that helps them, but we don’t want our members to spend extra money, either. We especially caution you to look into any service or offer that seems too good to be true. Remember, we’re always here for you, so please let us know when you have any questions!

Other ways to enhance your website: The logical next question is “what comes after listings?”. While our SEO department is available to take you in-depth through any of these suggestions, here’s a brief list of other great things to focus on

1 – Customize your content: We provide some excellent stock content, but the specificity and unique voice you bring to it help potential clients to decide whether or not they want to work with you (link to that blog)

2- Build your content: Bigger is definitely better when it comes to website content. Contact us for suggestions about where to expand on your offerings

3 – Consider Social Media: Search trends lean towards more and more emphasis on the social media sphere, so it’s worth considering the use of such practices in promoting your business.

If you discontinue membership:

If we have created a Google Places Listing for you and verified it, it will remain online, but we strongly suggest you claim it into your own account. Your other listings will be left to expire a year after creation, unless you specify that you are closing your business, in which case we can close the listings outright.

Rich M – DoctorSites Support
Email any questions to Support@DoctorSites.com

Promoting Your Address, Even If You Don’t Think You Should

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Most of our members have a physical location that clients/customers/patients come to. For such businesses, promotion works more or less the same whether they are running a Dentist office, Animal Hospital, Haberdashery or donut shop; as long as you say who you are, what you do and where you are, people can figure out how to come to you.

If you don’t have a physical office you wish to publicize, it’s extra important to clarify how your business works. If people don’t come to you, how DO they interact with you? Remember, you want it to be as easy as possible for clients to contact and do business with you, so make sure that no guesswork is involved with the process.

When your clients are the only ones you want to find you.

If you do have a physical location, there may still be something about your business, clients or office location which requires keeping the location private. The most common example of this is a home office, but there are many circumstances where this is the case.

This is the trickiest situation to give general advice about, because no matter how much I know about business promotion and marketing, I don’t know much- or anything- about your specific situation. Promoting your home address may very well be dangerous, may be awkward, or could be a complete non-issue; so please, consider our advice with all factors in mind, check in with your own thoughts and those who know your specific situation, and feel free to contact us with specific questions.

Unfortunately, privacy concerns are usually counter to effective business promotion. No public address often means no public listings, and a lack of address may affect your Search Engine results. If you don’t want to share your exact location, provide as much other information as possible, even having city, state and zip is more helpful than no address information at all. Some of our members with home offices list their street name without a number, or substitute a neighborhood or district that the office is in. This allows a context and some idea for a client to know how convenient a trip to see you could be.

Whatever information you do share, make it clear on your website what a client should (and perhaps shouldn’t) do to contact you, and what the next steps would be. If it is relevant to explain why you keep your address secret, you can divulge this later on, it’s not important to state on the website.

When you come to your clients…

If your business model is not based on people coming to you, but you make house calls, do presentations at offices, deliver goods or services, or anything where you come to the client or customer, it’s still important to mention both your general location and where you’re ready, willing and able to travel.

If you do have a physical address you can share, it actually proves more helpful for Search Engines, listings, and client knowledge to have a business access on your website and listings IN ADDITION to a list of areas served and/or distance that you travel.

Many small business owners are under the incorrect impression that showing their address information will somehow hurt other aspects of their business. In general, more information is better than less, and your website works best when you can anticipate client questions and answer them. The key is to be as user-friendly as possible, and take the guesswork out of starting a business relationship.

When you never actually meet your clients in person…

Promoting a business that focuses on online or over-the-phone consultations is different than promoting a “brick and mortar” business.

If you supplement client interactions by calls, Skype or what have you, you’re still best off promoting your business address and making it clear that you ALSO offer these additional methods of contact.

It can’t hurt to use your office on your website or listings even if you never expect clients to come to you; a common misconception is that having an address shown minimizes your appeal for phone or online consultations. At worse, this information is just tangential, but it likely can help establish your presence and credibility. It also can improve your presence in Search Engine Results pages.

Our members work in fields where personality can be crucial, and where you come from, and are, may be seen as part of your personality. Is your way of thinking and doing business influenced by big city living or small town ways? Is your style East Coast, West Coast, Middle America? Is this something you can use to your advantage?

Once again, however you work with clients, you want to make sure your website clearly explains the situation and process. Don’t expect clients to call you because they’d like to learn if you do telephone consultations, because your website and other promotion should make that clear. Your method of doing business should be presented as a selling point, not something websites viewers should have to wonder about or hunt for.

Think about it; if you had the choice between businesses, and one explained how to work with them and the other didn’t, which business would you pick? It’s always worth a few minutes of your time to make sure your website and other promotional material is the best and most informative that it can be, it pays off in the long run.

Rich M – DoctorSites Support
Email any questions to Support@DoctorSites.com

Let’s Get Personal

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This Above All, to Thine Own Self Be True”
- Shakespeare

DoctorSites provides you with a website straight out of the box. This includes a clean and easy to use design, forms (and option to replace those with your own), maps, and even pre-written pages for all the content we’ve found vital for DoctorSites practitioners. This content is deliberately written to the average of the average, made to broadly cover the scope of a DoctorSites practice. And while it’s a great start, it is no substitute for content that is tailored to exactly where you are and what you do!

The best way to make sure your site reflects you is for you to personalize and add to this content!

Our complete website means you can get started right away, after filling out only a minimum of information in the sidebar and About Page. But rather than consider this where your work with your website ends, you should think about this as where your work begins. Our content is best used as a jumping off point that, over time, becomes more and more tailored to you and your practice. While it’s possible to overload a page with too much information, it’s basically impossible to overload a site with too many pages of unique content. And all that content contributes and boosts your SEO ranking.

Simply put, if you are serious about using your website to grow your practice, then you need to get specific. Getting specific doesn’t mean you have to put hours into writing your own content, but it does mean that you need to make sure the content that you use reflects the specifics of your practice. This often just means changing phrasing, concepts or content to better reflect the specifics of your work.

Oftentimes, people simply leave our content without any alteration because they assume it’s best for SEO. This is in part true, as the content of our site is geared towards the broadest base of searchable terms. But this content is only good if it matches what you do and reflects and conveys the unique ways and approaches you use to do it. Content that doesn’t match what you do will do no one any good. And that’s why you want to keep writing and developing the content and tone of your site.

One of the most important things your site can have is NAP (Name Address and Phone Number) so taking the time to add an accurate practice name, practitioner name, phone number and address to the sidebar and to the Contact Page is time well spent. And very little time at that.

To add this content to the sidebar (or footer, depending on the template), simply log in to your editor and select “Settings and Profile” from the left. Then scroll down to the section labelled “Sidebar Contact Information.” You can fill in the NAP here. To add a picture, check the “custom sidebar box” and then use the “insert/edit” image link in the toolbar (it looks a little like a tiny picture of a mountain) to include a picture. Editing the Contact Page is even easier, from the “Edit Pages” (top tab on the left), click the “Contact” page, and that will bring up the editor. You can use the big green “Add A Photo” button to add that photo too. Or just email the image to us, along with where you want it placed, and we’ll make it happen!

The second most important thing is enabling your “About” page. The About page is the perfect example of how our templates give you a big leg up on content, but still do best with personalization. In the About Page, you simply fill out a series of blanks with information that makes it accurate for you/your practice. To enable the page, simply check the on/off box next to the page name in your list of pages.

However, if you enable the page without customization, your potential clients will be left with a fill-in-blank story, so make sure you do, in fact, fill in those blanks before hitting the “on” box. Then, enhance the customization with a professional looking headshot (see our pictures blog for more). Group practices can have headshots of key staff and a group photo. Consider pictures of your office, waiting room, the front of your building, or anything else that may be relevant. This not only customizes your website, but it helps a client visualize coming to see you. Adding a picture only takes a few moments, but helps potential clients envision what working with you will be like and that can be crucial for conversion.

Finally, above and beyond completing our fill-in-the-blank content, you should strongly consider writing new specific content as well. Specific content is a useful draw for both search engines and people. For potential clients learning more about your approach and thoughts to their specific situation can help them figure out if you’re the right Doctor for them. For search engines, those specific key phrase targeting pages help you stand out.

If it helps, you can think of your website as having its own hierarchy of needs. Most important (like oxygen), you need a website just to compete these days. Secondly (think sustenance) you need to personalize the existing content, because clients on the internet want to know who they’re working with. Thirdly (think companionship) you want to boost the customized content with totally original content, both for search engines and potential clients. And all those things together make your website an optimally effective marketing tool.

Mari F – DocstorSites Support
Support@DoctorSites.com

Using Google Trends to Stand Out From the Crowd

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Where’s Waldo? You know him, the goofy-looking guy in the red and white striped shirt and cap.  Even though he’s often lost in the crowd you know exactly what to look for to find him. But what if, unbeknownst to us, Waldo got a makeover in every new puzzle? What if the red and white stripes were traded for blue and gold? Sure, after some hunting we might still be able to pick him out of the crowd, but would we be sure it was him? Would we recognize that signature Waldo style?

Those red and white stripes are looking pretty important now, aren’t they?  The same principle comes into play when we search for things on the web. If your potential clients are searching for a specific term, you want to make sure you’ve used it on your site!  But how do you know what those terms are that people are looking for?

Now there is a way to connect the dots between what you can offer and what the client is really searching for. Google Trends gives a behind the scenes peek into how your potential clients are using the web.

That helps you in two ways:

1. “Hot Searches” provide an overview of the most popular searches in the country for any given date. This can be helpful in staying up to date on current new and events and allows you to capitalize on the opportunity when something related to your field is being discussed. Is there a surge in searches for medical treatment for affordable health care because of a special report on the news? Take advantage of that by writing on article on the topic and putting your expertise out there.

2. “Explore Trends” – with this tool, you are able to test keyword popularity and cross-test synonyms. For example, if you knew that the term “doctor” was 29% more commonly searched in your area than the term “physician,” you could use the word “doctor” to theoretically generate 29% more leads than if you chose to use the word “physician.”  Do searches in your town usually search for “affordable doctor” or “affordable healthcare?” You can use this tool to find out:

But be careful! Sometimes the most popular search term isn’t always the best. Why?  One word – Competition.

If you have two search terms where one is more popular but has lots of competition for the front page, and another which is not quite as popular but will be easier to lock up a top result – you want to grab that top result!

But if all things are equal, and you think you can get that top spot – go for the term with more traffic!

So what are your red and white stripes? Check out this free tool today to find out!

For more tips on Search Engine Optimization, and to optimize your site for the new keywords you’ve identified with Google Trends, check out our other SEO articles, or contact the SEO team today!

The DoctorSites SEO team
Email any questions to SEO@DoctorSites.com

Your Second Career As A Writer: Advice On Blogging And Articles

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You didn’t know you had another job, did you?

It might actually not be your second job, but your fifth or sixth, and while this writing gig may not generate direct income, it can help you bolster your marketing for your main career, and pay big dividends!

As website marketing specialists, we often suggest that our members get published on other websites to better raise awareness and bring attention to their businesses. As a result, we get asked about how to make that happen.  However, this is a topic we can really only discuss in a basic sense, since what you write, how you write it, and where you publish it depends on who you are, who you know, what you do, and how you do it.

1) Consider your audience:
While there’s a logic to writing for your peers and colleagues, remember that when you want to build clientele, it’s more helpful to be published in layperson-friendly media. For instance, I don’t write blogs for other website-marketing types to read, I write for people who aren’t website experts, to help them better use their website. If you are, say, a unicycle instructor, you could write for unicyclist.com, but you also could write for fitness journals about the health benefits of unicycling, or a cycling organization about why unicycles are a great alternative to bikes.

2) Write what you know.
In terms of both your peers and your clients, consider publishing what you tend to say anyway. For instance, most of the blogs I write are fine-tuned versions of things I tend to talk about the most when working with clients. There are several benefits in doing this:
It encourages you to think of the best way to say what you’re saying anyway, and document that phrasing. It gives you a fixed place to refer to, so instead of saying the same information again and again, you can link to the article. This saves time when speaking and space when emailing.In a subtle way, having it “in writing” makes your words seem more official, especially if your article is published by someone besides yourself.

3)  Network!
Forming long-term relationships with local media or other organizations can help establish you as an expert and credible source. This works best when you can create an organic dynamic with media sources, but don’t let that stop you from contacting people and organizations; if you don’t try, you won’t make the connection. Even a “no thank you” today might lead to “Hey, I remember you” next month. It’s tricky to plan, as it works best when such dynamics develop organically, but you only make the connections if you try. Focus on establishing a long-term presence instead of expecting a huge payoff for any given piece.

For instance, I did a stand-up comedy routine about marketing when I lived in Boston. I got some attention for it, and did a lot of free shows in cafes and local colleges. Eventually, local magazines and newspapers would call me up if they wanted a humorous yet informed comment about marketing or advertising, and I wound up getting a lot of well-paid writing gigs. These helped to put my name out there, and thus ended with me getting more and better comedy shows.

There’s a lot of ways to do this, none of them guaranteed, but hopefully this can give you some ideas, such as:

Writing letters to the editor. Remember that most people only do so when a complaint comes up, so consider how impressive a “Thanks for your accurate piece” letter may be. If you write to critique an article, consider offering yourself as a future reference.Think of what sort of activities are coming up in a few months: magazines, journals and websites usually start planning holiday-themed issues well in advance. Check your contact list. Who do you already know and get along with who can help you get a foot in the door. You might not know an editor in the New York Times, but you might have social connections to a staffperson at a local paper.

Remember, of course, that even if your first job is being a writer, a good writer has a good editor. Before you publish anything, make sure it’s reviewed, even if by a friend, colleague, or spouse. It’s counter-productive to publish articles filled with typos or factual errors, so take the time to get your best work out there.

Think of all you have to share. Who can you share it with? How could that sharing help your business grow and prosper?

Rich M – DoctorSites Listings and Support
Email any questions to Support@DoctorSites.com

Beware The All You Can Buy Domain Buffet

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When you sign up for a domain or start researching your domain, one thing becomes quickly clear; your domain name matters and having a keyword in your domain is often an aspect of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Just to define the term, a keyword can be considered any search word (or phrase) people will type into a search engine that you want to be a result for.

The role of a keyword in a domain is easy to overstate. That is, unless you’re contending for a word that doesn’t have a lot of competition, your use of a keyword in the domain is a single mote of sunshine streaming into a greenhouse — easily lost and having almost no noticeable impact.

That said a relevant and logical keyword does give your website some boost and in today’s keyword saturated market, there’s really no reason not to, unless such a thing would make for a cumbersome domain name.

In this case, cumbersome just means the domain is too long:
johnsmithphysician.com isn’t long but

johnedgarsmithnewyorkcityphysician.com is going to be hard to remember let alone rattle off when you’re giving your domain to a prospective client or colleague for referral.

Especially if you consider that your email would then be drjohn@johnedgarsmithnewyorkcityphysician.com – you’ll be out of breath before you can tell someone where to email you.

But that single keyword looks nice and gives you an SEO boost. So, imagine how many keywords you can get a boost on just by purchasing more domains.

Then before you know it you’re on GoDaddy or Namecheap and own everything from

johnsmithnewyork.com to
johnsmithtopphysician.com to
feelhealthylifebetterjohnsmith.com

Unfortunately, as tempting and simple as it sounds, buying every keyword domain in your field is not going to boost your search results. If you handle things right, multiple domains will not hurt your website’s search engine ranking, but that same money spent renewing domains would be better spent with a smart adwords buy.

There are several scenarios for multiple domains without multiple sites of content and neither one will ultimately give you the SEO boost you’re looking for.

Scenario 1: Duplicate site content.

Definition: Each domain has the exact same site content but is technically a separate site.

Why it’s bad: Search engines hate duplicate site content. For one, if multiple links go to the same place, then search engines aren’t doing their job. For another, when search engines see multiple sites with the same content, they assume you are spamming or trying to trick the system into giving your site a higher ranking than it deserves, and react to negate, not reward this behavior.

Therefore, when you have two sites with the same content, search engines apply a proprietary and secret (a good search engine will never reveal exactly how to gets results) set of rules search engines to determine which site is canonical and which is just a copy.

Like the branded version and the off brand version, the copy is put on the bottom shelf.

However, which version is canon and which version is considered the copy might vary on a page by page basis, and in the end both of your pages are weakened by this duality.

In a case where you must have duplicate content, there is a tag system to help, but all this tag does is tell the search engine which site version to discount. There is no tag that will cause it to take both sites into consideration.

In short, the best you can do is negate the ill effects a duplicated site has.

Sidenote: This is one reason why we always recommend personalizing your content at least minimally see this blog and this blog for more on that.

Scenario 2: The 301 Redirect.

Definition: Alterations are made to the records which guide your domains’ behavior so that any one who goes to the non-primary domain will be redirected to the primary domain. This is how we handle multiple domains, with some rare exceptions.

Simply put, when a user attempts to go to domain “A” they are automatically redirected to domain “B” which acts as the primary domain and the only domain with content the search sees.

This is how we will handle multiple domains on your account with few exceptions.

But equally relevant, the secondary domains have no weight, only the keyword in the primary domain will be considered when your site is being ranked. Therefore, again, you aren’t getting any boost from having additional keyword-heavy domain names.

Scenario 3: This site is used to point to your main site

Earlier in search engine history, the idea of creating microsites (tiny sites with very little content) that linked to your main site was not a terrible idea. However, with the release of Google’s latest search engine algorithm and similar updates on Bing, this idea is totally obsolete. If your site doesn’t have activity; fresh content, new pages, updates and the like, then it’s going to be less attractive.

Since search engines prefer regularly updated sites, The Hot Topics! page has content which updates regularly.

That means if you want to create pointer sites (sites geared to get more traffic to your main site), every pointer site needs to have active content changes and unique text. Without this, no pointer site is will matter enough to give your main site any juice.

So now, instead of having one site to maintain, you’ve got lots of sites, which means a lot of time (and time is money) spent maintaining sites whose only purpose is to draw traffic to your main site.

To find out some great SEO alternatives, get in touch with the DoctorSites SEO team or check out the SEO tab for more information.
Mari F – DoctorSites Support
Email any questions to Support@DoctorSites.com

How to Deal With A Bad Review

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Some unpleasant things, like death and taxes, are certain. Others are less certain, but still more common than we’d like. One of these are bad reviews.

In my 20’s, I wrote for a few independent music magazines, and often reviewed albums. One decision I made early on was to not give a bad review of any young band. I figured that if they were bad, they’d get no review, thus the possibility of my readers hearing bad music was lessened without me breaking the hearts of 3-5 young people who had been working hard, even if to make mediocre tunes. One reason I did this is because I often saw how up-and-coming writers often gave horrible reviews to up-and-coming bands in a manner that suggested the reviewer was working out their own baggage and ego issues. Often, a bad review speaks at least as much about the reviewer as the subject of the review.

That said, when you get a bad review, it hurts. It may hurt because it rings true, it may hurt because it seems vengeful and unrelated to you; I’ve even seen bad reviews where the reviewer admits never actually interacting with the business. You may recall the reviewer specifically or have no idea where this comes from. But still, a bad review hurts.

So, my first bit of advice, if you get a bad review, is to stop and breathe. Meditate, pray, vent, commiserate with others; whatever you need to do to deal with the emotional hurt. Whatever you do, do NOT take action on the review until you are able to do so in a calm and focused way.

The worst time to make decisions is when you are upset, a bad review is best dealt with when you can approach the situation looking at the long-term big picture. It’s not about winning, or hiding, or having a fight with a reviewer, it’s about improving your overall business reputation.

Google Places Listings currently rank as one of the most popular directories online, which means that these are the listings most of our clients check in on, and so these are the ones where a bad review seems to hurt the most. Sometimes this is a review added directly to the listing, sometimes this is a link on the listing to another review site.

When you first see a negative review on your listing, your first inclination might be to try and shut the listing down. This will likely exacerbate matters. While some directories make it easy to close a listing just because the business owner doesn’t want it online, Google is decidedly more focused on putting things up than taking things down; if there is information to be added, Google tries to find it and add it. Google’s mentality seems about totality; as much information provided as possible.

Google wants a listing for every business it knows about. Business owners are best off creating and managing Google Places themselves, unless they have a professional service, such as a website company (that’s us!) to manage it for them. Otherwise, Google may hodgepodge a listing with the wrong information. When you sign up with our service, our listings team searches Google Places to see if you already have a listing. If we do not find one, we create a listing for you in Google Places, as part of our Automatic Search Engine Listings (ASEL) service. I have written additional information on Google Places Listings in a previous article.

If the listing is claimed by the business owner, they may delete it from their personal account, but not Google Maps or other public forums- they have just lost what control they may have had. This can start a spiral of contradictory information, which complicates the situation.

The solution? Respond! Google Places allows you to write responses to reviews. If we’ve created and maintain the listing for you, we’d be happy to relay the responses, or show you how to claim the listing yourself.

How you respond varies on the situation, the details of the review and if the person is writing under their own name, an online handle or anonymously. Make sure that you ADDRESS a bad review publicly, but RESOLVE it privately- you want the public forum to show that you care about your clients and are proactive, but you can leave the details to more direct activity. Every article I’ve ever read about reviews on directory listings agrees that a good response to a negative review can end up as good publicity.

For example, a few years ago, a chef burned my entrée…setting the initial tone for a bad experience. The waitress informed me the meal was delayed and being re-made; presented it as a quality control issue so that I would only get the best food when it arrived, told me that our current round of drinks was on the house, and suggested a few ready-to-bring appetizers I could get for free while I waited. Aha! What began as a problem is now a fond memory and an outright endorsement; the short delay ended up with me getting several freebies.

A more direct example is the Vagabond Lodge in Hood River, Oregon. I was contemplating staying there, and so looked up their Google Places Listing: http://g.co/maps/9krq9

The listing may have changed since when I first saw it, but it includes some bad reviews. However, the responses to the reviews show several things:

1) That the owners consider bad reviews to be feedback, not attacks.
2) The owners seemingly have addressed these issues.
3) That the owners are plugged in and paying attention to their customers.

There were enough good reviews to show that most people liked the place, and precedent showed that any complaints I might have would be addressed. I went and had a great time even though I didn’t expect perfection.

One way to avoid bad reviews on your listings is to make it easy for your clientele to bring complaints directly to you. To use restaurant metaphors again, if I go out to eat and the waitstaff seems to care about my experience, I’d rather complain to them than later online; it’s faster, easier and more likely to address my complaint. This is why many businesses seek out client or customer feedback via comment cards, follow-up emails, surveys, etc. If you allow a client to openly and honestly voice a complaint or a concern TO YOU, either in person or via a direct method, in a way where they believe you will respond in a helpful manner, they are less likely to put a bad review on a public forum.

Consider that it’s easier to deal with a bad review on a forum you have some feedback — such as your own listing — than a forum such as your irate ex-client’s Facebook, blog, or twitter feed. The closer to “home” you can deal with problems, the simpler it can be to deal with such problems. If clients feel like they can bring their complaints to you, they’ll likely do so, but if they don’t think you’ll care, they may take their complaint and make it a public venting.

Of course, one way to beat negative reviews is to try and get good reviews!

If you are good at what you do, clients will like you, and will tell you so. When they do, request that they repeat their praise publicly. Time magazine gave Casablanca a bad review in 1942. Even now, it gets 4/5 stars. Not a perfect score. However, with all the praise and love it’s earned over the years, the complaints are buried. Ask several people you know about the film, and I bet nobody will mention the plot holes which have been pointed out.(1)

I recently participated in a webinar put on by Local Search gurus fromLocaleze, comScore and15miles. It was mentioned that while roughly ⅓ of people surveyed make decisions based on reviews, only about ⅕ actually read all the reviews. It seems the trend is more to “skim” reviews for general opinion, and any themes. So, the aggregate opinion of reviewers in general seems to be more important than the specifics in any reviews.

You’ve probably heard how the Chinese word for “crisis” includes the character for “opportunity.” This may not be entirely true, but it’s still possible that a crisis can be an opportunity. If you handle bad reviews with a touch of class and professionalism, they can end up showing your communication skills and problem solving abilities.

For another professional’s opinion on this, I invite you to read this blog by Mike Blumenthal, who is considered the foremost Local Search expert in North America.

Rich is TherapySites’ Directory Listings Specialist. In a past life, he also was a music reviewer for several magazines.

(1) Harmetz, Aljean (1992). Round Up the Usual Suspects: The Making of Casablanca — Bogart, Bergman, and World War II. Hyperion. ISBN 1-56282-761-8.

Rich M – DoctorSites Directory Listings
Email any questions to Support@DoctorSites.com

The Importance Of Targeting Keywords

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We’ve all done it – we Google ourselves to try and see what information comes up, or where our business website appears in search results. That’s good! It can help you to position yourself. But are you searching for the same terms a client will search for? Are you searching for both the specialization AND the location you serve? If you are that’s great, as it gives you a more realistic diagnostic of how effectively your Search Engine Optimization is working for you! — but now – do the pages on your website reflect the information gained from your searches?

The goal of our Search Engine Optimization is to make sure your site gets seen by people who might be interested in your services. This may seem obvious, but often when considering Search Engine Optimization, we forget the “people who might be interested in your services” component. If you are providing health care in New York City, you ideally want visitors to your site who are looking for health care in New York City, and surrounding areas.

One way to accomplish this is through well placed keywords. Ensuring that you “target” the keywords you use on your site can be a crucial step in the Search Engine Optimization process. By picking the right keywords for your area and your specialties, you can not only raise your online visibility, but bring in more potential clients! First, I’ll demonstrate how targeted keywords produce better search results, than I’ll show you how to take advantage of targeted key phrases in your SEO.”

I recently moved down to Berkeley, CA from Oregon, and realized that I had left my favorite running shoes at my old house! I knew that I could go on one of the many popular online shoe stores available, but I still prefer to try shoes on in a shop to make sure that they fit well. I went to Google and searched for “Shoes,” only to discover that there were over one billion results!

I quickly realized that I was going to have to focus my search if I were going to find any actual shoes. Not only were there too many options (even if I wanted to go through 0.01% of the results!), but I also quickly noticed that sites were popping up for everything related to shoes: stores, fashion, design, etc.

While these results were interesting, I really was only concerned about finding shoe stores! Therefore, the first step to focusing my search was to change the search from the general “Shoes” to “Shoe stores.” The addition of this one word immediately reduced my search from over a billion, to just over eighteen million results!

Better, but there is a good chance I was still missing out on something. The results here are going to be shoe stores across the country, and even the world. I was interested specifically shoe stores in the San Francisco bay area.

I could easily stop there, but because I am primarily interested in finding running shoes, I decided that it might be wise to include that in the search terms, to find stores that specifically specialize in athletic shoes.

 

There we go. From the original search for “Shoes” that came back with over one billion results, I am now down to under 500,000!

While this example is a little goofy, it demonstrates how a potential client might find your website, starting with the broadest terms, and refining from there. Keywords with a greater degree of specificity are more useful both to you as a website owner, and to the individual browsing the web.

What are targeted keywords?

Targeted keywords are words or phrases that include more information than the most general possible phrasing, “targeted” to what a user is actually searching for. In the above example the generic “shoes” was not targeted, but each subsequent search incorporated a more refined targeting.

Why are targeted keywords important for me, and how can we use them?

At this point, you may be saying, “Chris, that is great information, and I can see how a user might want to incorporate more targeted keywords when searching the internet, but how does this help me, the website owner?” Targeted keywords are critical to successful Search Engine Optimization because they allow you to directly connect with an audience that is searching for you, your location and your specialties.

A properly optimized website for a shoe store in Berkeley may not come up in the first page (or first ten pages!) in a Google search for the term “shoes.” It will, however, be highly ranked when doing a targeted search for the relevant terms (e.g., “Berkeley Shoe Store,” “Bay Area Shoes”).

The easiest way to incorporate these targeted keywords into your site, is to directly include them in page content (or sidebar) itself. As the owner of a shoe store in Berkeley, I would make sure that my site prominently mentioned that we proudly served Berkeley, and the greater Bay Area. Such information is helpful not only to human visitors who are looking for more information regarding your practice, but also the machines who are determining where to place your site in their search results!

These are just a couple of ways to incorporate targeted keywords into your website design. By focusing on keywords that both target your locality and your specialties, you can help drive not only more traffic to your site, but also “better” traffic—that is, clients in your area, who are more likely to contact you! Expect further blog articles from us in the coming weeks documenting additional ways to utilize targeted keywords, and other Search Engine Optimization practices. If you have any questions about how to specifically integrate targeted keywords onto your DoctorSites site, just send us an email, or give us a call, and any of our Search Engine Optimization technicians would be happy to help!

 

Chris C – DoctorSites Support and SEO
Email any questions to Support@DoctorSites.com

On The Go: Optimizing Your Site For Mobile Browsers

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Image representing iPhone as depicted in Crunc...Displaying Content for Mobile Browsers

I’ve been seeing a lot of inquiries into mobile-friendly/mobile-optimized sites recently, so I’d like to establish our stance towards mobile browsing. The short of it is this: By most standards, our sites are mobile-friendly, and providing a dedicated mobile page (referred to by some in the tech community as “mobile optimization”) is becoming a progressively less attractive avenue for website designers to pursue.

Before we dive into why that’s the case, let’s clarify some of this technobabble: what do the terms “mobile-optimized” and “mobile-friendly” mean? Moreover, what is mobile browsing, and why does it matter?

Mobile Browsing

By “mobile browsing,” I am referring to viewing pages on the Internet using a smartphone. You might be surprised to know that some cell phones have had the ability to do this since the mid-1990s! On most of these early devices, the ability to browse the web was highly limited. The Nokia Communicator, for example, included a full keyboard and allowed for basic web browsing; however, the product was primarily touted for its email and scheduling functions. The number of people who regularly connected to the Internet through these devices was thus too small to garner extensive attention from web designers.

In the last five years, the number of people using cell phones to browse the Internet has exploded. Apple’s release of the iPhone in 2007 illustrated the potential to access the Internet from a cell phone in a dynamic, user-friendly environment. These days, there are many smart phones that use the Android operating system; BlackberryOS and Windows Phone are two other common operating systems used on smartphones.

The challenge for web designers, here, is this: how do we design websites that display content on such wildly different devices as computers and smartphones?

Mobile-Friendly Pages

One potential solution is a mobile-friendly page. Mobile-friendly pages are standard web pages, accessible from a laptop or a desktop, that are designed to be easy to handle on mobile devices. They have simpler navigation and layout, are relatively small in terms of the magnitude of data they contain, and they don’t use complex systems to display content. Mobile-friendly pages were initially created when cell phone browsers had severely limited capabilities in comparison to desktop browsers.

By these criteria, our websites are already relatively mobile-friendly. Here’s why:

1) The memory requirements to load your pages are minimal, which results in shorter loading times for mobile devices.

2) Site navigation is entirely click-based, instead of requiring extensive typing on an awkward hand-held device. The only time a mobile user would have to type something would be to fill out the form on the “Contact Me” or “Appointment Request” pages.

3) Our templates don’t use clunky JavaScript navigation. So, it’s straightforward for someone on a gestural mobile device (e.g., most smartphones) to navigate your website.

The only thing you might want to change from our default settings, if you’re trying to make your site mobile-friendly, is the slideshow. Apple devices cannot play Flash files, the architecture on which our slideshows are built. It’s easy to replace the slideshow with a static image using your Site Editor. That said, mobile-friendly sites are somewhat of a Catch-22: make your website too mobile-friendly, and it looks sparse and boring on a desktop or laptop, but put in too much dynamic content and it becomes quite hard to look at on an iPhone. A fine balance between the two extremes is needed.

Dedicated Mobile Pages

While pages that are termed “mobile-friendly” are often just standard webpages that have been designed to be accessible to both standard and mobile browsers, some web designers create dedicated mobile pages, intended to be viewed on a smartphone.

When a website detects that a mobile device is trying to access it, and it has a dedicated page enabled, the mobile browser is actually fed an entirely different webpage! These pages are designed and sized for mobile browsers, and have content that displays well on the comparatively tiny screens of smartphones.

Here at TherapySites, we are consistently introducing improvements to our site editor and the presentation of the sites themselves. We introduced a series of wider templates several months ago, with which many readers may be familiar. Our new “Title Editor” enables our users to modify the appearance of the header of their website, work which not too long ago required intervention from our support staff. Just this week, we’ve been working to implement a feature which will allow users to place text and images in any area of a template by using a “floating box!”

The Internet is not a static place, and our developers are always working to anticipate and react to changes in the market. We have our “ear to the ground,” so to speak, and we’ll always be staying up-to-date to ensure that your website is keeping up with trends and advances. Since the divide separating mobile browsers from desktop browsers is now an aesthetic distinction – rather than a technical one – we’re working hard to create pages that look great from both perspectives!

Some Final Thoughts

Ultimately, one of the most overriding concerns in considering this topic is the target audience and the featured product. For a huge website like Amazon.com, dedicated mobile pages are a logical design decision. Their standard website would be exceedingly difficult to navigate on a smartphone, and Amazon’s customers are quite likely to want to purchase the latest movies, music, and books while on the move.

By contrast, consider the product offered by most of our websites: the services of a healthcare professional. Our websites tend to display information in a format that’s entirely different from Amazon’s, and is easily viewed on a smaller screen. More importantly, people are much less likely to seek the services of a healthcare professional on a smartphone in public. Choosing a healthcare professional is a personal, serious, and intimate affair, and not something most folks would undertake while “on the go.”

Andy H – DoctorSites Support and SEO
Email any questions to Support@DoctorSites.com

SEO Does Not Stand For Slightly Eccentric Orangutans

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Do you every wonder what it takes to show up on the first page of search results in a search engine? Maybe you have heard the term SEO and wondered “What do Slightly Eccentric Orangutans have to do with better rankings in search engine results for my website?” Of course, I jest in regards to the primates, yet I still remember the first time I sat down to optimize my website and how overwhelmed I was by the plethora of different methods and opinions that abounded and were “the only way to get your website on the first page of Google.” I hope that through this blog post as well as the next couple of SEO-centric blog posts, we can shed some light on the mystery that is SEO so you can learn to effectively optimize your website.

To start let us look at the true definition of SEO by asking the question:

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

SEO is the active practice of developing a web site by improving internal and external aspects in order to increase the traffic the site receives from search engines.

As you can see, nothing about orangutans in there, eccentric or otherwise. However, there are three things that are in there that are absolutely important to the optimization of your site.

1. Active practice
2. Internal aspects
3. External aspects

Today we are going to look at some of the basics of SEO and we will be starting with the a few of the “Internal Aspects.” of site optimization. We will look at the “External Aspects” of SEO in a blog post in the near future, however, if there is one thing you take away from this post or any future post about SEO let it be this:

SEO is an active practice.

Just as you would change the oil in your car every three to five thousand miles to prevent engine damage, you need to check your site’s ranking in search engine results as well as using a web site tracker such as Google Analytics and fine tune the internal and/or external optimization of your site’s SEO as needed.

Internal Aspects of Site Optimization

We are going to look at three internal aspects that are required for a successful optimization of your website. (The three steps that are listed below were taken from a blog post written by Dustin Williams on seo.com, The 3 Key Elements To A Successful SEO Campaign.)

1. Keyword Focus

Keyword research is the groundwork for a successful SEO campaign. Doing keyword research in a way that will bring long-term success requires in-depth analysis around all keywords that may be relevant to the products or services of the targeted website. Start with the most general keywords and find long tail keywords (a phrase that contains 2 – 5 keywords) relating to each of them, then search for other long tail keywords relating to each of those. This pattern can be repeated many times to find many keyword opportunities. This strategy will also uncover some highly targeted keywords that will convert (change visitors into customers) well and could be fairly easy to rank for. Don’t forget: Long tail keywords are often less competitive and typically convert much better. It is also a good idea to search for lateral keywords as well. Lateral keywords are those that have the same meaning as other targeted keywords. So if I am optimizing a website about “aquariums,” I would also want to optimize it for the term “fish tanks.”

A great free tool to research keywords is the Google AdWords Keyword Tool. You can use this tool to check and see the local and global competition for keywords and keyword phrases that you are thinking about using to optimize your site.

2. Strong Page Element Optimization

The optimization of the HTML elements on each page of the website is a critical factor in search engine optimization. Targeted search terms should be included in various places in the HTML code to tell the search engine crawlers what the page is about. The following elements must be optimized to allow for a successful SEO campaign.

Page Title: The page title (title tag) should include the targeted search terms and be a well written sentence that is 64 to 70 characters long. It should not be a string of keywords or one keyword phrase repeated several times. Remember that a good page title will not only be keyword targeted but also will entice a person to click on it in the search results.

Page Headings: The page heading (and subheadings) should be formatted properly using H1, H2 and H3 tags and include the targeted search terms. Cascading Style Sheets can be used to format the heading to fit with the content of the webpage. H1 tags are meant to be used for the main page heading and should only be used more than once on a page where it makes sense. H2, H3 and other header tags can be used for content subheadings and headings to site navigation.

Image Alternate Text: Optimize Alt Attributes of images by including targeted keywords where the keywords have some relevance to the image. Alternate text should tell a website visitor what the image is. When optimized, the alternate text can help with keyword rankings for both the webpage and the image in image searches. Do not make your image Alt Attribute extremely long and keyword stuffed. Alternate text should be brief and relate well to the image.

Link Anchor Text: Site content should include links to other pages of the website that have keywords in the anchor text. Adding two or three keyword links into page content of 150 or more words is ideal. Do not fill the page content full of keyword links. Remember that linking in the content more than once to the same page will not give any additional SEO benefits.

I know, the information in this section probably seems like you just had a conversation with an orangutan. However, if you are a TherapySites customer, please feel free to contact the SEO Support team at SEO@DoctorSites.com for instruction and assistance on optimizing your page elements for SEO.

Also, for further information on optimizing your pages for search engines, visit the links below:

4 Keys to Search Engine Optimization
Pro Tips to Optimize Your Website
On-Page SEO Best Practices

3. Good Quality Page Content

A website with good quality content will be one step closer to getting top search engine rankings. The search engines are constantly trying to improve the quality of the search results. The one way to be sure to always be relevant when algorithms are updated is to provide content that search engines will consider high quality. That kind of content is not copied from other websites. It is unique, specific, and provides value to a site visitor. Writing guides, fact sheets, frequently asked questions, common misconceptions and practical use articles that are clean, simple to read, and incorporate the keywords and keyword phrases you have chosen to optimize your site with are all great ways to add good content to a website. Keep in mind that having great content will not only give the search engines a good idea of what the website is about but will also give other webmasters a good reason to link to your website.

In Summary:

Today we have learned that SEO has nothing to do with primates. The three things we need to focus on when developing the internal aspects of our site optimization are keyword focus, page element optimization, and quality page content. Last, and most importantly, SEO is an active practice and must be checked and maintained.

I hope you now have some insight on how to get started with optimizing your site. If you are a TherapySites customer and you have any questions or would like your site reviewed for SEO, please contact us at SEO@DoctorSites.com.

Nathan S – TherapySites Support and SEO
Email any questions to SEO@DoctorSites.com