SEO For Chiropractors: Generate New Leads and Clients
Posirank has a proven track record in generating more leads and clients for Chiropractors
Chiropractic - A Competitive Market
Right this moment in the U.S. (as well as throughout the world), millions of people who are suffering from pain and discomfort are finding effective relief from chiropractic techniques. Chiropractors are very skilled and licensed health-care professionals who are trained in spinal manipulations to relieve pain especially in the back, neck and other areas, as well as problems with the nervous system.
According to the well-known market research firm IBISWorld, which recently reported on the period 2003-2022, there are currently a total of close to 70,000 chiropractic businesses in the U.S. On an annualized basis, for the period 2017-2022, this represents a 1.2% increase, while for the most recent reporting year (2022) the growth was almost 2% (1.9% to be exact).
The takeaway from these statistics is crucial: this is a business niche with huge competition. And the competition is growing. California alone, according to the same source, has over 4,000, followed by Florida (at 2.6 thousand) and Texas (at 2.4 thousand).
SEO? Yes It's Effective - But Be Careful!
Given the realities of marketplace competition, it's no wonder that chiropractic practices today are looking to exploit every opportunity to gain the "upper hand" over the competition.
And for sure that includes an effective presence online. Very rare it is to find any chiropractor who does not have a website for themselves or their practice, social media accounts, and even use media such as video and podcasting to reach the public.
And some have even heard of the importance of SEO - which stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO can be thought of as a set of techniques or strategies that are used to get websites more traffic by getting them more "visible" when people do web searches. Sites buried in the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages) don't get any traffic or "clicks" from those listings, because they are never seen by many (or even any) humans.
But there is a danger here - there are all kinds of hucksters out there (just as in any area of business) who peddle the latest "tool" or "solution" to get instant traffic. It is possible to manipulate (i.e. trick) search engine formulas into ranking a site more highly than it ought to be, but sooner-or-later the search gods like Google will detect the scam and penalize the fraudsters. Sites relying on such foolishness have been known to lose much or most of their traffic overnight when search engines adjust their programming - so beware!
SEO for Chiropractors: AVOID These Practices!
At Posirank we have been around since 2013, and our founders have (both together and as a group) literally decades of experience in the SEO industry. In fact, we've seen it grow up from the very beginnings. In those days "SEO" was indeed little more than insider tricks - but the smoke-and-mirror era of SEO has long since passed.
But the scamsters are still out there. So below we mention some SEO and related areas that you should stay away from -
Intrusive Advertising/Pop-Ups. Ever visit a site where the moment you land there you are greeted with ads above, below and all over your screen? No one likes that. But scamsters would have you believe this will bring you more leads and phone calls. Search engines don't like these types of sites either, and they can detect when this is happening. And sites like this are devalued - pushed to the bottom of the search listings, where they will die a slow death. Intrusive advertising or annoying pop-ups have no place on a reputable health-industry site. Get rid of them right away if you are using them.
Duplicate Content. Never be tempted to cut corners on the content posted on your site. It is a big temptation to take something well-written on another site (or on another page of your own website) and just tweak the wording a little bit. Don't do it. Search engines long ago learned how to detect duplicate and near-duplicate content, and if your site is not offering information that is unique then it is not going to be valued by them.
"Thin" content. Some sites (many in fact) don't suffer from duplicate content, but they simply don't offer enough content to thoroughly explore a topic in detail. Web searchers - humans - are looking for information and are researching topics. Make sure that you are demonstrating your expertise fully by giving them the benefits of your insights and experience. This is one of the most important SEO for chiropractors techniques that we know of. Make your site content one-of-a-kind!
"Spun" Content/Bot-Generated Content. Another shady type of content has been around for years now: taking sentences or sentence/paragraph fragments and varying the word choice with synonyms in an effort to generate content that has different phasing so as not to be seen as duplicate. But the usual result is a "word salad" - a jumbled mish-mash that no human would actually write. You might think that this shady technique has become extinct, but if you google "spun content generator" you'll see it's still being peddled out there. Beware!
Poor Website Design. Another important area of SEO for chiropractors is to look at your overall website design and functionality. We find that there are still too many sites where there are pages that load too slowly in web browsers, that do not look good or function well on mobile devices, that have navigational elements that are confusing, or which have links that are broken (do not work, usually giving a 404 error). Again, search engines today are able to detect these types of website issues and do not like to send searchers to these sites, so they are suppressed in the SERP's. Poor website design can be a major root cause of badly-ranking websites.
Exact Match Domains. This is based on an old idea that if your website name contains wording that is relevant to your niche it can help the search engines to know what your site is about. For example, you would expect that a site with a domain name of "Ususedbooks.com" to be a site (in the U.S.) that sells and/or buys used books. While there is nothing in the world that is wrong with an EMD, don't be tricked into believing that this alone will get your site better rankings. Search engines today rank sites based on their usefulness and the experience they offer to their visitors, not on the wording in their domain names.
Keyword Stuffing. In the old days, it was simply a matter of mathematics: more keywords used in your content made it more likely to be able to rank that page for those keywords. This led, inevitably, to the practice of "stuffing" keywords onto a page anywhere you could - including page footers and "hidden" text (hidden from human eyes by matching the text color to the page background, but still detectable by search engines). Today? You guessed it, search engines have evolved and can detect this foolishness.
Irrelevant Links. Are backlinks bad? Not at all - they are very necessary and the Internet would not be able to properly function without them. But there are plenty of people out there who promise to get you tons of backlinks. But upon closer inspection you find they are from sources such as article directories, links from forums, social bookmark links, links in blog comments, web directory lists and link exchanges (you link to my site and I'll link to yours). Relying on these types of links is like building a house on sand - they provide you absolutely no value, and search engines ignore links from these types of sources as ranking signals that indicate value.
High-Volume Link Farms & PBN's. It's hard to believe but true - there are still companies out there who are still trying to promote the value of getting massive numbers of links from specially-designed and often interlinked sites. These are sites that are created for one purpose only: to hold content and contain links. They are called "link farms" or PBN's (private blog networks). Search engines are busy, however, in squashing the influence of these sites as soon as they detect them - so if you are using them as backlink sources, you are living on borrowed time.
SEO Providers with no Credentials. Finally, we want to warn you that there are many out there offering SEO campaigns for chiropractors who lack any real qualification to do this work. It is always best, before beginning work in SEO, to investigate the background of the person/company who will be doing the work for you. How long have they been doing this work? What types of clients have they serviced? Do they have any testimonials, case studies that they can share with you? (At Posirank we do!) How does their online reputation look? Our advice is to investigate before you pull the trigger.
Chiropractic SEO Best Practices
Work With A Provider Who Knows the Niche. Firstly, you need to choose an SEO provider who knows the niche or industry you are working in. We know - and love - chiropractors! We have helped MANY of them to get better rankings and increased visibility (and the increased revenue that will bring) for their practice. Every SEO niche has it's "insider techniques" as we know them and use them every day.
A Thorough Site Audit. Just like your family physician, when you are not feeling well, they will order diagnostic tests and check the results before making a diagnosis or beginning treatment. A site audit is performed to examine in-depth each and every area of your website to make sure it is in compliance with search engine expectations to make sure it is a site they will want to send searchers to. Without a site audit, your SEO provider is not able to detect the root of any issues you may be having, and their recommendations may not give you the results you need.
Focus on the User/Visitor - NOT Search Engines. Yes the goal is to please the search engine gods, but beginners in SEO don't understand that to please search engines you must focus on human visitors. Put very simply: Can site users easily find what they are looking for? And when they find it will they value it? Focus on search engines and you may get ranked well. Focus on users of your site and you will get ranked well.
A Competitor Analysis is Crucial. SEO for chiropractors is not just about your site or your chiropractic business. You also have to pay attention to what your competitors are doing. As chiropractors are a local-SEO focused business, your competitors are other chiropractors who operate in the same geographic region/area/neighborhood/city as you do. How are their sites ranking? Are they outranking you? For what types of web searches? And most critically: WHY are they outranking you. Competitor analysis is crucial to understanding the challenges you face and being able to draw up an SEO/marketing strategy to gain the edge.
An Active Social Media Presence. One thing we see in the chiropractic industry is a lack of effective use of social media. Many chiropractors have social media accounts, but are not using them to best advantage. Maintaining them, making sure your business information is correct, providing fresh and useful content updates can take a lot of time. But the investment is worth it. And make sure that you have links on your main website to your social media accounts where they can read more about you, your staff, case studies, tips and latest treatment strategies. People searching social media are information-hungry. Feed that hunger.
Reputation Management. Health-care professionals are especially sensitive about their online reputation. And for good reason: negative comments and bad reviews can send prospective (and even existing) patients elsewhere! At Posirank we have learned that the real secret of reputation management is not just about fixing problems when they arise, but in preventing negative content from being posted in the first place.
The Content-Keyword Relationship. What do we mean here? A typical SEO tactic is to take and produce content to "target" keywords. A far better approach is not to manipulate content to target obvious keywords, because it will sound/read unnaturally. Great content (truly useful and unique content) will rank on its own and will read with a natural flow and style.
Backlinks. If you need backlinks (and all sites do, to help with their ranking as they get established), the best option is to attract them naturally. Yes, there are additional ways to secure them, but that is work best left to professionals who know how to do that safely and ethically.
Demonstrate Expertise. If you are going for a professional image as a chiropractor, you need to let your light shine, so-to-speak You need to detail your qualifications - training and experience, certifications and awards - and those of your staff. For health-related sites, did you know that one of the most important aspects of your site is your "about us" page? Google itself has said that in the health niche, where issues of health (life and death in some cases) are at stake, expertise, authority and trustworthiness are CRITICAL factors in how they rank websites.
Chiropractic SEO: Final Recommendations
Let us sum all this up by saying that you don't need tactics and tricks - you need come-along-side-of-you expertise to develop a comprehensive, multi-channel approach to marketing your organic SEO and social media presence.
We hope that the information presented to you on this page is useful, but we would also like to encourage you to engage with a professional team who can help you to manage your SEO objectives. You can telephone or email us - of if you are ready you can book an initial consultation with one of our SEO analysts and discuss your site and your business goals for it. You can also register for dashboard access if you want to see our full range of services and pricing. Why put it off any longer? Reach out today!
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