Today we are going to talk about SEO. That may seem like a scary acronym but it’s actually quite important. What is SEO, also known as search engine optimization? This is making your website more attractive to a google, yahoo or bing search and how you do that is by providing certain information on your website, having certain features and making it easier for the algorithms on each one of these platforms to recognize your information. This is all about maximizing the number of visitors to your website. More visitors can equal more customers. This may all sounds like some crazy, witch doctor, behind the scenes computer stuff, it is but it’s not as hard as it sounds. Luckily, you have a friend on your side who is willing to give you a few quick tips!

 First things first, last year we had “mobilegeddon”. That meant any website that wasn’t mobile friendly got pushed down and those that were mobile friendly got pushed up. We didn’t see a whole lot of fluctuation. Google released all this information and made it sound like the world was going to end, but it didn’t happen. There was a little bit but I do believe in 2016, 2017, this is going to become very, very important. Having a smart phone that can get on the internet is no longer a luxury, it’s the phone they give you for free now. This is definitely something you are going to want to keep an eye on as your customers use your website more.

 As social media has become so prominent, search engines have taken notice and are now indexing your social media posts. You want to post information that is relevant, that is very news worthy, that can grab the attention of people and it can show up in a google search. The key to success in 2016 with your SEO, is going to be providing wonderful, keyword rich information that is actually interesting in a way that you are speaking to a human. You want to write it and provide that information just as you would if a patient was sitting right in front of you. On your website, you want to talk like a human, however you also want to include keywords, and it’s really important that you use long tail keywords. 

 For example, if you compound bio identical hormones, just saying that is putting that keyword in there but you don’t want to do that, you want to actually sound like a human, you want to sound like you’re speaking to someone, you want your website to relate to humans. The easiest way to use your long tail keywords is in a blog and this is where you can create wonderful content, all the time about things you know about your industry. If you want to give out information about flu shots or bio identical hormones or diabetes education or medical therapy management, you can write blogs about this. The wonderful part about that is google getting big in to answering questions. If you are highly regarded as an authority in your industry, then your answer can be featured on google. Awesome!

 Let’s put it all in to perspective. If you sell a poison ivy toxin and that’s all you say on your website, if someone was to google those words, where do you think you’d end up? Probably quite far down and most people don’t even go to the second page of search results! Now you have a blog or an announcement on your website that contains the long tail keyword “poison ivy toxin made locally” you’ll appear higher in the search results! Now add your city and state to the end of that and you’ll be appearing at or near the top of the search results. You want to give this detailed phrase that people might search for. This is how you’ll stay ahead of the competitors!

 In closing, SEO is very important but it shouldn’t scare you away from having an online presence. When used correctly, it will increase your site’s traffic with more potential customers. As of May 2015, mobile searches had passed the number of desktop searches. As technology becomes more and more widespread amongst everyone, you’re going to want to be seen among the crowd. The internet is overstuffed with websites as it is, so if you want to be heard, then it’s time you’ve taken it upon yourself to get to work!