Ancaster Chiropractor
Dr. Mark Del Cantero
Cedar Springs Chiropractic
201 Wilson Street East, Suite 111
Ancaster, ON L9G 2B8
(905) 648-2058 Phone
(905) 648-2031 Fax
Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College graduate serving Ancaster, Ontario since 1997 using CBP and diversified adjusting techniques.

Costa Mesa Chiropractor
Dr Candice McCowin, D.C.
OC Medical and Disc Institute
2960 Harbor Blvd, A/B
Costa Mesa, CA 92626
(714) 751-5050

Costa Mesa chiropractor using diversified, Activator Methods® and spinal decompression for patients located throughout Orange County, California.

Overland Park Chiropractor
Kyle R. Younger, DC, CCSP
Alyssa-Rae Zonarich, DC, CD(DONA)
Amanda E. Toney, DC
Suzanne E. Wolverton, DC
Stephen J. Harms MSOM LAc
Megan Harms MSOM LAc
First Choice Chiropractic & Acupuncture
11960 Quivira Road, Suite 200
Overland Park, KS 66213
(913) 402-7444

A team of chiropractors and acupuncturists serving Overland Park, Kansas since 2005 using Koren Specific, diversified and Thompson chiropractic techniques and state-of-the-art acupuncture treatment.

We divide the search terms that visitors use to find your site into two basic categories: “friendly” and “stranger.”

Friendly keywords usually involve the doctor’s name or the practice name. These are people who are either already patients (to find your hours or telephone number) or referrals from current patients who already know they want you. (“Does she have a website?”) Most sites perform pretty well for these types of search terms without a lot of effort.

However, it’s the performance of stranger keywords that are our primary focus on your behalf. Those who are using stranger keywords are potential new patients who don’t have a specific chiropractor in mind. Because of this lack of preference, they use more general search terms like “chiropractors in Denver” or “Denver chiropractors.” (There are about a dozen or more derivations we track.)

While being at the top of the heap for as many stranger keywords as possible is helpful, it’s not the whole story. Your Google ranking is unlikely to prompt someone to drive clear across town, past a dozen other chiropractors, simply because you were number one for the search term Denver chiropractors!

In this way, your practice website is like the yellow page directory. Proximity matters.

Here are seven things that you or your support team can do to improve the performance of your website:

1. Supply Enough Original Content

When you set up your Perfect Patients website, we supply stock photos and generic text as “placeholders” to give you and your team an idea of what could go on pages reserved for describing your practice. It’s pretty good. Since other practices have chosen to use that content, and you don’t replace it with your own original practice-specific content, we have to “hide” that page from Google to avoid your site from being penalized for “duplicate content.” (For the same reason we ask Google not to index the 700 pages of general chiropractic content on your site. Visitors see it, but Google doesn’t.) Thus, one reason why a site may not be performing well is that in Google’s eyes your site is just a mere two or three pages! All things being equal, sites with more original content rank better than sites with little original content.

Action step: Provide more original content describing your procedures, services, personnel and practice philosophy.

2. Show Patients What to Expect

Not including photographs (or videos) of your practice won’t diminish search engine performance (traffic) it can lessen the number of site visitors who pick up the phone and call your practice to being care (conversion). The Internet is a visual medium. Prospective new patients visiting your site who are the slightest bit apprehensive want a peak inside your front door. Does your practice look busy? Do patients look like they’re enjoying themselves? Does the doctor look likeable? These days, with digital cameras so common and inexpensive, even built into cell phones, visitors to your website are justifiably suspicious when you don’t include photos of you and your practice.

Action step: Supply photographs of you, your team and your practice. Follow the suggestions in our Photo Guidelines.

3. Reveal Your Authenticity

Many report that writing about themselves is difficult. Apparently when describing why they chose chiropractic as a career, their education, practice location choice and personal health habits, they find themselves in high school English composition class. The result is often a stiff press release without soul or personality. Many of these biographies are so politically correct, so boring and emotionally safe they make it difficult for a prospective new patient to make a buying decision.

Action step: Lighten up! Reveal your doubts when you consulted your first chiropractor. Share your addiction to almond M&Ms. Explain what you love about practice. Confess your greatest failure, proudest achievement or biggest challenge. Express energy! Be authentic. Get real.

4. Using a Brand New Domain Name

If you’re just now getting your practice on the Internet and your domain name is brand spanking new, you have a problem. Especially if other practices in your area have been around for many years, earning and cultivating the trust of Google and the others. They have a “head start.” And remember, search engine rankings are dynamic. As you enter the fray, other website owners respond. And so it goes. (One more reason why you want a website service, not just a website.)

Action step: The way to dislodge a website that has been around longer than yours is to prove to Google that your site, while newer, deserves greater authority. We know of only two ways to do that. Both are difficult, but possible: 1) increase traffic to your site without relying on search engines (such as email campaigns) or, 2) increase the number of inbound links from local, high quality, trustworthy websites (your dentist’s website, MRI facility, state association, etc.).

5. Add More Website Members

Besides the patient education benefits of the monthly newsletters, eLearning and health interest articles that Perfect Patients sends on your behalf, adding members to your site increases the number of visitors to your website. These visitors are showing up to read your newest content without relying on a search engine. “Whoa! Something’s going on here,” reasons Google, pushing your website ranking higher. You’ve probably heard the old adage, “Everybody goes there because everybody goes there.” That’s true here as well. Traffic begets traffic.

Action step: Add more patients as members to your website. If you’ve had a staff change since you launched your site, communicate the importance of this procedure in your staff training.

6. Getting More of What You Already Have

Simply put, if patients weren’t inclined to refer their friends and family to your practice before having a website, they aren’t likely to start when you do. In other words, a website doesn’t necessarily guarantee you’ll get new patients. If patients perceive your adjustments as rough, your personality cold, your communication style bossy, your care plans excessive or any one of countless other factors, a website is unlikely to dramatically change your new patient flow. A practice website tends to merely amplify what is already true about your current practice.

Action step: Hold some patient focus groups and uncover patient perceptions of your tableside manners, practice procedures, report of findings and other aspects of your practice. Find out how current patients describe what you do to others. Master all 12 referral principles.

7. Improve Your Front Desk

The weakest link in the marketing strategies of far too many practices is at the front desk. An inexperienced or poorly-trained individual who serves as the “gatekeeper” to your practice has a far different set of demands than even five or six years ago. Can your frontline representative provide reassurance to skittish, apprehensive prospects on the phone? Does she understand chiropractic, its nervous system focus and potential whole body effects? Is she persuasive, or merely an “order taker”? Does she rigorously ask if new prospects have been to your website?

Action step: Train your staff and role-play. You can no longer afford a mere receptionist. If, due to the research prospective new patients have done on the Internet, they sense they are more knowledgeable about chiropractic than your front desk assistant, they move on to the next practice. All this while you’re out of earshot in the back.

A practice website is merely a tool. It’s not a secret weapon to acquire new patients. Maybe that was true when only a fraction of chiropractors had one, but not today. Prospective new patients are far more sophisticated. They pick up on subtle clues and nuances revealed in the word choices and pictures on your site. Will it be a good fit? Is the doctor sensible? Do I trust her? Is he forthcoming? Does he give me confidence? Answers to these questions dramatically affect the performance of your website.

This is a combination of patients returning to care (since Dr. Sonya’s last visit), and online new patient marketing (the practice website and Choose Natural) which are producing incredible results.

Welcome to our newest Bangalore Chiropractor, Dr. Nick Beckwith

Welcome to Dr. Nick Beckwith who recently relocated from the US to India and started at the clinic earlier this week.

Dr. Sonya and Dr. Nick are seeing a very wide cross-section of patients. Interestingly, traditional back pain and headaches admitting complaints are in the minority! Complaints like ADHD, colic, bed-wetting, breathing problems, dizziness, extremities pain, etc. are more popular.

Alongside paying patients (essential so that the ministry is financially sustainable) the doctors are seeing economically disadvantaged patients… India’s poor surviving on less than $2 per day.  We’ll continue to grow this side of the practice in order to fulfill our mission to bless the poor.

Perfect Patients founders, Bill Esteb and Steve Anson, along with the Perfect Patients team consider it a privilege to underwrite and support this long-term chiropractic mission. And to be involved in breaking new ground for the chiropractic profession… most Indians (1.2 billion people) have never even heard the word “chiropractic”… yet!

Want to join our India Chiropractic Mission mailing list?  Use this form.

We welcome your comments and questions.

Recently Dr. Lechner, an Asheville chiropractor asked ‘Do I tweet or retweet?’

While trying to fit all the pieces together, what you really want to know is…”How can I, as a chiropractor, grow my practice through the use of social media and social networking.”

The following comparison will help explain what social media forums have to offer and how it can relate to your practice.

Blogging. Think about a blog as the meeting room of your practice. This is where everyone gets together to talk about what is going on, to share and relay information. It’s not a formal suit and tie meeting room but more the Friday business casual atmosphere. There are only minor rules for this meeting room, (your blog).  And that is to share relevant or news worthy information. And to relay how the information (blog posts) you are sharing can benefit the people present in the meeting, (the blog reader). When a blog reader can take what they have just read and apply into a part of their personal life they will revisit your blog over again to pick up more tidbits. You Tube is the video version of a blog, providing an alternate resource to share and relay information.

LinkedIn. Is more of the chamber of commerce for your practice. LinkedIn offers the outlet to share professional information about you and your practice. Post your education, credentials, awards and achievements. Tout about the value you bring to your profession and your community. This social networking forum allows you to provide information as why you are the leading chiropractic choice in your community.

Facebook.  We can equivolate Facebook to the cafeteria or lunch room. You want to be your lunch table to be full of fans. This social networking atmosphere is more casual. There isn’t any deep, integral conversation going on here. This is where you can show the more personal side of you and your practice.  Make posts upcoming events in your office or community, change in hours, interesting health related articles you have read, new content added to your practice website or just what’s on your mind.

You can also post pictures of your Patient Appreciation Days, Health Events, the office staff in their Halloween costumes, etc. Facebook allows you to promote chiropractic care, wellness, natural healthcare and a healthy lifestyle in a casual, welcoming forum. Friends of friends will see your posts and will be enticed to find out more. This is how your Fan base (new patients) will grow.

Twitter. This is the bulletin board. You broadcast (tweet) about what the new information you add to your blog, post on Facebook or announce professional accolades. Tweets are short, sweet and to the point. Tweets trigger the receiver to investigate the details (internet traffic).  An additional benefit is in retweets of your original message to their Twitter followers (more traffic). Tweets are short, sweet and to the point.

Create your own social buzz. So go ahead blog, post, link, tweet and yes of course - retweet.  This is the time you want everyone talking about you.

In the old days, just having a website was enough.

When Perfect Patients began providing a chiropractic website service back in the Stone Age of the Internet (2006) simply having a website put many chiropractors on page one of Google. Those days are long gone. As more and more chiropractors see the importance of having their practice on the Internet, competition has heated up.

These days, if you’re a chiropractor located in a competitive jurisdiction, you’ll need to decide how badly you want to be ranked in the top three positions of page one that get the lion’s share of new patient clicks. Because it’s going to cost. Either by hiring one of the countless SEO consultants, or securing our advanced SEO placement through Perfect Patients.

Because your competitors are.

Brings back fond memories of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Back then, before the Internet, a similar tension surrounded the business decision of going for the full-page yellow page ad or settling for a less expensive quarter page or smaller ad whose placement was further back in the book.

However, the similarities between website ranking and the yellow page directory end there. That’s because a website isn’t stuck on page five; it’s ranking can be improved—if the site is “worked.” Such as, changing content on the home page, securing new inbound links to the site, self-generating traffic to the site and countless other details that prove to the search engines that your site is worthy of being placed high in the rankings.

That’s why we make the distinction that Perfect Patients is a website service. If you have an under performing website, chances are you have a website product that is largely the same website today as it was the day it originally went live. If your website has lost that “new website smell” and you’re ready to get serious about the Internet presence for your practice, watch our current video.

Sycamore Valley Chiropractic Website

“Our previous Perfect Patients site generated a steady flow of new patients but our new site takes our Internet presence to a new level”, beams Dr. Shanda.  “The thing we love most is the homepage video.  We’re already receiving great feedback from new and current patients.”

Perfect Patients is leading the charge to bring affordable, professional video to the chiropractic profession.  We send our video crew to your office and they’ll shoot a 90-second practice promotion video and patient testimonials.

“Nothing converts like video”, says Perfect Patients co-founder, Steve Anson. “Today’s media saturated world would rather watch a video about you than read about you.  That explains why You Tube is the third most trafficked site in the world and why the average user session is an astonishing 32 minutes!”

If you have a practice website, you work hard to attract new patient traffic… now you need to offer content that motivates them to call and schedule.  Video does that better than text, hands down.