Marketing and advertising are a big part of attracting an audience to your laser clinic. Today, that includes online marketing and considering how four out of five people use search engines like Google to find local businesses and information, that marketing strategy needs to be solid. Local SEO is part of your larger, general search engine optimization strategy, but it’s a part that needs dedicated attention to get the results and rankings that your clinic deserves.
For starters, you need to study up on local optimization and learn all about how you can get your business out there and build the reputation that you deserve. Let’s dive right in.
Today, the majority of people who are searching for local businesses are doing so from a mobile device. Therefore, if your website isn’t mobile-friendly, you’re not going to get the attention that you deserve. First of all, Google will notice that you don’t have a mobile responsive site and they will dock valuable points. Then, when your potential clients get to the site, they won’t be able to navigate simply or they could spend too long waiting for pages to load—either way, they’ll leave and find a better site from a different clinic.
Unless you’re one of the rare few companies that have yet to get online, you likely already have some degree of an online presence. Whether it’s just a website or a social media page, or if you’ve gone all-out and gotten your business listed just about everywhere you can, you need to check the content that’s already out there. You might have some great stuff that you can reuse after you’ve optimized everything. You might even have some terrible content that you don’t notice until you understand SEO best practices.
Check your website, your blog, social media profiles, directory listings, and any other mention or existence of your laser clinic online. Make sure that all of your content is local-optimized and ready to be found. Then, you’ll be better able to plan your new content strategy.
Google is essentially the gatekeeper when it comes to search engine rankings. Yes, there are other search engines out there, but fractionally as involved as Google. One of its features is the Google Business Profile, which is available for every business to claim and complete to help promote their products and/or services. If you want your laser clinic to rank well in local search results, you need to maximize this profile and complete it as much as you can.
Google even offers a handy completion tool that will tell you just how “complete” your profile is. Your goal will be to get as close to 100% as you can. Then, you’ll get better rankings in the search results because Google knows you exist and because you took the time to make your presence known to the search engine giant.
It can be tempting to take your first round of keyword research for your general SEO strategy and just toss some locations in the mix to create new local keywords. That’s not how it works, though. You might end up with some great keywords. You could choose some that are terrible. There’s no consistency and no guarantees. That’s why you need to do keyword research for local keywords just like you would for other optimization efforts.
Consider cities and/or towns, counties, regions, and states that you could utilize to get your laser clinic on the map with local SEO. Then, research to see what people are searching for when they want a laser clinic in your location. That way, you’ll be using the right keywords from the start.
The name, address, and phone number (NAP) of your laser clinic need to be consistent across the entire Internet. You need to list your business the same way, every single time. Not so much as a period can be out of place or Google will deduct points and knock you down in the search results. Check your website, all directory listings, your social media pages, and anywhere else your laser clinic is listed online.
Laser clinics are still a specialty service to most, which means that people will be looking for insight from others to see what they can expect. Get reviews and testimonials for your website, as well as for other places online, and make sure that you’re monitoring and following up with reviews as needed. For example, if you get a negative review, you need to address it right away and resolve the issue. Otherwise, it looks like you’re either not aware of the negative review or you are ignoring it, and you don’t want to give people the wrong impression.
Positive reviews are your ideal choice, of course, but you can’t force people’s hands. You need to embrace reviews that you can when you can and invest the effort in building a strong reputation for your brand that you can use to help with local optimization.
Once you have taken the time to consider and plan a local SEO strategy, you’ll also need the right tools and systems in place to field your local leads and potential clients. That includes a 24/7 answering service like the team at Smith.ai. When you partner with the virtual receptionists at Smith.ai, you’ll also have access to assistance with lead intake, appointment scheduling, and even live website chat. We can even assist with outreach campaigns and outbound sales to help start the leads flowing in the first place. Plus, it all comes with a reputable, custom strategy to manage every last detail.
To learn more, you can schedule a consultation or reach us at hello@smith.ai to discuss what the virtual receptionists at Smith.ai can do for your business.