Paid Search & Keyword Relevance for Your Daughter Site



Paid Search & Keyword Relevance for Your Daughter Site_________

Many of you are managing paid search campaigns, either on your own or with help (such as with Reach Local). A few of you have had questions about your ads and their relevance in the new website structure. If you are buying ads for keywords that do not appear on the specific destination page/URL (such as on your franchise home page) in your daughter site for that specific ad, you should consider doing one the following to improve your ads' performance:

• Add a page in your daughter site supporting that keyword, with unique copy/content (not a duplicate, or near copy, of the corporate/shared page). You might only want to do this (a page for one keyword) for high performing keywords (those receiving lots of traffic in your territory). 

• The more likely alternative to the above approach is to include "like" items on one page (such as vaccinations, or flu-related items, etc.) so that appropriate ads (like those for keywords with flu or influenza) all get discussed on one page (or one set of pages nested underneath one main page, such as "Flu Shots in Arizona" with supporting pages for AZ Flu Clinics, Flu Shot for AZ Corporations, etc. depending on your specific services). 

• Add content to an existing page (again, not duplicated or copied from elsewhere on the site). This is similar to the above point where you include "like" items on the same page, but could even be additions to the bottom of your home page as at the very minimum. See this Arizona home page as an example:

It is critical that any content you add is not a copy, or near copy, of existing content elsewhere on the website. The search engines will penalize the entire site (corporate and all daughter sites) if they find duplicative content - one of the very reasons we have changed over to the new structure. In the Arizona example above you'll note that the content at the bottom of the home page regarding meningitis and anthrax is brief and to the point, with mentions of specifics about Arizona clinics. This is the best practice since it speaks to the local searcher for those terms (keywords) that directed him to the specific page as a result.

Since each of you select and manage your own keywords based on search behavior in your territory, and the specific services you provide of course, only you can determine exactly what to add to your daughter site. Even so, the corporate team will review the content in an effort to result in the highest quality site we can provide for our customers and the search engines.

Give Your Website Some Link Love__________________________

Through the search engines (Google, Bing and Yahoo primarily) and social media platforms you can help your new website's search rankings through some simple steps.

• Search: Set up a Google+ profile if you have not already done so. Have your employees, friends and family willing to help do the same.

o Then search for "passport health" or "passport health " and click the  "+1" box in the search engine results next to your listing on Google's search engine results pages (or SERP). 

o Use (click on) a few of the natural search results you value in Google and Bing in the coming days/weeks - IMPORTANT: do not click on the same +1 repeatedly, Google will know that someone with the same IP (computer or router) is clicking the same link 2-3+ times is gaming the system - once per link/result per computer or office is plenty.

• Social Media: "like" us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and subscribe to our channel on YouTube.

• Social Media - LinkedIn: Search for us (not Passport Health Communications!) on LinkedIn and follow us as a company. While you are at it, make sure your own LinkedIn profile us up to date and identifies Passport Health in your profile.

• Social Media (Blog): Subscribe to our blog - at the very top right of the header on our new website you'll see three grey icons, one for twitter ("t"), one for facebook ("f") and one for an RSS feed for our blog (looks like radar waves). Use this RSS button to subscribe to our site with your feed "reader" (like Google Reader). 

TIP: Five or more good customer reviews on Google have been found to increase your rankings in Google. Point your patients to your listing on Google Maps to submit a review. If you search Google maps for "passport health utah" and click on our listing there you will see an example of a listing with a couple of good reviews. Many of you have reviews, including some challenging ones, that you may not be aware of, so stimulating more and positive reviews will help your business.

BONUS TIP: Yesterday we stressed the opportunity you have to generate inbound links to your site among those in your local network (doctors, hospitals, media, suppliers, government, universities, etc.). It is important that the links you have these friends generate go directly to either your home page (daughter site home page) or to one of your supporting (inner) pages that provides relevant content that contextually fits the referring link provider's site/page (such as the example of a nursing school sending links to your page on "Careers at Passport Health ".

Link Building for Your New Website_________________________

Now that we've launched the new website, including all franchise sites (daughter sites), there are many things each of you as franchisees can do to help build your business. In addition to building more website content specific to your local franchise (as outlined in yesterday's message), you can help those searching for your services to find you by doing some local link building. This means getting others in your community to put links on their websites directly to your new, local website. 

Examples include inbound links from:

• Universities (.edu websites are highly valued by search engines like Google) - Nursing/Medical schools might want to link to a local page you have (or now build within your site) that discusses job opportunities for nurses.

• Governments (.gov sites are also highly valued as authoritative sources by search engines) - County health departments, in some cases, might choose to refer their site visitors to you.

• Local Chambers - If you are a member of the local chamber or other business organizations that provide links, make sure you are getting these established with them and pointed to your site.

• Media - Your local news media may provide readers/viewers/listeners with travel and/or health information where it's logical for them to discuss, list and/or link to your website.  

• Suppliers - You might have suppliers with valuable enough websites to encourage them to link to your site if/where it makes sense.

• Doctors / Hospitals - If you have good relationships with local doctors or hospitals, then seeking inbound links from these businesses can really help.

• Customers - In some cases, your business customers (or associations, churches, schools) might even be good candidates for links to your site. A large organization may put a link to your PPH site within their website as a service to their employees, members or constituents. 

In each case where you want to encourage someone to link to your site, keep in mind a couple of things:

• What is in it for them? Will you, or should you, link back to them in a natural way that serves your/our customers? 

• Is there a specific area of their site you have identified where a link to your site seems natural? In all cases, you should identify the page on your site that you want someone to link to - it could be your franchise home page for a media outlet's travel resources, or an additional page you have built that is a deeper resource fitting the party linking to your site. In all cases, make sure that there is content on that page that is relevant to the incoming linking party (such as jobs/careers for nurses seeking work via a nursing school's web resources as described above).

Digital Marketing Education Tip

If you'd like to learn more on the value of search marketing, link building and related topics, consider subscribing to the blog from .

Website- Content______________________________________

Content

Nothing beats excellent, relevant content for marketing your website. You can improve your new site with thoughtful, unique content that describes your services to your specific market. This content can:

• Help your prospective patients understand the value you provide.

• Help your prospective employees understand what it may be like to work with you.

• Support your paid search advertising as previously discussed (having your ads point to content relevant to the keywords you are buying).

• Engage and support the customer throughout the travel experience - from preparing to travel to returning home healthy, your patient/customer will enjoy the guidance you provide.

Types of Content

• Study your current content, the keywords that work for you in your territory (what people search for in your area) and tackle only the most important areas where you have gaps by creating content to support the keywords you are buying. At the same time, do not copy the content that is already elsewhere in the site as that will lower our site quality and rankings across the network, including your own performance.

• A picture is worth a thousand words - people love pictures… as long as they are high quality and relevant. A single picture can support the story on your page. 

• A video is (worth) a lot of pictures - high quality video of 30 - 90 seconds can tell an engaging story. It might be a video clip you generate through a public, or TV, appearance, which can be very compelling. If you do use video, though, use it sparingly and try to tie it to current events (which means it may need to come off your site later). Search engines score content on its freshness, so old news is not worth much.

• Make sure to share your website and your new content among those in your personal networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Your Personal Blog, etc.).

Specific Areas to Add to Your Site

• Clinics - Build a page for your clinics, or better yet a page for each clinic. Highlight the geographic area, landmarks, address, description of how to find the clinic and even mention something unique about each specific clinic. It could be to "Walk right in a say hi to Jane Doe, our Travel Health Ambassador" or whatever fits your specific business.

• Team - Your local team… bios and pictures. This really personalizes your site and makes it different from those in the rest of the network.

• Testimonials - If you have local testimonials, by all means consider posting a few on your site (to use a person's name you should make sure you have their permission).

• Unique services - This could be your flu business, your corporate business, or a community outreach effort you are involved in or some other service or activity unique to you and your business/market.

Caveat!

Please bear in mind that the approval process may result in some push back or adaptation of the content you create to ensure that it is both unique and of high quality, thus supporting the entire site and network in pursuit of high search engine rankings, brand consistency and customer service excellence. 

Paid Search Geo-Targeting Video Tutorial - 4 Minutes of Tremendous Value___

Most of you are investing in paid search advertising - either through Reach Local, another partner, or with your own time. If you haven't taken the time to carefully study your geographic targeting for this advertising, now is the time to do so. 

Since your customers must travel to your clinics, you should consider how easy (or hard) it may be for them to do so for any particular service given their alternatives from competitors' services. You might spend differently to serve (and defend) a nearby territory, for example, than to toil for customers in the distant reaches of your territory if there are viable alternatives for those customers much closer to where they live or work.

By using Google's geo-targeting tool you can be very precise about where your ad appears (states, cities, distances from a city, etc.), including and excluding specific areas of your territory to optimize performance for your various campaigns. This can save you money by not exposing ads to areas unlikely to contain customers (as well as making sure you don't expose your ads in other PPH franchise territories), while simultaneously improving your ROI where you do invest in ad impressions.

Here is a simple video tutorial showing how this tool works - it is just under four minutes long and can give you some great ideas for your paid search advertising investments:   

Whether you are managing paid search advertising yourself or through a partner, make sure to dig into your geo-targeting criteria so you know where you are investing in customer acquisition. 

Localizing Content for Your Home Page(s)____________________________

Several of you have done a great job localizing your new websites - thanks! For those of you looking for examples to help guide your work you might check the sites for Colorado and Dallas as just two good examples of localization (go to the site and see these home pages and the additional pages they've built, each one reached via the links to the left of the main image near the top of the page).

As a result of the new website and your immediate follow-up efforts customizing your own sites, our overall website performance has improved in the early weeks since launch. We've increased the number of keywords ranking in the top 10 nationally by over 100% while increasing those ranked locally by over 200%. In addition, our site traffic is up by every measure (+20-50% vs early April and nearly double the same time period a year ago)... even if we throw out the first week after launch when many of us were visiting the site ourselves. 

Even so, the performance lift will likely taper off some as those close to the business (employees, friends, family) visit the site less and competition heats up in the coming weeks. Further, we all know that improved site traffic and keyword rankings do not equal improved conversions to appointments. It is very early in the "game" and we have much yet to do - especially as competitors in some areas react to our increased profile in the market. 

More Localization of Your Site is Needed

From analysis of search engine performance data over the past two weeks, we (and our outside search experts) believe we can make even more performance improvements by customizing the home pages you currently have for each clinic so that each is unique to that clinic. You now have a home page for your franchise territory - for example, it may read "New York City" or "Colorado" in the large copy under the main image - and a home page for each clinic such as the one below for "Boulder, CO" where in addition to seeing the city/state reference in the large copy under the image you see the "Immunizations for Travel and Wellness" feature for Colorado in the area at the bottom right of the screen shot below. Though this is great, in Colorado's example, every Colorado clinic has the same feature that speaks to the state/territory, or franchise in total, rather than to each specific clinic. This leads to duplicate content and makes it a bit harder for search engines to clearly identify your "footprint" across your territory. This is where you (once again) come in to help further customize and localize your sites.

ACTION NEEDED!

 

Just as (many of) you provided a headline, picture and some copy for the feature on your home page (describing your business in your territory), you now need to provide the same three things for each clinic. The simplest way to think about this is to go to the "Locations" map in the main nav, click on your state(s) and then select each of your clinics (one at a time) to see what your home pages look like. For each of these pages, you need to provide us a new feature (headline, picture, copy) that describes your business for that particular clinic. In the example below, Colorado will need to provide something like this*:

• Title - Boulder: Immunizations for Travel and Wellness

• Image - An iconic picture of Boulder (please supply only pictures where you have the rights to the picture and note those rights in your submission as before)

• Copy (30 - 50 words) - Passport Health Colorado serves Boulder with its centrally-located travel clinic located at Canyon and Folsom. We provide the nation's leading travel health, preparation and wellness consultation and all travel immunizations including Yellow Fever (we are a Colorado State Certified Yellow Fever Vaccination Clinic).

*Underneath the Boulder, Colorado screen grab below you'll see the full description of the original request for this information for your franchise, including the link to where you might find suitable images for your pages. 

The Rub

While this seems pretty straightforward at a glance, the hardest part of this is that each clinic's feature should read a little bit different from the others to avoid being exact or near duplicates (in addition to the city name, which is not enough localization for the search engines). The more one can vary this description the better (while still presenting your best face to the first-time visitor), perhaps by adding something specific about where the clinic is within the city/area... all while keeping the copy under 50 words. 

Once we begin to have several of these localized clinic home pages, we'll be able to determine whether or not to (yet again) further customize each home page.

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