SEO Campaigns & The Element of Time
SEARCH MARKETING
SEO as you may already know is an acronym for search engine optimization — a method that when used correctly, can help position your dental website higher in the search engine results pages — for keyword phrases associated with the treatments you offer — and for the physical location of your practice.
Dollar for patients, SEO is unique — hands down, it affords the dentist the highest return on their investment, far beyond any other marketing effort. That said, it is certainly a worthwhile goal to implement an SEO campaign for your website and start attracting new patients to your practice via the Web.
THE ELEMENT OF TIME
While SEO can be a very powerful tool in your dental marketing plan, part of the SEO equation for successful ranking is the factor of time. Search engine optimization and ultimately better positions within the organic search results is not something that happens instantly. An SEO campaign can run anywhere from 30 days, up to a year or more. It’s a process that requires great patience and finesse.
Dependent upon the keywords targeted, their competitive value, the quality of your on-site SEO, the link analysis established for your site and other factors, the element of time is one of the most important ingredients crucial to positioning your website above the competition. In fact, any SEO efforts must be given sufficient opportunity to affect your rankings, before you can determine what must be done next.
CLIENT WHO STOPPED SHORT
Sadly, for the first time in my career, yesterday brought news of a client who decided to abandon their SEO campaign. While I never asked for a reason, I suspect it was because they, like most good people, do not fully understand SEO, or realize how long a ranking campaign for a website can take.
This particular dentist’s site was moved to another hosting company and nurtured over several months to bring it from page #9 and no results, up to page #1 results on Google. We had maybe less than a month till we attained full saturation.
In this instance I attempted to convince the dentist that it would be wise to go a little longer, however the client’s decision was final and as always, respected, so their retainer has been refunded in full. Unfortunately, their site’s hard-won rankings and all the ground it gained in the last several months was for naught and will soon revert back to its former obscurity in the search engines.
PERSISTANCE IS KING
This is the dilemma faced by anyone pursuing better rankings in the search engines. Often a webmaster or site owner is right on the edge of success and they don’t even know it. This is where perseverance becomes your most important asset.
Instead of throwing in the towel, if the dental webmaster continues upon the proper course and gives their efforts more time to work, they will reach their goal and reap the rewards higher rankings offer.
John Barremore
Webmaster / Dental SEO
November 13th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
But can you imagine how much time is required to perform a normal seo campaign? Not a year, not 2 years - for a normal one 4 and even more $)
That is crazy, don’t you think so?
November 15th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
Dependent upon how competitive your market share is and the phrase(s) you’re targeting, an SEO campaign can take a long time; thus the reason for failure in many cases. Success might have been just a matter of the next search engine update.
John