I’ve been talking to a lot of specialist surgeons and doctors lately to help them grow their clinic as well as non-clinic based businesses and the same things keeps coming up…

They expect that Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) will get them more patients.

Unfortunately, they’ve been bedazzled with tech jargon and fleeced out of their money.

SEO is dead. It doesn’t work. It used to work… back before 2011.

In fact, I did it back then. We did it ourselves and hired companies to help us. It was one of my first big lessons in online business. And it worked.

We were able to trick Google into putting us at the top of the page, because let’s be honest, that’s what SEO is all about. It’s about putting things on your website to overcome Googles algorithm and fool it into putting your websites at the top of the search, ideally above everybody else.

The SEO companies will tell you that you’ll need to be patient and it will happen over a year or so while you pay them thousands for it.

As you can imagine, Google doesn’t like this because it falsifies their search results.

So they’ve always been actively fighting the SEO process. They don’t want people gaming their system. They want the best and most accurate results for their users. SEO attempts to overcome this and fool Google into getting you higher up.

I should say, SEO companies used to attempt to fool Google. Now all they do is attempt to fool the uninformed doctor.

In 2011 there were significant changes to the Google algorithm and SEO died. People lost million dollar businesses overnight. Their SEO’ed websites disappeared overnight. Google know what’s going on and they punished those website by dropping them to the back pages of the search, or worse still, banning them from search all together.

So SEO is not just an ineffective strategy, it’s extremely dangerous for you and your business.

Since then Google search results have becoming increasingly individualised.

Now it’s at a point where your search results will be different from someone else’s search results. This is because the results are based on your preferences and search history.

If I type something into Google the top listing will be different to when you type the exact same keywords into Google. This is the stuff the SEP companies won’t tell you.

And it gets better…

If I regularly search your company name or website, sooner or later your website will naturally move higher up my search results. No expensive SEP required. This is because my personal search history shows that I’m interested in that site.  The algorithm then feeds me what I want to see based on my history. Hey presto, your website rises to the top.

So really, SEO is more of a party trick than anything else. Ask your dinner guests to search the same keyword and see how your company appears higher on your results.

Even if you attempted to use SEO to optimise a person’s history you would have to do it on their computer, by typing words into their keyboard.

It’s shocking that doctors are been paying upwards of $500 per month for this ‘service’.

But let’s take a step back from SEO for a second and look at the bigger problem at hand.

If you’re replying on people finding you in Google, then it’s already too late.

At that point they’re already price shopping and comparing you to everyone else. Everyone has an expensive website with photos of the doctors, descriptions of how they are different and the qualifications they have.

At this point you are a commodity on the shelf and the game has been lost.

This is also the case for Adwords. Adwords is essentially paying Google to get your ad to the top of the search – they put your ad into a place where people will see it. Again, it’s too late at that point. People will click your ad and 3 or 4 others and compare you all. You are now paying a premium for the pleasure of being a commodity.

No wonder so many doctors are coming to us saying that Adwords didn’t make much of a difference to them (except empty their pockets).

Here’s what we need to do instead. If you want to stand out, you need to do things differently for the hordes.

Not with prettier photos or more information on your website. That’s just more of the same.

What if instead we captured them before they got to Google?

So that if they ever went there, they’re looking for you by name…

What if we got them looking at your information before they realised that’s what they needed. So that when they do realise, you are the go-to person because you helped them make the breakthrough.

What if we did it in a way that was visible where they spend a lot of time (so you get better ROI) and in a way that stopped them in their tracks (so that everything else in the market is drowned out) and in a way that shows them that you are the person who implicitly understands them and can help them?

This is how to get more of the right patients to see you are the price you want to charge.

If you want to know how this works and how it applies to you, then click below to speak to our team.

Click here.

Please follow and like us: