Values That Drive The Decision To Get LASIK

According to a recent report from Iconoculture and AMO, these are the values that drive people in deciding to get LASIK:

Entitlement: They feel like they deserve LASIK.

Confidence, Vanity, Self-Esteem: Patients feel that they'll feel better and look better/younger when they get LASIK.

Responsibility: Patients with kids feel that it's their responsibility to improve their kids' vision.

Practicality: Simplifying their routines by getting rid of glasses and contacts saves patients time.

Aspiration: Patients have an ideal in their mind of how they want to look and feel. They want their lives to be as perfect as possible. LASIK = Perfect Vision = Success.

Control: Why not fix their vision if it's possible?

You can improve your website's conversion rate by making sure that your website touches on these motivations. This is especially important in content development for LASIK website marketing.

Google's Page Rank

Those of you who are actively promoting your practice’s LASIK website on the web are probably aware of your Page Rank. If you have downloaded the Google Tool Bar, you can see the Page Rank of every website you visit. Page Rank (or PR) is Google's way of telling you its perception of the relative value of a given website on a scale of 0 - 10. The more websites (especially more credible websites in related fields) that link back to your site, the more likely you will have a higher PR. Keep in mind, however, that PR is only just an estimation of the relative value of your site. Don't live or die by it.

Typically, sites with higher PR values rank higher on searches on Google, Yahoo and MSN. While this is not always the case, it tends to be true. It is especially true with very competitive search phrases.

New sites typically start at 0 and gradually increase their PR over time. It is very unusual to see a PR of 10. Naturally, Google has a PR of 10. Few other sites ever get that high. Many good sites have PRs of 4-5 and in some cases even lower.

Over the last week or so, you may have noticed that Google updated your PR. If yours went up, keep doing what you are doing. If yours went down, don't panic. Just keep trying to add relevant content and encourage more related sites to link back to your website. There is no shortcut here. You have to keep working it.

If you're struggling with your PR, let us know, we can help.

Dan Goldstein
Page 1 Solutions

Mini Contact Forms Can Yield Major Results

Who has the time or wants to give a lot of personal information through a long and tedious contact form? Not many people do. The solution? A mini-contact form!

By creating a call to action that appears on almost every page of a LASIK website, it is appealing even to the most cautious consumer and can even be extremely professional.

There are several styles or layouts one can choose for a mini-contact form, but they all have the same idea in mind. *Get the potential client to contact your LASIK practice by providing a haven for them wherein they only have to provide the most basic information possible.

This information includes:

*Name
*Phone Number
*Email Address
* Comments section

This is a great, non-threatening approach to justifying why they should submit an inquiry. Plus, by making the Name, Phone Number and Email Address fields required, all the information a practice needs to contact the person is right there.

For example, check out: the Khanna Institute of LASIK. You don’t even have to scroll down the page any. It is just right there, in plain sight. This is a wonderful example of how a practice can use a mini-contact form to draw in patients as a call to action. This contact form is even spruced up with Michele’s picture. They want people to know that they can “ask Michele a question NOW.”

Mini-contact forms can be a great asset to any practice’s website. Page 1 Solutions will help answer any questions you have about the functionality or easy installation of a mini-contact form. In essence, by providing an alternative contact means for the consumer and customizing it to fit the practice’s needs, successful leads through the web are bound to increase.

Noël Otten
Account Manager
Page 1 Solutions

Link Building

The major search engines today rely on incoming links as a major part of their algorithms in determining the credibility and ranking of websites in the free search results. Accordingly, it is essential for you to develop as many incoming links as possible. Following are a few things you should do:

• Make sure all of your listings with professional societies include a link to your website.
  
  
• The same applies to all other organizations to which you belong - make sure they list your website and link to it when listing you as a member.
  
  
• Try to get an acknowledgement on the websites of the charities that you contribute to. Each charity should acknowledge your contribution and if they have a website, ask them to acknowledge your contribution and link to it.
  
  
• There are hundreds of directories on the Internet. You should try to get your website listed in as many of them as possible. Many directories are general directories with many categories of website listings. Your website might be able to be listed in the LASIK surgeon area or in the section for your city or state. There are also some directories out there that offer free listings. Make sure you are listed in these. Again, each listing should link back to your website.
  
  
• Another suggestion is reciprocal linking. This can be taken to an extreme, but a basic approach would be to exchange links with your friends – surgeons or doctors in other areas - and vendors or colleagues in your own community.

Some listings are better than others. However, with the exception of link farms, it is almost always a good idea to try to get as many links to your website as possible.

If you need help with link building, you should call a website marketing firm that specializes in LASIK websites - Page 1 Solutions fits the bill.

Dan Goldstein
Page 1 Solutions

Google vs. Yahoo

If your practice wants to generate LASIK patients through the search engines, which search engine is the best? The answer is you need to do well on both Google and Yahoo to be successful with your practice’s internet marketing. In fact, you shouldn't stop with Google and Yahoo. MSN is a strong third choice and there are many other second and third tier search engines that also generate a lot of searches - and hence a lot of search results for LASIK surgeons who have a strong presence on them. The second and third tier search engines include AltaVista, AOL, Ask, A9, Lycos, HotBot, and more.

Now, getting back to Google and Yahoo. The consensus is that Google is more important, but it is close. The numbers vary depending on who you ask. I have seen numbers in the range of Google generating about 39% of the searches while Yahoo generates about 31%. That is probably close, but your guess is as good as mine. MSN comes in around 12%.

The latest battle seems to be about how big their indexes are. Yahoo just recently claimed an index database of over 19 Billion webpages, plus images, music, etc. Google, by comparison claims its indexed database is about 8 Billion webpages plus images, etc. Who really cares? There aren't that many ophthalmologists or LASIK practices in your market. The question is - are you indexed and how do you rank on both of these important search engines - to say nothing about MSN and the second tier search engines I mentioned above.

Dan Goldstein
Page 1 Solutions

Web Marketing in a Down Economy

Many LASIK practices make the mistake of pulling back on their marketing budgets when the economy turns sour. Especially where web marketing is concerned, a down economy is precisely the time to increase your spending. You have to fight harder for the leads on the web because there are fewer of them. You will still turn a profit - again, especially where web marketing is concerned, because you will see patients as a result.

Web marketing is so crucial in these hard economic times because it is pound-for-pound the most cost effective marketing medium there is. Try launching a television campaign for $20K. Even when you consider the monthly investment for search engine marketing, the web is cheaper by folds.

Be aggressive in your web marketing. Now is the prime opportunity to pass up your competitors that stop marketing because of the slow-down. When others slow-down - you should speed up.

Jonathan Fashbaugh
Jonathan's Web Marketing Blog
Page 1 Solutions

Search Engine Optimization is the Foundation

Search engine optimization is the foundation for a successful web marketing strategy. Some ophthalmologists make the mistake of thinking that if they're doing search engine marketing, then they should be raking in patients from the Internet by the bunches. This can be true for some surgeons, depending on their market, the competition and the website itself, but more often than not, search engine optimization is a platform from which a complete web marketing strategy will build.

So, if search engine marketing is a foundation, how do we know when and what to build? Ultimately, you'll need a search engine marketing company that specializes in the LASIK industry to help you, but it's important that you understand the basics.

Search engine positioning will make sure that search engines find your website.

Optimization (frequently used synonymously with search engine positioning) clarifies the subject matter of the website for the search engines. Websites have certain cues built into their guts that optimization can play upon to send the clear message, "This is what I'm about. If you're looking for a top notch LASIK surgeon, then this is the right place!"
Search engines judge sites by more than their first impression. They judge sites according to a multitude of criteria (this is why you should hire professional search engine marketers). To name a few:

1. Optimization
2. Depth of Content
3. Freshness of Content
4. Link Popularity

Of all of these, I would say that most LASIK surgeons’ websites lack link popularity the most. Just go to Google and type in LASIK surgeon and then your state. It's highly likely that of all the listings returned by Google, the vast majority of the first page listings are ophthalmology directories. Why? Because they have an incredible number of incoming links, and their sites are typically massive.

In order to compete with directories on the search engines, you need to begin accruing incoming links to your site. When you start doing this, you'll notice that your results will begin to raise. This is because search engines view incoming links as votes for your site. If someone else is linking to you, then that must mean you have something good to offer.

Depth of content is actually very simple. Just write quality, informative content. Organize the content well, and keep it coming. Remember, a website is NEVER complete.
You can make sure that your website has fresh content by manually adding new sections and pages, or you can make it easy on yourself. Once you have the core of the site (a page focusing on nearly every key area of your practice), add a blog like this one. When search engines find that your site is updated three or four times per week, they begin to list your website as a search engine result more readily as a source of up-to-date information for a given subject.

When your web marketing addresses all of these criteria, you'll find that your site appears more frequently and consistently on the search engines, but bear in mind, search engine optimization is a foundation. Without it, a search engine marketing effort will falter, but a search engine marketing strategy consisting solely of SEO is just doomed.

Always glad to help,

Jonathan Fashbaugh
Page 1 Solutions