Help, I'm Drowning in Spam

The problem of spam continues to be a pain in my clients' collective sides. While it's actually impossible to prevent you receiving spam altogether without accidentally blocking good emails, there are a few things that you can do to reduce the amount of spam that you receive.

1. Use contact forms on your website instead of displaying your email address. Spammers have computer programs that scour websites for the '@' symbol, harvesting large lists of email addresses to later bombard with spam. By hiding your email address behind a contact form, you can avoid this extremely common source of spam.

2. Add form validators to your contact forms. By adding some checks and balances to your contact forms, you can prevent lots of spam abuse. The level of protection is somewhat subjective because the more complex the checking is, the more likely you are to prevent legitimate emails from coming through, but a happy medium is usually the best option.

3. Avoid Info@ and other stereotypical email names. Almost every company has an “info@companyname.com” email address, and spammers know it. They tap into databases of website domain names and send emails out to all sorts of stock email addresses, a favorite of which is "info@". If you have an info@ email address, change your email address to something a little more unique, and you'll find you receive much less spam. Changing your email address can be a bit of a short-term pain, but it does offer a reprieve in unwanted email.

If you're a Page 1 Solutions client, our mail hosting also offers custom spam filtration controls. Call us if you'd like to discuss any possible solutions to your spam problems. We're always glad to help.

Jonathan Fashbaugh
Account Manager
Page 1 Solutions

Keeping the Visitors in Mind

Search Engine Optimization is usually focused on trying to figure what the Search Engines are looking for and how to catch up and get the better of the competitors’ websites.

It is equally important however to keep in mind that it is the visitors to your LASIK website who are the ultimate decision makers for the site’s popularity and are hence the single most important aspect of a website.

Visitors are those people who you attempt to attract to your site and they are the ones who will essentially make your website and hence your business successful. Hence, it is very important that the site be "user-friendly" and have the ability to attract a visitor to contact the practice or to commit to that full smile makeover.

Today’s search engines are changing the way they rank sites and are not only promoting natural web pages, with good content and natural links but are also looking into tracking a user's browsing pattern in order to rank search results. A site that is bookmarked and visited frequently will almost always rank higher. So make your LASIK website interesting and update it often to encourage prospective patients to bookmark it and come back frequently.

Ultimately, the focus comes back to emphasizing visitor optimization and content optimization, creating a unique experience for the visitor and holding their attention by providing information in a simple, attractive and fun way.

Debby D'silva
SEO Specialist
Page 1 Solutions

Blog Fodder is Everywhere

Some of my clients who have rightly decided to add a blog to their LASIK websites find that creating a blog post entry once per week is a bit more challenging than they thought it might be. They see the value in doing it, but posting to their blog ends up at the bottom of a lengthy to-do list.

First of all, I recommend that you bump it up toward the top of your to-do list. Blogging is a really fast and easy way to promote your website, so give it the attention that it deserves. After all, if it brings more clients in the door, isn't it a worthwhile investment?

Next, eliminate every excuse - including, "I don't know what to write about." Writing topics are everywhere. Did you notice someone at dinner with fumbling with their glasses or contact lenses? Blog about it. Be mindful of possible blog ideas when you watch the news. You can also quickly browse some of the news websites out there such as CNN.com, Google News, and your local newspaper's website. These sources frequently feature stories that you can use to create blog posts. Simply mention the news item, possibly including a synopsis of the story, and offer your opinion as an LASIK surgeon. If you found the story online, you can link to the page where you found it. It's also helpful to link to any relevant pages of your site. So, when commenting on the latest Bausch and Lomb recall, you could link to a specific page in your website.

You can also blog about the things going on in your community and about office activities. Blog about the office holiday party, a birthday, a retirement; anything's fair game. These kinds of posts show visitors to your site that you're human and that you care about what goes on at your office enough to post it on your site. This illustrates caring and dedication.

Remember, your blog entries don't need to be long, although more content does provide more for the search engines to spider. The important thing is that you blog often: at least once per week.

Jonathan Fashbaugh
Page 1 Solutions

Website Marketing for Ophthalmologists

With so many LASIK practices today focused on getting business from the web, actually generating leads and converting them into new patients is getting harder and harder. Our blog will focus on all the things you need to do to turn your practice’s website into a patient generating machine. Each post will focus on a different aspect of website marketing and will try to flesh it out for you in easy to understand terms.

The subjects covered will include:

- Writing your practice’s website
- Designing your practice’s web site
- Programming your practice’s website so it performs on the search engines
- Optimizing your website for the search engines
- Registering your web site on the directories and search engines
- Developing a link optimization strategy
- Tracking your search engine results
- Converting visitors into prospective clients
- Converting email leads into clients
- And much more.

Please feel free to submit questions about your practice’s website. We'll be happy to address them.

Dan Goldstein
Page 1 Solutions

Page 1 for our Clients

We call ourselves Page 1 Solutions for a good reason - we get our clients to Page 1 of the search engines or they don't pay us for website marketing. It is that simple. And we have a great track record of success. Below we list just a few of our clients along with their their results when you do a search for "lasik (client's market)" on Google:

Carter Eye Center - LASIK Dallas - Google Results - Page 1, #1
Wang Vision Institute - LASIK Nashville - Google Results - Page 1, #1 and #2
20-20 Institute - LASIK Denver - Google Results - Page 1, #2
Levinson Eye Clinic - LASIK Denver - Google Results - Page 1, #6
Cherry Creek Eye - LASIK Denver - Google Results - Page 1, #10 (new client)
Howerton Eye Center - LASIK Austin - Google Results - Page 1, #5
Khanna Institute of LASIK - LASIK Los Angeles - Google Results - Page 1, #3
Siepser Laser Eyecare - LASIK Philadelphia - Google Results, Page 1, #3

There are lots more, but this should give you the idea. If you want to be on page 1 of Google for LASIK in your market, visit the Page 1 Solutions website, call us or send us an email.

Welcome to our blog!

Welcome to the Page 1 Solutions and VISX Lasik Web Marketing blog. Be sure to check back soon for helpful web marketing tips and articles for your opthamology pratice!