May 2015 Ceatus Chronicles: Ceatus CEO Dr. David Evans provides the remedy to practice’s Internet strategy blues

The CEO of Ceatus Media Group, Dr. David Evans, pens a popular monthly column for Plastic Surgery Practice magazine which addresses a variety of Internet marketing topics that are important to premier elective healthcare practices. He often receives letters from his readers requesting advice about challenges they are facing. These challenges have ranged from issues with SEO and PPC to content development, Google penalties, reviews management and more.

It is from Ceatus clients that the inspiration for Dr. Evans’ Plastic Surgery Practice articles originates. Because Ceatus specializes in helping premier elective healthcare practices reach more prospective patients online, Dr Evans has, over many years, helped clients successfully overcome a variety of difficult challenges and achieve increased patient volume and revenue. Real experience with real successes allows Dr. Evans to articulate the details of effective strategies and share this information with PSP readers.

Below is an interesting letter he received from one of his readers, posing multiple questions about her Internet strategy, what she should be paying as well as what her marketing company should be doing to achieve success. Also included is Dr Evans’ detailed response.

We hope you will find it informative.

Dr. Evans can be reached at dwevans@ceatus.com.

Dear Dr. Evans,

I have read your columns in PSP for years, and your advice has been very helpful to our practice.
We recently redesigned our website and changed its domain. The website is about to launch, and the designer wants to charge us a monthly fee of more than $2,500 for a package that includes the following:

• Submission of site to 10 directories
• Writing and distributing articles
• Analysis of competitors
• Monthly marketing reports
• Answering RealSelf questions
• Social media posts (Facebook, Twitter, Google+) – Maybe
• 12 social posts for all channels – Maybe

In your articles you have stated that it takes Google nine months to a year to index a new website domain. Also, we find that many of the patients on RealSelf post questions unrelated to our practice, which doesn’t help bring patients to our practice. With this in mind, I have several questions:

• Are the website designer’s recommendations a waste of money?
• What is the right marketing approach for a new website/domain name?
• What would you suggest to enhance our new website and marketing strategy?
• How much should a marketing company charge per month, and what should be included?
• Are Google ads and pay-per-click a waste of money?
• How do I check to see if our new website domain is being held up in Google’s “sandbox”?
• Where can I find a list of pay-for-play directories to which I can submit our new domain?

Dear Ms. Y,

Thank you for your letter. I have a few questions for you.

Why are you changing the domain name?

Was your previous site penalized?

Will you forward the previous domain to the new domain?

If the old domain is being forwarded to the new domain (assuming it is done properly), then the new domain should be out of Google’s sandbox in no time. It should not take nine months to get traction. However, if the old domain will not be forwarded to the new domain, then nine months to a year is realistic.

As far as the action items you listed, only one or two have any value related to your website. Your marketing company’s primary actions should be building links and citations for the new site. But unfortunately, these actions do not appear to be part of their strategy as they are not included in their list of action items. In addition, some of the proposed actions are actually quite outdated, such as article distribution and submitting to 10 directories. These actions don’t help anymore, and they could cause your site to be penalized. I don’t really understand the difference between the last two action items, and I can’t help but wonder if your company doesn’t either.

In any case, $2,500/month seems high to me if there is no work being done on citations and links.
As for the questions you answer on RealSelf, it would be wise for you to set up a Q & A on your own site to answer those questions. This will build content and rankings for your site with very little effort as you are already answering these questions anyway.

PPC advertising can be very effective if implemented properly. I would suggest a minimum budget of $2,000-$2,500 per month for a mid-sized metropolitan market.

A monthly fee of $2,500 for an area like yours is a reasonable amount if the strategy includes the following:

• Building citations and links for your domain
• Regular analysis and updates to the site to enhance SEO
• Monitoring of important citation sites to ensure info is accurate, with no duplication
• Daily social media posts on FB, Google+ and Twitter
• At least one blog post per month, to build content on your site
• Comprehensive monthly reporting
• Tracking and storing all leads to the website, for future reference, if needed
• Regular back-ups to your website in a secure location
• Routine changes to your website, such as adding a few gallery photos each month, or a new page about a procedure with content provided by you (More extensive changes would cost more, and probably not be included in the regular monthly fee.)
• 24/7 availability – at no extra cost – of a knowledgeable marketing consultant who can answer your questions and give advice when needed
• And most importantly, a strategy to help with your reviews. (FYI, we now offer a Practice Reviews Manager as a standard part of our package, which monitors reviews and helps with solicitation of reviews.)

If you want additional PPC ads, then a 15% management fee is reasonable. That is pretty much industry standard.

I hope this information helps.

Best regards,

David Evans

CEO Ceatus Media Group