Archive for March, 2009

Cosmetic Surgeons Turn to the Web and Online Marketing more in Economic Downturn

The New York Times “Skin Deep” recently reported a discovery that has piqued the interest of quite a few consumers who were on the fence about pursuing a cosmetic procedure. Recently, in order to compete during a deep economic downswing, many dermatologists, plastic surgeons, and cosmetic surgery offices are increasing, or trying to maintain their current patient numbers, by offering broad discount rates on all kinds of procedures.

These broad discounts are a direct result of the amount of individuals looking for a cosmetic procedure declining sharply along with the fall in the economy. Those who are still seeking a cosmetic procedure are using due diligence and basing their decision more on quality and recognition than overall cost. This has meant that plastic surgeons have had to come up with new ways of selling themselves and their individual services. This has led to a tremendous movement to dig deep into the marketing of the surgeons’ persona as much as the actual surgical background and experience. Online branding of surgeons has started to become the staple of plastic surgery marketing during this economic downturn. Surgeons who once relied heavily on magazine ads, local newspaper, and word of mouth are now researching the web as an actual tool to find and validate new potential patients. While many have websites, or more to the point, html pages online, most never fully utilized or even realized the potential of the web. Now with over 70% of all medical patients searching online first for medical professionals, from family doctors to plastic surgeons, it is now more important for surgeons to maximize their online presence.

The first place that many plastic surgeons are starting to turn to online is to pay per click (PPC) advertising on Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Sometimes they even turn to PPC management companies who, at a cost plus a percentage of the budget, will help them create a budget and even setup the campaigns. The potential conflict here becomes obvious very quickly. On average, the cost per each and every click to a surgeon’s site from the average Google adwords campaign for a plastic surgeon is between $4.00 – $20.00. In an average size metro area that is a moderate monthly spend of around $16,000 – $80,000 PER MONTH. The cost can be considerably higher with more keywords pursued in any one area. For example “Los Angeles Plastic Surgery” is a single keyword with over 4,400 searches per month. There are literally hundreds of other keywords for the Los Angeles keyword base. The price for that one particular keyword is currently just over $21. While this may be cost effective for well known surgeons who are already converting through alternative branding, it can quickly bankrupt new or emerging cosmetic talent.

This leads to a solution that surgeons are starting to more readily grasp, organic search engine optimization. “By seeking out those who are seeking you, you simply change what has become a depression to some, into a golden opportunity for you” Says Todd Williams of plastic Surgery Website Design, a marketing and design company that works exclusively for plastic and cosmetic surgeons. “The first thing that we do with any new client is to analyze their current web presence. What is their bounce rate, what is their conversion rate, what kinds of search engine traffic are they currently getting, etc… Core questions that tell us where to begin,” he says. “Most of the time we can increase conversions by simply changing their design to something more aesthetically pleasing to the consumer” pointing out the fact that many of the older plastic surgery websites online today are old flash driven templates that tend to carry higher bounce rates and lower conversion rates. “It’s at that point we can start building out their organic search engine saturation and they really start to see just how many people are still actively searching for a cosmetic procedure”.

Some plastic surgeons are really taking the initiative discussed here and going to the next level by integrating social media such as twitter, facebook, myspace, and their own plastic surgery blogs where they communicate with potential patients in an individual capacity.

One thing is certain, micro targeting online is no longer “something extra”. It is now a requirement and a necessity for any surgeon looking to not only make it through this recession, but also continue to grow and thrive.

Distribute Press Release for Instant Traffic

Press releases can be one of the most effective ways to drive traffic on the Internet. There are many advantages when you issue a press release about your organization.

1) Instant traffic.

Almost immediately, you will be able to get tens of thousands of page views for your news story. Given the comprehensive coverage, it’s only a matter of time before some one picks up on your story and make contact. That is when doors are opened and more business opportunities present themselves at your door step. And to think that all you did was to release a story.

2) Instant brand recognition.

Press release distribution services can get your story submitted to many well established news wire. That means your story will appear in many well respected websites. You are building a brand for yourself, whether you know it or not. That way, reputable companies may contact you to enquire more about the products and services that you offer. And these are the customers that you want to attract and keep, for they are the likely to be the ones with the resources to pay you higher prices for your quality work.

3) Published by other websites.

Usually, your release will be sent out to thousands of opt-in journalists. This gives you a chance of having your story picked up and published in other online or maybe even offline channels. These are channels that you may not have heard off. In other words, your press release can give you far better reach than you could possibly imagine.

4) Other unplanned traffic sources.

Content is usually syndicated to major news aggregators such as Google News, EIN News, Topix, etc. There are literally hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of sites that may end up carrying your news story. You never planned for your news article to appear on these sites, but they get published anyway. In the process, you get traffic from these unexpected sources.

5) Mid to long term traffic.

The traffic may taper off after the first two to three weeks. This is because your press release is giving way to other fresher (upcoming) stories. If you want your target audience to remember you, try to release at least one or two stories per month. That way, your target market will always be hearing from you.

But even if you do not publish additional press releases, you will still receive traffic in the mid to long term. What happens is that the major search engines will start indexing your news stories and treat them as fresh and unique content. When someone makes a search for relevant information, your press release may still surface in the search results. This is not uncommon because many news sites are considered to be authority sites by the search engines. Therefore, the content tends to rank very well in the search results. You want to be sure that when a potential customer makes a search for a product or service that you are offering, your press release is the one that comes up. You don’t want your competitor’s story to be overshadowing you.

Get instant traffic and maximum exposure – press release distribution service. Distribute your PR to high Page Rank authoritative sites (Over 300+ sites).

Distribute Press Release to Build Links

Many internet marketers complain that it is very hard to very their websites to rank well in the search engines. What they are saying is that they find it hard to build links. Link building should be the core activity in any search engine optimization process. You want to rank well? Simply build more inbound links.

Still, a huge portion of marketers fail to rank well in the search results after spending lots of time and maybe even money on link building. In this case, what is happening is that there is not enough link juice from the inbound links.

The term “link juice” is a loose term that is used by many internet marketers. It refers to the authority of a website. The higher the authority, the more link juice a link will have, and the more desirable the link. But what exactly are high authority websites?

Google has a way of letting the world know whether a website is an authority site or not. The indicator is known as Page Rank. The higher the Page Rank, the more link juice the website can pass to external websites. For example, a link on a Page Rank 7 website is much more valuable than a link on a Page Rank 1 website.

For the other search engines, there is really no way of knowing whether a website is an authority site or not. In this case, the only way to know is to make smart guesses. If you see a website ranks well consistently in the search engines, it is likely a high authority site. What you want to do, is to think of ways to get these sites to link to you. Unfortunately, that is easier said than done. How do you get a well established website like EIN News or CNET News to link to you?

One way to do so, is to publish press releases. You can write your news story yourself, or you can hire a professional PR writer to write your release for you. If you want to hire someone, make sure that he or she knows enough about your company and your products and services to do a decent job at writing the release. If possible, work with the same PR writer so that the writer learns more and more about your organization. Over time, you will observe a rise in the quality of the releases.

The next thing you need to do, is to identify a press release distribution service that will submit your news stories to these authority sites. Many of these News sites (at least according to Google) have high page rank. With a single PR, you can get hundreds of these sites to link to you.

Whenever possible, always try to include your target keyword phrases in your anchor texts. Not all news sites allow you to do this. If you can’t use anchor texts, simply use your URL in the PR body. This will be converted into active links and web visitors can still click through the link and arrive at your site.

Get instant traffic and maximum exposure – press release distribution service. Distribute your PR to high Page Rank authoritative sites (Over 300+ sites).

FastSubmitArticles.com to Offer Premium Article Distribution Service at $30

FastSubmitArticles.com is announcing the release of Premium Article Submission packages for individuals, small business owners, and corporate organizations. The service will help individuals and businesses to achieve higher rankings in the search engines. Companies who use the service will also receive traffic through the articles that they distribute.

In the beginning, FastSubmitArticles.com started out by offering article distribution services at an affordable rate of $6. For this fee, the Company distribute an article to over 300 well established article directories on the Internet. By utilizing the article distribution service, business owners can expect to receive traffic from links that are included in each article. For every article submitted, the author is allowed to include 2 to 3 links. When a visitor reads the article and find the content interesting, he can click on the links to find out more about the Company promoted in the author resource box.

In addition, the links will also help boost search engine rankings. Each link points to the official source of information. The search engines see this as some kind of “vote” for the official site, and learns to recognize the site as an authority site. This leads to higher rankings in the search results.

Many business owners welcome the new service because writing and submitting articles can be a very time consuming process. To write an article of professional quality will take an average of 15 minutes. The submission process takes even more time, depending on the total number of article directories involved. Due to the time consuming nature of article marketing, many business owners have decided to stay away from this traffic generation method.

With the release of the article distribution service, businesses can now outsource all their article marketing activities. With an additional $10, FastSubmitArticles.com will provide an article for the client. The client has the option to vet through, make an necessary edits, and approve the article before distribution commences. The turnaround time for distributing an article is about 3 to 4 business days.

Seeing the initial success of the service, many clients started to request for manual submission to several high page rank websites. To cater to this need, FastSubmitArticles.com has recently decide to release Premium Distribution Packages. All submissions done for premium sites are manual. If for some reason an article is rejected, FastSubmitArticles.com will work with the site editor to get the article approved.

However, problems are extremely rare. There are over 20 Premium sites (all with high page rank) included in the package. Due to the high quality content that is submitted on a daily basis, many of these Premium sites have granted FastSubmitArticles.com expert author status, which means that articles are approved instantly upon submission.

Darren Chow, the founder of the article distribution service, commented, “Since launching the premium packages, 80% of our clients are signing up for premium submissions. Although the normal distributions are much cheaper, most still see value in our Premium packages. Many business owners have seen a boost to their search engine rankings after signing up for Premium submissions.”

He then adds, “Article marketing has been a proven traffic generation method. Many marketers have achieved great success with it, and there is no reason why it wouldn’t continue to work well for others.”

To date, the Company has distributed thousands of articles on behalf of their clients. Their portfolio of clients include many successful Internet Marketers as well as well known organizations.