Complete Beginner’s Guide to Physical Therapy Search Marketing

As a private practice owner, physical therapy search marketing is a channel that you cannot afford to neglect. Search engines account for an enormous percentage of all online traffic. They are constantly directing traffic to one website or another and the search giants of today have held strong percentages of market share since their origin. Google, Bing and Yahoo are unlikely to disappear for a while so long as the Internet relies on search engines to be navigated.

This also applies when it comes to potential patients looking for information on physical therapy or searching for a nearby practice online. In just about all cases, they’re using a search engine to accomplish this task. This is why businesses like yours need to capitalize on physical therapy search marketing and use it to your full advantage, as it remains the dominant source of traffic for all businesses, including physical therapy facilities. Below, we offer some relevant keywords and search marketing opportunities that your practice can start taking advantage of right away.

Use the Google Keyword Planner

Google’s Keyword Planner can help you find relevant physical therapy search marketing keywords. Once found, you can begin targeting them with your search marketing campaigns.

To begin driving traffic to your website immediately, you can use Google AdWords, also known as a PPC ad campaign. PPC stands for “pay-per-click” and it implies that every time your ad is clicked, there is a fee. Although it’s a modest one, these fees can add up to quickly consume a several hundreds dollar search marketing budget. Many businesses in other niches spend thousands to tens-of-thousands of dollars per month on PPC campaigns.

PPC ads are featured at the top of Google and the Keyword Planner is a very important tool for PPC campaigns. When creating your ads you enter targeted keywords that your ads will be displayed for. To get you started, below is a collection of some of the most effective keywords that you should be using on your website. By simply adding the city name in which your facility is located somewhere in the phrase, you’ll have a complete list of targeted keyword phrases to begin creating profitable PPC ads with:

• physical therapy
• neck physical therapy
• back physical therapy
• arm physical therapy
• leg physical therapy
• foot physical therapy
• knee physical therapy
• hip physical therapy
• shoulder physical therapy
• physical therapy programs
• physical therapy association
• physical therapy clinics
• sports physical therapy
• physical therapy clinic
• pediatric physical therapy
• outpatient physical therapy
• doctor of physical therapy
• physical therapy services
• advanced physical therapy
• orthopedic physical therapy
• physical therapy offices
• performance physical therapy
• physical therapy rehabilitation
• professional physical therapy
• physical therapy program
• physical therapy treatments
• geriatric physical therapy
• physical therapy centers
• physical therapy center
• dynamic physical therapy
• hand physical therapy
• physical therapy locations

Google’s Keyword Planner provides a competition rating and suggested bid amount for each keyword that you intend to target. These metrics are very important. The higher the suggested bid and competition rating, the more that keyword will cost to target with your PPC campaign. Costs can add up quickly when targeting keywords that are highly competitive.

Search Engine Optimization

Just as you can pay to be at the top of search engines, you can also rank there naturally. Using the same keywords that you are targeting through PPC with Google Adwords, you can begin to optimize your website to naturally overtake your competitors and be a top contender for Google’s top 10 search results for a given keyword.

[pullquote1 align=”right” textColor=”#000000″]Search engine optimization (SEO) is relatively straightforward and revolves around one simple concept: content is king[/pullquote1] Search engine optimization (SEO) is relatively straightforward and revolves around one simple concept: content is king. Google has been telling webmasters this for years and while some listen, many have not.

What this means is that the content of your website dictates your results through SEO. When you produce valuable content that your audience and readers will benefit from, you will see more promising results. One way to do this is to utilize your website’s blog and integrate targeted keywords into insightful and knowledgeable blog posts. You can write content such as “how-to” guides, tutorials for physical therapy, suggestions, and home-based treatments for patients, to name a few. Always keep in mind that quality content is better than high quantities of content and that your readers are much more likely to share an article that is worth reading.

To optimize your content for search engines, insert your targeted keywords into the following as possible:

• Page Title
• Meta Description
• Meta Keywords
• Tags
• Categories
• H1 Heading
• H2 Heading
• H3 Heading
• Image ALT Text
• URL Structure
• Body of the Content

By following this basic structure, your content will be well optimized and ready for sharing. The more your content is shared, the more it will link back to your site, which will increase its search engine rankings. Remember to keep the content readable and not overuse the keywords. Your audience wants an article that flows well and doesn’t sound robotic.

Contact Us for Additional Physical Therapy Search Marketing Tips

[squeeze_box]If you still feel like you can use some help with your physical therapy search marketing, contact us at E-Rehab today. We can work together to establish a strategy that’s feasible for you, and soon enough, you’ll see as your website starts ascending in the search rankings.[/squeeze_box]