10 Best Techniques for Generating Website Leads – Addiction Treatment Centers Using SEO on WordPress Websites
There are a lot of ways to “skin a cat” so to speak. I have seen SEO guys use one or some of all of the things suggested in the article below. There are two keys to success in our opinion: 1) do it right, do it technically right, 2) do it often, as often as possible. From a technical standpoint all the information is here on the internet and Youtube. From a doing it often standpoint we all have to make the time even when we don’t have it available.
Start Your Keyword Research
While it would be nice for all of us to rank # 1 for addiction treatment center it really is not likely or probable that that will happen. Ranking for root keywords like addiction treatment and drug rehab is smart however we want to modify these keywords with geo modifiers like addiction treatment center in Wilmington, NC. This would be considered more of a long tail keyword and has a much more likelihood of getting a qualifying phone call then addiction treatment center. Addiction treatment center couples therapy is another example for a long tail keyword. Creating content around these keywords will produce much higher quality inquiries than just trying to rank for a root keyword.
Create High Quality Content
Creating high quality and relevant content is much easier said than done. If you use a writer whose first language is not English and you are targeting an English-speaking market that is mistake #1. Many addiction treatment centers hire marketing agencies or professional writers to produce their website content. While this is a good practice it is even better to have your clinical team review and edit their content. You want to make sure that the content you create really speaks for your treatment center. To take it one step further we recommend that the content you write has enough value that other people want to share it. Creating informational type posts tend to attract linking.
Optimizing Website Structure
There are several different types of Website structures however in most cases in addiction treatment center lead generating websites will be using the hierarchical website structure model. It is easy to understand and is most commonly used. It uses a home page and then main category pages like Types of Treatment, Services, Locations, Alumni. Internal linking from category pages to child and subpages for example: Detox, Residential Treatment, PHP, IOP etc. is also an important part of website structure.
Building Hi Quality Backlinks
When Sergey Brin and Larry Page were at Stanford Google was just an idea and they came up with the premise for their search engine PageRank was backlinks. PageRank was given by counting the number of and the quality of backlinks and citations from incoming websites. The more incoming linked pages, the higher quality the linked pages the higher the ranking could go for the search results pages. This simple concept is still of high value today. If you are an addiction treatment center then you want to be speaking at colleges and universities and hospitals and asking for backlinks to those speaking engagements. Having incoming links from .edu’s and other authority websites like hospitals and newspapers does nothing but make your website rank higher in the search results pages.
Use Social Media for Distribution & Branding
With social media you can have some serious leverage. Platforms like Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit, SnapChat and many more have some serious time on site as far as the internet goes. If you publish a great blog post then go ahead and share it with your followers and ask them to share it as well. You can leverage keywords as well. Don’t only push the links back to your home page push them back to the specific page about the topic you are writing about, i.e. relapse prevention. As far as branding goes we find that using groups in social media is a really great way to target your audiences. Just make sure you follow the group rules and down spam the users.
Local SEO is Super Powerful
We have all heard of GMB or Google My Business. Make sure you have a GMB page and it is updated regularly. Most of the best addiction treatment centers calls come from local audiences. Getting local PR or local press can sometimes get you national coverage. Some of your best phone calls will come from GMB.
Using Schema Markup Language
This can get a little technical but you have to make your website more readable to the search engines. Having a technical team that knows what they are doing and have built a lot of drug rehab websites is money extremely well spent. The closest thing to layman’s terms for Schema is here at the Search Engine Journal. The other way to go is hire a drug rehab website developer who can manage a lot of the schema for you.
Drug Rehabs Must Be Mobile Ready
If you website is not “mobile ready” you are going to miss admissions calls. In our experience 50% of the incoming calls to a drug rehab website are from the local area. What Google cares about is Mobile Website Speed, your website must load quickly on a mobile device. Your website also has to be easily read on a cell phone or a tablet. If it does not load quickly Google will push you down in the mobile search results. If you need help with improving your mobile speed then call a white glove drug rehab website developer like Magna Technology.
Use Internal Linking
Using internal linking within your website is helpful is boosting your on page keywords. For example if you want to rank for the keyword phrase drug rehab for sale then you want to link internally to your page that says drug rehab for sale. Using internal linking is just one of many techniques to help your keywords rank higher in the Google search results.
Using Analytics is Critical
The old adage, “you can’t manage what you don’t measure” holds true here. The basic Google Analytics package is good enough for most of us. Setting up goals in analytics is extremely helpful. There are hundreds of things you can measure in Google Analytics. Things that we pay special attention to are the following: acquisitions, time on site, number of pages, goals completed, geography, keywords to name a few. However, since all of us are generating leads online which includes phone calls and web forms we want to track those as well. The best place to do this is using Call Tracking Metrics. CTM has a really simple user interface and your website guy needs to be proficient in doing dynamic keyword insertion.
Conclusion
SEO is a term that is used in many ways and different for many people. However, at the end if the day we must all be consistent in order to rank well with the search engines. The bottom line is consistency. Do more of it and do it better when it comes to content creation, technical skills, link building, branding, public relations, event marketing, networking etc. When we do this we will generate more leads, more phone calls and be able to help more people with a strong digital strategy. From a budgetary standpoint we recommend new treatment centers put in 20% for marketing based on what their run rate is going to be. If your top line revenue for the month is going to be $100K then you need to spend $20K per month on marketing. If you don’t have 20%, do at least 10%. If you can’t do 10% you are wasting your time in the addiction treatment space.
