For SEO companies, there must be a full moon out this week. Each day, I have had a client forward me a solicitation from another SEO company... form emails with the client’s name pasted in... promises that no one can possibly fulfill... guarantees of placement. All of it designed to prey on their insecurity about Search Engine Optimization....

Efficiency is the fastest way to improve your bottom line. It is also the hardest thing to achieve in marketing.  Impossible?  No. Difficult? Not really. I have my theories as to the psychology of why people choose to avoid the simple steps of efficiency... but that’s a different conversation entirely.

Efficiency in marketing can be...

One of the great aspects of using our tracking technologies is how accurately it tells our clients exactly how people are using and responding to their marketing efforts. Over the past year, we have watched the more forward-thinking practices ride the wave of mobile traffic. The practices that are out in front are now gathering the following data...

There is opinion... both spoken and written on the Internet. When we talk about word of mouth, reviews or testimonials, we are not just talking about the words and phrasing, we are really talking about trust.

And, research on the effect of trust being transferred to what we read on the Internet is almost unbelievable. Check out this article on a...

As I mentioned a few weeks ago in my blog, User Generated content has changed how we evaluate information on the Internet.  This was the basis for my lecture to a room full of cosmetic surgeons in Tulsa, OK a few weeks ago.  And, the response was extreme.  Everyone immediately understood the impact of reviews and comments by...

This comic strip sums up most people’s frustrations with Search Engine Optimization.  As a business owner, you probably don’t have time to learn all the hows and whys that affect optimizing web sites.  So, SEO companies talk in broad concepts, which leads to the perception of vague and mysterious actions.  This is also...

On the topic of content-managed web sites, one of the most common changes clients want to make is adjusting monthly or time-sensitive specials.  The concept of the Internet-only special or “Check our web site for special deals” is fairly common.  However, if you don‘t run specials the right way you run a big risk of...

Over the weekend, I gave a marketing presentation at the AACS CME course in Tulsa hosted by Drs. Angelo Cuzalina and James Koehler.  It is always great to see my friends in Tulsa but this time there was an added jolt.  My presentation was on the impact of the social media experience on the use of the Internet and I called it Digital...

Dog Star Media builds custom designed, content managed web sites.  Many people do not understand what content managed means.  This term means that once the site has been designed, anyone can use a general interface to make additions and deletions to the site.  Most commonly, this means clients can add or change some photos and basic...

One of the more interesting features of our new Mission Control web site design is the In-Site Advertising feature.  This is a feature which allows you to specifically program areas in your web site to display advertising graphics as part of the overall page design.  Think of these like little programmable billboards through out the site...

Periodically, we like to update our standards of production for web strategies at Dog Star Media.  Today, I’m beginning a series of blogs about web site design and function and how we will now be offering a new Advanced Feature Web Site, Mission Control at Dog Star Media.

With a Mission Control web site, you easily can manage and...

There is certain overhead that goes with having a business.  Depending on what you do, the overhead is different.  However, one universal cost of doing business is a necessary effort to be visible on the Internet.  If you don’t do something to make your web site relevant to search engines, then you will not show up in...

Clearly online reviews have been the hot topic in Internet marketing this year and one of the biggest questions I have is how do I get an early warning on any negative reviews I might receive.  The answer is simple, go to Google.com/alerts and set up Google Alerts for your name and practice name.  Any time something is posted on those...

An interesting conversation boiled up in our offices this week.  It’s the age-old question of how many calls a cosmetic practice should get in proportion to how many visits their web site gets over a given period of time.  It is one of the hardest statistics to nail down for many reasons.  Chief among them is that there is no...

It happened last month.  Our first client crossed over into the 40+ percentile for mobile traffic.  And, this is a client with nearly 1000 visitors per month.   Several others are passing the 25% mark with several lodged firmly in the 30+% range.  Suddenly, the mobile game has changed from simply measuring whether or not...

I think we can all agree that online reviews influence others.  We are seeing more and more emphasis by consumers on what we call “user generated content” online.  User generated content is opinion, observations and reviews... in other words what the public has to say.  Review sites have become the lightning rods for...

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the most misunderstood elements of a online marketing.  There are several elements and best practices related to SEO and, in my experience, the biggest obstacle to successful SEO is communication. 

As SEO can’t be fully explained in a blog of any reasonable length, here is one point that is...

Yesterday, I was in a meeting where this topic came up.  It is one of the most common questions in marketing and it has a lot of answers. There are two ways of looking at it, aesthetically and technically.  Technically is the easier of the two ways because you are dealing with factual data.  Looking at your Google Analyltics and, if...

One of the unexpected side effects of our new Online Review Manager program is that it has resulted in our clients actually gathering more positive reviews.  Why is this?  Because, with new incentive to gather reviews, our clients have made it a priority to ask for more reviews and made it easier for people to give them. Previously, any...

I have been talking a lot about online reviews lately because, due to the influence of social media, they are everywhere and take many forms.  Reviews are part of the explosion of “user generated content” and we are way past the tipping point of this sort of content being acceptable.  So, we seek it out and tend to give it...

There is a saying about the basics of Public Relations.  It goes like this: You can fight fact with fact but you cannot fight opinion with opinion.    If there is a bag of apples that weighs one pound, anyone saying it weighs two pound would be wrong on a point of fact.   However, if someone says their experience with...

Remember when you became aware that you should be marketing yourself on the web?   Hopefully someone told you an truth about advertising and marketing: That first impressions are almost everything.   The old Head & Shoulders ad said it best, “You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression.”

If you...

It was not too long ago that doctors and dentists did not put any time, effort or resources into marketing.   In fact, I clearly remember many doctors telling me that they strictly relied on word of mouth for new patients... but that was before the Internet Age.

You can still get business from word of mouth but, in nearly all cases, that...

The emphasis on today’s Internet is on what is called User Generated Content.  In other words, your opinion and the opinions of others.  Social media is all about user generated content and so are review sites.  On a review site, users give their opinions on products and services.   Those opinions are supposed to be...

Being highly technical, there are numerous technical ways to report and measure.  Nearly every kind of metric is confusing and usually too technical for business owners, especially busy doctors.   That is why we frame our reporting in the Dog Star Media SEO program.   In our program you get the stats you care about first:...