SEO Spotlight: Brett Borders – Denver SEO

Brett Borders professional SEO services is entering its second year. Brett has been working in the internet business since 1992. Brett has good advice within this interview regarding the best practices of marketing a dental or physicians practice online.

Hayden: How did you get into this business?

Brett: I have been into computers for a long time. I first went online in 1989 with Prodigy and BBS services, and I found my way onto the internet in 1992. I used it exhaustively for a hobby, but it never occurred to me that I should make a career out of it.

I was living in Oregon and working a crummy office job, when I started to talk to one of my friends about his work. He said he was a developer,
which I first thought was soaking rolls of 35 mm film in trays of chemicals and made photographic prints. We got to talking about online marketing and he told me statistics about how the spending on online advertising would be going through the roof by 2015. I felt my skin tingling with excitement. He thought that I would be talntexd at online marketing, and told me he consider hiring me, but I’d have to learn more about HTML and web technology first. I soon quit my job, enrolled in an internet marketing program at a state university. I got tremendously excited by SEO and online marketing, and I blazed right through the coursework. After graduating from the program, I worked for an SEO agency for 8 months. This January, I quit and started working from home as a freelance Denver SEO and social media marketing consultant. I’ve worked really hard since then – putting in crazy hours – but I have learned and grown a tremendous amount.

Hayden: What advice would you have for people in the professional services industry (doctors, dentists, attorneys, etc) that are not yet online but are looking to get online?

Brett: I would think carefully about a domain name. If you can get an exact match domain name that describes what you do (i.e, ‘HoustonDUIAttorney.com’, ‘MiamiDentist.com’) it can make ranking in Google a lot easier. I have bought a few of these kinds of domains and ranked them very, very easily, with minimal effort. I also recommend that you get a solid, SEO-friendly content management system to help you update your website. Wordpress and Drupal are very good, an there are plenty of programmers around the world who can work on them. Don’t start out with some kind of custom CMS that no one has ever heard of – it will be hard to change in the future.

Another thing you have to consider is that making a high-ranking website takes effort. If you just slap up a quick 4 page brochure site that does nothing but talk about YOU and your company – then you are going to have a hard time getting the links you need to secure a top rakings. Google does NOT want to rank sales-oriented pages in the organic results – they want you to have to buy AdWords. Google wants to rank only the most information-rich sites and pages. So if you want to rank well, you are going to have to provide valuable information that is actually useful to your customers and other professionals. Stuff people will want to link to.

If you are an attorney, consider providing some solid information about the kind of law you specialize in: ‘Common Misconceptions About Personal Injury Attorneys,’ ‘Loopholes in Wyoming’s DUI Laws.’ If you’re a Realtor, make a neighborhood guide or offer a virtual tour of your city in Google Earth. If you’re a dentist, write a blog about running a successful dental practice that OTHER DENTISTS will be tempted to follow and to link to.

Yes, this takes real effort. But there is no “something for nothing” online. It’s just like running a retail store or having a boutique office downtown – appearances, presentation and details really count. If you embrace making a quality website that is full of good content for users… rather than resist the process… search engines will reward you and you will outrank your competitors. You will truly have a #1 website.

If you don’t want make new content and improve your website – that is okay – but you should be prepared to budget substantially for offline advertising and pay-per-click to drive people to take a look at it.

Hayden: What advice would you have for people in the professional services industry that are already online but are looking to improve their visibility online?

Brett: If you have any flair for writing and you have the discipline to make a short article that demonstrates your expertise every month, a blog can be a good way to get more links to your website. These links will directly improve your search engine rankings. Just make sure the blog is hosted on your main domain, not on a subdomain of an external site like Typepad or Wordpress.com. An important thing to remember is that a professional blog probably shouldn’t be a journal where you talk about your business and what is happening around your office. You should share your expertise and try and create content that OTHER dentists, attorneys or doctors will take interest in and want to link to. If you do this consistently (without quitting after 3 months) – and you network with other professionals and gently let them know about your blog, you will be surprised at how much it can help your site “stay fresh” in the search engines. As you have to write about your professional and explain it clearly, blogging will give you a great sense of perspective.

Remember: you wrote detailed professional articles in medcial or law school – so I’m sure a blog will be easy compared to that!

I think that social networking can be a great tool for some professionals to use to build relationships with their colleagues and clients. Some professionals are very skeptical at how something like Facebook or Twitter could help – but social media sites are a powerful new way that people mingle, meet, remember and recommend people. It’s becoming just as important as “real life”! If you join the conversation online and you are authentic and polite about it – you will be surprised at what kind of opportunities and connections will come your way. Make a Facebook account and add the clients and colleagues you feel comfortable connecting with. Just be genuine and talk about your life – and once in a blue moon you can drop a discrete update about your professional work. People will get to know you, like you, and remember you as a real person. And they will come back or recommend you. People are talking online, and it really helps to be a part of the conversation.

Hayden: What are three “nuts and bolts” type activities that someone in the professional services industry could be doing for their own website to increase their visibility online?

Brett: I recommend most professionals get listed the Yahoo! directory, DMOZ, and Business.com . They still seem to be useful for helping to increase your PageRank. Most general directories don’t have much value anymore, Google devalued them in 2007, but it seems like these old directories are trusted and ‘grandfather claused’ in.

I recommend asking everyone you know – friends, family, clients – for links. But don’t start a reciprocal links program (google is on the lookout for those and can ban you) or get a bunch of directory links. This doesn’t work any more.

Another thing you have to consider is your online reputation. It’s important to remember that any single customer can make a negative review about you, that will rank very highly for your personal name or business name overnight. So you have to treat every customer like they were the reviewer from the local newspaper, and fix any grievances or disputes right away.

You also want to consider doing PR and social media marketing to fill the front page of Google up with positive information about your business – BEFORE there is a problem or concern. You can read my online reputation management blog for more insights.

Hayden: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Brett: There is tremendous opportunity for smart professionals who are willing to embrace the web and spend some time exploring and engaging in it. You can’t just hire an SEM firm to 100% take care of everything, it also requires a personal and expert knowledge of your field. If you treat your website as a “necessary evil,” it’s going to be a struggle. If you think of it as an amazing opportunity to generate ongoing leads with just a little bit of passion and creative effort, your website will be a huge success. I know you can do it!

You can reach Brett Borders Denver SEO practice by visiting www.copybrighter.com.

October 17, 2008 Posted in: Uncategorized