Before You Reach for That Bottle of Pills, Reach for New Research from The Lancet

If you have back pain, you may not want to reach for that bottle of pills. Brand new research from one of the oldest and most respected medical journals, the Lancet, has showcased that mediations, injections, and surgery should be your last options when dealing with back pain. 

They also discussed that a collaborative approach to care, between medical doctors and chiropractors, just might be the future of back pain relief. 

The Lancet showcased that collaborative care model is best when dealing with back pain. Back pain is one of the most significant burdens on people worldwide with over half a billion people suffering at any given time. But here is the really interesting part of their research0 they point out that many of the common practices like medications, injections, and even surgery should not be your first option when dealing with back pain. As a matter of fact, they go on to say that there has historically been a massive gap between what the evidence shows to be effective care and the actual care given in many medical doctors offices today.

Conservative collaborative care, including the care given by chiropractors, is the best place to start. 

Chiropractors were also involved in the publication and the research behind these groundbreaking papers. So, it is a fantastic day when collaborative conservative care comes to the forefront and medications, injections, and surgery go to only those who need it (which thankfully is only a tiny percentage of the people).

So if you know someone who has suffered from back pain, please keep in mind that a collaborative approach to care is best. Staying conservative with exercise, perhaps seeing a chiropractor, staying as active as possible, and maintaining a positive outlook is crucial to recovering and thriving after a bout of low back pain. 

Learn more about this exciting research on The Evidence Based Chiropractor Podcast. 

Building Your Chiropractic Brand on Social Media

Building your brand with social media. These days is crucial to market your chiropractic practice online. I want to offer two tactical tips for you to grow your practice in 2018 by building your brand on social media. 

Also, you can check out the long-form portion of this in the latest issue of Chiropractic Economics. 

Number one- every time that you are out in your community focus on highlighting somebody else's business. So take out your smartphone. Take a picture when you are eating lunch at a healthy local shop, when you're grabbing groceries at Whole Foods, etc. Start to showcase other people's businesses by tagging them in your photos on Instagram and Facebook. I can guarantee that they will then share that content with their audience. 

Tactical tip number two is to interview other business owners in your community. A yoga studio, a pilates studio, perhaps even a physical therapist or another healthcare professional. Reach out and start to schedule interviews with them that you can stream on Facebook Live. Or if you're uncomfortable on camera, simply use the audio and post it as a podcast or blog.

It will help you build your brand (and goodwill) in your community. You will be able to get more eyes on your content and also help you make relationships to get more patients exposed to your practice and your clinic. There you have it! Two tactical tips to build your brand on social media. 

Behind the Scenes of RockTape Rockstock 2017

Join me as we hop behind the scenes of RockTape Rockstock 2017. 

Come behind the scenes with me at RockTape RockStock 2017. RockStock’s mission is to unite a community of health and fitness professionals dedicated to movement innovation.

Taking place in beautiful Huntington Beach, the event had chiropractors, therapists, movement and healthcare professionals of all disciplines having fun, learning cutting edge techniques, and collaborating on how to provide the best patient-centric care! 

I was fortunate to to catch up with RockTape Medical Director, Steve Capobianco, Crossover Health's Dan Lord, and Chiropractic Radiologist Cliff Tao. Check out the video about for interviews with all of them where we talk about movement, the future of healthcare, and chiropractic radiology. 

Rockstock 2018 is an event you don't want to miss! 

Chiropractic SEO- Your Guide to Rank #1 on Google

SEO. Oh sweet SEO.

Search engine optimization.

This is probably the most important and most misunderstood aspect of building a website that converts prospective patients or visitors into actual patients.

The reason SEO, or search engine optimization, is so important is approximately 70% of clicks go to native search results (not ad’s). And, approximately 70% of clicks go to the top 5 results for the keyword which is searched.

So yes, if you search YOUR CITY CHIROPRACTOR and you are not in the top 5 results then it is very likely you are getting next to zero clicks to your website.

Click Here to Download this Article as a PDF!

(yep, The Evidence Based Chiropractor has 2 of the top 4 search results for “chiropractic podcast”)

And often, being in the top 5 doesn't cost any money at all. You just need to give Google the information necessary to find you. You need to be a relevant result.

Remember that all of your marketing efforts work together. They should play nice. When you have good traffic coming in daily from Google this will help build your email list (a certain percentage of visitors should always convert to your email list via an opt-in).

Then you should use your Facebook pixel to re-target these visitors on social media. Even more advanced marketers could use a pixel from Perfect Audience and begin re-targeting across the entire web.

Personally, this is something I overlooked for a long time with The Evidence Based Chiropractor. But then, I saw Tommy Griffith, SEO Chief at AirBnB and formerly of Paypal, speak and it started to all come together.

I am willing to bet their are a few very simple tweaks you can make to your website right now that will boost your Google rank.

I bring up Google because they account for nearly 85% of search engine queries. For local businesses lets face it- Google is the master and we are all puppets.

The challenge with Google is they pretty much don't release any data on how or why they make any decision regarding search ranking.

Thanks Google.  

But, all is not lost. We (and by “we” I mean people way smarter than me) have figured out the how and why of Google results.

This topic alone could take up thousands of pages in a book, but we will break it down to a few simple keystones you can implement immediately.

Here are a few tools you should be using and we will dive into what each one does.

SEO helped me get to the top of "chiropractic seo" when searched on Youtube

Jump to a specific part of the article by clicking the link below:

WEBMASTER TOOLS
MOZ
PAGE SPEED

Click Here to Download this Article as a PDF!

Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools, now known as Google Search Console, is ground zero for optimizing your chiropractic SEO. Basically, this tool will show any “problems” with your website.

See, Google can be finicky. If it encounters a problem with your website they know the user experience will not be great.

User’s don't like problems.
Potential new patient’s don’t like problems.
Google doesn't like problems.

via GIPHY

And you get slapped on the wrist. Which means you get a lower ranking for errors on your website.

The nice thing is that Google will tell you about every error. But you need to ask. And the Google Search Console is the place to ask. You just quickly enter in your URL and it will give you a variety of tools to look at any problems with your website.

Also, you can upload a sitemap. A sitemap is literally a “map” of your website. This gives Google additional information to easily crawl, or search, your website. That is a good thing because it will give them additional information to match your site to potential visitors.

So, when you first get into the Search Console you will be able to see your Crawl Errors, Search Analytics and Sitemaps. Sound complicated, but its not.

The Crawl Errors are when Google is having a hard time finding content on your site. Essentially, they are “error” which is making it confusing for your content to be found. Not a good thing.

But, you can check your Crawl Errors at anytime and correct them. Thank you Google.

Next we need to look at Search Analytics. Using Google Analytics is one of the best ways to discover the nitty-gritty of your content and its performance. However, Search Analytics is also a nice little tool for you to take a quick look at your progress (or lack of progress).

Finally are Sitemaps. As we reference above, a sitemap is literally a map of your site. It allows Google to quickly find and index the content on your site. The easier you make it for them the better your results will be. So make sure you have an updated sitemap uploaded. Usually you can find them as an extension of your site with .sitemap/xml

MOZ

Moz is an awesome service company that provides super-high quality web analytics. Basically, they have a tool set that gives you a plethora of information to make your site more Google friendly.

Their suite of tools includes an open site explorer, SEO tool, Keyword search tool and others. Keep in mind some of their tools are paid and not free. And the paid tools are best for professional SEO specialists and marketing types in larger companies.

For most chiropractors they are overkill (they are professional marketing level products) and won’t give good return (they are also somewhat pricey).

BUT, their free tools are exactly what you need to help build a great online home.

Let’s look at a few tools.

The Moz open site explorer tool should be an essential part of your chiropractic SEO toolkit. This tools allows your to research backlinks, finding backlink opportunities and get a fantastic overall feel for your website.

Everything that Moz creates is very easy to use. And Open Site Explorer is no different. Simply enter the web address you want to investigate into the search bar and click search (also great for searching competitor’s sites).

The Moz tool with then create a complete profile of your page including Page Authority, Domain Authority, Inbound Links, Social Media links.

““FYI: a huge bank of super nerds that love number and stuff; compiles this information and delivers it to you with unicorn-riding mathematicians- Just Saying.””

— MOZ

Links to your site are still an essential component of getting great SEO. This Moz tool will help you see where you stand. Also, don't forget that you can pump in your competitors website also and see who is linking to their websites. This will give you a great opportunity to reach out if you have a piece of content which is more complete or more current. In other words, Moz Site Explorer is one of the best “research” tools out there. You can literally build a list of opportunities to improve your sites SEO.

Domain Authority and Page Authority are proprietary Moz stats/numbers that help determine your link authority. They analyze the potential of your page/site based on a variety of factors (including links) and then give you an easy to digest number.

The higher the better. For instance, Wikipedia has a Domain Authority near 100. That’s a nice place to be!

But, do not be discouraged if your Domain or Page Authority is not 100.  It may even be around 20. It’s ok. It takes time. But as you develop a ton of links from reputable site (with high domain authority) you will notice that your SEO begins to improve and you will place higher in the organic search results for your targeted keywords.

PAGE SPEED

Checking your page speed is also a really good idea. If you website is loading slow it will affect the ranking, but it will also make it much more likely that a visitor gives up before even reaching your homepage.

In the game of page speed- seconds matter.

Reducing your loading time by literally 1 second can make a HUGE difference in user experience. And when Google is ranking search results it will nearly always choose the faster site to list above the slower site.

And don't forget mobile!

Almost 50% of all web traffic is now mobile. Fortunately a vast majority of website are now mobile friendly. Make sure yours is. This is not an option. You site has to be mobile friendly to compete in search rankings now.

The biggest issue my website had initially was image size. “Big” images can drastically slow down your website loading time. It is really really easy to resize images that load 10 or even 20 times faster.  Sometimes the resizing of images will be called “compressing” images. For our purposes its the same thing. Reducing the file size to improve load time.

There are a few other items which can really drag down your page. They are:

Page Speed Drags

Remember, improvements to your page speed work in 2 primary ways.

First, you can decrease your load time. This will help keep people from pogo sticking off of your website, which is a huge killer of SEO.

Second, it will give you an advantage other other pages with similar content.

The bump in SEO for page speed is all about user experience. Google wants happy searchers and quick load times are a big first step.

So there you have it. A few simple steps you can dive into to boost your page UP the ranking chart and get more eyes on your practice and more people in your front door.

Click Here to Download this Article as a PDF!

How to Keep Your Spinal Discs Healthy

Spinal discs are the shock absorbers between the bones, or vertebrae, of your spine. The discs have a tough outer ring and a jelly-like center. Their job is to help us move, bend, and twist while absorbing the weight of gravity. But, over time, our spinal discs can become degenerative.

Injuries, aging, and the effects of gravity all contribute to disc degeneration. The good news is that degenerative discs rarely cause pain unless they budge or herniate, placing pressure on the spinal nerves. So how you can slow down the degenerative process and keep your discs healthy?

Top research journals have recently discovered that movement and hydration are two important factors to keep your discs healthy. A well-hydrated disc can more easily adapt to movement and is less prone to injury. Many chiropractic techniques are designed to “pump” your spinal discs. This motion helps bring nutrients into the disc and pushes out inflammation and waste. That is a fancy way to say that chiropractic care can help keep your spinal discs healthy! Here are the key takeaways:

Your spinal discs act as small shock absorbers between the bones of your spine .

Movement helps bring nutrients into the disc and pushes out waste and inflammation; helping them stay healthy. 

Torn, herniated, or bulged discs can cause pain by irritating the nearby nerves. Researchers have found chiropractic care to be one of the best ways to heal and feel better!  

A combination of chiropractic care and staying well-hydrated are two ways to keep your spinal discs healthy and pain-free. But, don’t forget to stay active between your adjustments. And here is one more tip to slow down Father Time- daily exercise and stretching. Exercise and stretching will not only keep you fit and trim but can also potentially slow down the degenerative changes of your spine keeping you healthy and active for many years to come! 

---

If you would like research-based content like this for your practice (we are talking about videos, newsletters, social media graphics, blog posts, and MORE) then visit us and learn more at The Smart Chiropractor.

Modern chiropractic marketing made easy.