Marketing your practice online may be intimidating at first, but there are some very easy ways to boost your traffic, some of which only take an hour of your time or less per week. Here are seven different tips that you can incorporate into your marketing.

• Join local business directories. Google’s “Pigeon” update added increased search weight to these directories as well. If you aren’t already listed in them, do so now. You could improve your traffic just by getting your name and information placed on them.
• Pay attention to review sites. They play a role in local searches, and they could be a source of incoming foot traffic to your practice. Take the time to read any reviews in your site, and respond to any queries or complaints professionally. This is your public face, and it needs to be taken seriously.
• Contribute to blogs. This can mean making your own blog, and doing guest writing for other blogs. When you do guest pieces, you can link those back to your own website, which gives you more search engine visibility. Your own blog will also improve your indexing rate on search engine queries.
• Balance your SEO. There’s a fine line between optimizing your site to be more readily visible to search engine users and making a product that is, at best, tacky. Avoid keyword stuffing, and instead look to the fundamentals of SEO: Recommendable, safe, informative content that is on point and organized.
• Social media can be flexible, so use it. By handling your social media presence correctly, you already make your website more visible in web searches, but did you know that you can also use platforms like Instagram to advertise your company and market your patient results? Social media can also be connected to your newsletters, and even your direct mailing cards, with information and links to your Facebook or Twitter feed.
• Create content. If you want to set yourself apart from your competition online, you need to be generating content that people will want to read and share. As mentioned, blogs can be part of that, as can your social media posts. Videos can also be informative and entertaining. Your content is often going to be where and how you stand out, get noticed, and boost your practice’s presence.
• Be real. Finally, while it’s easy to get swept up in marketing buzz and strategy, it’s also easy to create and project an image that just isn’t your practice. The closer your marketing is to reality, the more effective it will be in the newer social arenas that exist online. False marketing or images can and will be called out, so it’s vital that you present your practice as it is, not as you think the public wants it to be.