If you are new to “link building”, it really isn’t as hard as it seems.

Basically, link building is just a link from another website back to your own medical spa or laser clinic. The more back links your site has, the higher it will rank on the major search engines.

Link building can be very time consuming, but the FrontDesk SEO tool can really help you go out there and find the sites you should be listed on. This saves you a tremendous amount of time.

Because you will be resubmitting the same text over and over again, make yourself a document that you can keep all of your submission text on. This should include your Page Title, your website’s URL address, a brief description of your practice, and important keywords. Website submissions also ask for a name of the submitter and email address. I would suggest setting up a email address with Google or Yahoo, one that you only use for submissions, this way your personal email won’t become inundated with confirmation and/or spam emails as a result of your submissions.

View: 5 minute video introduction to linkbuilding and SEO

There are several types of link building methods you can do. Some are just basic data submissions, and some are blog and article submissions. I will describe the differences amongst the major link building methods:

Article Submission

There are directories on the web designed just for submitting articles and some for writing blogs. When you submit something you wrote about your practice or even a particular therapy you offer, you can attach hyperlinks to keywords in your article that direct the reader back to your website. Some quality sites are Squidoo, Hubpages, Blogger, and Wordpress.com. Let me show you how this works with just one line taken from a blog I wrote on my own blogpost:

“It’s your body and you do have to be careful of who you choose to perform your laser lipo procedure. While no physician can have a 100% satisfaction rate, don’t be afraid to ask questions about how long a physician has been performing these procedures, who they trained with, how many procedures do they perform a month, and also if they have any satisfied patients you can chat with. Also, it’s important to ask to see a before and after photo book with their patients, and not someone else’s.”

By choosing a keyword you think your reader would be interested in, you can immediately direct them right to that page on your website with the hyperlinks.

Google considers a “Yahoo Directory” link as a quality back link. Unfortunately, they charge an annual fee of $300. It may be worth submitting to; however, there is no guarantee from Yahoo Directory that your site will be accepted.

Directory Submission

DMOZ is a directory worth submitting your site to. DMOZ is an Open Directory Project (ODP) mainly known as DMOZ which stands for “directory.mozilla.org” and is owned by Netscape. While DMOZ can substantially increase your SEO ranking, it’s tough to receive their approval and the entire process could take months. If you are fortunate enough to receive their approval, many smaller directories use the DMOZ directory categories so if you can become listed with DMOZ this would mean you would also become listed on many other web directories as well.
There are other major directories you can submit to such as the BOTW (Best Of The Web) directory ($99/year or $299/permanent).

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is changing in it’s effectiveness all the time. In social bookmarking websites, users save links publicly (not personally on their own computers) to web pages that they want to store and/or share with others. Usually, these bookmarks are shared within an individual “group” someone may subscribe to (such as “Laser Hair Removal”). You can add descriptions to your bookmarks in the form of metadata, or meta tags, so that other users can understand what the content is of your bookmark without having to download it beforehand. Different types of “descriptions” can include comments or even reader’s votes (favorable or not – like on YouTube or Digg). Again, FrontDesk SEO makes this process relatively easy.

Blog Commenting

MedicalSpaMD is a blog and, like most blogs, it is highly susceptible to spammers like we have all seen and Jeff so diligently tries to eliminate on a daily basis as it can be a true nuisance for people like us who use this site as a valuable tool for your practices.

If you want to find blogs to participate in and comment on, try to find quality blogs that are related to what you do as a profession. Again, FrontDesk SEO can help with this. And when you add your comments, try to make them content-relative because not only do your comments add value to the blogpost in general, they also have greater chance of staying on the blogpost with a link back to your website.

Press Releases

Press Releases have worked well for me, and I’m not too proud to say that I didn’t write the ones that really worked. There are a lot of good and bad example press releases out there and I am no exception. Writing a quality press release is an art and, frankly, I don’t have the talent for them and pay someone else to do it. Let me give you an example of my own good and bad press release experiences.

While this press release still continues to give my website hits, all it is is words: Paula’s Bad Example

Now look at the one I paid Fran Acunzo from Acara Partners to do for us. It includes a photo, links and even video: Paula’s Good Example

If writing a good press release including videos and back links is not your forte, then it’s worth it to farm it out. Just writing a good press release is half the battle. Submitting it to the right press release agencies that will index it effectively for you is the other half.

Social Media Sites

Social Media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube work very well by providing quality and relevant back links to your site that all the major search engines love.

So, this is back linking in a nutshell and we can really go deeper into the categories, but I fear you will become bored or even glassy-eyed if you’re not a geek like me. So if you don’t have someone out there performing these activities for you and you really are serious about your web presence, you really might want to take a look at FrontDesk SEO and see what it can do for you. Just remember, building links doesn’t increase your website’s internet presence overnight. It does take some time, like my good friend Jeff keeps reminding me! In a world of available “instant results”, it’s hard to be patient sometimes!

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In Hollywood they are known as pillow injections – those dermal fillers designed to plump up the skin. But the procedure of the moment doesn’t involve perfecting the pout or smoothing around the eyes.

Instead the well-heeled are padding their feet with Restalyne or Radiesse in an effort to prance in their 4-inch pumps a little longer.
One physician described the procedure as a way of putting a Dr. Scholl’s pad inside the foot. “When you’re wearing thousand dollar shoes you don’t want to put a pad inside,” said Dr. Stuart Kaplan.
Wearing a pair of medical magnifying glasses, the dermatologist proceeded to pump just under 1 cc of Radiesse into his patient’s feet. “It protects the bone in the balls of the feet from hitting the shoe,” explained Dr. Kaplan.
When asked about possible side effects he said it was like getting any injectable. “There are always risks but it’s not any different than injecting a filler in the face.”
The final bill is the same too. The price for the privilege of being able to parade around in a pair of Pradas a few more hours each day is around $1000. To justify the price Kaplan joked women get to walk around in those expensive shoes longer. “Rather than stand in high-heels for 45-minutes,” he said. “Women can stay in their Manolos for five hours.”

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Laser Clinic MD: Last woman standing….in her stilettos

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In this article, I will give you several tips and tools to evaluate your laser centers culture and operations, so you can successfully navigate any economic downturn… And live to sell another day when the inevitable upturn comes around.

What is the Passion and Purpose of Your Medical Spa?

You reap what you sew. When you engage proactively and passionately in your business you will undoubtedly be successful and see your practice expand. It helps to articulate your passion for your medical spa.

At Assara Laser, our passion is to “help clients look and feel great, not fake.”

Why the Recession Drastically Affects Your Laser Clinics Bottom Line

You’ve probably noticed that generating revenue is not as easy as it once was. There are myriad reasons for this; from the decline in disposable income, to unemployment hitting record highs and tanking real estate valuations. As if these facts were not bleak enough, credit markets are virtually frozen so business owners are finding it nearly impossible to obtain small business loans and lines of credit. Refinancing current loans has become difficult for small businesses.

In short, we’re operating in the perfect storm.

Accepting Reality and Responsibility Today

The easy way out is to close up shop and blame the recession. This will not help you going forward, it will not pay your devoted employees their wages, and most of all, it will not help your clients “look and feel great, not fake.” So, accept responsibility.

The hardships of the recession create a fact-pattern, problem to be solved; not a reason for failure. To paraphrase Michael Jackson, start, first, with the man in the mirror. Think about the following questions. And pay attention – there will be homework at the end of this article!

Finding Your Medspas Winning Competitive Difference?

Let’s be honest. The quality of your laser clinc’s treatments are probably not drastically better than that of your competitors. The proprietary equipment and IPL or laser systems (Thermage, Fraxel, Titan) that you use are, for the most part, available to the competitive skin clinic market at large.

You may believe (and tell clients) that your microdermabrasion treatments are better because you use a diamond-tipped wand or aluminum oxide crystals. You may think that your IPLs or laser hair removal treatments are better because you use cryo-cooling or because you use chilled air cooling, or because you use a diode laser or because you use alexandrite lasers . . .

BUT . . .

Step in to your clients’ shoes. To them, the bells and whistles of your Thermage or Fraxel device don’t matter. Your clients already expect expert advice and cutting edge cosmetic lasers, IPLs and skin tighening equipment, so merely meeting this fundamental requirement is not a winning competitive difference.

What does matter to your clients are presentation, client interaction, customer service, reliability and consistency. Consider this carefully.

What is each of your medspas clients worth?

At Assara Laser, one of the most popular packages is our $449 per month Unlimited Laser Hair Removal Program. On average, a client that signs up for this program will remain a member of the Program for 7 months, depending on the results they wish to achieve. How much is a single unlimited client worth to us?  A client in the program for 7 months, making a monthly payment of $449 is worth $3,143. For many laser clinic owners, a single laser hair removal client is worth more than a home mortgage payment!

Do you treat every single potential laser treatment client that contacts your laser clinic as if they’re worth $3,000?

What is your time and effort worth?

Before my partners and I built Assara Laser, I was an attorney. I still practice corporate law as a labor of love, when a friend or business contact has an exciting deal. I normally discount my rate to about $400 per hour, as law isn’t my primary source of income.

Assume an hour of your time is worth $400.  Assume further that, every time your customers complain, you are willing to give a discount, or a free treatment and that, collectively, free and discounted treatments account for a 20% loss in your revenue. To make up for this lost revenue, how much more work do you have to do?

Well, let’s add 20% to your 10 hour day, which now makes it a 12 hour day. If annual sales are $1,000,000 per year, you’ve lost $200,000. This translates into 500 hours more of work you must do to bring your revenue back to status quo!

Is there a big difference between a day that starts at 9:00 a.m. and ends at 7:00 p.m. versus ending at 9:00 p.m.  You betcha there is!  Is there a big difference between a loss of $200,000 and a loss of zero. You betcha there is!  And these differences drastically affect your quality of life.

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Skin Clinic MD is now publishing the latest news about medical spas, laser centers, skin clinics and laser clinics on Twitter.

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Skin Clinic MD (medspaMD) on Twitter

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Is click fraud costing your skin clinic or medical spa and driving up your prices?

The practice of “click fraud” began in the early days of the Internet’s popularity with software programs that automatically surfed Web sites to increase traffic figures. This led companies to develop policing technologies touted as antidotes to the problem. (Some marketing executives estimate that up to 20 percent of fees in certain advertising categories continue to be based on nonexistent consumers in today’s search industry.)

Don’t think it’s already happening to your skin clinic, med spa or laser clinic? Here’s a recent quote from Michael Caruso, CEO of click fraud services vendor ClickFacts in an interview:

“In particularly fraud prone verticals such as finance, class action lawsuits and medical, we see click fraud rates in the 30-45 percent range. These are all categories that see high keyword pricing in the auction model. That makes them particularly tasty for click fraud artists. “If you can make more money from the dark side than the light side of search, there are plenty of people who will take advantage. Plus, it’s not even technically illegal yet.”

There are two main ways that your skin clinics and medical spas marketing budget is being drained by click fraud:

First, your medical spas and laser clinics competitors who see your ad are simply clicking on it, draining your marketing budget and costing you advertising dollars. Second, fraudsters set up ‘affiliate sites’ that run skin clinics ads where they are clicked on by bots or employees. (These sites are the most damaging since you’re paying for every click without any return at all. Click fraud around skin clinics, med spas or laser clinics can be very lucrative since dermatology or plastic surgery clinics are becoming such a competitive market and the payment per click can be as high as $4-6.)

Unfortunately, to keep your medical spas budget safe you have very few tools. (Google just gave advertisers $90 million to compensate for click fraud as the result of a class action suit but you can bet they’re not that Google’s not interested in your individual account. Especially since they’re making money from click fraud when your ads are clicked on.)

Start by limiting your skin clinics exposure. If your dermatology or plastic surgery clinic is still running an Adwords or Yahoo campaign, they allow you to limit the maximum amount you spend in a day. Take advantage of this feature by limiting your maximum cost to what you can afford to spend. You can also look for the tracks of click fraud by examining the reports you might have available to you. Multiple clicks coming from the same IP address are a sure sign of fraud.

(Malaysia has become such a haven for click fraud around medspas and IPL laser treatments.)

If you’re going to run ppc ads, protect your skin clinic, med spa or laser clinic. You can be sure that you’re the only one trying to.

Related articles from Laser Clinic MD

• Yahoo Reaches Settlement In Pay-Per-Click Class Action Lawsuit (techcrunch.com)
• Smarter Healthcare: How Social Media is Revolutionizing Your Doctor Visits (mashable.com)
• Tatler Turns 300, Shuns The Web (huffingtonpost.com)

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What is medical spa & laser clinic click fraud costing you?

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Looking for a medical spa? Finding A Non-Surgical Specialist

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“Hey jeff, I have a question for you. The ads that appear on the right side of MedicalSpaMD in the “Ads by Google” space, did you subscribe to Ad Sense to get them there? Are they Google Ad Words ads, or are they from a PPC company like Yodle or Reach Local?”

We have a number of advertisers on Medical Spa MD, some of whom use Google and others who want specific placement and visibility who place their medical spa ads directly.

These direct ppc ads are used for a couple of purposes; to pay our hosting and bandwidth costs so we don’t have to charge readers, and to pay the fees for other services we use to communicate with Members and fulfill orders. On the other end the advertisers gain access to more than a million and a half page views from a pretty select member community. It seems to be working out pretty well since we’re getting an increasing number of businesses who want to become a Medical Spa MD Partner.

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Medical Spa Marketing

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What happened in medical spas, skin clinics and laser treatment centers in 2009?

Cosmetic enhancements circa 2009 can be divided into three basic categories. Non Invasive includes wash and wear injections and resurfacing treatments such as IPL & laser treatments and chemical peels, and clinical skin care. Minimally invasive falls somewhere in between surgery with visible scars, and the non invasive category, and can be performed in a doctor’s office. Invasive procedures involve surgery done to reshape or refine parts of the face and body, typically involving an office or hospital setting and anesthesia. Most common are breast augmentation, liposuction, mini face lifts and pretty much anything that involves a scalpel.

In the overall scheme of things, there is no ideal time frame to jump on the Botox bandwagon, although the trend is certainly towards doing things earlier as a preemptive strike for maintenance and to forestall the day when everything goes south. But there will come a time when creams stop doing enough to make you content with the way you are aging, and you start to wonder what else is out there. You don’t have to take it lying down (although lying down does make sagging disappear – try holding a mirror above your head).

The next logical step from wrinkle creams and sunscreen are chemical peels, laser treatments, and intense pulsed light treatments (IPL) that can even out skin tone and improve texture.

Botox is brilliant for lines around the eyes, forehead and mouth. Dermal fillers such as Restylane, Evolence and Radiesse are de rigeur for plumping furrows, creases and deeper folds. Brown spots and sun damage can be helped with a course of Fraxel or Pearl. For slack skin, tightening devices such as Thermage and Titan can deliver a subtle lifting effect on droopy brows and necks. The final stage before considering surgery tends to be a combination of several of these to maximize the anti-aging results.

Of course, when the non invasive treatments stop delivering what you really want in terms of sagging, sinking and bulges, you might consider a short scar face or neck lift and some minor eye rejuvenation surgery to reduce excess skin and fat deposits.

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• Demand for plastic surgery robust despite recession: poll (nationalpost.com)
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Medicals Spas & Laser Clinics in 2009

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I’m guessing that about 40% of medical spas, laser clinics and skin clinics do some form of email marketing or newsletter. Perhaps I’m wrong but that number seems about right to me.

Of course I’d say that about 1% are really using newsletters or email effectively since there’s something of a learning cure, it takes a while to create the content, and there’s some dilligence involved to actualy take the time to send a consistant strategic marketing message and accelerate sales.

At Medical Spa MD we’re about to start publishing something that looks and feels pretty much like a ‘laser clinic marketing newsletter’, but behaves much differently. We’ll be using the Sendside Platform to create and distribute what amounts to an interactive, multi-dimensional message.

If you’re a Medical Spa MD Member you’ll be receiving one of these in the next few days and you’ll see immediately what I mean. If you haven’t yet joined Medical Spa MD you can do that now. It’s free, and there are some really nice downloads in the members only area of the site that you’ll have access to. Not convinced? See what Medical Spa MD Members say about us.

As we increase our offerings to Members we’ll also be posting about how we’re doing, and how we’re doing it. (Spoiler: Both our Canada Botox pharmacy partner and our Medical Spa Aesthetics Training Books are blowing the doors off.) We’ll be writing about our successes in communication for our partners and advertisers, and when we’re not doing so hot. The benefit for Medical Spa MD is that we’ll be using our existing Members as well as new visitors as something of an ongoing focus group. (Usually I retch at the use of focus groups to define what you should do, but this one’s actually going to work since it will be anonymous, live, and we’ll have real numbers to show.)

If you’re a Member you’ll be able to both see what we’re doing, and we’ll be showing you how we’re doing it. If you wish, you’ll be able to replicate it. For our members who are vendors this is particularly interesting since there are a few things that are of particular interest. We’ll be posting all of these in the Medical Spa Marketing & Advertising category so you’ll be able to read all of the posts there.

We’ll all be able to see where this goes.

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Laser Clinic Marketing

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Botox, Juvederm, Restylane, Sculptra and Dysport at wholesale prices from Canada.

MedicalSpaRx.com is a well established international medical supply company.

This website is developed in cooperation with MedicalSpaMD.com to service their clients specifically. You will see options such as the ability to be part of a group buy and make larger savings without having to buy the extra volume.

You can expect the service and pricing that you get at MedicalSpaRx.com, with added advantages for MedicalSpaMD.com users.

Using the Group Buy option you can order a smaller amount of product for just a fraction of the cost. The difference is that your order will not be shipped immediately when you become part of a group buy. Your order will only ship when there are enough other buyers that have placed a purchase as part of the group buy to satisfy the minimum volume requirements.

When being part of the group buy, your credit card will be charged upon placing your order, and the order shipped once there are enough buyers for the group buy. We will keep you informed and up to date , but in the group buy you should expect a longer waiting time to get your order.

If you require delivery in an immediate fashion, you should order regularly.

We require a medical practitioner, clinic, hospital, pharmacy or other medical establishment to hold a valid license to be able to order prescription products. If for some reason you are unable to provide this information please call to discuss the possibilities.

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Restylane, Botox, & Juvederm from Medical Spa RX

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