Whatever business you’re running, you almost certainly have a website. And your most critical concern is your SEO (search engine optimization). Essentially, this refers to how likely your website will show up on search engines such as Google or Bing when a consumer is looking for the services you offer. If your business shows up towards the top of the search results, that suggests you have very effective SEO.
But getting a lot of traffic to your website isn’t the only concern. You also need a lead (i.e. contact information) for follow up. Think about it…traffic translates into “clicks” on your site but you can’t follow a click! You need a name, email address and phone number. Additionally, clicks and traffic could just be bots and not real consumers. So you need a way to ensure the traffic to your site reflects real consumers and real potential clients. You need an SEO barometer!
What’s an SEO barometer?
It’s a phrase I coined but it’s also a very descriptive and accurate concept. When folks show up to your website, you want to give them a reason to leave their contact info behind, like a breadcrumb, that allows you to follow up with them. This also helps confirm that visitors are real humans and not a bot.
That also means you need a “carrot” that will be tantalizing enough to incentivize a visitor to want to leave their contact info. For healthcare, that’s easy. Pricing is normally very opaque in healthcare. So if you’re willing to provide pricing on the condition the visitor enters their contact info first, you’ll generate a ton of leads. Real leads.
That’s where a Price Estimator on a doctor’s website, like this, comes in. Everyone wants to know price. Upon arrival to your site, they’ll notice you have pricing available. They’ll quickly submit a “wishlist” along with their contact info to get instant, automated pricing.
Aside from capturing contact info, a tool like a Price Estimator is a great SEO barometer. In other words, if people are showing up on your site, they’ll want to know price, and you’ll get a bunch of wishlists and leads in the process. Conversely, if you’re not getting a lot of wishlists and leads, then that means you aren’t getting that many visitors, a reflection of poor SEO. Because, again, if there’s traffic, they’ll want to know price. A Price Estimator is a great gauge or barometer to measure how much traffic you really have.
Google Analytics is a great tool for measuring traffic, but those are just clicks. You don’t know if those clicks are from bots. With a Price Estimator, you know there’s a real person behind that wishlist. How do we know that? Because that person has to interact and take 3-4 deliberate actions (including creating an account) to submit a wishlist and get their pricing quote. There’s no bot doing that!
Insights from an SEO barometer
Enough with the abstract concepts! Let’s put this to the test. Take a look at the trend of leads received by the doctor below. Reviewing his leads from May 2017 to Jan 2018, you’ll see there is an overall trend upwards. Which is great and evidence of increasing traffic and therefore great SEO.
Now, compare the table above to the table below. This doctor’s traffic seems to be decreasing but then hits a wall and drops and plateaus in November, December and January. Because of this insight, he uncovered that his mobile site was malfunctioning.
Measuring traffic is one thing but to measure the consumers’ level of interactions with your site is paramount. And there’s no better way to measure that interactivity than with an SEO barometer such as a Price Estimator.
