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Drug Rehab Website Development Hurts Marketing

Contents

What Are the Top 3 Reasons Drug Rehab Website Development Hurts Drug Rehab Marketing?

Drug rehab Website development and design are drastically affecting drug rehab marketing for addiction treatment centers, opiate detox centers, inpatient rehab, and IOP treatment programs. Understanding the many components needed including; design, drug rehab SEO, and branding are critical for successful web marketing. These are all paramount to generate drug rehab leads and customers for sales/service organization in our industry. However, it requires an ongoing, in-depth knowledge of the crucial role website structure plays. Drug rehab SEO website development is complex for drug and alcohol addiction treatment center web marketing.

Understanding How Drug Rehab Website Development Effects Treatment Calls Lead Generation

Addiction treatment centers are facing their most difficult challenges ever in 2018. Generating enough clients to sustain their business has become a daunting necessity. The insurance companies are now paying for shorter lengths of stay and less reimbursement for drug testing. This combined with new laws in Florida on patient brokering, Google PPC restrictions and algorithm changes, have many centers frustrated and struggling to gain clients. We are seeing many centers close their doors, merge, or get bought out by wall street investors.

As a treatment center owner, you most likely started your center because you have a passion to help and extensive knowledge of addiction. That most likely shows with the clinical aspect of your center. However, many centers fall because they do not respect, or understand drug rehab SEO marketing.

Understanding the Value of Proper Website Development

The current behavioral health industry landscape requires that recovery centers learn better addiction treatment marketing practices including the status of the drug rehab SEO website development. Website development is the major building block for their drug rehab marketing. Relying solely on outreach, and buying rehab leads to maintain an acceptable census puts them at great risk. Addiction treatment lead generation and producing treatment calls is difficult on the web. Drug rehabilitation owners often use short-term solutions to their long-term problem.

Drug Rehab Web Marketing Outperforms All Other Marketing Combined

When the money was flowing, there was no reason to have drug rehab SEO website development or a healthy marketing mix. Addiction treatment centers and opiate detox centers threw a ton of money at their rehab marketing with PPC, bought some VOB treatment calls (no longer legal in Florida,) relied on Outreach and that was the extent of their marketing plan. They demanded immediate results which have caused industry-wide thought process concerning marketing. Concentrating on short-term solutions, to their long-term problem of generating clients, puts them at great risk of not surviving in the red ocean.

Website structure the #1 Ingredient for Drug Rehab SEO

Drug Rehab SEO website development needs proper website structure. Many drug rehabilitation centers think web marketing does not work. The main reason is when they implemented it into their substance abuse marketing their website lacked proper structure. They were investing money in drug rehab SEO that could not perform. Without proper structure, Google spiders will not rank or penalize the website.

Substance abuse web marketing is complicated, competitive, and requires knowledge beyond addiction treatment. Drug rehab SEO website development needs to have the proper foundation to produce treatment calls. It must be the start of your drug rehab marketing and lead generation.

Web marketing outperforms all other marketing combined when set-up correctly and executed properly. Speaking with many treatment center CEO’s and Executives, many say web marketing does not work. Our immediate response is let’s look at your electronic assets and how they are set-up.

1. Proper Website Structure = Poor Web Marketing Results

Let’s first look at the website. Website structure is the critical starting point for SEO performance. The aesthetics of treatment centers websites are often beautiful, showing pictures of the beach, and amenities. The aesthetics of a website are only a fraction of what is needed for web marketing. When a house is being built, the foundation is the most important aspect. Without a strong foundation, your house will fall. With web marketing, proper structure is the original building block.

We recently spoke with Brian Frye, CEO, of Magna Technologies, a highly respected industry website design company and attendee favorite panelist at BHNR’s Ethical Marketing Practices Conferences, about the status of treatment centers websites. Here is what he had to say,

“The biggest problem is poor website structure. Centers do not understand how damaging this is to their marketing.”

Website Structure 1st Step in Addiction Treatment Center Marketing

Proper website structure is a critical aspect of a websites SEO and critical for drug rehab marketing. It will be one of the main factors in generating revenue or wasting marketing dollars. Poor drug rehab website development causes Google (and other search engines) to do one of two things. They will either not read and rank your site or penalize your site for structural errors. If you have an efficient website structure in Googles eyes, you get rewarded in many ways (Google juice) with higher rankings. Poor structure is one of the main reasons why many treatment centers say web marketing does not work. SEO is also a huge factor for many addiction treatment centers.

Get a Website Designed and Developed by an Experienced Drug Rehab Professional with In-depth Knowledge Beyond the Addiction Treatment Industry

The “big boys in the sandbox” understand better drug rehab website development equals higher rankings in search engines and more clicks. These big players use professional and experienced webmasters with experience beyond the addiction treatment industry. Their sites use an efficient, clean and trimmed hierarchy. The small to medium players usually use unskilled individuals with limited knowledge of proper structure. Their hierarchy is generally disorganized, jumbled and not optimized for Google. This is an area that the small to medium size treatment centers can gain ground against the competition (big and small) on the web if they include it in their drug rehab marketing plan.

2. Pay Attention to These Areas of Drug Rehab Website Structure

While this article cannot cover all that is involved with proper website development and structure, here are some areas that must be addressed.

Schema.org (Schema) Advanced Search Tactic

Schema is a syntactic vocabulary that is added to HTML that improves how spiders read and present a web page in SERP’s. This is an absolute must in your drug rehab website development.

Google can read every language, however, it’s native tongue is the schema. This is the key to drug rehab SEO. It allows search engines to more clearly understand and read sites more quickly. It is becoming paramount for all websites to correctly incorporate schema where ever possible on their website for several reasons. It gives the ability for search engines to pull better rich snippets and rich data that makes a website link stand out and gain real estate in SERP’s, increasing clicks.

Voice Search Get Ahead of other Rehabilitation Centers

Getting ahead of the competition is easy if you know what’s coming. Secondly, it is becoming a necessity in the new age of voice search. As we pointed out in an earlier article, treatment centers and ancillary service organizations in the addiction treatment industry are suffering from digital Darwinism. Organizations in the addiction treatment industry do not have a firm understanding of the many aspects of SEO and now comes along voice search.

Digital voice search is one of the newest technological advances in the ways consumers get information. It is rapidly becoming a crucial part of the way our potential clients will get information they are seeking at home (Google Home, Microsoft’s Cortana, and Amazons Alexa,) and on mobile devices (Android, and Apple.) ComScore.com predicts that by 2020, 50 percent of all searches will be voice searches.

Implementing Schema on a website is like placing a direction post on a highway. It quickly gets the spiders to the information that correctly answers a voice query. This is important because voice queries depend on implied content. Proper schema helps provide the content rather than the spiders using an ambiguous page of text.

Implementing Schema and Asking the Right Questions

One of the biggest issues with schema is many do not know how to properly place it on a website. According to schema.org, there are only 10 million websites using schema.org markup. While this may seem like a lot, only 1% of websites have implemented it. This can give a treatment center an edge with marketing. This should be included in their drug rehab marketing strategy. Some of the areas where you should incorporate schema are;

Site Navigation Element
About Page
GMB Map (Google Maps)
WP Footer
WP Header
WP Side Bar

3. Proper Website Structure gets more Google real-estate with Site-links

Site-links are links and descriptions of the different parts of your website that show up in SERP’s. This is a Google’s SEO golden nugget that improves click-through rates, however, there are several pieces that need to be in place to achieve this golden award. They also are huge in SEO by making navigation easier, dominating SERP’s, brand reputations, and building trust with Google and the user. One of those important pieces is a good website structure (trust and brand reputation are also factors.) If you have a poor website structure, it is highly unlikely that you will achieve a sitemap in Google listings. This causes a reduction in targeted traffic and lower clicks of your target audience.

Here is an example of a search that achieves a site link. Try typing into Google search your center and see if your organization shows a site link. If it does not, you either have no site-link, or it is incorrectly implemented.

A quote from Google Webmaster clearly showing the importance of proper website development; We only show site links for results when we think they’ll be useful to the user. If the structure of your site doesn’t allow our algorithms to find good site links, or we don’t think that the site links for your site are relevant for the user’s query, we won’t show them.

Top 8 Mistakes with Drug Rehab Website Development

While Google doesn’t provide a step by step drug rehab website development procedure there are certain things that should be in place to achieve site links.

Unique website name
Clear website structure and navigation
#1 rank organically for the search term
Implementation of sitemap.xml to your Google search counsel account
Build internal links
Cross check page titles
Brand Awareness on social media
Better Website Development and Structure Means Better Website Crawling

Google spiders search billions of pages on the web and compile a massive index. Their algorithm has over 200 factors. According to Google, it is a must that they can crawl and index your site correctly. If you have poor drug rehab website development, chances are extremely slim in achieving a coveted site-link in Google search.

Learn From the Top 3 Reasons Drug Rehab SEO Website Development Hurts Drug Rehab Marketing

Poor drug rehab website development structure is the #1 reason why addiction treatment lead generation fails. Google heavily uses the user’s experience to rank any given site. Google’s algorithm considers many factors. In addition, it looks at loading speed (after 2 seconds you lose 50% of the audience), click-through rates, time on site and frequency of visits to name a few. This article pinpoints these 3 key areas for recovery centers to look for and understand in their marketing.

Proper Website Structure = Poor Web Marketing Results. Get your website built by an industry professional
Pay Attention to Schema and Voice Search
Proper Website Structure gets more Google real-estate with Site-links

If recovery centers can’t get to page one of Google they can’t generate addiction treatment calls. This article outlines the most common mistakes made with drug rehab website development in the recovery industry. Give us a call, we are drug rehab marketing specialists and we will quickly evaluate your SEO. We also provide SEO training. If you would like us to evaluate your organization’s website contact Charles Davis at CEO@BehavioralHealthNetworkResources.com, or give him a call at 561-235-6195.

Drug Rehab SEO Marketing Vs. Digital Darwinism

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Drug rehab SEO and drug rehab marketing is understandably becoming the most important part of drug and alcohol addiction treatment centers business model. Search engine optimization (drug rehab SEO) is what allows Google to effectively communicate with your website. Search engines speak many languages, but SEO is what it understands best. It requires on-page and off-page critical areas to rank on page one.

Advertising or drug rehab SEO for intensive outpatient programs and inpatient drug rehabs requires many different areas. CEO’s and Directors have always taken short term solutions to their long-term problem of a healthy census. They expect immediate results in all their drug rehab SEO marketing efforts. Many rehabilitation centers are seeking that one thing. They think they can do one singular thing that generates clients or gets them page one rankings, it doesn’t exist. Drug rehab SEO and marketing takes many things to accomplish, time and investment.

Understanding Drug Rehab Marketing and Digital Darwinism

Drug rehab SEO has made digital Darwinism a thing in the 21st-century. It demonstrates that conducting business, as usual, will eventually force you to close your doors. There are many addiction treatment centers and behavioral health organizations closing their doors nationwide.

The one thing they all had in common is that they suffered from drug rehab SEO digital Darwinism. They stayed with past and outdated drug rehab marketing, SEO and business strategies. These consist of a “buy rehab leads” mentality. These organizations should have learned from Google when addiction treatment ads were first banned on July 1, 2017.

Now, in 2019, if you want to buy rehab leads or do PPC on Google and Facebook you need the Legit Script certification. This certification is only needed if you want to place paid ads on these platforms. This certification does not apply to organic drug rehab marketing. Google AdWords is not the answer for small to medium size players. A $10,000 budget gets eaten fast considering there are big players spending in excess of $500,000 per month. In order to achieve page one rankings in organic marketing, it takes;

a structurally correct website
schema
a fast loading website
drug rehab SEO

Each component requires a specialist with specific knowledge. It takes time and investment, however, the payoff goes way beyond a buy rehab leads strategy. Consider this, AdWords or PPC only account for about 2% of page one clicks. The first three organic slots and Maps account for 70% of page one clicks.

Digital Darwinism Fuels Short-term Drug Rehab Marketing Solutions

Digital Darwinism is when technology evolves faster than businesses can adapt. The substance abuse industry has ignored web drug rehab SEO for short-term solutions to their long-term problem of maintaining a healthy census. Not realizing that the short-term solutions strategy has put them on a hamster wheel with their addiction treatment marketing. They are forced to pay over and over again for the lead generation. Many of the small to medium size recovery centers think that they cannot compete on the web with the big players spending $500,000’s every month.

They can compete with proven drug rehab SEO strategies put into place properly. Many of these centers have also been burned by the large drug rehab marketing agencies with their cookie cutter option (click to read more on how they are burning operators.) Many of these agencies do not even rank for key terms for their own business like;

drug rehab SEO
drug rehab marketing agency
drug rehab marketing consultants
drug rehab marketing

If they can’t rank their own business with their drug rehab marketing, how can you expect them to rank yours? Being educated on the many components of SEO, knowing what to look for, and performing some of the drug rehab SEO themselves will get the smaller centers on page one of Google.

What Are Drug Rehab SEO and Drug Rehab Marketing?

Drug rehab SEO marketing goes beyond outreach and “buy rehab leads”. It is a key component in addiction treatment center lead generation. Some of the things consist of:

proper website development
building high PR7, PR8, and PR9 backlinks
schema
Google My Business
proper H tags
keyword counts
META descriptions
SERP descriptions
ALT tags
URL’s with keyword
and many more

Then there is off-page SEO that involves drug rehab SEO marketing and citations, back-links, long tail keywords, social media, and email marketing to name a few. These are some of the long-standing components that must be performed. The newest, as of July 2018, is Google’s speed update affecting rankings on mobile devices. We recently spoke with Brian Frye, of Magna Technology, a national leader in drug rehab website development about the importance of speed. This is what he had to say;

After proper website development and drug rehab SEO marketing, speed becomes a big factor when ranking on mobile.

While it is impossible to name all the different components, the CEO’s and marketing directors must get educated in order to rank on page one organically. Many in the rehabilitation industry have a poor website structure in their drug rehab lead generation strategy.

Critical Business Areas Are Drug Rehab SEO Marketing

In any business, the #1 factor is generating revenue. With our industry this is done with drug rehab marketing and drug rehab SEO. In the drug and alcohol addiction treatment industry you generate revenue from marketing and billing. Many recovery industry businesses think they have these two areas under control. These are critical areas that CEO’s must be extremely knowledgeable in. In many cases organizations are leaving huge chunks of revenue on the table.

Marketing dollars are being thrown and wasted on top of a poorly developed website with poor marketing. In-house billing and unchecked substance abuse billing and revenue cycle management companies errors are costing centers operating revenue. If you aren’t looking at the following you may not be in business much longer:

how many organic keywords are we ranking for?
are we ranking in Google maps for long tail keywords (IE drug rehabs followed by city)
have a niche drug rehab SEO agency that is increasing rankings on a monthly basis

Our industry is changing fast and the organizations that don’t adapt with proven drug rehab marketing strategies will not stay in business. You will not be able to operate with lazaire fare strategies. Relying upon your marketing Directors and Outreach staff’s book of referral sources puts your organization at great risk. Many are simply shuffling the same referral sources back and forth. This is a short-term strategy that is causing many centers to close their doors. Drug rehab centers need to find the best digital marketing agency or digital marketing services. They not only need to find the industries best search engine optimization agencies but also ones like BHNR that teach their clients search engine optimization.

Marketing Directors Role in Drug Rehab Marketing

Marketing Directors in our industry do not understand web marketing in general. They have risen to the position of Marketing Director because at some point they generated a referral base from boots on the ground tactics. What happens many times is that their referral sources dry up? They are usually let go because they have little value to the organization with drug rehab marketing.

They have no drug rehab marketing or even more drug rehab SEO education or skills that provide value to the organizations. Judging from the many LinkedIn profiles we see daily, the average length of employment for Marketing Directors is about six months to one year.

What treatment center owners don’t realize is that each employee turnover costs the organization $20,000 in hidden costs. Weeks of rev up time, training, education, administrative costs, HR, equipment, systems to be learned =, and many more. The main reason why this is occurring in our industry is that owners are not supplying the correct tools to Marketing and Outreach. They are relying upon these positions to generate calls, instead of providing the calls for them to convert. This was ok in the past, however, with the current climate it is essential for operators to have a robust business and marketing plan in place.

Drug Rehab SEO Website Development is the First and Most Important Step

The very first step in a solid drug rehab marketing plan is drug rehab SEO website development. An abundance of centers will use a website designer, not a website developer to build their website. There is a very distinctive difference between these two roles. A website designer will build the most beautiful website. This is often what CEO’s and marketing directors are most concerned with on their website. They don’t understand that this is only a small part of web marketing.

On the other hand, a website developer plays a much larger role in drug rehab marketing on the web. This is because they have an understanding of drug rehab SEO. A website developer puts the many critical components in place that get you ranked on Google. Many judge their website on its’ aesthetics. This is about 10% of what you need to be looking at on a website. The remaining 90% is like the inside of a watch.

There are many moving parts that must be placed correctly for Google to rank on page one. Without a structurally sound website, you are leaking wasted marketing dollars. Ask yourself, did we build our website with drug rehab SEO marketing in mind? If a website does not have the following Google will not rank you or rank poorly::

a proper silo
schema, sitemap
HTTPS
mobile optimization
proper local drug rehab SEO

What to Look for in Drug Rehab SEO Marketing?

There are very specific things to look for with drug rehab marketing, and even more so with drug rehab SEO. A Marketing Director position definitely says you are an addiction professional. As a professional, you should be skilled in every aspect of that position. This biggest chunk of that position is web marketing. Web marketing if executed correctly outperforms all other marketing combined.

There are only a few small to medium size addiction treatment centers, detox’s, sober living facilities and sales/service organizations that have a understanding of drug rehab SEO and a good drug rehab marketing strategy. If your organization or drug rehab marketing agency is not getting your facility on the first page of Google in the 3-pack or in the first three slots on page one organically for key long tail keywords (ie drug rehabs West Palm Beach) you are not doing your job very well.

Drug Rehab SEO Marketing 40 Point Checklist for CEO’s and Marketing Directors

As a CEO or Marketing Director you should be able to answer the following marketing and drug rehab marketing and drug rehab SEO questions;

Is our website structurally correct?
Is the hierarchy of our website good for Google?
Are the URL’s for our website correct for drug rehab SEO?
Does our website have an SSL certificate?
Do we have schema incorporated into our website?
Are our Google maps properly coded and placed on our website?
Does our website have a sitemap and have we told Google it’s there?
What is our list of drug rehab marketing keywords based on our organization’s services? And, out of those keywords which ones can, we easily rank for on the first page of Google?
Do the main pages of our website have SEO for these keywords?
Is our website fast enough on mobile for the new speed update released on July 9, 2018?
What drug rehab marketing agency is performing our drug rehab SEO and have we recently looked at their performance? Do we rank in the first three slots of Google organically for any of the keywords?
What keywords are we using in our drug rehab SEO marketing and are ranking in the Google 3-pack?
How do we understand Google analytics and how to use it to build our marketing campaign?
What posts from our drug rehab marketing are producing the most calls from our call tracking metrics?
How many calls are being produced by our marketing company?
When was the last time we posted in our Google My Business?
When was the last time we uploaded pictures in our Google My Business?
Are we using Yoast to check the bare minimum for our drug rehab SEO?
Are our pictures on the website optimized?
Do we have a blog?
Is our blog long-form (1,500 words or more)?
Is our blog content attracting, engaging to our target audience and does it touch an emotional level?
Does our SEO for our keywords? If so, what are those keywords and how many of the blog posts have made it to page one of Google? Do we need a drug rehab SEO blog writing service provider?
Do we any orphaned posts?
How are we building quality drug rehab SEO back-links?
How many drug rehab marketing and drug rehab SEO citations do we have?
Do we have a staff page linking to LinkedIn. This is part of drug rehab SEO marketing?
Are we getting regular Google Reviews? If not, why?
Can we use email marketing to professionals, individuals seeking treatment and our alumni? Are we emailing EAP’s, Labor Unions, Interventionists, Private Clinicians, Treatment Centers, Detoxes and more…?
How many of our staff are involved in our drug rehab marketing on social media? And, what are the uniform messages we are using?
Are we building a targeted and captured social media audience of professionals and individuals seeking treatment with our drug rehab SEO marketing on Facebook and LinkedIn?
Has our web marketing been evaluated by a industry leading drug rehab SEO professional?
What is our activity on the World’s #1 business networking site LinkedIn (500 million members)? Are you using drug rehab SEO marketing strategies to connect on LinkedIn?
Do we understand how to maximize Facebook (2 billion members)
Are we driving 500-1000 targeted visitors (per article) to your blog posts?
Do we understand and utilize your Google Analytics?
What have we done to utilize call tracking metrics?
Are we doing Lunch and Learns at our center for EAP’s, Labor Unions, Interventionists, Private Clinicians and more…?
Do we have any kind of Outreach training including drug rehab SEO and drug rehab marketing (LinkedIn, Sales force, answering calls from potential clients, etc…)?
Is our entire organization on the same page with the messages we are putting out on social media?

Addiction Conferences for C-Level Executives Provide Business Answers

You can get answers to critical drug rehab marketing, drug rehab SEO and business operating questions and more at Behavioral Health Network Resources next addiction conferences. These event feature education for CEO and Marketing directors on the business side of behavioral health. We hav introduced education on website development, drug rehab SEO, drug rehab marketing on social media, google Ad Words, PPC and much more.

Outreach’s drug rehab marketing is one of the most overlooked areas in our industry. Just look at LinkedIn for instance. this is an area that can be used for drug rehab marketing and yes drug rehab SEO. Yes, drug rehab SEO. There are proven business and marketing solutions. We have been providing events like these since 2015 and have put on over 16 addiction conferences.

We are currently looking for Co-Hosts and Co-Chair sponsors for West Palm Beach and Los Angeles addiction conferences in 2022 and 2023. These addiction conferences cover proven and ethical business and marketing practices. Each event has 5 panelists educating on the real pain points of operators. Some of these topics include;

proper website development
drug rehab SEO Professional
drug rehab marketing strategies
dealing with insurance companies
social media marketing
the business of medication-assisted treatment
substance abuse billing
ranking in Google maps
legal issues
patient brokers

Outreach Needs More Drug Rehab Marketing Education

Outreach positions have poor drug rehab marketing tools at best and almost no drug rehab SEO knowledge. There are many new pups that are in the role of Outreach. Many are out of treatment for less than a year, and again have some source for referrals. Once their referral sources dry up or get reduced they are given the talk by the treatment center owner. This talk reveals they have 30 days to start generating more referrals. In those 30 days, they are aggressively seeking new treatment centers for employment. Many times this is when they try to start using LinkedIn for outreach and addiction professional networking. As an Outreach professional and certainly as a Marketing Director you need to understand the complexities of web marketing.

Understanding Drug Rehab SEO Marketing Vs. Digital Darwinism

The best B2B advertising websites like Design Rush know SEO outperforms all other drug rehab marketing combined. It requires H Tags, ALT Tags, SERP’s, URL’s and keywords. Not understanding Digital Darwinism is a costly mistake and could be detrimental to the success of the organization. Once you have set-up the proper foundation you need to drive your target market to your website.

Many drug and alcohol addiction treatment centers, opiate detox’s, sober livings and behavioral health sales/service organizations do not have the proper drug rehab SEO or drug rehab marketing foundation in place. Without the proper website foundation, you are wasting large amounts of money on marketing. A website is like an iceberg only 10% of it is showing. The 90% underneath is the critical piece to be examined. Many organizations judge their website on how it looks. This is a critical and costly mistake.

Drug rehab SEO marketing is extremely complicated and behavioral health organizations need to be educated on what needs to be done. SEO involves;

key search words
H tags
internal and external links
high PR back-links
citations
Google My Business
Google 3-pack
schema
site speed
SERPS

While this article provides a healthy checklist for drug rehab marketing, there is much more. It’s is an on-going task and treatment centers must take on more of this role. We not only perform drug rehab SEO, but we also teach our clients to be able to perform many tasks needed for it. Give us a call at 561-235-6195 and ask about our 90-day drug rehab SEO program that also provides you search engine optimization training.

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