Get More Chiropractic Patients With Facebook

How Chiropractors Get More Clients With Facebook Ads

In today's digital age, social media has become an essential tool for businesses to reach and engage with potential customers. Facebook, in particular, has emerged as a powerful platform for lead generation and has proven to be highly effective for businesses in various industries, including healthcare. For chiropractors,

Facebook lead generation ads offer a cost-effective and efficient way to attract new patients and grow their practice. In this article, we will discuss how lead generation ads with Facebook can help chiropractors expand their reach, increase their patient base, and ultimately, grow their practice.

What are lead generation ads?

Lead generation ads are a type of Facebook ad that is specifically designed to capture information from potential customers, such as their name, email address, and phone number. These ads appear in the newsfeed of targeted users and include a call-to-action (CTA) button that encourages them to take a specific action, such as signing up for a newsletter or requesting more information. Unlike traditional Facebook ads that direct users to a website or landing page, lead generation ads allow users to submit their information directly on Facebook, making the process quick and convenient.

Why use lead generation ads for chiropractic practices?

1. Targeted Audience

One of the biggest advantages of using Facebook lead generation ads for chiropractic practices is the ability to target a specific audience. With Facebook's advanced targeting options, chiropractors can reach potential patients based on their location, age, interests, and behaviors. This ensures that the ad is seen by people who are most likely to be interested in chiropractic services, increasing the chances of converting them into patients.

2. Cost-effective

Compared to traditional forms of advertising, Facebook lead generation ads are relatively inexpensive. Chiropractors can set a budget for their ads and only pay when someone clicks on the ad or submits their information. This pay-per-click (PPC) model allows chiropractors to control their advertising costs and ensures that they are only paying for potential leads.

3. Increased Reach

With over 2.8 billion active users, Facebook offers chiropractors a massive audience to reach and engage with. By using lead generation ads, chiropractors can expand their reach beyond their current patient base and attract new patients who may not have been aware of their services. This increased reach can help chiropractors grow their practice and establish themselves as a reputable healthcare provider in their community.

4. Easy to Use

Creating a lead generation ad on Facebook is a simple and straightforward process. Chiropractors can use Facebook's ad manager to create and manage their ads, even if they have no prior experience with digital marketing. The ad manager provides a step-by-step guide to creating an ad, making it easy for chiropractors to set up their campaigns and start generating leads.

5. Mobile-friendly

With the majority of Facebook users accessing the platform through their mobile devices, lead generation ads are designed to be mobile-friendly. This means that potential patients can easily submit their information on their smartphones or tablets, without having to navigate to a separate website or landing page. This convenience can increase the chances of converting leads into patients, as they are more likely to take action when the process is quick and easy.

How to create effective lead generation ads for chiropractic practices

1. Use eye-catching visuals

Visuals are a crucial element of any Facebook ad, and lead generation ads are no exception. Chiropractors should use high-quality images or videos that are relevant to their services and will capture the attention of potential patients. For example, a photo of a chiropractor performing an adjustment or a video testimonial from a satisfied patient can be effective in grabbing the audience's attention.

2. Craft a compelling headline and ad copy

The headline and ad copy are the first things that potential patients will see when they come across a lead generation ad. It is essential to make them compelling and attention-grabbing. Chiropractors should focus on highlighting the benefits of their services and how they can help potential patients. For example, a headline like “Say goodbye to back pain with our chiropractic services” can be more effective than a generic headline like “Chiropractic services now available.”

3. Include a clear call-to-action (CTA)

The CTA is a crucial element of a lead generation ad as it tells potential patients what action to take next. Chiropractors should use a clear and concise CTA that encourages users to take action, such as “Sign up now” or “Request an appointment.” It is also essential to make the CTA stand out by using a contrasting color or bold font.

4. Offer something of value

To entice potential patients to submit their information, chiropractors can offer something of value in return. This could be a free consultation, a discount on their first visit, or a free e-book on chiropractic care. This not only incentivizes users to take action but also helps to establish the chiropractor as an expert in their field.

5. Test and optimize

As with any marketing strategy, it is essential to test and optimize lead generation ads to ensure they are effective. Chiropractors can experiment with different visuals, headlines, ad copy, and CTAs to see what resonates best with their target audience. Facebook's ad manager provides analytics and insights that can help chiropractors track the performance of their ads and make necessary adjustments to improve their results.

Lead generation ads with Facebook offer chiropractors a powerful tool to attract new patients and grow their practice, get in touch with us for more information. With its advanced targeting options, cost-effectiveness, and ease of use, Facebook is an ideal platform for chiropractors to reach a targeted audience and generate leads. By creating compelling ads and offering something of value, chiropractors can increase their reach, establish themselves as reputable healthcare providers, and ultimately, grow their practice.

Why No One Clicks on Your Social Media Content — 6 Tips for Improving Engagement

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For a small medical practice, gaining steam on social media is undeniably an uphill battle. You have to contend with algorithms that make it nearly impossible to get discovered until you achieve a certain level of visibility. This situation puts you in a catch-22: you can’t get anyone to view your content until you get engagement, which requires views!

Nevermind the fact that social media overwhelmingly prefers silly or opinionated content—two things that really don’t gel with the average healthcare and medical practice’s branding. Sure, you can gain thousands of shares by posting ridiculous cat videos, but there’s a slim chance all that attention will aid your business goals.

Despite all these challenges, putting your practice out there on social media isn’t just worth it; it’s necessary. According to research from Stone Temple, 63 percent of all web traffic in 2017 came from mobile devices. In the U.S., 87 percent of mobile internet time is spent in apps. What are the most common apps? Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram, to name a few.

Following this logic, people on the internet spend the majority of their time looking at social media apps on their phone. While Google Search is another top app—meaning SEO is also critical for medical practices—social media is by far the most common way people discover content. Consider that two thirds of U.S. adults say they get their news from social media.

Put simply: if you aren’t on social media, you will have an incredibly hard time gaining brand recognition for your office. You will also have a tough time getting attention for your laboriously curated or crafted content.

So how can you climb uphill to earn engagement and, eventually, legions of new patients? Start by following the six tips below.

1. Talk About Your Audience, Not Your Business

No one logs into social media to talk about you! Okay, that may be an unfair exaggeration, but our point is that most people enjoy social media because it’s all about me, me, me.

You should use that tendency. Instead of talking about your medical practice, talk about the healthcare industry in a way that people can relate. Suddenly, you’re not just promoting. You’re conversing. Or, you’re informing. Sometimes, you might even be commiserating.

Here’s an example: consider a post written by a local Chiropractic office that says, “Regular adjustments loosen up tight muscles! Come in today and mention this post for $5 off.”

While the offer may be tempting and the service may be useful, people may tune them out. Instead, the office can say, “Has sitting at a desk all day made you achy and cranky? Come see us! With a quick chiropractic adjustment, we’ll have you feeling like a new person when you walk out the door. Get $5 off your service when you mention this post! ”The difference is all about perspective. When you write content, don’t just subtly hint at relevance to your audience. Instead, write things for them that subtly steer them towards your services. Flipping your thinking around can be a quick path to more consistent conversions.

2. Cover Interesting Healthcare Topics Rather Than Just Your Brand Alone

Another way to branch away from overpromotion is to be a provider of news and information from the healthcare industry. A healthcare provider can offer self-care tips and the latest studies on which health practices are most effective. You may even want to share stretches and exercises people can do at home to start feeling better.

When done right, this content earns your audience’s interest without your practice appearing like it wants something in return. You also round out your subject matter pool to include topics that are universally interesting and helpful to potential patients.

3. Participate in Discussions in Groups and Trending Hashtags

What if your brand were a really helpful person? That’s the approach many of the most successful social media marketers take when they’re trying to build an audience. They get proactive, reaching out to target audiences in the social niches they occupy.

For example, the same hypothetical Chiropractic office mentioned above could join yoga, martial arts, or natural living groups. As long as they are not overtly promoting or stealing focus from other discussions, the business can become a valuable contributor to the group. After all, who better to offer expertise than the experts?

When building your initial audience pool, try to be very active in Facebook groups and public discussions. Avoid coming across too opinionated, but don’t be shy about setting facts straight. With enough effort, you can gain some initial followers—and even new patients!

4. Aim for Emotional Content That Tells a Story About Your Customers

Going back to one of the main drawbacks of social media marketing for medical practices: only certain types of content seem to excel on platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. These popular content categories include humorous content, content that impresses/amazes, content that sums up people’s feelings succinctly, content that isn’t afraid to state a strong opinion and content that stirs emotions.

Of all these options, emotional content is probably the easiest to pin down. While getting an emotion out of your audience may seem like a tall order, it’s actually fairly hard to fail completely at it. An attempt to make a joke or be “cool” might go over like a lead balloon. Being controversial is never a good idea since it, well, stirs controversy. But no one can 100 percent fail at communicating emotion as long as they’re sincere.

Think from your heart and start by telling stories either about your patients or related to their lives. Get to the emotional core of what your service offers. If you’re relieving pain, you’re offering the ability to make more memories and have good times again. If you’re offering weight loss, you’re providing confidence and empowerment. If you’re offering hormone therapy, you offer customers an emotion: a feeling of control over their lives and the ability for them to feel like themselves.

When using a storytelling approach, start small. Highlight a patient whose day you made. Or, mention the emotional benefits of whatever information your content offers, such as information to help make people’s day less stressful.

From there, you can learn more about how to combine images and text in a way that stirs people’s souls.

5. Engage Your Social Media Marketing Audience Directly by Asking Them Questions

There is probably no more powerful social media marketing phrase than “What do you think?”

Arguably, all of social media is just one big pile of people telling others what they think. When they share art or humorous content, they’re really saying, “This is the type of thing I like!”

“People like to think things through,” explains Barry Feldman on Hubspot. “They like to hear from other thinkers. Certainly, they want other people to know what they think.”

Soliciting opinions is a surefire way to get your audience talking. Try to avoid controversial topics, and moderate comments that include vulgar, hostile, harassing or otherwise off-brand statements. Having someone mad at your medical practice for deleting their comment is a whole lot better than being the practice that let someone attack others in their comment section.

The beauty of asking others for their opinion is that it can be done with just about every post. You can ask people how many times they broke a bone before graduating from high school. Or, if you’re writing about weight loss, throw in a question on your post asking your audience what their favorite healthy snack is.

Soliciting opinions is easy, and it can reliably earn engagement. Just be wary of doing it too often, especially if no one’s taking the bait. You don’t want to be the brand that gets mocked for throwing a poll that absolutely no one clicks on.

6. Research Your Audience’s Interests and Influencers

All of the above methods work well on their own, but you turbocharge their effectiveness by doing a little digging and documentation on your audiences. Try to identify the types of content topics they seem to be most interested in. Look at influencers they frequently interact with and try to write content you think that influencer would share.

Above all else, write down your strategy, measure your results, and experiment to find better performance over time. The nice thing about social media marketing is that your engagement numbers are easy to track! Keep an eye on your graphs and let your “likes” point the way to a bigger, more interactive audience and more new patients walking into your office.

8 Secrets of Social Media Marketing That Everyone Misses

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Social media marketing sounds simple enough to many newbie business owners, but they need to recognize the difference between personal social media use and professional use.

Think about it like this: if you make a good pot of coffee to serve your family, then that’s something you can manage on your own. But if you plan on serving 1,000 cups of coffee to peers over the course of a three-day business conference, then that’s an entirely more complex matter!
Everything gets more complicated when you move from personal to professional, and the results matter more, too.

Suddenly, you aren’t just posting on your Facebook when you feel like it. Nor can you just feel good about the occasional reply and like. Instead, you’re actively trying to drive business goals and represent your brand in a likeable way.
The dramatic difference between the two approaches catches many business owners off-guard. To help them out, here are a eight secrets the pros use when it comes to social media marketing — and that many small businesses overlook.

Write Down a Policy and Style Guide

Ask them to tell you what the business’s social media policy is, and you’re just as likely to get dozens of different answers. In fact, most employees may look you back blankly in the face.
A social media policy guides the brand voice as well as the decisions a business makes when posting. So, if you were trying to pick between two image types, the social media policy could help you decide on the one that aligns better with your social goals.

Set policies for employee social media use, too. Make sure they know they represent the company! Let them know what sorts of offenses could get them in hot water, including posting extreme political opinions or offensive takes.

Creating a social media style guide can similarly help make posting easier, especially if more than one employee handles the duties. Align everything in your policy and style guide so that your social media accounts can support both your brand and your marketing goals.

Target Your Content and Conversations Towards Personas

Some small businesses get HUGE social media followings …of people who would rarely buy anything from them.

There is a big gap between mass engagement and targeted engagement.

You want your posts to speak to a highly targeted audience based on the traits of your best customers. For instance, if you pitch your services to existing IT departments, don’t be shy about using jargon. Stay current on any discussion, too, so that your ideas don’t seem dated.

But if you want to offer managed IT services to regular businesses, they may not know a CAT cable from a cat collar. Feel free to post basic how-tos, and try to keep terminology approachable.
Decide upon the segments you want to speak to in order to raise your chances of success. Imagine traits of a single person in this segment, including their typical job role, the things they value most, and broad aspects of their personality. This is your “persona” for an idealized version of a target audience group.

You can even name them! That way, before you decide on a post to share or an image to use, you can ask something like: “Would Sarah the retired optometrist care about this post?”

Strategize, Set Goals, And Ditch Vanity Metrics

Always set goals for your social media usage. It should serve a concrete purpose that ultimately benefits your business.

Common social media marketing goals include:
● Raising website visits
● Generating leads through job quotes
● Helping introduce new products to people
● Getting more participants for events, contests, and things like webinars
● Upselling existing customers
● Reminding prior customers to return again
● Promoting a specific brand value, especially through philanthropy

No matter what your goals are, ensure they actually help your business get more money or improve its brand.

For instance, having a certain number of “likes” or shares from a post promoting your content should not be a goal. These are vanity metrics. Instead, you should monitor the amount of actual visits to the content on your website. Ideally, you will also have targets for the percentage of people converted from social to content to signing up for your related offer.

Carry on Actual Conversations and Engage

Don’t just post into the void or post things you, personally, want to read.
Everything you post should be targeted towards the personas you have created and tied towards business goals.

With this in mind, you want your audiences to feel like your brand is carrying on a conversation rather than just talking at them.

Respond to certain positive comments or interesting ideas. Try to see if you can get the full perspective from people who have something negative to say. Make each response feel personal, not canned.

Give your audience opportunities to take center stage. Post a question for them, like “what are your favorite ways to save money?” Ask them if they would like to see more of certain content types, or less of certain post types.

Also, make your social media use broader than just posting on your own page. Use social listening tools to monitor brand mentions and jump in on messages when you think it’s worthy of a conversation. Find other business pages, and engage with them like you would want others to engage with you.

As Andrew Kucheriavy of web development company Intechnic writes, “make [sure] your interactions are meaningful! Networking is about adding value to a relationship.”

https://www.intechnic.com/blog/10-common-social-media-marketing-mistakes-to-avoid/

Make Time for Off-Schedule Posting

Many business owners go ahead and queue up an entire month’s worth of content in advance.
This is great! Having a schedule makes the social experience more consistent and professional for your audience.

But you shouldn’t be shackled to this schedule.

New articles and ideas will pop up on your radar all the time. Maybe something interesting happened in your industry this week. Maybe you just snapped a great photo of your team at the office.

Promote Content Posts to Put Them in Front of Targeted Audiences

Promoting content on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter can be highly affordable. More importantly, it can grow your audience beyond people who already follow and interact with your pages.

Start experimenting with promoting certain posts and using custom audience building features. Platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook even offer the ability to target specific companies or hyper-local areas.

If you put just a small budget behind a few key posts a month, then you can quickly multiply the number of people who see your messages. You also generate valuable data based on who does and doesn’t interact when they see certain posts.

Give yourself the chance to actually share content during opportunities like these rather than hoarding it all until next month. If you set aside, say, an hour each week to make time for unscheduled postings, then you can flesh out your existing content and make your page feel more organic.

Just remember to stick to your policy, goals, and persona guides. Also, proofread twice!

Don’t Assume Social Media Marketing Is Easy to Do Yourself

There’s a reason “social media manager” is a full-time job at most big companies. Even for small businesses, managing it all and doing it right can be tough.

On top of that, you may not have the time to dig into your data or revisit your strategies and guiding documents.

So seek out help. Share the burden with others who are qualified and whose judgement you trust.
As Social Media Week observes: “Long gone are the days when you could rely on an intern to manage your business’s social media accounts. Either hire an in-house expert, or outsource to a social media management firm.”

Crawl Before You Walk, Walk Before You Run

As with anything in business, don’t bite off more than you can chew. Stick to one or two social networks at first. Otherwise your pages could feel like soulless cookie-cutter copies or, worse, ghost towns with nary an update in months.

But if you stay focused on your goals and your principles, then you can start out small to find gradual success. Only once you get the hang of it should you start to scale out and do more.

Pros and Cons of Offering Customer Support via Social Media

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Today, customers expect service from multiple locations in multiple ways. Providing customer service via social media really is no longer a choice. If you have social media accounts for your business, you have no choice but to also answer questions, deal with issues, and do “customer service” communication on the platforms where you exist. Otherwise your customers will get frustrated with you for not answering their questions.

There are both advantages and disadvantages with offering customer support via social media, of course, and these are detailed below.

Pros

There are a number of positives about performing customer service on your social media accounts that you should know about. These pros really do overcome the negatives.

Your Business Will Grow

Today consumers want to talk to you on social media because that’s where they are. They use social media more than the telephone to deal with everything. When you are good at answering and responding on social media, it will make your business grow. As consumers see – in a very public way – how you deal with issues, they’ll be that much more likely to want to purchase from you.

Your Brand Will Expand

One of the reasons you even start a social media channel is to get brand recognition. The better you are at updating and sharing with your audience, the more you can expand your brand. Dealing with customer service on social media causes content to be produced that offers even more information for the consumer before they choose to be part of your client roster.

Social Media Is Inexpensive

This is the very best thing about using social media. In most cases it’s basically free to start, other than perhaps some social media monitoring tools that you might want to use like Buffer or Hootsuite. In any case, the cost is very low compared to traditional customer service means such as a call center.

Cons

Of course, nothing is perfect. There are pros and cons for everything you do for your business. Thankfully all of these cons can be controlled by having a process and a system for ensuring that you are able to answer questions in a way that doesn’t look bad for your brand.

Your Actions Live Forever

Online, as you know, your actions really do last forever. Even if you delete something, there are ways to find it. People also take screen shots and use them against people. So, create a system, have standardized responses, and rules of the road for any person dealing with the public.

You May Miss Some Issues

Social media is not very linear. It can be very hard to be sure every last question was answered and every situation was dealt with. Again, if you create systems and standards, you will be a lot better off and be less likely to miss as many issues.

Too Many Channels May Cause Confusion

When you have many social media accounts, someone may ask the same question in multiple places – which can make you feel as if you’re always answering the same questions. You’ll have to work out a process to deal with this and keep track. But, it is something you can control as long as the process is in place.

As you see, with these pros and cons, you can clearly count on the fact that you will need to do some customer service on social media if you have social media accounts. Therefore, you need to set up some sort of process and system to make it work for your business.

Expert Analysis of Google’s Pigeon Update on Local SEO for Businesses

Atlanta Local SEO, Brand Optimization, Local SEO, Local SEO Marketing, Medical Clinic Website, Medical Marketing, Reputation Marketing, Sales, Search Engine Marketing, Search Marketing, Social Media

What Is The Pigeon Update?

Somewhere around the last week of July, Google rolled out a brand new search algorithm update that rocked the world for local SEO and local business marketing.

According to Google, this new search engine update was designed to “improve” the search results for local businesses by leveraging hundreds of ranking signals as well as it’s own internal search features like spelling correction, synonyms, and the Google Knowledge Graph.

What Are The Experts Saying About The Pigeon Update?

Many of the top SEO experts across the industry have weighed in to share their research and findings from the impact on their clients.

Search Engine Land made the following analysis:

“It looks like Yelp and other local directory-style sites are benefiting with higher visibility after the Pigeon update, at least in some verticals. And that seems logical since, as Google said, this update ties local results more closely to standard web ranking signals. That should benefit big directory sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor — sites that have stronger SEO signals than small, individual restaurants and hotels are likely to have.”

Moz’s David Mihm (Director of Local Search Strategy) had the following comments:

“Directories with strong brands (like Yelp, as Matt McGee already pointed out) often show up multiple times for the same search, especially on recovery searches for specific small businesses – many of which occur when the searcher clicks a Carousel result. But they’re even prevalent on far less-specific discovery searches, and on searches performed on mobile devices (in my own limited testing).”
“A number of folks have commented in places like Max Minzer’s Local Search community, and Casey Meraz highlighted it as well, that there seem to be many more two and three-packs than there were before, which takes even more real estate away from small businesses and increases the relative opportunity for directories.”
“I’m at a bit of a loss as to any economic benefit this boost to directories (with easier-to-reach, larger Adwords budgets) might provide Google, but I’m looking forward to hearing what other commenters have to say.”

It’s important to note the consistent message across all of the SEO industry’s top experts – local directories with recognizable brands such as Yelp, YellowPages.com, Kudzu, etc. are now getting even higher and stronger positioning across local searches. This has the direct effect of pushing the local business listings farther down the results pages and onto the 2nd page in many cases.
Another SEO expert, Greg Gifford (Director of Search and Social at Autorevo) made the following analysis:

“In the past, “used cars CITY” always brought up a map pack. We’ve seen a few isolated cities where the map pack has disappeared for that query… Before Pigeon, those would have all resulted in seven-packs.”

Nicole Hess, Senior SEO Strategist at Delphic Digital made the following observations:

“There were a few locations that are not appearing in the local pack of results, though at some previous point did appear there. The average drop in traffic for a location that is no longer in the local pack is 16% less traffic month over month (and this is in a good season where overall organic traffic is increasing)… Being out of the local pack correlates with a loss of organic traffic for a few locations. A loss of organic traffic is also occurring where listings are competing against paid ads that have star ratings.”

Here again, we note the drop in rankings for individual local businesses. Many local businesses have fallen out of the “7 Pack” listings, resulting in a drop of approximately 16% of organic traffic for some businesses. We also see that businesses are continuing to lose traffic to some of the paid ads (PPC) that have star ratings. So it’s becoming increasingly important that we continue to increase the star ratings for our clients to remain competitive in local SEO searches.

Another SEO expert, Andrew Shotland, a Local Search Engine Optimization Consultant at LocalSEOGuide.com commented:

“We are really interested in how this update moved Google more in the direction of hyperlocal search. Something that has been flying under the radar on this update is the neighborhood specific location settings that previously seemed to be just a test are now live everywhere as far as I can tell.
“I am also seeing a number of the local directory type sites I work with have almost all seen five to ten percent increases in organic traffic since the update. This lines up with the contraction and elimination of many of the local pack results that others are reporting. Directories would be one of the benefactors of this.”

One of the early observations concerning the Pigeon update is that many of the “7 Pack” (map) listings for local businesses have completely disappeared for as much as 50% – 60% of the searches for local businesses – leaving just the “regular” 10 listings per search results page. Andrew’s comments here suggest that because so many of the 7 Packs have disappeared the major directory companies’ listings are now showing up more often in the top 10 results – pushing the local businesses farther down the results.
Mike Blumenthal of Blumenthals.com observed the following:

“The update does appear to have reduced duplication between the organic and local results. After the October 2013 update that ended blended results, a number of sites were seeing both organic and local pack results. Those seem to have been reduced to one or the other… The directories, at least anecdotally, appear to have benefited from the change.”

Mike’s comments continue to support the other SEO experts’ observations that the major local directories (Yelp, YP.com, kudzu, etc.) have benefitted from this Pigeon update with higher rankings – resulting in pushing local business listings farther down. But he also makes another interesting observation that where a local business might have had a listing in the 7 Pack (maps) section and also in the other listings outside of the 7 Pack, many of those businesses have lost one or the other listing, resulting in only one listing on the first page where they formerly had 2.

Mary Bowling, Co-founder at Ignitor Digital had this to say about the Pigeon update:

“Google has made several moves lately for the purpose of better aligning desktop and mobile results. Google’s interpretation of the searcher’s location may now be playing more into which results they see on their desktop, just the way it has been playing into which results they see on smartphones.
“Some of the things people are reporting are a reduction in the number of local packs seen in the SERPs and a widespread reduction from 7 results in the local packs to 3 results. This may also be an attempt to better mirror on the desktop what mobile searchers see.”

This is another interesting observation that both Andrew (above) and Mary are observing, specifically that Google is now more consistently observing the location of the person doing the search on a desktop and providing results specific to that location.

“This suggests that the part of the search results page composition algorithm that handles determining when to serve local pack results has undergone a revision rather than elimination for many of these effected terms. The dial has been turned back some, if you will, and other qualifying elements have been introduced in how it functions.
“Specificity of the query is an additional element. When Google first began displaying the local pack, they inferred locality intent associated with queries like “house rentals” or “pizza”, etc. For whatever reason, the assumption of local intent has now been dialed back in a number of cases, most likely based upon some sort of usability testing, or out of desire to further reduce “clutter” in search results.
“Overall, the news that this update bumps up web search ranking signals more so than some of the local factors doesn’t necessarily pose a huge fear factor for local businesses. On the other hand, local companies that were enjoying good local pack rankings, despite having an SEO-weak website presence, will now have to step up their game in order to recover.
“Finally, some directory sites appear to have benefited. To me, the recent shift has heavily benefitted Yelp (I think they likely need to Shut-The-Front-Door on whining about Google mistreatment). Yellowpages.com also appears quite prominently in my sampling, as well as some vertical directories.
“Some of the more marginal, less-popular online yellow pages and business directories are not all that visible or prominent these days. In some business category and market combinations, the organic search results are more populated by these directory sites than by the websites of local businesses – which will necessitate a bit of a shift in local companies’ online strategies.
“If these ranking changes for local-intent queries were intentional upon Google’s part, it seems clear that they feel that there are many cases where searchers desire to perform comparative research to decide upon businesses prior to selecting listings. Businesses will have to adjust their strategic approaches accordingly.”

What Does Pigeon Mean For Local SEO For Businesses?

So the messages from the SEO experts seems rather clear…

The major online directories like Yelp and YellowPages.com are seeing higher rankings and more frequent rankings – pushing the local business websites farther down the search results.
Many searches for local businesses that used to show 7 Pack (map) listings no longer show those 7 Packs at all.
In many searches, the 7 Pack of local listings has been reduced to a 3 Pack instead.
Google seems to be placing more emphasis on using the exact location of the person doing the search by delivering results that are “hyper-local” – very specific to the immediate geographic area.
Star ratings that are shown on the search results definitely have an impact on the number of clicks that a listing will get.

So for those of us who do Local SEO, Local Marketing and Reputation Marketing, this update sends a clear signal that it is increasingly important to have our clients local citations and local directory listings complete, accurate and optimized to give them the best chance of showing up in those directories that are now gaining higher prominence in the search results.
We have also noted that star ratings continue to have an impact on the organic traffic for four clients’ websites. So we must continue to work hard to get those online reviews posted to the major review sites (especially Google+). In this regard, our industry leading Reputation Marketing packages should give our clients a considerable advantage over their competition.
Finally, as fewer 7 Pack listings show up in the search results, it becomes even more important to implement effective local SEO strategies that get our clients ranked higher in the results, to compete with the increased rankings of the local directories.
On that note, I would like to share a little of our own anecdotal evidence that when done effectively, a good SEO program can still beat out the major online directory sites in the search results. At Grow Smart Marketing we have a good number of clients that are still ranking at the top of their local search results and consistently beating Yelp, YellowPages, and the others even after the Pigeon update.

If you’d like to speak with one of our Grow Smart Marketing consultants about implementing an effective local marketing program for your business please contact us today for a free, no-hassle step-by-step strategy session.