Traditional SEO vs. Local SEO: Which Does Your Business Need?

Most people do not realize that Google uses multiple algorithms to provide search results, so it is important to understand the difference between them when you are trying to optimize your site. If you want your site to be seen by potential and current customers, you need to optimize your website for the right algorithm. So how do you know which type of SEO to do to make your website more search engine friendly?


Online review responses and HIPAA compliance

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) is a federal law that prohibits the disclosure of protected health information (PHI) without patient consent. PHI is defined as “health information that can be used to identify an individual” and includes data related to a patient’s medical or physical condition, and identity. HIPAA extends to online review management, and since responding to reviews is essential to a healthcare organization’s online reputation, healthcare marketers must follow HIPAA guidelines when crafting review responses. Below are best practices to consider when handling online reviews, and some examples of HIPAA-compliant responses.

Best practices for HIPAA-compliant review responses

Avoid a HIPAA violation by following these quick tips:

  • Have an internal plan. Collaborate internally to develop review response policies, including identifying who will be responding to reviews and creating templates that can be customized for positive and negative reviews.
  • Protect PHI in your response. Remove all detail about a patient’s diagnosis, treatment, condition, and visit, and do not confirm or deny them as a patient.
  • Respond broadly. Stick to general responses like, “Thank you for your feedback” or “Thank you for taking the time to leave us a review.”
  • Take the conversation offline. Give the reviewer the opportunity to further discuss their comments by providing them with a phone number or email address for your office or patient experience team. This also helps prevent further online conversations that could violate HIPAA.

Keeping these tips in mind, below are some real examples of review responses that either violate or follow HIPAA guidelines.


How to Come Up with Blog Ideas: Four Easy Tips for Business Owners

In order to keep your site relevant for your money-making search terms, you need a blog, and you need to publish high-quality content on your blog regularly.

How to come up with blog ideas, though? Where to start?

In this post, I offer a few no-nonsense ways business owners can come up with great blog ideas by leveraging their experience and expertise in their field—no intimidating “keyword research,” “discovery,” or “competitor analysis” process required.

(For my purposes here, by “business owners,” I mean those without SEO training.)

If successful, the tips from this post won’t feed you blog ideas or topics themselves. Rather, they’ll equip you with a reproducible process to ideate stellar content ideas or topics for months (and years) to come. If you take advantage of the tips I provide, you’ll become your business’ very own brainy content strategist—and very likely a richer entrepreneur.