Orthotown August 2017 - 61

by Sam Harbison
As director of accounts at Search
Control, a marketing and ad
agency in Scottsdale, Arizona, Sam
Harbison works with clients in a
wide array of industries. Harbison
has 10 years of experience helping
customers improve their online
web presence through both
organic and paid strategies.

s part of my tenure
as a web professional,
I've bu ilt hundreds
of websites, set up an
equal number of online
marketing strategies ...
and heard thousands of questions from
clients who need guidance about everything
from the basics of owning a website to the
speciﬁcs of search engine strategies.
If your practice has an online marketing strategy-or
plans to develop one soon-you should ask yourself these
questions, and make sure you're comfortable with the answers.
(If not, rather than muddling through it yourself, it might be
time to search out qualiﬁed professional assistance.)

Why would I need to worry about hacking?
Do I really know my site?
It can be tough to jump into the technical ins and
outs of the web. You don't have to be a programmer, but
understanding the more critical components of your site is
essential if you want a successful web presence.
For example: If you don't know which platform your
site lives on, it's time to dig a little deeper. Many dentists
are using platforms such as WordPress, which my company
almost exclusively builds in. It's critical to understand that
your website is a living, breathing component of your online
marketing: Every year-and, actually, I'd recommend it
every three months-you should complete a quick "health
check" on your website. This means the following:
* Do you have a recent backup of the site?
* Have your plug-ins or other add-ons been updated to
help prevent potential security breaches?

* Does every "ﬁll-in" form on your site still work, and
does everyone included on the form actually receive the
messages or emails sent from the site?
* If a cellphone user clicks the phone number on your
website, does it dial your business?
* Do you have the login information to your File Transfer
Protocol (FTP), website administrative backend and
hosting platform?
If you pay a company to manage your site and hosting,
oftentimes this is just a phone call making sure it has all of
the above in place. However, if you've recently transitioned
to a new vendor or have taken a portion of your website
management in-house, embed these bullet points in your
internal procedures. Over the past few years, a number of
large security breaches came from hackers leveraging outof-date website technology to spam or create havoc. These
security breaches can prevent emails from being received
and, in some cases, I've seen people lose entire websites.
I know it sounds like an excessive amount of caution,
but dealing with hackers and spammers is a reality in the
web today. Luckily, a quick health check can avoid the hassle
and stress of dealing with almost any type of security issue.
Avoid downtime and stay effective online by hitting those
checkpoints often.

I keep hearing about online directories.
I have a website-isn't that enough?
Having a website is a great start, but to maximize its reach
you also should "legitimize" that site by setting up accurate
proﬁ les on sites such as Yelp, Google Local, Bing Places,
Superpages and Manta. Why they're important:

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Orthotown August 2017