Physical therapy practice owners finally realized that having a website is essential to running their business. As a matter of fact, it has become customary for every small business (not just physical therapy practices) to get a website when they start up. But while the physical therapy practice owner’s embrace of the Internet is a good thing, you should realize that simply having a website in existence will not automatically translate to more patients if you don’t get visitors. And not just any visitors — we’re talking about targeted traffic from people that are actually searching the Internet for physical therapy services. This is where search engine optimization and physical therapy marketing on the Internet comes into place.

Do not make the mistake that most physical therapy owners make and try to make your website rank for the general keyword of “physical therapy” — that keyphrase is very competitive and is unlikely to deliver you with patients that you can service. Instead, focus on the “local” long tail (or the LocalTail, as we like to call it) — effective physical therapy marketing involves targeting keywords like “physical therapy ” which are more likely to be from prospects within your area who you can provide your services for.

As soon as you have identified one or two primary keywords, there are two factors to effective search engine optimization: on-page SEO and off-page SEO. If you focus on the fundamentals of each, then it shouldn’t be too much of a problem to rank for your terms. The former is very simple: just be sure that your homepage