| Hello,
This is Tom, lead developer for UMTPG Media. Many of you I know because we corresponded with in the past in when working on your website and marketing material, but this is a large database, so many of you I have not yet met.
To give proper context, I joined with Joel in 2019 to take on site development and optimization. At that time, I knew nothing about the NEMT, home care, or the broker industries, but in building close to 550 NEMT websites and counting, as you can expect, I have learned a great deal. I am far from an NEMT industry expert, but as you know, Joel is a wealth of knowledge so you can’t help but learn.
Quite some time ago, Joel asked me to prepare some notes to share with many of you who keep wasting a ton of money on paid advertising or simply getting suckered by the countless “SEO experts” who flood the internet. Because of our workload, It has taken me a long time to draft the message, so I just had to commit to making time.
I will try to be brief and to the point, so please read the various important points that can save you a lot of time and money.
1. It is impotent to understand that your NEMT business is a very niche service. Like me prior to joining with Joel, I knew what an ambulance was, a taxi and limo service, but I knew nothing about NEMT. The same will hold true with you. People do not know of NEMT until they need the service. This is importantly to understand because many providers think they are going to get a flood of business and online revenue through your website, and the fact of the matter is you are not. Why? Because you are a niche service and not a Shopify store, and the vast majority of the people looking online for NEMT service are price shopping. This it’s important because they know nothing of quality, only price, and if they are shopping for the lowest price while you are paying for online advertising you can easily see how you are further squeezing your own bottom line.
2. Will you get some private pay clients online? Yes, you will, but it won’t be at a level that you can rely on or scale a business around. Again, you are a local niche service and not a Shopify store selling trinkets and gadgets around the world. The primary purpose of your website is to make you look first class, even if you are new with limited to no experience, and to reaffirm your credibility when facility staff and administrators go online to verify and learn more about who and what you are. This is why you want to follow Joel’s strategies because your website, marketing materials, and executive welcome packet are designed to complement each other and build your brand.
3. With all of that being said, you have to understand that Google is a behemoth and a monopoly. They comprise 95% of all online searches, up from 92%. Therefore, it stands to reason that everything we do is in pursuit of and to cater to Google. Whether you like Google or not, they are the giant in the room, and we would be fools not to cater to their criteria. For this reason, everything we do on our end is to optimize your site on the backend to be as attractive as possible to Google.
4. The first thing you can do on your end to optimize your site and build long-term organic traffic and save money is build out and update you Google My Business (GMB) account which is absolutely free. In building out your GMB account, you should make a post at least once every 2-3 weeks and link it back to you site or a specific blog post that we have created on your site.
5. The second thing you should do is refer people to your “Request Transport” page that we build on your site. We build this page specifically so facility staff and prospective customers can submit trip details and then you can contact the person to confirm. The repeated direct engagement with your site is absolutely huge. It cannot be understated as it makes a giant impression with Google.
6. I know everyone wants to post on Facebook, instagram, and the like, and I know all the “SEO Experts’ offer to make regular posts for you on the platforms, but two quick things to confident. First, the “Experts” are all using ChatGPT to create a generic AI post because, like me when I started, the “Experts” have no real understanding of NEMT, and second, you lose credibility when your Facebook and social media posts only have 3 likes and they are always from the same friends and family.
7. You can list your business on services such as Yelp, but keep in mind their free accounts are limited and are really designed to get you to pay for upgrades, but I will tell you that those subscriptions are actually more beneficial and cost effective than paid ads. With paid ads, you pay by impression, so it quickly ads up, and when you stop paying because you realize you are losing money, there is absolutely no SEO benefit to your site. It is like turning off a faucet. Once closed, traffic immediately stops.
These are just some quick thought and strategies for you to consider because I know so many of you are being solicited with all the ridiculous “Get featured on the first page of Google” nonsense, and it is wasting your money. Joel always talks about playing the long game, and your online optimization should be no different.
Feel free to contact me with questions, but please be patient in giving me time to respond. We have a large workload.
Hope this helps.
Thanks, Tom tdoyle@milliondollartransportation.com |
