If you're looking for a quick helpful read to ensure your entrepreneurial physician business website is doing more than sitting there like a handsome self-satisfied brochure, look no further than "eBoot Camp: Proven Internet Marketing Techniques to Grow Your Business" by Corey Perlman.

Recommended to me by a client as a concise way to teach my clients what is important in creating a website that is a true marketing asset, I dived in and came up for air a couple of hours later.

I'm at the stage of "Internet-savvy" that I know and understand much of what is covered in the book, but I haven't yet developed the ease and precision with which to teach the materials. And now there's no good reason to spend time on developing that skill -- I'm simply going to recommend that my clients read this book.

Quick personal note -- this book represents the evolution from my former business's website (a very pretty, much commented-on web brochure that never delivered business from being found in the search engines) to The Entrepreneurial MD, which certainly does a much better job. My search engine rankings are high for my keywords, and much more importantly 65-70% of my business now comes through the Internet. I am living proof that this stuff works!

Back to the book.

The book is divided into two sections: How to play (and win) the search engine game and Create a web presence to dominate the search engines and drastically increase traffic to your web site. Pretty cool promises, hey?

In addition to lots of useful explanations and information, Perlman provides Tips for Success, Walkthrough and Exercise, Case Study, Resources and even Cocktail Information and Web Tidbit sections in each chapter.

He dissects the anatomy of a search engine, teaches you about domain names and keywords (crucial to success!) writes about pay-per-click ads and describes in simple terms things such as title tags, meta description tags and the importance of link popularity.

Once the technical stuff is over, he moves smoothly into how to use your website as an effective marketing tool by "hurling your url" into blogs you read or write, online articles, social networking sites, and press releases. And he wraps up by guiding the reader through the steps to staying "top of mind" with customers or patients, flexing the website's biceps to kickstart relationships and then email, audio and even video to cement the love affair.

I highly recommend this book for the enthusiastic but not-yet savvy Internet marketing neophyte -- it will make my job as a physician business coach a lot easier!