If you have a business, chances are you are trying to get an established online presence. Even doctors need a user-friendly website and a good digital marketing strategy in order to grow their business. Now more than ever, you will find your future patients through an online browse for local doctors, dentists, chiropractors and so on.
Personal and word-of-mouth referrals by people in your community will only bring you a limited amount of patients. If your business needs a more advanced approach to patient acquisition, you're in the right place. In this article, we will go over 10 different ways that you can increase traffic to your medical practice website.
1. Build a Great Website
The most important aspect of your digital marketing strategy should always be your website. In order to have a competitive practice, you must begin with establishing your online presence using a professional website. There are many different things to consider when creating or updating your medical or dental practice website.
A well designed and functional website reflects your business directly. Your goal should be to present your business as visually appealing, professional, and polished. High quality photos and a color scheme will assist in this goal. Deciding on what your design and logo will be can quickly become overwhelming. However, if you use a medical web design company, you get access to a gallery of designs that you can use to create your website.
More than half of online searches come from mobile devices. For this reason, responsiveness on a website is an incredibly important aspect of website design. If your user searches for your site on a tablet or phone and has difficulty reading your content, they are very likely to click off. Creating a website that is easy to navigate, intuitive, and responsive, will allow for users to seamlessly find what information they are looking for.
2. Optimize SEO For Your Practice
Having a beautiful website is always great but if nobody can find it, what strategies can you use to fix this issue? One other great way to boost website visitors is the strategic use of keywords and phrases for search engine optimization (SEO).
The consistent use of SEO on your medical webpage will make your website more easy for your patients to find. Make the words on your page readable, consistent, and relevant to your target audience. This will let most search engines know what websites are credible and relevant to those searching for their next dentist or doctor. Let your website visitors know what services you offer that they may be looking for. One very important keyword that should be used for your dental or medical practice written on all pages should be your location.
The vast majority of searches done for medical practices include the location such ascity, region, or zip code, and the specialty, such as pediatrician, dentist, or cardiologist. This means that the keyword phrases used for your individual medical office will vary greatly. If you want to offer dental cleanings Orange County, California, your service page for dental cleanings must clearly state Orange County and dental cleaning together as well as all other services that you want to market to your audience.
Detailed descriptions of these services will not only make your website easy to navigate but the use of keywords and locations will make your practice pop up closer to the search bar, bringing you closer to a new patient.
3. Use Call to Actions
A call to action is an important aspect of landing page content which can be a phrase, button, or even an image, followed by instructions that direct your website visitor to do something.
For a medical practice, you may want to prompt a lead to call your clinic or fill out an appointment sheet. For these types of calls to action use words like ‘Call Now’ followed by your practice’s phone number or ‘Schedule an Appointment’ linked to your booking system. These action words do not always have to be linked, but they must propel your website visitor to act. Always make these calls to action easy to spot and easy to access for your users. There is no need to frustrate patients with a difficult to navigate website and no instruction on what to do next.
4. Contact Form
The purpose of increased website traffic will be to get more leads and potential patients. For this reason, it is very important to have a contact form available on your website. This is a quick and easy way for interested leads to share their information with your practice. This offers you the opportunity to make contact and share more information about your practice or possibly schedule this client's first appointment.
5. Inform Your Future Patients
One of the best ways to attract more patients to your practice using your website is to offer them engaging, informative, and high quality content. This can be in many forms such as blog posts, informative videos, infographics, and even social media posts from your clinic. Offer your visitors answers to their questions about their health, wellness, and how your clinic can help.
Many business owners with an unmanaged online presence miss the opportunity to optimize their website to communicate with their audience. Putting out high quality content that is tailored to fit your target audience is one of the best ways to keep people interested in what your business has to offer to them. Plus, this engagement on your blogs and other content will push you further up on searches as your website and its content become more and more relevant and reputable.
6. Find Your Competitors
Since your business is a physical clinic, your competitors will be closeby and will have an established online presence as well. Once you locate competitors, you can assess and analyze the differences in your website and theirs.
One great way that you can efficiently analyze a competitor analysis is by reaching out to experts. A digital marketing specialist can determine the best course of action based on techniques that local SEO services use to boost the rankings of your local competitors. There is a lot that you as a business owner can use from competitors to apply to your digital marketing strategy. Not only can you utilize their strategy but you can assess their mistakes and avoid them.
7. Google My Business
Google is the world’s most used search engine. For this reason, creating visibility for your business on Google is incredibly important to get you a higher ranking locally. One great way that you can use Google’s services to boost your business is to have a well established business profile on Google My Business.
If you have a profile already up, you can still optimize the information that you provide for the best results. You should include original high quality images of your office, a link to your website, and your business’s phone number. Your information should always be up to date and correct.
8. Encourage Google Reviews
A great review can go a long way for a business’s credibility and reputation. Similar to word-of-mouth referrals from friends and family, reviews carry a lot of importance. To those searching your clinic, five star reviews from a wide range of patients spanning years of service speaks for itself.
Now that you have your optimized Google My Business, there are many ways to encourage your patients to leave their reviews. One great way to do this is to link your reviews on multiple pages of your website. Include this link and a display of already present reviews for potential future patients to see. You can also link your practice’s google review page along with your scheduling software.
9. Establish Credibility
In order to establish credibility without reviews or a website that has been in business for a long time, consistency is key. Tone, branding, advertising, and website design should remain consistent to encourage retention. However, if you are in the beginning stages of establishing your online presence, keep in mind that building credibility online for your business will take time.
Another great way for a medical practice to build credibility on top of reviews is to show off skills, experience, and education. Showcasing your expertise is crucial in establishing credibility.
One way to communicate this to your audience is to include a bio for your professionals that includes education level and any continual training that your practice pursues which separates you from other clinics. This information should be found on an About Us page. Displaying this information will help a potential patient feel more comfortable with pursuing care with your knowledgeable staff.
10. Make Improvements
Your business may change and offer new services and specialities. There may even be changes to your staff. There are many reasons why you may need to edit and change your website or add additional pages as you establish your online medical presence.
This can be not only overwhelming and hard to keep track of but it can be difficult to implement. As a doctor and business owner, balancing this can be difficult to do. With Solution21 , web design packages allow for an unlimited amount of content edits added to your website at no additional charges.
Along with minimal changes to the content on your website, your goal with your online presence should be to stay consistent overtime and pursue improvements. These improvements to your SEO, branding, social media presence, and advertising will take a dedicated amount of time and strategy. This will benefit your practice as your improvements bring you more patients and revenue.
Conclusion
Increasing traffic to your medical or dental practice website can be overwhelming. Our expert team at Solution21 is ready to jump on the task of creating the best website for your business needs. We have a collection of highly skilled web developers, UX/UI designers, writers, seo specialists, and more. Whether you are building a website from scratch or want to improve your results, we are here to help.
Source: Google
