With the majority of people turning to the internet to search for healthcare information and services, it’s essential to ensure your website is easily discoverable and highly visible. In this post, I’ll provide you with some effective tips to increase the visibility of your healthcare website and attract more potential patients to your practice.
1. Audit Your Competitors/Peers
By auditing your competitors (or your peers) websites you can gain valuable insights into what works well and identify areas for improvement on your own website. If their websites are more streamlined, functional, and fresher than yours, they may be drawing in more patients with a stronger online presence. Critically evaluate the sites in terms of look, design, and functionality. Do they include a blog? Helpful checklists? Pre-registration forms patients can fill out to save time before their appointment? An online appointment system? Screenshot the design features you think work well and think about how you might incorporate them into your own website.
Read How To Conduct A Competitor Audit on Social Media for more tips.
2. Sign Up For Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free tool that will help you identify how well your website is performing over time. By analyzing your website’s metrics, such as the number of visitors, bounce rate, and time spent on the site, you can identify areas for improvement and develop strategies to enhance user engagement. A high bounce rate can negatively impact your website’s search rankings, as it indicates that visitors quickly leave your site without finding what they were looking for. By regularly monitoring and analyzing your website’s metrics, you can make informed decisions to optimize your site’s content and design, resulting in increased visibility and improved user experience.
3. Tailor Your Site’s Information To Reader Needs
Is your website nothing more than a glorified brochure? By identifying the most frequently asked questions in your practice, you can create content that directly addresses these concerns and provides helpful answers. This can include blog posts, videos, and FAQs that provide practical advice, tips, and insights related to common health issues or medical procedures. By offering this type of content, you demonstrate your expertise and establish trust with potential patients, which can ultimately lead to increased traffic and conversions on your website.
4. Use Keywords Strategically
Keyword research is the process of identifying the words and phrases that people use when searching for information related to your business or industry. By incorporating these keywords into your website’s content, meta tags, and other elements, you can help search engines understand the relevance and value of your site for those search terms.
Recommended Reading: The Power of Long-Tail Keywords for Driving Traffic to Your Website
5. Optimize Your Site For Local Search
If you want more people to find you online, you need to optimize your website through good search engine optimization practices. And if you want to attract new patients, your website also needs to be optimized for your local area. When someone uses the internet to locate a Medical Practice nearby, it’s critical that your website appears in those results (searches on mobile devices containing the phrase “near me” has skyrocketed in recent years). Optimizing your website for local search includes adding your practice’s name, address, and phone number to your website. You should also include local keywords in your website content, such as the name of your city or town. Additionally, getting positive reviews from patients on popular review sites like Google My Business can also help improve your local search rankings.
Why and How You Should Optimise Your Medical Website For Local Search
6. Optimize Your Site For Voice Search
The majority of patients searching for information on the web still trust search engines but the way people search for information online is changing. Increasingly, people are using voice search on their smartphones, tablets, or voice assistants (like the Amazon Echo or Google Home devices) to search for information on the internet (yet another compelling reason to make sure that your site is optimized for mobile). In essence, voice searches are largely about answering questions. Here are some tips to consider while generating content for voice activation devices.
7. Make Sure Your Website Is Mobile Responsive
With the increasing use of smartphones and tablets, more and more patients are searching for healthcare information and services on their mobile devices. In addition, Google’s algorithm now prioritizes mobile-friendly websites in its search rankings, which means that having a mobile-responsive website can have a significant impact on your visibility in search results.
To check if your website is mobile-responsive, you can use the Mobile-Friendly Test tool provided by Google. Simply enter your website URL, and the tool will analyze your site and provide feedback on its mobile-friendliness.
8. Include A Blog
Including a blog on your medical practice’s website can have numerous benefits. It can help establish you as an authority in your field and provide valuable information to potential patients. Regularly updated blog content can also improve your website’s search engine ranking and drive more traffic to your site. When creating blog content, consider the topics and questions that your patients are most interested in. This can include information about common health conditions, treatments, and preventative care tips. You can also write about industry news and updates, and share patient success stories or testimonials.
Need a topic for your healthcare blog? Here are 12 ideas to get you started
9. Drive More Traffic With Social Shares
Enabling social sharing buttons on your website is an effective way to encourage visitors to share your content on their social media profiles, which can help increase the visibility of your website and attract more traffic. By making it easy for visitors to share your content on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, you also increase the chances of your content going viral and reaching a wider audience. This can ultimately lead to more traffic, more backlinks, and higher search engine rankings.
10. Include Patient Testimonials
Adding patient testimonials to your website is a great way to build trust and credibility with potential patients. Make sure to include testimonials from a variety of patients, including those who have had different types of procedures or treatments. You can also include testimonials from patients who have had positive experiences with your staff or who have been pleased with the overall atmosphere of your practice. To make the most of patient testimonials, consider including them on your homepage or a dedicated testimonials page. You can also sprinkle them throughout your site on relevant pages or blog posts. Finally, don’t forget to promote your patient testimonials on social media and other marketing channels to maximize their impact.
11. Use High-Quality Images and Videos
Adding high-quality images and videos can be an effective way to create a more visually appealing website and improve the user experience for visitors. In the healthcare industry, images and videos can be particularly powerful in helping patients understand complex medical procedures or conditions. However, it’s important to keep in mind that using images and videos comes with some considerations. For example, it’s important to ensure that any images or videos you use are properly licensed and don’t infringe on copyright laws. Additionally, images and videos should be optimized for web use to avoid slowing down your website’s loading time.
10 Places To Find The Best Free Images For Your Healthcare Marketing
12. Add Clear Calls-to-Action
Your website should have clear calls-to-action (CTAs) that encourage visitors to take the desired action, whether it’s to schedule an appointment, fill out a form, or call your office. Make sure your CTAs are prominently displayed on your website and are easy to find. Additionally, it is important to use action-oriented language in your CTAs to make them more effective. For example, instead of just saying “Click Here,” use a more specific and action-oriented phrase such as “Schedule Your Appointment Now.” By using clear and compelling language in your CTAs, you can increase the likelihood that visitors to your website will take the desired action.
13. Make Sure Your Website Is Secure
Ensuring that your website is secure is crucial for building trust with your patients. HTTPS encryption protects the data that is exchanged between your website and your visitors’ browsers, making it much harder for anyone to intercept or tamper with that data. It’s especially important if you have a patient portal or any other feature that requires users to submit personal information. In addition to HTTPS encryption, displaying security badges, such as the Norton Secured Seal or the McAfee SECURE trustmark, can help reassure visitors that your website is safe and secure. These badges are a visual indicator that your website has undergone certain security checks and meets certain standards.
14. Consider Paid Advertising
While organic search results are important, consider using paid advertising to increase your visibility online. With tools like Google Ads and social media advertising, you can target specific demographics and interests, allowing you to reach the people most likely to be interested in your services. Additionally, paid advertising can be a good way to supplement your organic search results, especially if you’re in a highly competitive market. Just be sure to set clear goals, track your results, and adjust your strategy as needed to get the best possible return on your investment.
Wrapping Up
Your website is pivotal to your digital marketing strategy. And with more patients than ever searching online for you, it’s imperative that your website is optimized for them to find you. Investing time and resources into optimizing your website can pay off in the long run with increased traffic, more patient inquiries, and ultimately, more business. It’s a worthwhile investment that can help set you apart from your competitors and position your practice for success in the digital age.
Health Care Social Media 