Dream Practice Websites

Websites for Medical Doctors:  How to Get More Patients and Build Your Medical Practice from the Internet

If you're a medical doctor looking for ways to position your practice as the best in your local area through an effective website and internet marketing campaign, then the information in this article should prove to be extremely helpful for you.

Most doctor websites fail to live up to their full potential.  This happens for two primary reasons:

1.  Your website is not getting enough traffic, meaning not enough people on the internet are finding it.

2.  Your website is not set up to convert visitors into patients.

In this article, we're going to talk about how to overcome these 2 issues so that your practice can reap the full benefits that the internet has to offer.

Getting A Steady Stream of Qualified Traffic to Your Medical Website

Most doctors have their website built, then keep their fingers crossed that it brings in a lot of new patients.  In most markets, there is too much competition to allow for this.  It's important to have an online marketing plan that you consistently implement in order to ensure that your website captures the majority of the market on the internet.

This starts with getting your doctor website search engine optimized.  You want to make sure that your website is optimized for the main keywords that are relevant to your practice.  For instance, if you're a medical doctor practicing in Santa Cruz, CA then you would want keywords such as 'Santa Cruz doctor' and 'Santa Cruz physician' set up in various areas of the website.

You would also want to do a link building campaign for your main keywords, so you are doing everything possible to get the top spots on Google for your the terms your patients are typing in.  We do this for our clients using article marketing as the main strategy.

SEO alone can generate a lot more traffic to your website and may be all that you need to bring in the number of patients you want, depending on how big your local market is and how effectively you can own the top spots on Google.

Pay per click advertising is another important doctor marketing strategy.  You can use Google or Facebook to set up targeted ads to your local audience.  PPC is a relatively complicated form of advertising that requires a fair amount of skill to make it profitable.  It can be, however, a very powerful way to drive traffic to your medical website very quickly.

Social media is also becoming more important for any doctor to consider as part of their marketing strategy.  Websites like Facebook and Twitter have become so popular that it only makes sense to have a strong presence on these sites.

You also want to be sure that every marketing strategy you are using offline leads back to your medical practice website.

Doctor Websites:  Converting Website Visitors Into Patients

Getting traffic to your practice website is the first step toward a successful online campaign.  The next step is to make sure that you have all of the right marketing features to ensure that the traffic you are generating is converting as effectively as possible into paying patients.

Let's look at a few of the main features you should implement.  These are the main areas of focus we bring to web design, which is highly unique in that most web designers just focus on the aesthetics and layout of your site and completely overlook the most essential conversion factors.  Without these elements, there's a high probability your website will be relatively useless to you.

Make Your Doctor Website Remarkable:  Here's How

1.  Create a compelling, benefit-oriented headline at the top of your home page that share exactly how your practice can help people and why they should trust you.

2.  Create a free report that shares health tips and educates prospective patients on your approach to care.  This can be set up with a nice image next to the email opt in form, which should go in the upper right corner of your website.  This is a critical marketing step, as it enables you to build your email list of prospective patients who aren't ready to call you just yet, but they are interested.  If you think about it, this is most people.  Email marketing allows you to stay in touch with these people and build good will and trust until the time is right for them to come in for care.

3.  Integrate social media icons and a Facebook fan page on your site.  Very few doctor websites are doing this effectively.  You can position your practice differently by having the strongest social media presence in your local area.  Putting your fan page on your website is a great way to get this process started.

4.  Create high quality, search engine optimized content that benefits your website visitors and patients.  In internet marketing, it's a proven principle that the more you're willing to give away for free, the better the chances are of people calling you from your website. ( Of course, you want to share information within the boundaries of your professional guidelines. )

5.  Use Wordpress for your online platform.  Wordpress is a blogging platform that enables you to log into your website anytime and add your own content without needing a web designer.  You can create highly targeted content very easily that reaches out to your local audience and educates them about your approach.

6.  Incorporate video into your website.  People love video.  And, they are often scared of doctors and new things.  With video, you can help people overcome their fear of calling you.  Video allows you to build trust faster and convey a high level of professionalism.  It's also the case that very few other medical doctors are using video in their website and overall marketing campaigns.  With video, you will stand out and differentiate yourself.

Web 2.0, social media, and video are extremely helpful tools to market your medical practice because they get people engaged in your work in a way that is nearly impossible to do otherwise.  The main word that summarizes online success in this day and age is:

Interactivity

Be the practice that engages and interacts with fans, visitors, and social media connections and you will win the marketing game.. and leave your competitors scratching their head as to why you are building such a booming practice.

At Dream Practice Websites, our goal is to position your practice at the leading edge of online marketing.  This  starts with building you a highly professional, interactive website that generates leads and builds your email list.  As part of our basic web package, we will do on page SEO to ensure that your site has all the factors that Google is looking for.  Then, we can also implement a link-building campaign once your site goes live, which will greatly enhance your chances of high search engine rankings.

We can also create customized social media profiles on Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube for your practice.  This is becoming increasingly important, as consumers are coming to expect uniform brand recognition from your website to all of the main social sites.

On Facebook, we can build you a customized landing page with 2 main calls to action:  Encouraging your Facebook visitor to 'like' your page and become a fan and then inviting them to download your free report so they can get on your email list.  Generating leads in this way through Facebook has become an incredibly effective way to promote your practice.

With our web package, you're going to learn exactly how to market your website with our extensive training videos on all facets of internet marketing, from online video to blogging to social media and PPC.  We don't want you to just have a beautiful website; we want to make sure that you have the right skills to generate traffic and convert that traffic into leads and then patients.

We hope this article alone has given you several ideas on how to build your practice through the internet.  Whether we build your website or not, we wish you the very best in your quest for your ideal practice. 

Please contact us here  if you'd like to set up a free consult with Kevin Doherty or click here to review our web package.