Your New Practice Website

Too many healthcare professionals have no website. If you’ve just launched a website for your practice, though, you might be wondering whether the effort was worth it. How can you tell if people are even visiting your new practice website? How can you make sure that the effort pays off?

Get a handle on your data.

The first thing you need to do is install web analytics and make sure you know who is visiting you and how they find you.

Without analytics, you won’t know whether you have 3 visits a day or 300. You won’t know whether your current patients are visiting, or if most of your visitors are Googling for a new doctor.

Without data, you can’t make useful data-driven decisions.

If you have a website and no web analytics, contact your webmaster or your web team today and ask them to install Google Analytics for you. This free tool will immediately begin capturing data with no other effort on your part. When you’re ready to use the information, you’ll have it.

Find out what works for you and what doesn’t.

When you have a couple of weeks of data, you can tell who visits your website and how they find you. A few questions your analytics can tell you:

• Where are your visitors located? Use the Audience> Geo> Location report to find where your visitors are. If they’re mostly far from your office, you need to target your content to your audience better. Most healthcare professionals should pay attention to local SEO.
• How do your visitors find you? Check the Acquisition> Channels report to find out what traffic sources are bringing visitors to your website. If Social Media is bringing you a few visitors, you could put in more effort to increase the number of visitors who find you in this way. If you’re getting traffic from links in local directories, get more of those links. In general, do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.
• What content is important to your visitors? Use the Behavior> Site content> All pages report to find out what’s most important to your visitors. If they’re visiting your Patient Forms page often, that’s a sign that your visitors are current patients enjoying the convenience of being able to fill out forms online. They might also like to book appointments online. Are they reading your patient education materials? Add more to add value.

No visitors yet?

If you’re only getting a few visits a day, don’t worry. If you checked your traffic sources report, you know how your first visitors have found you. It can take a while for search engines to pay attention to a new website, and you may need to build momentum with your social media.

Here’s a good way to help your first visitors find you:

• Put your web address on all communications with your patients. Bills, information sheets, newsletters, brochures — if you can print your web address on it, do.
• Train your receptionist to ask, “Have you visited our website?” and make sure there’s something interesting for them once they get there.
• Ask related businesses to link to your website. A sports gear shop might be happy to link to your chiropractic practice, especially if you have a blog post that will be helpful to their customers.
• Offer to provide an article or guest post for local publications. If you’re a pediatrician, a local mommy blogger or parenting magazine may want your expert opinion on vaccines, nutrition, or sleep training. A vet can give seasonal tips for dog owners to a home and garden publication.

We’ve seen advice to get your family members to visit often to make it look as though your website is popular. Don’t waste your time on that. But do tell people who might be interested in the information at your website.

Build up your website.

As you use real-world and social media connections to help spread the word about your new practice website, don’t neglect to build the site into something Google will notice and offer to searchers. Regular blogging is the most effective strategy. You can also use other content marketing strategies along with your blogging.

Don’t fool yourself, though. Nothing you do away from your website will be effective in getting high search engine rankings if you don’t have valuable content at your website. We’ve found that blogging three times a week and adding new pages regularly gets results. Leaving your website alone and writing occasionally when you feel inspired doesn’t.

Haden Interactive provides top quality SEO-friendly blogging for healthcare clients. Contact us to discuss your needs.