8 must-haves for your medical practice website
Post on 12-Apr-2017
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The 8 Must-Haves for Your Medical Practice Website
| PRACTICE SOLUTION
www.patientpop.com
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If your practice website only tells visitors about your practice, then it’s not doing
all it should.
Right now, 39% of people who need a healthcare professional extensively
research them online (that number grows to over 50% when it comes to
millennials). Of all the people in your area who need your service, how many of
them are scheduling appointments with you?
Websites that convert visitors to patients all use certain elements to ensure
their online success. Savvy practice owners optimize their pages for search
engines. They build trust with visitors through testimonials. And they stop the
visitor from researching other providers by providing easy, one-click online
appointment scheduling. With these features -- and a few others detailed in this
eBook -- you will have the competitive advantage on other local providers.
The 8 Must-Haves for Your Medical Practice Website
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A mix of SEO tips, good marketing strategy, and tested usability features, here’s
the eight must-haves for your medical practice website.
A Helpful Title
The title isn’t just the name of your web page, it describes what the page is all
about. Your title is displayed as the link in the search engine results page as
well as the title of the active tab in your browser.
The best titles for medical practice websites are those that anticipate the way
a potential patient would search for your service. Most people search for a
procedure or specialty + their geographic location.
Before we show you how to write the best title for your practice, let’s take a
minute to look at the anatomy of the search results page. The title is the large,
blue link that sends the visitor to your page. The green text is the address of
your site. Finally, the gray text is called the meta description, which we’ll discuss
later on in this article.
Orange Coast ENT provides a great example of a well-written title. They make
sure their specialty, ENT, comes first. Next, they prioritize searches looking for
an ENT in the Irvine or Huntington Beach, CA area. Finally, they have the added
benefit that their brand name includes the broad “Orange Coast” area as well.
When someone searches for any combination of ENT or head and neck surgery
+ any of those geographic locations, OC ENT’s site is displayed on the first
page of the search results. The SEO term for this is “ranking.”
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If you are using a content management system (CMS) like Wordpress, you can
set the title for each page in the administration panel.
If your site was hand-coded with CSS/HTML/JavaScript, then you’ll need to
define your title using the “title” tags within the header.
A Well-Written Meta Description
The meta description is an expansion on the title. It’s not visible on the site, but
it tells the search engine what keywords are most important. Remember, search
engines display your meta description beneath the link on the results page.
The meta description should repeat the key terms you are trying to rank for, but
must be written in full sentences. You want your meta description to be precise,
because potential visitors will read it after the title to see if your site is what
they are looking for.
There are some potential pitfalls when writing your meta description. Some
shady SEOs try to include many different locations or specialties in their meta
description with the hope of showing up in search results more frequently.
This is called keyword stuffing and is rarely effective. Search engines are more
advanced now, and if they believe a site is guilty of this, they will deliberately
ignore your site.
The best thing you can do is to accurately describe your specialties and service
area. The research shows that when people search for a local business, they
expect to find it within 5 miles from where they are searching.
Dr. Amersi has optimized her meta description very well. Let’s say “Susan” is
looking for an OB/GYN. What does she know without ever having to click on a
single search result? She knows that Dr. Amersi is trusted and that she serves
the Santa Monica area. And, if Susan is in a rush, she has everything she needs
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to make an appointment or find the office quickly, without having to enter Dr.
Amersi’s page.
A URL That Makes Sense
The URL -- or actual link -- is one more element that search engines review
when deciding if your page is the best answer to a user’s query. Make your URL
clear, so the user knows where they are on your site.
In the past, a CMS like Wordpress would’ve defaulted to something like this:
nycpainspecialists.com/?p=29503,
which doesn’t mean anything to anyone but the programmer who wrote it.
Compare this to the URL of Dr.Johar’s service page for back pain
nycpainspecialists.com/services/back-pain-management.
Much more user-friendly!
If you found his back pain page first, instead of coming in through the
homepage, you would know just by looking at the address that this is just
one specialty that Dr. Johar offers. Search engines look for the most relevant
answer to the user’s query, but also the most helpful, human-friendly site. When
a URL functions as a sitemap, it’s providing an optimal user experience -- which
Google likes.
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Full Descriptions for Each Specialty
Create a dedicated page with a full description for each of your specialties
or services. You never know which specialty or procedure your prospective
patients are searching for, so describe everything you offer.
There are three SEO-specific reasons each specialty must appear on its own
page:
1. If you discuss all of your specialties on a single page, search
engines will have a difficult time deciding what keywords match
for that page. Relevance is determined by how deeply a topic is
covered. If your specialty page covers everything shallowly, it’ll
be determined irrelevant.
2. Conversely, by giving rich, detailed information about each
service on its own page, you increase the chances that search
engines will find it useful for local searches. Plus, you can
spend that time discussing your unique qualifications (e.g.,
certification or training in that procedure).
3. Google recently revealed the top three elements it uses when
deciding how to rank a website. Content was in the top two (it
did not specify order). As you write about your specialities, all
related keywords (gynecology, obstetrics, birth control, etc.)
will give search engines confidence that your site is an authority
in this area, causing it to rank more highly.
Finally, when writing for keywords, be sure to use the ‘question and answer’
format. Voice searching on mobile devices is increasing every year since Apple
introduced Siri. People ask questions when they use voice search instead of
listing a set of important keywords (i.e., “Pain Management Doctor, Midtown
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New York”). You do the same thing. Have you ever started a search with “what
is the best…?”
Whether your patients are using Siri, Google Now, or Windows Cortana, search
engines increasingly value sites that answer common questions.
A Website That Looks Great
on Mobile Devices
In April of 2015, Google decided that because over 50%
of all searches were taking place on smartphones, a site
had to be “mobile-friendly” if they were going to rank it for
those searches. You know how annoying it is to pull up a
site on your phone and have to scroll three different ways
and pinch to zoom in order to accurately tap the correct link.
Google wanted you to have a better experience, so they
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now encourage you to visit sites that will provide you with the best experience
by ranking them more highly.
If your site isn’t mobile optimized, you are going to miss out on patients, either
because Google has penalized your site, or because patients are annoyed with
your unresponsive site, and click away.
A Picture to Introduce Yourself
Your patients may feel uncomfortable or timid in new situations. If you needed
to see a dermatologist, you would want to know that it was a clean, white
environment. What better way to help your prospective patients know that your
facility is modern, clean, and professional than with a few pictures? They’ll feel
safer with your practice, when they see where they’ll be cared for.
If you are re-branding yourself or changing your market, photos on your site
can be the first step towards setting those new expectations and attracting
your new clientele.
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And the most important picture you can post is yours. Preferably a professional
portrait, but even a few well-taken personal photos, when relevant, will go a
long way to make the prospective patient feel like they already know you.
“Businesses do not have emotion. People do,” says Bryan Kramer, author of
There is No B2B or B2C: It’s Human to Human. Your prospective patients will
be trusting you with their most valuable asset, themselves. They don’t form a
relationship with your brand or your building, but with you.
One example is how Dr. Amersi incorporates family photos into her website.
The end result is a page that introduces you to her as a human, as a mom, and
most importantly, as a doctor. Your doctor.
Reviews for Credibility
Amazon.com learned a long time ago that unfiltered reviews from normal
people will go a long way in building the trust necessary to buy, or in this case,
make an appointment.
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It’s one thing to read what the doctor thinks of himself, it’s another thing to
read what his patients think of him. According to one study, 88% of people trust
online reviews as much as a personal recommendation.
Instead of having to go the slow route of one patient telling her friend, who tells
his boss, who tells her husband, etc., now a handful of reviews can carry the
same social weight for every patient that visits your website.
Reviews need to be prominent. They need to be true. And they need to be
great. With every review, you are removing objections for why the visitor
shouldn’t call you.
You should vary the type of patient-reviewers as much as possible. Patients
are looking for a reviewer they identify with. Let’s say there is a mom with two
children looking for a dentist. If she sees another mom leave a review about
how great the hygienist was with her kids, it’s going to mean much more than
the review by the 60 year-old man who loves his new dentures.
These Additional Key Features to
Turn Browsers into Patients
Patients should be able to book appointments on your website, allowing you
to “convert” them immediately. A Google/Nielsen study shows that over half
of customers want to complete the transaction within an hour of starting their
research; don’t make your patients wait until the next day to call you. You might
lose them within that time.
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Booking appointments online means your patients will always have a pleasant,
brief, and successful experience. This cuts down on time they spend on hold,
trying to find the opportunity to call during business hours, and any other
variable you can’t control.
Plus, if they are able to complete the transaction with you, then they’ll have little
motivation to continue researching your competitors.
Your contact information needs to be readily available. The top performing
sites will also use call-now buttons for mobile users. This prevents patients
from having to write down your number. They can take action as soon as you’ve
convinced them that you are the one who will help.
Create a separate Contact page listing all of the ways they can reach you,
along with a map so they can get a feel for where your office is. Include your
address and phone number are in the footer or bottom of your site, where it’s
“sticky,” or visible no matter which page they’re on.
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Finally, list what insurance you take. It’s convenient for the patient, removing
any last-minute doubts, and streamlines your front staff operations as it cuts out
unnecessary calls.
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We’ve seen these eight must-haves turn practice marketing around.
Anyone with a bit of technical skill could implement some of these crucial
elements, while others will require the help of an SEO expert and web designer.
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