Prospective patients look online for information on doctors and other medical professionals now more than ever before. To increase the likelihood they will find your healthcare practice, you must build a robust online presence.
Here, we share three ways healthcare providers can build an online presence to increase patient awareness of their healthcare practices.
Claim Online Business and Healthcare Profiles
Review and directory listings are a great opportunity to increase your online presence. A review site or directory listing refers to business information found on websites like Yelp!, Healthgrades, and Google My Business. Unclaimed profiles often have unverified, inaccurate business and contact information. These unoptimized profiles also lack photos and business hours, inspiring little confidence in potential patients.
To build your web presence as a healthcare provider, you should claim your listing on every review website and business and healthcare directory out there. You should populate them with accurate business information as well as photos and other relevant content.
More on This: Why It’s Important to Optimize Your Healthcare Directory Profiles
Optimize Your Healthcare Practice Website
Optimizing your website is one of the easiest ways to improve your online presence as a healthcare provider. An optimized healthcare practice website can attract more visitors and spur more appointment bookings. An optimized website has:
Webpages Designed to be Found in Search
Many prospective patients turn to Google and other search engines to find healthcare providers in their area. You can increase the likelihood they will find your healthcare practice website by creating individual webpages that clearly detail each service you offer and answer common patient questions about those services. This creates a large online presence that showcases your knowledge and authority.
Website pages should also include information about symptoms and remedies for the medical conditions you treat. This information is helpful for your readers and useful for search engines.
Make sure each service is on its own individual page. This process — known as siloing — organizes a website’s content into distinct categories. Properly organizing content and keywords notifies search engines that your page is an authority, which boosts your search engine optimization (SEO). Mix up too much unrelated information on one page, and your SEO will take a hit.
Modern Design that Looks Great on Every Device
A well designed website can go a long way toward supporting your online presence. How your healthcare practice website looks has a huge impact on whether visitors stick around. Your website should feature a modern layout with a streamlined homepage that allows visitors to focus on key areas. All photos of you, your staff, and your practice should be high resolution and professionally done. Your website should also be “responsive,” meaning it looks good and functions well on desktop computers, smartphones, and tablets.
Calls To Action (CTAs) that Prompt Appointment Bookings
The goal of your healthcare practice website should be to get visitors to become patients. To do this, it must prominently feature several calls to action (CTAs) that drive appointment bookings. Additionally, it should feature one-click calling that allows patients to speak with your front office staff without ever leaving the page.
Make sure your CTAs are “sticky” — meaning they can be seen even as you scroll — so visitors can locate them as they are navigating your website.
Look: 11 Common Practice Website Mistakes and How to Fix Them
Use Paid Search Advertising
Organic SEO efforts take time to show results. To increase your online presence quickly, turn to paid search advertising.
Search engines allow businesses to bid for advertising space in search results. In Google results, these ads appear at the top of results and are labeled with the word “Ad.” These ads are called pay-per-click (PPC) or cost-per-click (CPC) advertisements. As their name suggests, you pay each time a person clicks the link. You decide how much you’re willing to spend on each click and set overall daily budgets.
How does your healthcare practice appear online? Visit this webpage for a free assessment of your practice’s online marketing, visibility, and website performance.
