Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

In this episode, Barbara discuss:

  • How will you get the attention of your patients to your website without spending money
  • What are the 15 steps in your traffic strategy

Key Takeaways:

“Networking, attending and speaking at conferences relevant to your business and practice add great value. It gives visibility and presents you as an authority by virtue of speaking there.”  – Dr. Barbara Hales

Connect with Barbara Hales:

TRANSCRIPTION

Dr. Barbara Hales: Welcome to another episode of marketing tips for doctors. I’m your host, Dr. Barbara Hales. Today, we are going to talk about getting more eyes on your website.

You may be asking yourself, “Why do I need to drive more traffic to my website? It’s there. Insurance companies are going to refer patients to it. Patients will be able to see the website themselves.” But the point is that when they are doing a Google search, it’s your name that you want to come up on page one. If you’re on page 25, they’re never going to find you regardless of how valuable your message may be or how great of a doctor you are.

If you’re on page 25, you might as well not exist. 8 out of every 10 patients go online to check out a doctor they’ve been referred to by another professional, another doctor, family, or friends. So, how do I get more patient eyes on my website without having to spend more money?

Get Patient’s eyes on Your Website Without Spending Money

Dr. Barbara Hales: There are several reasons why you want more views on your site. Besides what I just mentioned, the three most obvious ones are the number one ranking. The more people that visit your site, the higher your Google ranking becomes. Then when people are searching for a service you provide, you and your business pop up ahead of your competition, and you’re competing colleagues.

Secondly, you get more patients. The more people read your great content, the more likely they want to speak with you and make an appointment.

Thirdly, it gives you greater authority. When you rank over your competition, the perception is that the search engines deem you the one they recommend. So how do you get it? Here’s a checklist of 15 steps in your traffic strategy.

15 Steps in Your Traffic Strategy

Dr. Barbara Hales: The first one is site readability. Though your site may look great on a desktop computer, most people are now reading information through their mobile devices like their smartphones or iPads. Make sure that your site can be easily viewable on small devices.

The second is speed. Viewers won’t wait long for downloads. If they have to wait more than two minutes, they’re on to the next thing. The quicker your site loads, the better. Check to make sure that your pages are the most technically involving functionality of third-party plugins, image file sizes, and the actual structure of your pages.

The third is dealing with links. Make sure that all of your hyperlinks work, and none are broken. There’s nothing more frustrating than clicking on a hyperlink because you want to see the information, and absolutely nothing happens. Periodically click on the links on your site to ensure that when others do, they are sent to the place you want them to go. When publishing your content, look at your internal links, which increases optimization and improves user experience.

The fourth is keywords. Consider what words people enter into the search bar to find you. Longtail keywords made up of three to four-word phrases work the best. These may look like the location of your business, the specialty, and a service. For example, Brooklyn OB, high risk or Hollywood plastics, Facelifts. Longtail keywords are used the most for web searches.

The fifth is SEO. Maybe you’ve heard about that or seen the acronym in print. SEO stands for search engine optimization. This is still key to boosting your ranking to ultimately boost traffic to your site. Focus on creating internal links to new content, adding meta descriptions, implementing keywords into your new content, and taking advantage of the text’s image.

The sixth is blogging. Creating a blog post on your website enables you to share your story. A blog allows you to have a voice and be heard. You can write about breaking news, stories in your field, giving advice, discussing the latest information about conditions you treat and sharing your success stories. It is the place where you can let your personality shine while educating and informing your viewers on the blog, which can help boost your rankings.

Writing posts with your keywords contributes to optimizing your site. It helps both patients and search engines know what you’re all about and garner recognition for yourself and practice. An effective blog can gain you massive recognition in your respective field. Many bloggers are known as experts just because of their blogs, and they are known as influencers. eBooks and articles can come from a selection and compilation of blog posts in the future. Also, it builds a community.

Blogging is interactive in that readers post comments to each other as well as to you connecting people who are interested in the same things. Blogging allows you to educate viewers based on your experience, and it allows you to learn from your readers as well. A website community enables you to have a conversation and allows people who feel passionately about what you’ve posted to voice their opinion and speak their minds.

Once the traffic increases to your site and the conversation builds, even consider creating a forum. A was a post that went viral from an internist or family practitioner, who at the start of the pandemic, posted on how to properly care for groceries after you’ve brought them home from the store and keep yourself from being infected.

It was a video post, and it went viral, being seen by millions of people overnight. He was a sensation, and everyone wanted him to be their doctor. So, what did that mean for his practice, and think, what could that mean for your practice as well?

The seventh is guest blogging. There are two ways that guest blogs achieved success. The first is creating and posting a blog on a reputable site that has a large subscription. This increases visibility because it has a built-in audience and increases blood traffic back to your website.

The second way is to offer other people in your field to blog on your site. The writer will likely link to their guest article they’ll want bylines, which attracts new viewers to your site. Take care to edit or ensure that the guest blog is up to the quality that represents you. The guest blogs often create links back to your site, adding referral traffic to your posts and website.

The eighth is email marketing. Email Marketing can be a powerful tool and result in a significant increase in traffic. Informing your patients about a new service, procedure, or product, can also help you boost your traffic. Create irresistible headlines for your emails and, more importantly, the subject line. If the subject line does not promise value for the email, the post will be deleted without even being opened.

BuzzFeed and Upworthy often write upwards of 20 different headlines before finally settling on the one that will drive the most traffic. In addition to that, when you write your subject line, it may be sensational, but it also has to be reflective of the post itself. If you write a subject line and so someone opens it with the implicit promise that the article is about the same thing as a subject line, and one has no relationship to the other, the reader will feel cheated. Not only will they not read that post and delete it, but it’s unlikely that they’re going to open up any future posts that you publish.

The ninth is participating in social media. Consider which social media sites that your patients and clients are likely to hang out on so that your content can be seen. Besides sharing your content through social channels, actively participate in the community. Providing solutions to problems that people are struggling with gives the perception that you are the authority and the go-to guru. Join in group discussions with relative hashtags, answer your questions and engage with your readers. It’s essential to interact with your fans.

The tenth is adding videos to your content plan. Videos can be prized assets in both making your site engaging and attracting prospective patients. Studies show that information retention is significantly higher for visual material than text alone. Adding video marketing is an excellent way to attract and keep your visitors attention while boosting traffic to your website.

The health field offers many opportunities to create videos, including a walkthrough of your office and explaining the visit process. This enables prospective patients to feel comfortable when they walk into your office for the first time. Filming various procedures and services that you provide are also helpful for video staff members and their roles so that they feel they know your staff when they come in. And you may also want to consider doing videos of hospitals and wings where patients might be admitted, like the labor and delivery unit. For example, just make sure that you get permission from the hospital or the facility before doing the video.

The eleventh is podcasting. A podcast is an audio or video recording that is distributed online. The format is typically similar to a radio or television show. Since there is a minimum amount of equipment with a reasonable financial outlay to record a podcast along with the internet as the distribution medium, almost anyone can create one these days.

The format of your podcast can be interviews, monologues, or a hybrid of this podcast, for instance, Marketing tips for Doctors. Send emails requesting an interview with thought leaders in your field and publish the interviews on your podcast. Interviewing industry thought leaders with name recognition will boost your credibility and increase traffic to your website. The interviewee will probably share the content to further expanding its reach.

The twelfth is becoming active on aggregator sites. Submit useful and relevant articles with links to sites like Reddit, which will increase traffic to your website. Networking, attending and speaking at conferences relevant to your business and practice add great value. It gives visibility and presents you as an authority by virtue of speaking there. Having a speaking engagement is a great way to establish yourself as a thought leader and gain exposure for your website.

The thirteenth is networking. Networking with attendees is also very effective in getting referrals, and of course, it is crucial to have the business cards to share when asked how your elevator pitch is prepared for those asking what you do or the services that you provide.

The fourteenth is offering webinars. Webinars are highly effective in imparting your knowledge to your eager participants. Combined with an effective social promotion campaign, webinars attract people interested in the topic being discussed and thus increase traffic to your website. Send out an email a week or so ahead of time, as well as the last chance to register. Remind the day before the webinar. The service that your webinar is on will typically send these emails out for you to promote your webinars widely through social media.

And lastly is looking at analytics data. Register for Google Analytics, an invaluable free data source for each page of your website. It’s free, at least until now, and hopefully, will go on into the future. It is one of the many gifts that Google provides for us. Discover which pages are viewed the most, which are most popular, and the demographics of your viewers. Check out which posts and pages your audience likes, try to focus your content on them, and you may be producing the best content on Earth.

But if no one sees it, then it is as though it wasn’t there. Having engaging content on your site also answers the questions that patients and prospective patients qual and repetitively. Ask about so the content available on your site saves time for you and your staff.

Dr. Barbara Hales: If you would like to have a shortened checklist in print digitally, feel free to contact me or contact Barbara @BarbaraHalesMD.com for a free discovery call. Let’s discuss your needs and set them up for you. This has been another episode of marketing tips for doctors with your host, Dr. Barbara Hales. Until next time