It’s 2014, and we all know that you must have a website so new patients can find your practice. Unfortunately, that’s not as easy as it seems. You can’t just create a basic website and wait for your phone to ring. You’re going to be waiting a long time, if that’s your plan. An effective chiropractic website is the central hub of your online marketing, and it has to be done right to actually get a good ROI (return on investment).
There are many steps to building a web presence that effectively generates new patients:
- Getting traffic. You can’t convert visitors into patients if you don’t have visitors.
- Showing the site visitors that you can help them with their health problem.
- Making it easy for the patient to get more information or make an appointment.
- Make it easy for patients to share your information and refer friends.
- Getting people back to your site on a regular basis.
Every step above is important, but you can’t implement Steps #2 - #5 if you don’t take care of Step #1: Getting traffic to your site. In this article, we’re going to talk about the major ways to drive traffic to your site.
The Top 6 Ways to Get Visitors to your Chiropractic Site
- Google maps. Local search is a major focus for Google: they want people to find local businesses when doing a search, and your site needs to show up in Google maps. This takes work, as there are many components to getting a good placement in Google Places. For details on how to do this, see our Five Ways to Get Your Chiropractic Website to #1 in Google.
- Google search. Your main priority for your chiropractic website is to work on your organic search traffic and get it high in the search rankings for the most common keywords and phrases that your patients are searching for. This is time-consuming and involves creating original keyword pages and blog posts for your site.
- By doing this, you’ll show Google that your site is active and fresh. Plus, every time you add a new article you make it easier for people to find your site.
- Social media. Building a solid Facebook presence and engaging with your patients can drive a significant amount of traffic to your site. The key is to be consistent with adding material and start conversations with your patients.
- Email marketing. A regular email newsletter is a perfect way to keep your practice fresh in the minds of your patients and make it easy to forward on to friends and family members.
- AdWords. When we’re working with our VIP clients, we focus on the types of marketing that get long-term results without having to pay for monthly advertising, but in some instances (and if organized correctly) AdWords can provide a good ROI. Just make sure that you’re monitoring and tracking your conversion rate and that you’re adjusting your keywords effectively.
- Offline advertising. This is becoming less and less of an issue, but doctors are still directing traffic to their websites from newspaper and other advertising methods. It’s probably not going to be a major percentage of your site traffic, though.
If you’re thinking, “This sounds like a lot of work,” you’re right! It is a lot of work. But remember that every other chiropractor in your city wants the same thing as you: to be #1 in Google, since that’s where most of the traffic is coming from. Remember that the #1 search position results in 33% of all clicks! If you want to get the coveted #1 position, you have to prove to Google that your site deserves that position, and that takes real work.
Many doctors choose to hire someone to help them with this process, and we also provide this service to select doctors. To learn more about how we can help you, contact us here or give us a call at (800) 295-3346.
