Diagnosing Your Online Presence

As a doctor, you diagnose your patients with various ailments every day. You make careful assessments, and by the end of their visit, you have a plan to further explore or treat the problem. You share this plan with the patient and then work with them on their road to recovery.

But how well can you diagnose and treat your online presence? If you have a website and know you need SEO, that’s a good start. But in today’s digital world, web marketing goes far beyond this, and a well thought out plan for online marketing is crucial to growing your patient base.

So. Where to begin? In this iHealthSpot series, we’ll help you on your way to a healthy online presence and share the strategy behind improving it with five key elements of online marketing.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll discuss:

• Effective Website Design
• The science of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• “Socializing” with your patients through Social Media Marketing
• Protecting your online reputation through Reputation Management
• Improving ROI through Pay-per-Click (PPC) Advertising

By the end of the series, you’ll know how to use these marketing mediums to increase your visibility online, increase your patient base and grow your overall business.

Effective Website Design 

We’ll begin with website design, and delve into today’s best practices for modern, effective website design in “Check your Website’s Vitals.”  We’ll touch on the importance of brand identity, modern techniques for mobile-friendly web design and how to use your website to reach and capture your target audience. We’ll cover effective copywriting and the importance of regular additions to content through blogging. We’ll also cover important interactive features such as online appointment requests and online bill pay and why it is imperative to offer these tools to patients.

The Science of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

For many patients, the “how” of getting well is foreign to them, as are all the medical terms doctors use. For most of our physician clients, the same holds true where search engine optimization (SEO) is concerned. Though you know you need it, the science of how it works is often daunting and confusing. What goes into optimizing a website for search engines? What is a metatag or page title? If these terms aren’t familiar to you and you’d like to learn more about what goes in to optimizing your site for search, make sure to read “SEO…The Cure for an Invisible Website.” We’ll explain exactly what goes into search engine optimization and how to ensure your site ranks for all the keywords related to your specialty.

“Socializing” with your Patients through Social Media Marketing

Did you know social media is the fastest growing and most cost-effective marketing platform today? An unbelievable number of people are using Facebook, Twitter, and other social media channels to check out practices and read comments from real patients. Discover the best social media platforms to promote your website and business in “The Social Media Epidemic.” There are so many platforms to choose from that it can be overwhelming. In this article, we’ll narrow it down to the most popular platforms and the most relevant for medical practices to best promote your medical services, and engage with patients.

Protecting your online reputation through Reputation Management

You’ve worked hard to build your reputation as a respected medical professional in your community, but have you invested in building that reputation online? Negative reviews reach a large audience and will have a negative impact on your business. In “Decontaminating Negative Reviews”, we’ll share the value of staying on top of your online. Reputation and you’ll learn how pro-active reputation management can not only minimize the effects of negative reviews but also positively impact your business with positive ones.

Improving ROI through Pay-per-Click (PPC) Advertising

Some people shy away from “paid” ads on search engines. They are told that “organic SEO” is better. In the final part of our series, we’ll explore the creation of a PPC (pay-per-click) campaign.  If done properly, a PPC campaign has the potential of becoming your most effective form of online marketing. We’ll explain why in “PPC: Seek a Second Opinion.”

Bottom Line

A strong online presence won’t happen overnight. It takes a multi-tiered approach across multiple online mediums. With a good website as your foundation and an experienced agency partner, the sky is the limit. A great place to start is with education.

Be sure to join iHealthSpot for this informative series, designed to give you the insight you need to tackle the online world and ultimately conquer it! You don’t need to do anything. Just look for an email each month on these exciting topics and make some time to read and embrace them.

If at any time you’d like to discuss any part of the series with a marketing consultant, just contact us at (877) 709-0999 and we’ll be happy to have a complimentary, no-obligation consultation with you!