Practice marketing: How doctors optimize their website
"Dr. Google" is still very popular with patients. More and more people are searching online for a doctor or researching symptoms of illness. This makes it all the more important for you as a doctor to optimize your website in order to be present online for patients.
What can sometimes be exhausting for doctors is part of everyday life for most patients: even before they confide in a doctor, they do research on search engines. In many cases, patients then find information about their presumed illness on non-scientific sites. This is precisely why doctors should optimize their own websites and keep them up to date. But many find this difficult.
Practice marketing is becoming increasingly important
Your own practice website is basically nothing more than a marketing platform on the Internet. And this was heavily regulated until not so long ago: Advertising for doctors was prohibited until 2000. Only since 2002 have doctors been allowed to advertise their treatments "for the purpose of providing factual information". For this reason, many doctors did not engage in marketing for a long time.
But times have changed. Now, practice marketing - and especially optimizing your online presence - should be an integral part of your work. Because most patients now do their research online. A study by the Bertelsmann Foundation confirms this: 72 percent of those surveyed obtain information on diseases and other health topics from Wikipedia and other online encyclopedias. By contrast, only around 38 percent of users visit the websites of doctors' offices.
Accordingly, the need is clearly there, but unfortunately it is not being met by medical experts, but by portals such as Wikipedia. This is a clear sign that doctors should pay more attention to their online presence in order to inform patients safely and competently.
What are the basic options for practice marketing?
Traditionally, doctors have mainly advertised in yellow pages and newspapers. But you guessed it: these forms of advertising are becoming less and less in demand, since most patients no longer look for their specialist in the newspaper but on the Internet.
This means: In most cases, you should focus your marketing activities on the Internet. For example, your website should be up to date (also visually). In addition, you should be present in selected social media and increase your reach online with content marketing.
Search engine optimization for medical practices
You can do this, for example, with search engine-optimized texts that patients find on Google as soon as they search for a specific symptom or treatment. Here are three tips on what to look for when writing texts for your website.
Tip 1: Search for the right keywords
Before you go ahead and write a text for your website, take a look at what keywords users are searching for online. Keywords are search terms that users enter online on Google to find a solution to a particular problem. Well-known keyword research portals include UberSuggest and SEMRush, for example. Here is an example of the high-reach keyword "veneers," which is searched for 74,000 times per month in Germany:
Tip 2: Pay attention to links
Once you have found the right keyword and written the text, you should link the article in a meaningful way. This can be links that lead to another internal page on your website. Most valuable for you are external links on pages that are as trustworthy as possible. This can be the case, for example, if you are mentioned in an article of a renowned professional portal. If a link is then placed on this external page that leads to your practice website, this can bring your website up in the Google ranking.
Tip 3: Write for your patients and not for the search engine!
But with all your love for search engine optimized texts, please do not forget for whom you are writing: for your patients! That means: You don't have to constantly repeat the keyword or collect as many external links as possible. In particular, you should not buy them! Both "optimization measures" can in the worst case lead to your website being penalized by Google. Therefore, just write easy-to-read texts that inform your users in the best possible way. Google will reward that!
Online scheduling
The fully automated allocation of appointments in German medical practices could already be standard practice by now. Most patients would even like to be able to book appointments easily online. Nevertheless, many physicians are reluctant to make the switch or have data protection concerns.
Nevertheless, you should be open to this new technological option. After all, your medical assistants will also be relieved by online appointment allocation, as this will reduce the number of telephone calls and e-mails. The MFAs and ZFAs are certainly very grateful for this! After all, they have often been working at their personal limits , especially since the start of the pandemic.
Create Google My Business profile
A simple and free marketing measure, which unfortunately often remains unused, is Google My Business. If you create a profile for your medical practice here, you will be found more easily in Google searches and also listed on Google Maps. In addition, you can collect positive reviews from patients on your Google My Business profile, which in turn brings your website higher up in the search results.
But it is precisely this review feature that keeps some medical professionals from creating a Google My Business profile. They fear that they might receive unfair negative reviews. There's no denying that's a risk. But if you receive mostly positive reviews on your Google profile, the benefits far outweigh the risk!
Place Google Ads
All of the marketing measures mentioned so far take a few months to actually pay off in more traffic for the website or quite tangibly in more appointment bookings. But there is a faster way to get to the top of Google: with Google Ads.
The performance marketing agency searchperts has specialized in this and has already been able to increase the number of appointments booked by many medical practices and orthodontists. Thus for example also an orthodontic medical supply center, like managing director Damian Zielinski reports.
How easy it is to collect more positive reviews with Nelly
In addition to Google Ads, reviews have also become extremely important for medical practices. To get new positive reviews faster, simply work with Nelly. With the software, you can not only digitize your billing and patient admission, but also encourage your satisfied patients to leave reviews on Google, Jameda and the like. Create a digital workflow in your practice now. We will advise you on your individual case free of charge and without obligation!
The personal designations used in this article always refer equally to all persons. Double naming and gendered designations are avoided in favor of better readability.
What can sometimes be exhausting for doctors is part of everyday life for most patients: even before they confide in a doctor, they do research on search engines. In many cases, patients then find information about their presumed illness on non-scientific sites. This is precisely why doctors should optimize their own websites and keep them up to date. But many find this difficult.
Practice marketing is becoming increasingly important
Your own practice website is basically nothing more than a marketing platform on the Internet. And this was heavily regulated until not so long ago: Advertising for doctors was prohibited until 2000. Only since 2002 have doctors been allowed to advertise their treatments "for the purpose of providing factual information". For this reason, many doctors did not engage in marketing for a long time.
But times have changed. Now, practice marketing - and especially optimizing your online presence - should be an integral part of your work. Because most patients now do their research online. A study by the Bertelsmann Foundation confirms this: 72 percent of those surveyed obtain information on diseases and other health topics from Wikipedia and other online encyclopedias. By contrast, only around 38 percent of users visit the websites of doctors' offices.
Accordingly, the need is clearly there, but unfortunately it is not being met by medical experts, but by portals such as Wikipedia. This is a clear sign that doctors should pay more attention to their online presence in order to inform patients safely and competently.
What are the basic options for practice marketing?
Traditionally, doctors have mainly advertised in yellow pages and newspapers. But you guessed it: these forms of advertising are becoming less and less in demand, since most patients no longer look for their specialist in the newspaper but on the Internet.
This means: In most cases, you should focus your marketing activities on the Internet. For example, your website should be up to date (also visually). In addition, you should be present in selected social media and increase your reach online with content marketing.
Search engine optimization for medical practices
You can do this, for example, with search engine-optimized texts that patients find on Google as soon as they search for a specific symptom or treatment. Here are three tips on what to look for when writing texts for your website.
Tip 1: Search for the right keywords
Before you go ahead and write a text for your website, take a look at what keywords users are searching for online. Keywords are search terms that users enter online on Google to find a solution to a particular problem. Well-known keyword research portals include UberSuggest and SEMRush, for example. Here is an example of the high-reach keyword "veneers," which is searched for 74,000 times per month in Germany:
Tip 2: Pay attention to links
Once you have found the right keyword and written the text, you should link the article in a meaningful way. This can be links that lead to another internal page on your website. Most valuable for you are external links on pages that are as trustworthy as possible. This can be the case, for example, if you are mentioned in an article of a renowned professional portal. If a link is then placed on this external page that leads to your practice website, this can bring your website up in the Google ranking.
Tip 3: Write for your patients and not for the search engine!
But with all your love for search engine optimized texts, please do not forget for whom you are writing: for your patients! That means: You don't have to constantly repeat the keyword or collect as many external links as possible. In particular, you should not buy them! Both "optimization measures" can in the worst case lead to your website being penalized by Google. Therefore, just write easy-to-read texts that inform your users in the best possible way. Google will reward that!
Online scheduling
The fully automated allocation of appointments in German medical practices could already be standard practice by now. Most patients would even like to be able to book appointments easily online. Nevertheless, many physicians are reluctant to make the switch or have data protection concerns.
Nevertheless, you should be open to this new technological option. After all, your medical assistants will also be relieved by online appointment allocation, as this will reduce the number of telephone calls and e-mails. The MFAs and ZFAs are certainly very grateful for this! After all, they have often been working at their personal limits , especially since the start of the pandemic.
Create Google My Business profile
A simple and free marketing measure, which unfortunately often remains unused, is Google My Business. If you create a profile for your medical practice here, you will be found more easily in Google searches and also listed on Google Maps. In addition, you can collect positive reviews from patients on your Google My Business profile, which in turn brings your website higher up in the search results.
But it is precisely this review feature that keeps some medical professionals from creating a Google My Business profile. They fear that they might receive unfair negative reviews. There's no denying that's a risk. But if you receive mostly positive reviews on your Google profile, the benefits far outweigh the risk!
Place Google Ads
All of the marketing measures mentioned so far take a few months to actually pay off in more traffic for the website or quite tangibly in more appointment bookings. But there is a faster way to get to the top of Google: with Google Ads.
The performance marketing agency searchperts has specialized in this and has already been able to increase the number of appointments booked by many medical practices and orthodontists. Thus for example also an orthodontic medical supply center, like managing director Damian Zielinski reports.
How easy it is to collect more positive reviews with Nelly
In addition to Google Ads, reviews have also become extremely important for medical practices. To get new positive reviews faster, simply work with Nelly. With the software, you can not only digitize your billing and patient admission, but also encourage your satisfied patients to leave reviews on Google, Jameda and the like. Create a digital workflow in your practice now. We will advise you on your individual case free of charge and without obligation!
The personal designations used in this article always refer equally to all persons. Double naming and gendered designations are avoided in favor of better readability.
Melanie Schröder
Author
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