Spring Cleaning Your Medical Website: Tips for a Fresher, More Productive Site

Spring has sprung, which means it’s that time of the year again. Time to clean out those closets, garages and attics and reorganize the clutter you’ve accrued since last year’s big clean. In the midst of all of your cleaning, don’t forget to freshen up your medical website and put some shine back into your online marketing strategy as well.  You could be losing potential patients if your website is outdated and hard to use.

Clean Up Clutter 

Just like our homes, cars and workspaces, our websites have a tendency to accumulate clutter over time.   Can visitors easily find the information they are looking for? Are your menu items organized, relevant and easy to navigate?  While it’s important to add new pages, content, links and images to your website, if they are not regularly managed you will end up with a site that is inundated with unnecessary and stale information. Revisit the structure of each page of your site, and make sure the navigation is still clean, organized and user-friendly.

Freshen Up Your Content

What value is your website if the content visitors are reading hasn’t been updated in three years? Refresh your content to reflect what’s happening at your practice.  Go through each page of your website, and toss out old photos, forms and other items that aren’t relevant anymore to make space for new information that will benefit your patients. Update your most important pages, such as your staff page, services page or patient forms.

Google Your Practice

When was the last time you checked on the status of your search ranking? For all you know, you may not even be making an appearance on the first 2, 3 or even 10 pages of the search results. It may be time to address SEO techniques that have gone stale, or finally start optimizing your site for increased visibility online.  This could include re-visiting your targeted keywords, updating your local directory listings and auditing the content on your site for areas that need improvement. Talk to your medical website provider about implementing or restarting your search engine optimization efforts if you find your rankings are very low.

Revitalize with Technology

If you haven’t given your site’s performance much attention since its launch, then there’s a good chance that it not only needs an aesthetic facelift, but a technology update as well.  One of the most important things you should do to make sure your website is up-to-speed is optimize it for mobile. Your patients and potential patients are utilizing smartphones and tablets for almost every aspect of their daily lives. A mobile site makes it easier for users to easily access information at their fingertips. As a result, conversions increase as both new and repeat visitors can contact you with one-click calling, one-click appointment requesting and instant directions.  To maintain relevancy and accessibility, you must adapt your website strategy to align with the current mobile trends, which are only going to grow in the near future.

It’s a season of fresh beginnings! Make time to reorganize your website and revive your online marketing strategy this spring.  If you need assistance, contact Officite. We’d be happy to help you start fresh with a website re-design or assist you in rejuvenating your existing marketing plan.

Why Marketing is as Important as Design

Your medical practice website shows visitors what they need to know and compels them to contact you for more information. But without a marketing strategy in place, your site might as well be invisible. Here are a few things you should know about the importance of Internet marketing for your medical practice.

Search Marketing

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a necessary practice that uses strategic keyword placement to help Google find your site. When a patient enters a search phrase, your site is valued as relevant if your content meets Google’s criteria. Similarly, a Pay Per Click, or PPC, campaign helps to elevate you to the top of a Google search. It is cost-effective because you pay only when a person clicks the link to your site.

Officite specializes in SEO and PPC campaigns that improve your organic search rankings and boost visibility among people seeking your specific services. We use keyword-rich content based on thorough analysis to ensure that your practice’s site is highly competitive. Our ongoing marketing process allows us to adjust strategies as search engines tweak their own algorithms.

Branding

Patients should recognize your practice, and that’s why thorough brand marketing is so important. Your practice becomes more relevant to patients who have seen your brochures, logos, referral cards and online banners, and to those who associate these images with what you have to offer.

The Officite team designs attractive branding elements made to be consistent with your practice’s website, helping to reinforce how you present yourself to potential and existing patients.

Competing Online

Your competitors are aggressively marketing themselves, and your practice shouldn’t be left behind. A high-quality, functional website – while highly recommended – is no longer enough. Keeping in front of Web crawlers takes constant effort. At Officite, we’re fierce competitors on your behalf. We take a holistic approach: We’ll customize a pre-designed website for you, market it through SEO, PPC campaigns and social networks, and give you the tools necessary to consistently update it.

Find out more about how Officite can help you boost your online presence through effective Web design and marketing. We specialize in projects ranging from dental to pediatric website design, development and marketing. We know how to make a website that is useful, and we can get it in front of the people who need to see it.