Physiotherapy Websites, Search Engine Optimisation and Social Media Strategy

Websites are an important aspect of any physiotherapy or other health care clinic, and these days everyone should have one, there is no excuse!  They are a great representation of your business for clients and potential clients to explore and are also a key promotional tool.  If you already have a website, is it doing you any favours?  Consider the points discussed below to see if it could be improved. If you don’t have a website, now is the time to consider getting one!!

When building a website (or having one built for you) there are five key things to consider in the construction.

1. The website should contain high quality content that your potential clients will be interested in. Clearly tell potential clients exactly what you do and allow potential clients to explore who you and your staff are.
2. Optimise your website for search engines so that people can find you.
3. The site should incorporate social media applications to produce enable you to communicate information such as news and updates to your clients.
4. Build a website that you have control over.  It is entirely possible to have a website that you can edit and update them at any time you like without the need of your web developer.
5. Build a site that has the potential to expand to include a learning management system or wiki for staff development and management as desired.

#1 Have content users desire and will want to share

High quality content is a key feature of any website not only for providing good information to your clients but also for Google and other search engine ranking.  Have content users desire and will want to share.  With high quality content you are  likely to be linked to more often and the better the content the more likely you are to get linked to by other high quality sites.  This is key to gaining good ranking in searches.

#2 Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Writing great content is only good if people can find it so getting good search results is very important.  To do this you need to build and maintain your website in a manner that is optimized for search engines. This is commonly referred to as Search Engine Optimization. Basically what SEO does is fine tunes the website code and content so that more people can discover it through search engines.  Many people think that SEO is complex and always changing however this is not necessarily the case.  It is true that there are many aspects of SEO but some of the simple things that make a very big difference are easy to accomplish and include:

1. Make content users desire and will want to share (as already mentioned above)
2. Build usability and high quality design into your site
3. Ensure that spiders can parse your site and duplicate content isn’t an issue
4. Make it easy to reach deep pages in as few clicks as possible
5. Choose keywords that will garner traffic and employ them judiciously in your content

For more information and tips on SEO have a look at the Google Webmaster pages or if you would like help optimising your site for search engines contact me for advice.  A great read on this topic is the Hubspot blog.

#3 Social Media Strategy

One thing that Google likes is websites that have dynamic content, that’s content that changes regularly.  One easy way of doing this is to have a blog or other social media application which you can update regularly with news and other information.  Social media also plays an important role these days in generally improving your on-line visibility.  For these reasons it is important that any business has a strategy for social media marketing.  The marketing that you can do with social media is endless so this list highlights some of the key actions that you should take:

1. Have a blog and update it regularly.
2. Tweet!
3. Set up a company LinkedIn profile.
4. Have a Facebook page.
5. Make videos for your YouTube channel.
6. Share presentations and documents on Scribd and SlideShare
7. Link all of the above to update each other.
8. Make all of the above evident on and easily accessible from your website.
9. Monitor what is being said about you on-line and respond.

#4 Edit your own website

There is no reason why you need to go back to your web developer to make edits to your websites.  When I build websites for my clients I always provide them with a content management system (CMS).  This allows you to login to an administration area for your website and make minor and major edits, change or add images, write blog posts and add new pages. So when when you have a website built for you make sure that you have a CMS so that you have ongoing control of your own site.  It does not have to be an expensive option and I would suggest that you don’t pay more that £500 for a website with CMS!

#5 Potential to expand your website

As mentioned in my previous post you may wish to use new web technology to facilitate  staff development, distribute training information or standardise reports/policies/protocols.  For this you may want to use a learning management system or wiki which can both be incorporated into your website. So if you don’t have these tools when you first develop your website, make sure that it will be possible to add them at a later date if desired.

These days with open resources such as WordPress and Moodle and the opportunity for anyone to participate in social media it is entirely possible to build a website that covers these key five points yourself.  However, often busy clinic managers and practitioners are too busy find time to do this for themselves.  If this is the case for you it is well worth asking someone to help you out, and if they have expertise in your subject area all the better.  So all you fellow physios out there, I’d be more than happy to help out, just get in touch!!

Related posts:

1. Social Media Strategy for Physiotherapists
2. Web 2.0, Social Media and Physiotherapy.
3. Social Media for Physiotherapy Business
4. What about Social Media?
5. Web Technology and Private Physiotherapy Practice