It’s easy to have your nephew build a website for your optometry practice. There are myriad automated site builders out there, or maybe he or she knows a thing or two about WordPress. So, your optometry practice site is up, but no one sees it. Pardon the pun.
What gives? How come someone is searching for a new eye doctor and isn’t seeing your brand new site? Even worse, no one is clicking on it and booking appointments or looking at your awesome assortment of available frames.
What’s happening is akin to what formerly could happen with print advertising. Some businesses simply felt that putting an ad in the local paper with a boring headline and non-engaging visuals would make the phone ring. Not so much.
Today, your website has taken over much of the job of attracting new patients. That website your nephew put together for you isn’t optimized to what Google, and potential patients, want to see, so it isn’t ranking. And if it isn’t ranking in search, no one sees it.
You need a site that is optimized for search, social media, and other best practices that compose the digital portion of your optometry marketing plan. You need the team at MyAdvice to do that.
Optometry SEO
Search engine optimization. That’s a lot of vowels to buy on Wheel of Fortune, but it simply means making a website as friendly as possible for Google’s monster algorithm to find, understand, and deliver when a patient located five miles from your optometry practice searches for “Optometrists in Peoria.”
Google has the ongoing mission of providing search results that match the searchers’ needs as closely as possible. This makes the searcher happy, and the associated clicks he or she makes keep Google happy…and profitable.
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What makes Google’s algorithm happy with your optometry practice?
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- Content is king — Google rewards sites with robust, accurate, informative content. Gone are the days of limited page copy with a bullet list or two. Google likes information that matches your site’s keywords and descriptions. That way, when a searcher types in “What is 20/20 vision?” and you have a blog specifically about that, Google boosts you in the search results. You are providing the best answer to a user’s question. You need content on the procedures you offer and common patient questions. Your content should be fresh, meaning you add or update pages and blogs regularly.
And your content should be informative, spelling out exactly what you do. Why should a patient come in every two years if his eyes are fine? Your site told him that issues such as macular degeneration and glaucoma don’t exhibit any early symptoms, and most people don’t know they have these conditions until permanent damage has already been done. You have pages specifically on these topics, so they match search queries, and you rank higher.
- Content is king — Google rewards sites with robust, accurate, informative content. Gone are the days of limited page copy with a bullet list or two. Google likes information that matches your site’s keywords and descriptions. That way, when a searcher types in “What is 20/20 vision?” and you have a blog specifically about that, Google boosts you in the search results. You are providing the best answer to a user’s question. You need content on the procedures you offer and common patient questions. Your content should be fresh, meaning you add or update pages and blogs regularly.
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- Consistency — It may seem arcane, but Google likes and rewards consistency. If in one listing on Yelp! your optometry marketing efforts have your address listed as Elm Drive, but your Google My Business has it Elm Dr and another ELM DR., Google begins to question the accuracy of your business information. Are those different addresses? At MyAdvice, we make sure your NAP (name, address, and phone) is consistent across the industry’s largest network of maps, apps, search engines, directories, and social networks. Our tool, Local Power, actually locks this information so unauthorized changes can’t be made, and you stay consistent always.
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- Social media — Social media is increasingly a tool potential patients use it to find businesses. And for your existing patients, it’s a great way to humanize your practice. Social media has been shown to improve patient retention, boost traffic to your website, break down barriers for new patients, and allow a practice to create a community outside of the office walls. You can leverage your social media content on your own site.
For your optometry social media needs, we offer a service we call Social Power that includes three posts per week on Facebook and Google+.
- Social media — Social media is increasingly a tool potential patients use it to find businesses. And for your existing patients, it’s a great way to humanize your practice. Social media has been shown to improve patient retention, boost traffic to your website, break down barriers for new patients, and allow a practice to create a community outside of the office walls. You can leverage your social media content on your own site.
- Local rankings — Over the past few years, Google has localized search rankings. This makes sense — if you’re looking for a new optometrist in Peoria, it doesn’t make much sense to deliver search results from L.A. Google also looks at your Google My Business page and it likes to see photos of your office, lengthy descriptions of what services you offer, updating special hours for summer or on holidays, 360 photo office tours, and more. Our Local Power, as mentioned above, ensures consistency in a NAP, along with addressing these other important factors.
Generate more leads with your Optometry Website
And you thought that 1/8 page ad in the Peoria Herald and your nephew’s new website was all you needed to do for your optometry practice marketing. Adding the various elements and practices necessary to make your optometry practice website optimized can seem like a daunting proposition. When are you going to have time to check your patients’ eyes and fit them in the latest Gucci frames?
That’s why you contact us at MyAdvice. We not only build the most beautiful websites for our optometry clients, but we are the industry leader in optimizing them for search so patients and potential patients see your site in search results and visit your site. Let’s talk about making your site your best optometry-marketing tool.
