Health care professionals often have the issue of providing excellent service but having an inadequate online presence. This is due to the nature of the industry combined with a lack of marketing knowledge.

A high level of online visibility can certainly help improve a healthcare business. The following tips will help you improve your online presence.

Have a modern website

Your website is the face of your business. It should look good and work on all devices. Many websites in the healthcare industry have an antiquated design. An antiquated design sends a bad message to site visitors. A message along the lines of, “I don’t care about my website. I don’t care about my patients”.

Some of the signs of an antiquated website include a static HTML page that looks strange on screens of different sizes. More importantly, it usually appears in the form of a website that looks strange on mobile browsers.

A website that does not properly load on a mobile browser is obviously a very poorly designed website. The majority of web traffic occurs on a mobile device, which means that a majority of your site visitors will not have a great experience on a poorly loading website.

Modern website design will resolve many of the other problems with your online visibility. You still must focus on those issues, but the website is the most important factor in your online visibility.

Have a social media presence

A social media presence is the next most critical step to improving your online presence. Facebook alone gets two billion visitors per month. Twitter receives about one billion visitors per month. This makes social media a major presence in the online world. Sadly, the days of having a Facebook page that you update monthly are long over.

Now a strong social media presence will typically involve consistent updates that add value to your users combined with strong engagement on your part. This includes responding to comments and replying to messages. You can even set up a Facebook group depending on the type of healthcare you offer. For example, a physical therapy clinic may benefit from a Facebook group that offers support to patients.

Twitter works a little differently than Facebook does. In the healthcare industry, you will mostly be limited to sharing high-value articles with relevant hashtags. This makes it important, but a Facebook page is the most important aspect of maintaining a strong online presence.

Focus on SEO

SEO, search engine optimisation, is what will get your modern website to the top of a Google search. It is broken down into two separate categories: on-page and off-page.

On-page SEO will focus on ranking a particular keyword on your website to show up on the top of a Google search result. This usually involves publishing valuable articles to your blog. Valuable in this case refers to articles that answer questions that your readers may have or provide information that may want to know.

Normally, these articles will contain enough keywords to help with the SEO, and no other significant tasks with the keywords must be taken. The focus should lie on publishing high-quality content and not stuffing it with as many keywords as possible.

Off-page SEO focuses on developing SEO through the use of methods not on your website. This almost always involves guest posting and link building. Guest posting is simply reaching out to other blogs and websites and asking to publish an article.

They will let you share a link to your website, which helps improve your Google search ranking. Other off-page SEO tactics include leaving insightful comments on other blogs with a link back to your page and anything else that can result in a link back to your website.

Produce high-quality videos

Producing high-quality videos is another way to increase your online presence. This method requires a bit more investment than the other ones, but the reward can make it worth it. These videos should, of course, add value and explain your business. Doing that will add to your presence.

However, the best way to leverage videos involves creating a viral video. Creating a viral video might sound like it’s all about luck, which is partially correct. There are steps you can take to create a viral video though. The most important step for any video is to inject humour into it though. This goes for any video that you release. It does not need to be the type of humour that has people laughing hysterically. A clever joke or pun will usually work to get people to at least remember the video and your brand.

Add a Google Business listing

A Google Business listing is simply the page that appears when searching for your business. This might sound minor, but it is actually extremely important. Not many businesses actually get around to verifying their listing, which is good news for your business. Verifying a business requires nothing more than receiving a postcard at your address with a verification code.

Once verified, you can edit the location of your business, respond to customer reviews, and even add images to your listing. This improves your search presence and can even improve your ranking on the Google results page. Adding a Google Business listing is the easiest and fastest tip to complete and the first one you should complete.

Final Thoughts

The above tips should help you improve your online presence. Having a modern website is the most important as that serves as the face of your online presence. However, a great website is worthless if no one visits it, which is why the rest of the tips focused on ways to get visitors to your website.

Once they get to your website this makes them more likely to visit your office. Finally, you cannot forget about social media. Remember, to have a Facebook page at the minimum as just about everyone has a Facebook account these days.