How To Design an Effective Medical Website

The main purpose of your medical website is to make your money and currently, there is no excuse for you not to have an online presence.  Websites are one of the most important medical marketing tools out there since so many people search online when they need information about medical conditions or when they need to look for a doctor in their area.  Make sure your online presence is powerful by investing in an excellent website.    In the past, the yellow pages were important in medical marketing.  However, they are no longer a valid option because they are costly, and produce very little results.  In fact, the majority of people today rely on the internet to research medical services and procedures.  Online, they can view videos, testimonials, and photos, and make instant contact.  Just imagine even if you spend just half of the money it would cost you to get an ad on the yellow pages to market yourself online, you will still get far more patients out of your efforts.  If you get a full-page ad in the yellow pages, it will just sit amongst hundreds of similar ads and view by fewer people.    A good medical website will create a positive cash flow for you.  If you are a doctor, however, it probably means that your web developing/designing skills are limited.  Furthermore, you are probably too busy to bother with the details of building an effective website and promoting it.  That why it’s important to hire an internet marketing company with experience in medical marketing to build your website for you and run its search engine optimization campaign.   If you hire a quality company to take care of all of your medical marketing needs, there will not be much to do on your part besides monitor the results of the campaign.  However, there are a few tips you should follow that will minimize hassle and allow you to make the most out of your campaign.    Prior to hiring an internet marketing company to lead your medical marketing campaign, purchase your own domain name.  It is important that you are the owner of your domain because you never know what could happen in the future.  For example, if you hire an internet marketing company and they buy your domain and build your website for you.  If you have problems with your service provider and in the process, you have decided to switch to another company; you may pay some fees before they will transfer the domain in your name.  To avoid these kinds of problems, make sure you own the domain of your medical website prior to signing any contracts.    Find a company who can both build your website and take care of SEO.  A common mistake that many doctors make is that they hire a web design company with no clue about SEO to design their website and then hire an SEO company to optimize their website for the search engines.  The SEO Company ends up having to make many changes to what the web design company did in order to make the website SEO-friendly.  As a result, you end up paying more for a website that is less effective.  For optimal results, search engine optimization built into your website rather than added as an afterthought.    When looking for a company that can provide you with both search engine optimization and web design/development services, ask to see examples of their previous work and ask them to show you verifiable results of the success of their previous campaigns.  Most companies will have a long and convincing sales pitch but you should prepare plenty of questions to ask to ensure that you do not get lost in their sales message.    When interviewing companies, find out whether or not they charge for updating your content and website.  Some internet marketing company’s charge each time you request to have new content added or information changed.  These charges can add up and end up being a substantial amount of money.  Furthermore, when such charges tacked onto your bill, it may make you reluctant about updating your website.  This is bad since a constantly updated website is essential to your online success.  Find out what the companies SEO and web development package includes.  Ideally, updates will be included in your monthly fee.    In order to research the background of a company and determine whether they are reliable, search for the company name on Google.  It should be relatively easy for you to find the names of some of their clients that way.  You can contact their clients to get feedback about their services.  This is more effective than asking the medical website company directly for references since they will obviously give you the names of clients that they know will only say good things about them.  To get real information and answers, do your homework.