If you have a website, you’ve undoubtedly heard those 3 magic letters a million times: SEO. Search Engine Optimization.
Understanding (and utilizing) the power of SEO is like the modern-day Holy Grail of the web. But so many people don’t understand it, and if you’ve spent any time on the Internet, you’ve likely heard a thousand different opinions and even more “best practices” on how to use it, many of which likely conflict with one another.
In this post, we’re going to unearth some of the mysteries surrounding SEO by helping you discover what it is, what it’s not, what works best today, and how it relates to ophthalmic websites.
Most ophthalmologists and practice managers view marketing solely as advertising to attract new patients to your practice. A better definition of marketing, however, is any activity that moves your practice in a desired direction. A desired direction may include increasing revenue, attracting new patients, expanding your presence in your market, introducing new services, or simply automating your practice to enhance the lifestyle you want.
There are many ways to go about achieving these myriad goals, but we’ve outlined some of our favorites here. If you want to market your practice and enhances its reputation in the eyes of your patients, here are our top 7 tips for marketing your ophthalmic practice.
Competition is on the rise in healthcare. Especially as reimbursements decrease for many ophthalmic procedures, more ophthalmologists are turning to marketing to attract more patients, increase revenue, and stay competitive. Many ophthalmologists rely on marketing agencies rather than performing marketing activities in-house, and it’s all to easy for physicians to form opinions of effective marketing strategies based on what they have seen their competitors say and do.
While the pressure to remain competitive amidst a changing landscape is certainly powerful, ophthalmologists must maintain an ethical approach to advertising, especially in healthcare, where high stakes and occasional mismatches between patient expectations and surgical realities can vary drastically and have serious consequences.
In our last post, we looked at the value of using a psychological concept called priming to attract and retain more satisfied patients at your ophthalmic practice. While priming and other psychological tactics are powerful, they can’t stand on their own – they must be paired with follow-through and standard of care that match patients’ expectations.
Unfortunately, for too many ophthalmic practices the game is all about dollars and cents. The economics of running a practice can all too easily get in the way of patient experience, with patients suffering as a result. The rise of practices whose only concern is revenue maximization has lead to decreased expectations around patient experience - both for practice staff, physicians, and patients themselves.
To combat this, we propose that more ophthalmic practices use a high-touch approach to patient care. Focus on revenue alone, and your patients are very likely to leave dissatisfied at their experience. However, when a physicians treats their patients right and provides excellent care at every stage of their journey, and the revenue will naturally follow as a result.
In the late 1990s and early 200s, Google wasn't nearly as smart or sophisticated as it is today. Back then, having good SEO meant stuffing as many keywords into your website as possible, and getting as many inbound links as you could. The game was easy.
However, for those early "SEO gurus" who gamed the system, the fun wouldn't last. Every time Google found a weakness in their ability to deliver relevant, high-quality search results, they addressed it.
Put simply, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your website to be found in the search engines for relevant keyword searches. It’s not the mysterious black box many think it is – it’s really just following a set of guidelines so that search engines (and real people) can easily find your website and other relevant information when they perform a search online.
The age of the Internet has brought about online reviews for just about everything - products bought on Amazon, restaurants, bars, professional services, and of course, medical practices. By the democratization of the review process, patients no longer need to rely on word of mouth or a family history – they can just go online.
![A Visual History of Google's Algorithm Updates [Infographic]](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53ab6a4ce4b0fd77b2a8e739/560ec6f1e4b0fea507b81dde/5ab920e9f950b759a80ba0f4/1534826029249/google.jpg)
