Author: John Deutsch
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Are SaaS Applications and Cloud Servers HIPAA Compliant?
As a provider of SaaS software and hosting solutions to the medical industry, we get asked this question a lot. Unfortunately, there’s very little 
information available on the internet that addresses this specific issue – and what does exist is generally false or a part of a sales pitch by a company trying to market “HIPAA-certified hosting solutions” or other HIPAA-compliant health IT solutions.
Before we can answer this question correctly, we must first understand what HIPAA is and how it relates to software, hosting and other healthcare IT solutions.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act was enacted in 1996 to address the growing use of technology in healthcare, specifically the transaction of health information between providers, employers and health insurance plans. You don’t need to read the entire 349-page document (available here) to understand a few important principals of HIPAA. Here are some of these considerations and relevant certifications.
- HIPAA makes almost zero reference to technical specifications required for hardware, software, security, etc. Even if it did, it would be completely out of date since its publishing in 1996, and surely would not contain much relevant information pertaining to new technologies like SaaS software and cloud hosting. Therefore, it’s important not to read into false claims made by companies about the use of certain brands of firewalls, servers, operating systems or server architectures.
- You cannot be “HIPAA certified.” HIPAA is a set of rules and best practices. There is no certifying body for the government that certifies software, hosting companies or health organizations on HIPAA.
- You can be audited by a variety of governing bodies for HIPAA compliance.Other certifications do exist that may include some of the rules or best practices found in the HIPAA guidelines. Some of these certifications include:
a) SSAE16 – An auditing standard created primarily for the financial services industry verifying hosting companies’ physical and software security standards. Hosting companies that are audited receive reports demonstrating compliance for SOC 1, SOC 2 or SOC 3.
b) ONC-ATC – A certification for healthcare software companies to certify their software on a variety of security and functional items.
In consideration of the above items, the answer when it comes to considering cloud servers and SaaS applications HIPAA-compliant is that one must consider the use of these technologies as only a part of the big picture on how this is used. If there was a HIPAA certification for SaaS software, it would not guarantee HIPAA compliance as there could be faults in the hosting, the computer being used or the user using the software in a public place un-shielded by the public’s eye. There is no specific provision in the HIPAA guidelines that opposes the architecture of a cloud server, VPS server or SaaS application (even though by nature these are “shared” architectures). One must, however, consider the HIPAA guidelines that do exist that pertain to encryption, user authentication and other “best practices.”
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Value of SEO based on residual ROI
Quantifying the value of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts has always proved to be a challenge. Furthermore, providing a client with a forecast on their potential Return-On-Investment (ROI) if they proceed with an SEO campaign is next to impossible. At the rate Google changes their algorithm, no internet marketing agency can guarantee a client a sustainable #2 ranking in Google for any somewhat competitive keyword.
But every day people still make a leap of faith to try Search Engine Optimization for their business, being promised higher ROI than Pay-Per-Click (PPC) or other forms of online advertising would provide. Many of these people quit after three months, as they don’t have the staying power to see the campaign through, but those that persevere usually agree that SEO provides the highest ROI of all traditional forms of internet marketing.
Hey! If it was easy, everyone would be doing it!
Barriers to using SEO
- Ranking and timeframe CAN’T be guaranteed
- Wild ranking and traffic swings
- Up to 6 months with (sometimes) little improvement
- Constant changes to website content that often require approval – thus delays
- Expensive and labor intensive
- A campaign with no tangible guarantees is usually impossible to have approved by a committee
- Horror stories about SEO, such as JC Penny’s disaster
As a result, most companies do not even start a campaign and those that do usually require a long time period in order to see results. In that time, managers/directors can change, budgets can run out and accidents can happen.
So is SEO worth it?
If you have a long term focus, are willing to give up some control of your website and have the budget to see it through – yes, SEO is worth it. I’ve personally been doing SEO in the medical industry since 2003, giving me a unique insight into the long term benefits of SEO.
How is SEO ROI calculated?
The ROI of a SEO campaign is easiest to calculate by comparing the number of “clicks” it produces compared to a Google PPC campaign. While there are certainly many other benefits to a high Google ranking on keywords that define your business, such as branding, recognition as a leader in your industry (yes, people do think that if you’re #1 in Google, that you must be the best) and “Residual Value.” For the sake of argument, lets just work with the hard numbers. Because Google PPC and other PPC networks, such as Bing and Facebook operate on an auction system, where one can bid for the highest position – its assumed that the price paid per click represents the true value of a new visitor visiting a company’s site.
If XYZ company sells iPhones for $500 each, at a profit margin of $100, and pays $2 per click – this would mean that they would have to convert 2% (1 in 50 visitors) to sales for their Google PPC campaign to be a profitable venture.
In the same way…
If XYZ family practice earns a gross revenue of $500 per new patient per year, at a profit margin of $100, and pays $2 per click… you get the point.
One could argue that just as the patient might become a patient in that practice for 20 yrs, and bring their whole family in, and so on, the same could happen with the iPhone buyer. Because Google PPC is available to everyone, and is the best alternative to SEO, SEO ROI is most accurately compared to a Google PPC campaign.
Case Study – B2B Medical Vendor
Chart 1 – 53 month Google Organic generated visitors chart
The above chart represents the traffic generated from Google (Organic) search over a 53 month period. In this case a client actively contracted a SEO firm for a period of 17 months, at a total cost of $3000 per month = $51,000. The website was then purchased by another company, and all SEO was halted and not reinstated with any other firm. This client operates in an industry that averages $3.50 per click. In this 53 month period, Google (Organic) generated 266,000 visitors. Let’s examine the ROI generated in the initial 17 months, then the residual ROI generated in the following 36 months.
47,000 visitors in first 17 months @ $3.50 per visitor = $164,500
219,000 visitors in following 36 months @ $3.50 per visitor = $766,500
If the rankings maintain their current rate, which the trend shows that they will, the site will generate another $766,500 worth in clicks over the following 3 years.
$1,697,500 in clicks over 7.5 years. Total ROI = 33 times initial investment.
* Due to the increase in SEO competition and recent changes to Google’s algorithm, producing the same result in today’s market costs approximately 2.5 times more than it did in 2007. At the same time the average CPC has increased significantly, by a rate of approximately 50%. Considering these adjustments, a good SEO campaign should still deliver an ROI of somewhere between 15 and 20 times its initial investment.
Written by John Deutsch, President and CEO of Medical Web Experts
Medical Web Experts has helped physicians, hospitals and medical vendors with Search Engine Optimization assistance since 2003. For more information about their Internet Marketing services click here.
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Is your password 123456? Tips for password management
A realistic approach to internet security for medical practices – Part 3: Password Management
Do you use bad passwords?
Using “123456” as your password for your YouTube account isn’t a security risk to your patients, but passwords such as these are a huge risk to them when used in applications related to your practice. According to a study done by ZoneAlarm, 79% of passwords were found to use risky password construction. They also found that passwords containing “12345”, “QWERTY”, “PASSWORD” and first names are the most widely used passwords and therefore known by all hackers/bots as commonly used passwords. Adding an “A” to your “123456” password isn’t tricking anyone either.
Focus on your highest risks
Your primary email account is your single highest risk account. This is because many systems online with a forgot password function authenticate users through email account verification. Therefore, someone with access to your email account could easily gain access to many of your online accounts, such as your bank account.
Best practices for better password security
- Change your important passwords frequently, such as your primary email addresses, Electronic Medical Record system, bank account and CRM.
- Don’t use “12345”, “QWERTY”, “PASSWORD”, first names, animals and variations of these in your passwords.
- Use at least one upper case, lower case, number and special character in all your passwords.
- Protect your primary email account password – give it to no one.
HIPAA – All bark and no bite?
HIPAA is a highly complicated law (400 pages worth), even challenging for someone with both an IT and law background. Since its creation, there has been a lot of bark and no bite when it comes to enforcement – but this is all changing. In the past 2 years, we at Medical Web Experts have seen a significant increase in citations for HIPAA violations and medical practices being contacted with warnings from HIPAA governing organizations. Therefore, its important to have a plan to meet HIPAA guidelines in your practice, focusing on the highest risk issues to meet both HIPAA guidelines and to protect your business from real issues that can severely affect your business, such as data loss, lawsuits and website downtime.
About the Author
John Deutsch is the founder of Medical Web Experts and has spent the last 10 years working the healthcare IT industry, specializing in Electronic Medical Records, Network Administration and Software Development. To learn more about Medical Web Experts and their services, please visit www.medicalwebexperts.com
Read the other articles in this 3 post series:
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Secure Corporate Email for Healthcare
A realistic approach to internet security for medical practices – Part 2: Secure Corporate Email
Better Corporate Email
A good corporate email system designed to make your business more efficient while meeting HIPAA security guidelines should be a focus of all medical practices, big or small. Email has become such an important aspect of today’s business; it makes business sense to invest in a proper email system. The most time-saving email feature critical to every business is full email/calendar/contacts synchronization between your office PC, home PC, laptop and mobile phone. Features such as Anti-Spam, Anti-Virus, unlimited attachment size and unlimited mailbox size are some other features that medical practices find valuable.
HIPAA and Email
HIPAA regulations pertaining to email are extensive, but there are three rules that all practices must follow in order to meet HIPAA guidelines:
- Encryption – Accessing your email through a web browser and receiving/sending emails in an email application (Outlook, mobile phone, etc.) must be encrypted using at least 128-bit encryption.
- Archiving – HIPAA requires all emails sent and received to be archived for later retrieval. While this is an important HIPAA regulation, it also has significant value to a medical practice. Archiving essentially stores a backup of all emails; so if Julie, your front desk receptionist, sends a nasty email to a patient and deletes it, you’ll still have a copy of it.
- Consultations via email – Communicating with patients on medical matters via email is, generally speaking, a HIPAA violation. While you can control security on your server’s side, you can’t control your patients’ ability to manage their email in a secure manner. Beside the HIPAA risk, it’s a practice that doctors should not get used to; many email accounts are shared by spouses and emails are frequently read by prying eyes.
Best practices to for email
- Implement a secure corporate email system with archiving that meets both your HIPAA and business goals. We at Medical Web Experts offer secure corporate emails solutions with archiving for $10/mo. per email.
- Don’t communicate with patients via email on anything medical-related. Instead, implement a Patient Portal system through your EMR or with a solution such as Medical Web Experts Basic or Enterprise Patient Portal solutions.
HIPAA – All bark and no bite?
HIPAA is a highly complicated law (400 pages worth), even challenging for someone with both an IT and law background. Since its creation, there has been a lot of bark and no bite when it comes to enforcement – but this is all changing. In the past 2 years, we at Medical Web Experts have seen a significant increase in citations for HIPAA violations and medical practices being contacted with warnings from HIPAA governing organizations. Therefore, its important to have a plan to meet HIPAA guidelines in your practice, focusing on the highest risk issues to meet both HIPAA guidelines and to protect your business from real issues that can severely affect your business, such as data loss, lawsuits and website downtime.
About the Author
John Deutsch is the founder of Medical Web Experts and has spent the last 10 years working the healthcare IT industry, specializing in Electronic Medical Records, Network Administration and Software Development. To learn more about Medical Web Experts and their services, please visit www.medicalwebexperts.com. Learn more about Healthcare Internet Security.
Read the other articles in this 3 post series:
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Templates vs. Custom Websites
Every practice is different, right? Everyday Medical Web Experts receives phone calls and a doctor, nurse, office administrator or receptionist tells us about how “our practice is different.” If your practice is different, shouldn’t your website be different too? Yes! It obviously should be different and custom. Each practice has different requirements for a website. Some practices want a website for marketing and new patients, others practices only take referrals and need a website for information about the practice, some practices want a robust patient education section and most practices want a connection to their electronic medical records’ patient portal. The list could go on for pages and pages. Different practices have different needs and therefore need a custom design for their functionality.
Medical Web Experts offers website solutions for all specialties, across the United States and even internationally. A pediatric website in Youngstown, Ohio is going to be vastly different in its look and feel, and possibly functionality, compared to a pediatric website in San Diego, California. You can insert any specialty and any location and you will most likely need a different looking and functioning website. You, as a physician, know your patient base the best. You spend precious time with each patient discussing intimate medical issues. You know what drives them to choose your care over others and you need to sell whatever that is. It may be your location, your services or even your location. Template website companies don’t offer you video production services and allow you a custom section to highlight yourself with a video! A custom website company like Medical Web Experts offers solutions like custom video production and much more when building a custom website for your practice.
Best Content Management System (CMS) for a Medical Practice
What’s the best CMS for a medical practice? For those who are not familiar with website development this question may seem as simple as ‘vanilla or chocolate?’. However from Medical Web Experts point of view this question is loaded. The first question you need to ask yourself is, ‘are you actually going to use a CMS?’ In most cases we have discovered that no one in the practice will actually learn how to use the system. It’s like any other project we started in our lives. Remember when you wanted to learn to play guitar? Today that guitar has turned into a decorative ornament in the corner near the antique record player. The analogy might seem silly, but it it holds true. If you don’t want to learn how to use your new CMS, just pay your website company to do the updates for you. If you are still married to the idea of a CMS, please read on.
Why is it a loaded question? Simply, because it depends on how internet savvy you are and your needs. CMSs in their simplest forms are systems, which allow you to change content and pictures on your site. Now let’s move to your needs, the more complicated part. There are plugins for each CMS and all these plugins are different. For example both WordPress and JOOMLA! have customer relationship management (CRM) plugins, but one may be better than the other depending on your needs, if you even need a CRM at all. Both CMSs also have a blog options, however WordPress is built for blogging, so it might be a better option, if your practices main focus is blogging with the new website. This is why Medical Web Experts will always ask you, ‘why do you want or why do you need this?’ If this plugin section has not scared you away from a CMS, please keep reading.
1) The most basic and easy to use CMS for a medical practice is Adobe Contribute CS5. The software costs $200 and the installation by Medical Web Experts is free. The backend is simple to use and looks a lot like Microsoft Word, so the learning curve is not extremely high. Medical Web Experts provides a training session at a very low cost and you can make updates to content and pictures.
2) A user friendly CMS is WordPress. It is extremely widely used and you can find help and useful tips all over the internet. It has a countless number of plugins and is best know for it’s easy to use blogging function. Other functions include Askimet for an industrial-strength spam protection, Google Sitemaps Generator for SEO, related posts for providing readers an easier navigation to find related content, BackupBuddy for having your website securely backed up, subscribe to comments for keeping track of comments/conversations, contact us forms, DisplayBuddy to showcase images, Mobile to create an iPhone version of your website, EmailBuddy for collecting email addresses and to send customized newsletters to patients and more.
3) A ‘hot’ CMS right now, which everyone is asking about, is JOOMLA! It is frankly more complicated than WordPress, but is very search engine friendly out of the box. It takes three steps to update a page oppose to the one step it takes for WordPress, however it is dynamic in many ways. JOOMLA! Has, dynamic form builders, image and multimedia galleries, eCommerce and shopping cart engines, forums and chat software, calendars, blogging software, email newsletters, data collection and reporting tools, banner advertising systems, subscription services and more.
Our real opinion is you should have a custom website built in php. php is the mostly widely used language on the web today and is used it sites like Facebook and the New York Times. It also provides the most flexibility for the future. Do you know what functions you will need or want on your website in two years? And neither do we, so let’s be realistic and give yourself the best chance to have the flexibility you need. If you want to make updates to your website, you might as well learn html coding and you Adobe Dreamweaver CS5, because it will take you as much time to learn html as it will your new CMS. You will become a more versatile and coveted asset in the workplace when you know html and will be a better prospect in the workplace if and when it is time to move.
We hope this has been informative and helpful! Please call use at 619-793-4791 for more questions about the best content management system for a medical practice.
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Website Security for Medical Practices
A realistic approach to internet security for medical practices – Part 1: Website Security
Website hacking is on the rise
As websites become more complex, the potential security risks increase. 10 years ago, when most businesses had very simple sites with just a few pages, there was little hackers could do besides take your website offline or delete your website files. Nowadays, websites are based on Content Management Systems (CMS). CMS’ use a database to store everything from your last blog post to your last contact us form request. Databases store valuable data: both in that it can be valuable to others, but that your website depends on it to work.
How are medical websites hacked?
What would happen if your database was deleted and all your web pages and blog posts disappeared? What would happen if all your contact us requests were stolen, maybe containing credit card numbers or a patient’s sensitive medical information?
In my 10 years of experience in hosting medical websites, we have seen an alarming increase in attacks on websites. The three most common attacks include (in order of frequency):
1) Websites being inserted with Malware, redirecting users to another website. This makes your site unusable, is confusing to users and gets the site blacklisted in Google.
2) SPAM emails being sent through contact us forms. This will blacklist your domain and server as being a domain that sends SPAM, causing your emails to bounce. Email server downtime and/or performance degradation is also caused.
3) Complete deletion, export or corruption of databases. Without a backup, all of your data and site content is lost or stolen.
Hack “Bots”
The hacks are usually done by what is known in the industry as “bots”. Bots are like unmanned computers that look for websites then try multiple known techniques to enter into the website. Unfortunately, these bots usually find their targets through search, so the more frequent your site appears in Google rankings, the more frequently you are attacked. Therefore, as you increase your marketing budget, you also need to increase your security budget.
Website forms, information storage and HIPAA
When it comes to HIPAA, your website forms are at the highest risk. In the past year, we at Medical Web Experts have had multiple clients contacted from HIPAA governing authorities, requiring them to change the security for their contact us forms. HIPAA’s concern is that patients will use website contact us forms to send consultation-related messages to the practice and that these emails can be intercepted or stored in an unsecured database.
Best practices for medical website security:
- Have your website audited for security flaws.
- Implement website monitoring software, such as that by McAfee’s Site Secure system which monitors the site on a daily basis, checking for site flaws. Medical Web Experts is a McAfee Site Secure solution reseller.
- Secure your contact us forms or put disclaimers instructing patients to not include sensitive medical information.
- Put a CAPTCHA in your web form to prevent SPAM.
- Keep your server and CMS software updates current.
- Implement a daily backup system and secondary weekly/monthly backup system.
HIPAA – All bark and no bite?
HIPAA is a highly complicated law (400 pages worth), even challenging for someone with both an IT and law background. Since its creation, there has been a lot of bark and no bite when it comes to enforcement – but this is all changing. In the past 2 years, we at Medical Web Experts have seen a significant increase in citations for HIPAA violations and medical practices being contacted with warnings from HIPAA governing organizations. Therefore, it’s important to have a plan to meet HIPAA guidelines in your practice, focusing on the highest risk issues to meet both HIPAA guidelines and to protect your business from real issues that can severely affect your business, such as data loss, lawsuits and website downtime.
About the Author
John Deutsch is the founder of Medical Web Experts and has spent the last 10 years working the healthcare IT industry, specializing in Electronic Medical Records, Network Administration and Software Development. To learn more about Medical Web Experts and their services, please visit www.medicalwebexperts.com
Read the other articles in this 3 post series:
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Medical Website Blogging: Blogspot vs. WordPress
Keeping a blog is a great method of internet marketing for a medical website. It’s an effective way to keep patients informed on the practice’s latest news and accomplishments, as well as answer commonly asked questions. Blogging is a more modern alternative to the newsletter, which is more advantageous because it cuts down on the cost of printing and mailing that a newsletter would have. Blogs also reach a broader audience because they require no mailing lists and can be easily accessible to prospective patients. Blogging requires a bit of time and dedication, as it needs to be updated regularly with relevant information that will keep people coming back and more importantly, it will drive internet traffic to the your medical website. This, in turn, will hopefully build up the patient base.
The most commonly asked question when deciding to start a medical website blog is which blog publishing service to use. The two most popular blog services are BlogSpot (or Blogger) and WordPress.
BlogSpot
Pros: BlogSpot is that it’s totally free to use. Aside from being a free site, you can actually make money off the blog (at no charge to you) with AdSense. Web traffic statistics can also be easily viewed, letting the user track how many views the blog is getting, where they’re being referred from and which keywords are being to find the blog. BlogSpot can be easily customized and formatted to match the appearance of your main medical website.
Cons: All blogs on BlogSpot are owned by BlogSpot, you can own the domain name, but not the blog itself. BlogSpot is also known to be not great at search engine optimization (SEO), which means it might be harder to drive traffic to your blog with the use of keywords as it would with WordPress.
WordPress
Pros: WordPress has two options to choose from: a basic free service or a paid upgrade. A WordPress blog can be owned by the user if they purchase a domain name and a web hosting service. If the domain name is purchased, there are more opportunities to increase revenue through ads than BlogSpot and the blog’s meta and keywords can be controlled to increase SEO. WordPress is an open-source blog publishing platform that can be used as a content management system (CMS). More plugins like social networking for your practice, an SEO optimizer and Contact Us forms.
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Why Create a Video for your Website?
Thinking about creating a video for your website? According to a comScore report, 76 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content in May 2011 for an average of 15.9 hours per viewer. The total U.S. Internet audience engaged in more than 5.6 billion viewing sessions during the course of the month. Online videos are not going anywhere. Keep reading for a few reasons we encourage all of our medical clients to create videos.
1) A Warm Welcome: In the medical field, videos allow patients to get to know the doctors before meeting them. A custom welcome video will give a personal feel to your site, an important quality in an industry where cold and impersonal sites are all too common. When patients are researching physicians in their area, a video could very well be the key element that leads them to your practice.
2) Pack a Punch: A video allows you to deliver more essential messages in a shorter time than it would take readers to find these messages in text and read them. Even though many users will not watch the entire thing,
3) Increase User Time on Site: A video draws users in. Using multimedia is one of the best ways to increase user time on your site and thus increasing quality of visit. YouTube video wat
4) Search Engine Optimization: Videos can be an effective SEO tool. A YouTube video can be optimized for important keywords and very well rank just as high in Google searches as your own website pages for that keyword, thus driving traffic to your content and website.
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How much should I pay for a website and marketing for my medical practice?
Let’s look at the options:
1. Template Website vs. Custom Website
Creating a template site is relatively easy and can be done very inexpensively or even free. Those are about the only benefits from a template site. The drawbacks are:
A.) The site will not be optimized correctly for search engines. This means that it will be much more difficult for Google to sort and rank your site, so potential clients will not be able to find you as easily as they should, and will make really difficult for marketing a medical practice
B.) Your site will not be unique. Templates are sold — or given for free — to a large number of people. They are generic, so chances are there are hundreds of sites identical to yours. They are generally of lower aesthetic quality as well.
C.) Read the fine print. Some sites will offer to create a ‘free’ site for you, but there is a binding contract for at least a year with a monthly fee.
Custom sites, on the other hand, offer any and all services that you might need online – but this does come at a price. Setting up a quality custom site will run from $1,000 all the way up to about $10,000 for a smaller, more basic site. For $1,000 you can likely get a site that is fully custom, about 5 pages, and carries some type of mandatory monthly fee. Most legal web design firms will offer a buyout option if you do not want to pay for them to host it.
If you have the budget to create a custom site, the investment will easily be returned, so long as you choose a reputable company that has a proven track record not only in design, but in search engine optimized design and marketing. A site is really only as good as it’s position in the search engines. We often use the analogy in the industry that it is like opening a restaurant. You can have the best food and building in the country, but if you’re 100 miles from any city, you aren’t going to get any business. Before you make the decision on where to spend your money, make sure you talk to a few companies about how they can get you to rank highly in Google. There are really no guarantees as to where you will rank, that is simply the nature of the business. Search engine algorithms are constantly changing, but a good company will get you and keep you on page one.
What about marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) prices?
Once again, it depends: Where are you located? How much competition is there? How many people are looking for services that you offer?
You may be wary of some companies if they ask you what your budget is before giving you pricing. Don’t be. The reason is that the price of your marketing will depend largely on where you are. $500 a month isn’t going to get you anywhere if you are a divorce attorney in Los Angeles. SEO to move up in keyword rankings that competitive would take too many hours of manual work for $500 to cover the expense of it. However, If you’re a real estate attorney in Omaha, Nebraska, you make be able to make some real headway with that kind of budget.
What you should ultimately weigh out is how much return you will be getting on your marketing investment. Good SEO companies will get you ranked in 6 months, and once you have the ranking, you can stop paying for the services (assuming that there is no long term contract). So, that $500 a month budget comes out to $3,000, and you have your ranking forever (some minor tweaking may be necessary down the road). If the average client brings you $1,000, your costs are recouped at just 3 clients. If the medical search engine optimization (SEO) campaign has been done properly, you will be getting many more clients than that.
These prices are all very general. Some companies utilize outsourcing (or outsource everything) and have lower costs. Others do everything in-house and in North America, and so may cost more. Both have their benefits and drawbacks.
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The Top Five Mistakes You’ll Make Marketing Your Medical Practice Online
Marketing your medical practice online begins with a modern and professional-looking website. This website alone, however, may not be enough to increase your firm’s online visibility and draw more clients to your door.
Whether you’re seeking a professional medical website as a jumping-off point for an online marketing campaign or simply as an online reference for your existing clients, don’t forget that a website is a fantastic opportunity to expand your medical practice’s client base. Here are the top five mistakes that doctors make when they first start marketing their practice online.
- Ignoring branding. Playing with your website’s colors, graphics, pictures, and design can give it a unique feel and image – and this expands into your practice itself. By “branding” your practice with an easily recognizable logo and graphic design scheme, you’re giving yourself an image that your site’s visitors will remember. Not only will they remember your company in the future; they’ll come to associate your image with the services you provide.
- Not paying attention to your client base. It’s important to mold your practice into what you want it to be, but it’s also important for the success of your business to pay attention to what your clients need. This means not only taking the time to communicate with and take care of care of your existing clients, but also listening to their feedback and translating it to what your potential client base might need. This helps you focus in on particular services on your website and increase turnover.
- Using tired marketing methods like yellow pages and print flyers. With internet use and access becoming more widespread, fewer and fewer people are using print materials and print directories to find a doctor. While paying to have your practice listed in an online legal directory is a good internet marketing option, it won’t necessarily increase the visibility of your practice or your practice’s website. When marketing a medical practice A professionally organized internet marketing campaign can link readers directly to your website while increasing your presence in the search engines. This has the distinct advantage of allowing you to list your credentials, your experience, or a personal message from your attorneys on staff.
- Neglecting SEO. Research shows that around 95% of people searching in Google don’t click past the first page of results – so it’s important to get your website to the front of the list on important search terms like “Cardiologist in Miami” or “New York dermatologist.” By implementing a medical search engine optimization campaign, your site will begin to rank higher on the relevant keywords for your practice and area. With more and more people using online resources to find a doctor, higher rankings in Google and other search engines increases your overall exposure far more than online directories ever could. Unlike a pay-per-click advertising campaign, the benefits of SEO build over time and are often permanent.
- Neglecting good content. Having a professional-looking website, a uniquely branded image, and a killer SEO campaign will undoubtedly increase your practice online visibility – but being the best doctor for the job is what will ultimately increase conversion. Be sure to express this with quality, relevant content that clearly expresses your message, communicates your services, and turns your site’s visitors into potential patients.
Additionally, choosing a comprehensive medical web design service like Medical Web Experts gives you the option of incorporating professional graphic design, branding, and content writing services with expert SEO knowledge. Building your client base begins with building a professional website and a professional presence online.
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© 2012 New Wave Enterprises, LLC dba Medical Web Experts - 510 Civic Center Drive | Ste A | San Diego, CA 92084 | Tel:Fax: 619-923-2155
Medical Doctor Web Site Design and Marketing
Hospital Web Design | Physician Marketing | Security / HIPAA | Client Showcase | Contact Us | Sitemap | Legal
© 2012 New Wave Enterprises, LLC dba Medical Web Experts - 510 Civic Center Drive | Ste A | San Diego, CA 92084 | Tel:Fax: 619-923-2155
Medical Doctor Web Site Design and Marketing
