Voice search for your medical, health or wellness website.

Optimizing voice search for your medical, health or wellness website

As technology advances, we need to keep up with best practices. More and more, people are using voice search from their smart devices to look for local businesses. In the past these searches pertained mainly to restaurants and brick and mortar stores. Increasingly, we are seeing voice search impacting how medical, health and wellness practices will be found. For practitioners to have a significant edge over their competitors, it is necessary that they apply best practices to optimizing their websites for both web and voice searches. 

Which factors go into optimizing your website in the first place?

  • A responsive website. That means the pages will adjust to whichever device is being used. Your responsive website will look and function well across all devices and all browsers. 
  • Speed. Your website needs to load quickly. Search engines prefer the fastest loading sites. They will rank the fastest competing websites higher on the page. 
  • SSL certificates. Having an SSL certificate means that your website is secure and that user data is protected. When you see https in front of the site address, it means the website has a security certificate. Most decent hosting companies will include a https certificate in the hosting plan. 
  • Long articles or blog posts that provide valuable information. Google is requiring 1000-18000 words in blog posts in order to determine ranking. New studies indicate that 2300-2400 word posts rank highest. However, most people want instant results so be sure to use headings to delineate sections and lead them to the information that they are seeking. 
  • Your patients or clients will be looking for answers so include a patient/ client frequently asked questions page where you introduce the basics such as insurance questions or how you address certain problems. Don’t be afraid to answer the most basic questions about your specialty, what it is that you do, and what you can do to help the user.
  • Big contact buttons that can be pressed easily from a phone.

50% OF ALL SEARCHES WILL BE VOICE SEARCHES BY 2020

How should you optimize your website for voice searches?

We are increasingly using our smartphones to conduct searches. Because of that fact and that keyboards on phones are tiny and difficult to type into, voice search has become more commonplace.

Talking and typing are two different animals.Typing uses certain keywords and is short and to the point.

Conversational speech, on the other hand is much different. It does use long tail keywords but it mostly uses a question format. 

For example: Oncologic massage therapist Chicago v.s. Who is the best rated oncologic massage therapist near (my suburb or neighborhood).

How does your audience think in terms of your specialty or practice?

Digital marketer, Neil Patel, recommends using the free tool Answer the Public to get natural results  in determining how a question might be phrased.  When you enter a keyword, it generates questions pertaining to that keyword. 

Additionally, you can upgrade the service to get results for  your specific location.

Answer the Public

Possible results when you enter a search term

Patel also says that you can gain traction by incorporating words that refer to your particular location, the words near me,or landmarks. For example:

  • Oncologic massage therapist near Northwestern Hospital.
  • Oncologic massage therapist in Streeterville.
  • Oncologic massage therapist near me.

Groups using voice search at least once daily

Voice search is increasing  among all age groups. 

Make sure your business is listed on Google

To improve your local results, it is critically important for you to claim your business on Google.

  • There you will post photos  representative of your business
  • You will also add business hours.
  • Your location
  • Your phone number
  • A link to your website
  • And most importantly, KEEP YOUR INFORMATION UP TO DATE

Begin here:

Google my business

Your reviews will also be located there. Ask your clients for reviews.  After you meet with them, send a thank you follow up email and ask for a review. Provide a link to Google reviews and instructions.

It is also important to respond to reviews once you get them.

Near me searches are rising exponentially

To read more about how Google voice searches are being used:

Near Me Searches

Searches are getting more sophisticated

Clients will be asking questions such as, ‘Who is the best massage therapist for a cancer patient in Chicago? 

OR

Where can I find the best oncologic massage therapist ?

We can address that by knowing that those searches have local intent and optimize for them that way.

We can also optimize for voice search by using a conversational tone in our writing, particularly in the FAQ section of our websites.

‘BEST’ WILL BE DETERMINED BY YOUR GOOGLE AND YELP REVIEWS

VOICE SEARCHES ARE CRITICALLY IMPORTANT TO PEOPLE WHO ARE DISABLED OR INJURED

For patients who are elderly, disabled or injured, voice searches can be a helpful tool.

Additionally, voice searches will have applications moving forward that impact patient and client care from scheduling appointments to outsourcing medical advice to Amazon devices like Alexa. Amazon has already partnered with the National Health Service in the UK to give informational health advice, such as –How do I treat a cold?

In the USA, Cigna has partnered with Amazon / Alexa to provide voice access to certain services. 

To read more:

From Cigna

From Amazon

Web Search is still relevant

In light of what is developing, medical, health and wellness practitioners would be wise to have their websites optimized for both voice and web search. 

Many clients or patients will still want to visit your website to read about you and your services before making a decision based on voice search alone. 

We began our practice writing content and we can match your voice in creating blog posts, page content, FAQ pages. We would like to help in not only creating your website but updating your content to reflect the important changes that will affect our future. Please call us or click the button to get in touch. 

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What Should Your Medical Website Look Like?

Medical, Health, And Wellness Website Design Tips

Wondering what your medical website should look like?

Medical Website Construction

If you are a doctor, a therapist, a massage therapist, or a health /wellness practitioner, you might be wondering what your website should look like. Equally important, you may be wondering how your website should function.

Let’s go over some basic principles, so that you can get a good idea of what is involved in contemporary web design.

  • Your website needs to be responsive. That means that the site is flexible and adjusts to look and read well across all devices and all browsers. Currently, over 50% of all users will search for you on their phone before they will use a computer.
  • Your website needs to be fast loading. Speed is of the essence. Scientific tests have shown that humans have shorter attention spans than chimpanzees. If the website doesn’t load in three seconds, they won’t wait.
  • Your website should be attractive. Beauty is good. It keeps people on your pages. If your website is outdated, cluttered, difficult to navigate, poorly laid out, or just plain ugly, you need to do something about it. People will judge you on appearances. If your website is outdated, they will think you and your knowledge base are outdated as well.
 
  • Your website needs to be well laid out. All your primary information, such as name, specialty, and phone number need to be located above the first fold. That is, the section that is visible before the user starts to scroll.
 
  • The pages on your website, seen in the top menu, need to be organized in a logical and coherent manner and need to coordinate with one another. Additionally,  links and posts need to be up to date and functional.
 
  • You need to have a FAQ (frequently asked questions) section. Patients and clients will desire to know about your insurance and payment policies.
 
  • Modalities / services/ specialties. It is critical that you describe what you do, all the modalities that you practice, in easy to understand, layman’s terms. Remember, even PhD’s like to read at an eight grade level.
 
  • Security / https. Https means that your site is secure. It protects user data.  You can obtain it through a SSL certificate. 
  • Footers. I like to make footers universal; that is, visible on every page. I always include name of the practice, address, hours, contact information, copywrite date, social media buttons, and phone number. There is a simple plug in or code that can make the phone number dial directly from the preheader of footer. Sometimes, I will include a site map for ease of navigation, a map to the location or a social media feed. It can look pretty impressive to have your feed featured right from the footer.

One thing that I would advise against is putting patient testimonials on a medical website. It’s against the law in some states to do so and it can look a bit crass depending on your medical specialty.  If you practice aesthetic medicine and feature authorized before and afters, you can include testimonials.. 

We will discuss how softwares can populate patient reviews to various sites in a future post.  

Medical Website Aesthetics

Now, let’s talk a bit about the aesthetics of your site. Remember what I said before –  over half your clients and patients are conducting  searches from a smart phone.

  • Simple is good. I have a lot of tricks and animation on my website because I have to show you what I can do, and I admit, I love special effects. Your patients or clients are going to be looking for information, so overwhelming them with trendy visuals isn’t the best policy. Sure, you can have some lovely, catchy motion effects but not in every section.
 
  • Keep it real. You, your staff, your office will give visitors a greater sense of who you are than a bunch of stock photos of models dressed up as doctors. However, you can use stock photos of modalities, in headers, and so on to make the site attractive.
 
  • Video. I love it. I use it, and you should too. Welcome the viewer with a video. They’ll be seeing the real you and getting a sense of what you are like. If you are practicing aesthetic medicine, show videos of your injection techniques, various procedures, and patients speaking about their results. If you are a psychologist / therapist, you can upload your YouTube self help videos to your site. If you are a massage therapist, you can feature beautiful videos of your massage techniques. These look particularly impressive in headers and I’ve seen some gorgeous examples used in the websites of upscale spas.

Color

Folks, hospital blue and bright white is so yesterday. Even if you choose blue and white as your palate, there are all sorts of shades and hues of those colors, ranging from cloud to dove grey to grey-blue, blue-green, turquoise, cerulean, azure, and about forty other variations. Also, think green. Green is indicative of health and wellness. Again, nuanced colors are chic, elegant, and dare I say, classy. Colors can stimulate calmness and tranquility, and thus, reassure your patients.

Men, remember when making design decisions, females prefer softer, less bright colors. No one likes brown or maroon and orange is only popular with creatives and millennials.

Colors need to harmonize and create an ambiance. It’s trendy now to place images or blocks of information in horizontal sections. These sections are usually colorized and stacked one a top another with no white space in-between. This can look gorgeous if your web designer is a good colorist and terrible if they senselessly slap fully saturated colors next to each other, I’ve seen green, purple, orange, and brown next to each other. Not only is it garish, it creates a sense of disquiet in the user.

These colors, on the other hand, induce tranquility, calmness, and well being in a viewer.

Written Content

It’s critically important that you describe everything that you do in an easy to understand manner.  Appropriately sized headings, sections, attractive fonts, light backgrounds and darker fonts are all important for visibility and on page SEO. No one over thirty – five wants to read light grey print, or white lettering on a black background, or have to deal with tiny fronts. Statistically, eyesight is worsening for all demographics globally, so make your content easy to read. Proof read everything and run it through spell check, too. Google prefers 350-700 words per page and 1000-1800 per post.  

Contact and Call to Action Buttons

Make it easy for people to contact you. Remember, phone numbers in the preheader and footer, links to the contact page, and a contact form are mandatory. Popping up more frequently are chat boxes and booking software. What you choose is dependent on your staff structure and levels of comfort with technology. However, people have gotten used to instantaneous gratification and you have to make it fast and convenient for them to contact you in order to stay ahead of your competition.

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Let's End the Post with an Example:

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integralmed.us_office-modalities_ (1)
integralmed.us_office-modalities_
integralmed.us_our-services_ (1)
Visit the site to see other pages, footers, and pre-headers

We are passionate about medicine, health, and wellness. We are equally passionate about design. Please don't hesitate to contact us with any questions. You can use the contact button above.

Facebook for Medical, Health and Wellness Practitioners

Should Health Care Practitioners Have Facebook Business Pages?

If you are a doctor, dentist, therapist, or health care practitioner, should you put your time or resources into developing a Facebook business page?

The answer is, it depends on your goals. Our research has shown that some medical, health, and wellness practitioners have gotten great results using Facebook to enhance their practice or to get their message out to the public.

Why should you have a Facebook business page?

Facebook is the most widely used social network, and often, one of the first places people go to get information about a business. Simply put, it’s another place your business can be seen. Your business page is a highly visible location on the Internet where you can share your story, your contact information, location, reviews, and call to action button.

Facebook Reach

Facebook reaches 2.6 billion monthly users globally, yet Facebook organic reach is abysmally low. That’s because Facebook wants you to pay for advertising, but before you can even consider advertising, you need to build up your page.

Your Facebook Business Page Strategy

After setting up your page, you are going to need to develop a strategy for posting. You have to be consistent with your posts. Decide what is feasible for you or your practice You will need to post content once or twice a day, three to seven days a week. Decide what the best time is for your particular demographic. Are they on at lunch time, after dinner, or late at night? You might have to do a little research or experiment to know when your posts have the greatest likelihood of being seen.

How to Set Up a Facebook Business Page

Begin Here

What Should You Post About?

You need to mix up your posts. There is an unspoken 80 / 20% rule. 80% of your content should be informational and 20% should be promotional. Recently on Quora, I was asked, what my marketing takeaway from Whole Foods social media pages was. First, it’s a great strategy to study successful pages, which have significant resources behind them, to figure out what does and doesn’t work.

Here are a few ideas you can take away:

Whole Foods varies the content in their post types.

  • They pick a theme for the week or month, such as bee keeping awareness. Then, they will post educational information or videos tied that topic all month long.
  • Their posts feature attractive photos – sized for Facebook
  • One type of post will feature sales and discounts
  • Another type of post will feature local events such as store openings or cook book signings
  • They feature regional producers- such as craft beers and cheese makers
  • They feature educational posts – e.g: How does your food get to market?
  • They feature seasonal products – with the advent of summer, they are showcasing rosés and sparkling wines
  • They feature products associated with holidays- such as flowers for Mother’s Day.
  • They tie a product to a current event – e.g: Celebrate the arrival of the royal baby with English cheeses.

How can you adapt that strategy to your Health or Wellness Practice?

  • Feature beautiful photos
  • Feature a monthly or weekly theme
  • Mix up your posts – they should vary in type. Don’t be afraid to let your personalty shine . But post in a logical and coherent manner. First introduce the topic, then educate, then sell your services.

Social media posts adapted for your practice

Images

  • Post photos of yourself, your office / space/ staff.
  • Source  photos from Shutterstock, Pixels or Pixabey
  • If you are going to create memes then use Canva or Adobe
  • If you practice aesthetic medicine, you are in luck because social media the perfect forum to share before and afters, or videos of various procedures.

Relevance

Is there anything going on in the news or in your practice?

  • Flu Season
  • Breast cancer awareness month
  • A topic that is hot at the moment
  • Controversial health news that may be of interest to your patients

Are you featuring any events in your practice?

  • Openings
  • Fund Raisers
  • Product Launches
  • New Procedures
  • Book signing / launching events
  • Free screenings
  • Educational Content

If you are a blogger when should you share your posts to Facebook

  • If you want to raise awareness of certain topics
  • If you want to post helpful tips
  • When you want to share interviews
  • With each post

Blogger

Social Sharing

Do you have a blog or do you feature a blog on your website?

For Bloggers

By all means share your blog posts on all your social media pages, including Facebook

Read More

Memes

Fast and Funny

Are you clever and quick witted?

Inspirational Memes

Take your inspiration from these hilarious memes, just take care not to offend everyone

Read More

Video

YouTubers

Share your YouTube content on Facebook

YouTube

There's no penalty for sharing the same content across your social media channels. Just remember to upload your video directly to Facebook and not through a YouTube link for maximum reach.

Read More

Tips you should know about

  • Drive traffic to your website with links 
  • When you are sharing content from other pages, introduce the topic and source a photo of your own, then link, you will have more views then just by sharing a link.
  • Link your own Website in the comments section
  • Target your posts. You will reach the followers that are most interested in your content. Remember this only pertains to your page followers, not everyone on Facebook.
  • Video or not? For the past two years, video has been heavily promoted by Facebook. Now that they are inundated with video content, they are less gung-go. If you feel comfortable being filmed or talking about certain topics, giving advice, then use video.

Remember your content can be shared to all your social media , so if you have a Youtube channel then share those videos on Facebook and your blog as well.

How are you going to build your fanbase?

You are going to have to ask your patients, clients, and friends to like your page. Please remind them to follow and utilize the see first feature. This will indicate their level of interest and make sure your posts get seen.

See first instructions

Your organic reach will still be highly limited, so you will have to ask questions to inspire interaction from your fans. One thing that works almost universally is to post something at the beginning of the week and ask them to respond with their location. It shows Facebook algorithms that there are page interactions and that boosts your visibility. This is an example of a well-developed medical Facebook page with daily likes and some engagement. Remember, the more comments you can get your fans to make, the more the algorithm will boost your visibility.

Page Example

How to get more Fans

  • Ask for reviews from clients/ patients
  • Invite everyone on your customer/ subscriber list
  • Link to your business page from your personal profile
  • Interact with your fan base
  • Promote your page on and offline
  • Add a link to your email correspondence
  • Engage by leaving insightful comments on similar pages with large subscriber bases
  • Advertise

Advertising on Facebook

You can target your desired audience by area, zip code and demographics, but please be wary of look a like audiences and HIPAA compliance.

Medical Justice / Social Media for Doctors

Advertising is an art, not a science. Marketers can promise you rates of return on your investment but really, no one knows what will work unless and until it’s tested. Just because they have had success with a certain campaign previously doesn’t mean they will have the same success with your demographic or your specialty.

In the meantime, you have to decide what it is that you want from Facebook.

  • A moving billboard
  • A platform for disseminating knowledge
  • A place to gather emails and grow your list

One thing Facebook works well for is creating a funnel. That includes an advertising campaign that will offer the user something valuable and free in exchange for their email so that the relationship between the practitioner and the client can begin. One simple form of free information is a newsletter, free guide, booklet or pamphlet that shares information and your expertise on a topic of interest to the user. The middle of the funnel is the information you share with them or offer them something for free, and the bottom of the funnel is when you ask for the sale, but only after your subscribers get to know  know and trust you. 

An example of a funnel

A complex funnel could consist of a an automated free webinar, which gives valuable information but then has upsells, be it a book, an eating plan, vitamins, shakes, taped lessons, consultations, and /or joining a Facebook group where knowledge is freely shared. Usually included are several upsells ranging from low priced to your most complex, highest priced offering.

Last year, after being diagnosed with hypothyroidism, I watched a free online webinar given by a doctor. The topic was about why thyroid medication often doesn’t yield the weight loss results we expect to see. His lecture was very informative and he specifically addressed eating correctly and gut health in the conversion of T4 to T3. The first upsell included his book, which was an in depth examination of the topic; an eating plan / elimination diet, beautifully presented and delivered weekly into your in box; and an invitation to his Facebook group where any questions could be asked or information shared.  His next upsell was to vitamin supplements and the third upsell was to vitamin fortified shakes. There was nothing salesy or pushy in the approach. The upsells were presented as possible accelerators to improving overall health and the doctor’s entire approach and demeanor was that of one who desires to disseminate knowledge and help the concerned public who were not in a position to visit his office. 

Social media / Facebook is constantly evolving and algorithms are always changing. We’ve presented some general ideas you can use to build your brand. If you desire specific advice, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

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