10 Tactics to Drive Traffic to Your Eye Care Website
Did you know that there are more than 1.5 billion websites on the web today? If you want to increase your website visibility and get found online by more eye care patients, then you need to optimize your site for conversion.
Website conversion optimization is advantageous because you benefit from the website traffic you already have! Simply put, with conversion optimization, you’ll be able to increase your chances of converting website visitors into patients, generate new eye care leads, and increase your revenue.
Consider this, your eye care website is your digital storefront and all you need are those visitors to be interested in scheduling an appointment at your practice. Follow these 10 proven tactics to boost traffic to your eye care website and drive more patients to your office.
Tactic 1: Create a Free Google My Business Listing
Did you know that a complete Google My Business listing profile generates 7x more visits than an incomplete one? It’s important to create and maintain your Google My Business Profile so that people who are searching for an eye care provider in their local area can easily find your practice with the most up-to-date information.
On your profile be sure to add a link to your eye care website to help boost web traffic, include your name, physical address, phone number, and any important information you want new eye care patients to know. Keeping your Google My Business updated as your practice evolves is one of the single most important things you can do to boost your online visibility.
To help you get started, simply click here to create your Google My Business Listing.
Tactic 2: Implement an Effective SEO Strategy
SEO is known as search engine optimization and it’s one of the best ways to boost your website traffic. The goal is to rank at the top of search results organically. This means that your website can rank higher on Google when people search for your services. To do this you’ll need to write quality eye care content using keywords related to your practice that people are searching for the most. Examples include eye exams, LASIK, dry eye treatments, and contact lenses – all of which are searched for online. The following will help you get started when conducting your keyword search.
- Enter relevant keywords into these free tools: WordStream’s Keyword Tool, Soolve, Google Keyword Planner, Google Trends, Keyword Generator.
This can be any service you offer, for instance, eye exams, vision therapy, or glaucoma.
- Look for high-volume, low-competition keywords.
Search Volume —The number of times this keyword is searched for in Google each month on average in a particular country, etc. This will help you decide on what type of content you create.
Keyword Difficulty — Is represented as a number between 0 and 100. The larger the number is, the harder it will be to rank for that keyword. Finding a good balance between search volume and keyword difficulty is a good start. Long Tail-keywords or phrases will help you to rank even higher.
- Use the keywords you generated and sprinkle them throughout your website’s home page, landing pages, and content.
Tactic 3: Write Engaging Eyecare Content
The phrase “Content is King” is a well-known saying among marketers and content creators. It means to publish as much eye care content as possible. The more educational content you create, the more engaged your readers will be.
It’s important to know that Google usually favors websites that provide unique, high-quality content over others. It’s important to keep in mind that people are always searching for information online. So if you provide relevant and useful content that your readers enjoy and want to share, you’ll see more hits, more visitors, more engagement – and a better Google ranking.
Tactic 4: Use Links From Authoritative Sites
As you write your blogs that educate and engage readers, be sure to include backlinks. This will build your eye care website’s credibility and improve your search engine rankings. Backlinks are essentially incoming links that happen when one website links to another. Although it may sound simple, these links make a tremendous impact on a website’s prominence in search engine results.
Think of backlinks as conversations between web pages. It’s important to add backlinks because it alerts Google that this particular piece of content is important and gives its web crawler another path to access that content.
Tactic 5: Drive Website Traffic with Videos
Even though content is king the demand for videos has increased in recent years. In fact, online video will make up 82% of all internet traffic by 2021. You can post videos on your website, in newsletters, emails, and on social media. Here are some video ideas to help you get started:
- Showcase your office and introduce your team with videos
- Record patient care videos demonstrating eye procedures and provide at-home eye care tips
- Establish a positive reputation by posting patient testimonials on your website
Tactic 6: Have a Responsive Web Design
The way people browse the Internet is continuously changing, more and more people use their phones exclusively to browse online, replacing their laptops or desktop computers. For these people and many other mobile users, a traditional website designed just for desktops will no longer suffice.
With Google’s algorithm change, websites that are not designed for mobile devices in their search results are penalized while mobile-ready sites are given a ranking boost.
The shift from desktop to mobile shows no signs of stopping, on the contrary, it is speeding up. You can check the mobile-friendliness of your site by visiting Google’s Mobile-Friendly test site.
With responsive design, the layout of your web page adjusts based on the resolution of the screen a user is viewing the site on. Images will enlarge or shrink to fit any space, and text, along with other elements will flow to fit it as well.
Tactic 7: Make Your Site Load Fast
If you’re serious about driving traffic to your site then your eye care website must be mobile responsive and have a quick load time. According to Kissmetrics, 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in two seconds or less. Kissmetrics reports that 40% of consumers will abandon a website if it takes more than three seconds to load. To find out your load time use Google’s Page Insights Tool to check the speed performance and to see if it conforms to Google’s guidelines.
Tactic 8: Get Social With Followers
There are more than 3.5 billion active social media users today. If you haven’t already, create a social page for your practice. Facebook and Instagram are the most popular social platforms to use. On Facebook, you can post videos, and curated content that is relevant to your industry and eye care patients. On Instagram, post-high-resolution photos, run polls, create stories, and use hashtags.
You can also reshare authoritative sources on your social media channels like the American Optometric Association, Opticians Association of America, Ophthalmology Times, and more.
Another way to get social is to engage and encourage clients to follow your practice’s social pages by hosting contests, giveaways, and discounts. This will help build your social media audience.
To give you a head start, we have created a free social media kit with ready-to-use eye care posts that you can publish on your social media channels. Download our Social Media Kit!
Tactic 9: Research Your Competitors
What are the names of your local eye care competitors? Analyzing your competitors’ online presence is a quick and easy way to help boost your eye care website traffic. Here is a list of Competitor Traffic Analysis Tools:
By spotting something working well for your competitors, you can identify opportunities you’re currently losing out on.
Tactic 10: Send Emails to Your Patients
Email marketing can be used effectively as an outreach tool to target and reach your audience and drive more visitors to your website. You can email your current eye care patients about new blog posts, new features on your website, and promotions that are linked directly to your site.
Encourage your email subscribers to share your content on social media. As a result, you can generate leads from people visiting your website as well as your current patients.
What Are You Waiting For? Get Your Eye Care Website Noticed by More Patients
Use these 10 tactics to help you drive traffic to your website and convert more users into eye care patients. To help you get started, let’s first analyze your website! Click here to receive a free website audit of your practice.
We understand you’re busy and may not have time to write blogs, social media posts, record videos, email patients, but we are here to help! Put our eye care marketing experts to work.
Give us a call at 800.792.8384 or click here to learn more about our digital eye care marketing solutions.
