While everyone wants to have an attractive-looking website, achieving this goal is only part of the equation. Your website doesn’t just need to be pretty; it also needs to function strategically as well. When designing a website for a psychiatrist’s office, there are key components that your website should utilize.
Keyword research
Among the components of a good website strategy, keyword research is one of the most important. When performing keyword research, there are common goals that businesses want to achieve. In the instance of a psychiatrist’s office, goals may include to:
- Learn how patients look for your service
- Learn how your competitors secure new patients
- Make your patients’ search queries and your services match
Performing keyword research doesn’t have to be overly expensive. There are free tools available, like Google Ads, but there are paid tools, such as SEM Rush, available that may offer more enhanced features.
Sitemap
The next step after keyword research is to create a sitemap for your website. When you create a sitemap for a website, it should include the following components:
- Home page
- Service pages
- Conditions pages
- About page
- Contact page
- Thank you page
Having a home page should be obvious, but the strategy needed can be misunderstood. If you’re running a local practice, your main keyword should be “psychiatrist” + “your city,” and the keyword should appear in your (h1 title) main title. Since your homepage is typically your most vital and attention-grabbing page, using your “field + city” is a no-brainer if you’re trying to rank competitively.
Service pages are essential for informing potential clients about the services you offer. When you’re naming them, however, you should keep the names simple—unless your website is directed at other psychiatrists who already understand the terminology. You’ll also want to ensure that the names you choose are relevant to your keyword research.
While similar to service pages, separate condition pages can also be useful as a way to target conditions. Take anxiety, for instance. If you frequently treat patients who suffer from anxiety, you may want to have a specific page for anxiety treatment.
Most websites (especially those for businesses and/or services) have a page that tells potential clients about their business. Having such a page goes a long way to give your business credibility and help patients understand why they should choose your business. You can include public reviews, your education and your area of expertise. Another good addition is a welcome message that will let your patients know you’re there to support them.
It’s also essential to include a contact page to connect your practice with your patients. This page should include your phone number (which should also be located in your header/footer). You should also consider having a contact form that will allow you to track submissions. Remember to make sure that your form utilizes Google reCAPTCHA so that spammers can’t send forms.
Thank you pages aren’t common, but they’re a good way to track leads through Google Analytics Goals, which is used to count the number of visitors who find their way to your thank you page.
Content strategy
Once you’ve completed your website build, you should consider budgeting for a content strategy. Including blog posts on your website is a great way to reach out to your current and potential patients. You have thousands of content possibilities at your fingertips. Creating your own content (or paying someone to create it for you) is typically the way to go, as the content can be tailored with your patients in mind.
When creating content, ensure that what you’re uploading will be interesting to your patients. Blogs should be at least 1000 words long and have 1 main topic.
Implementing these digital marketing strategies can be a big step toward growing your practice, but remember to be patient because these changes typically don’t work overnight.