Creating and Maintaining a Medical Website: DIY vs Professional Help
The ROI on Engaging a “True” Medical Website Professional
Lessons in medical practice website development from the trenches 
When I first decidied to venture online I was POSITIVE I could handle it myself –typical surgeon
I started a blog on Posterous and then used a template driven website design and started preparing and writing content.
Despite well over two years of effort , as the graph below depicts … I never gained any traction or attention. Alexa didn’t even know that my website was somewhere on the internet 
.
Frustrated, I started to dive deeper… I wanted to know why, despite my blog and constant content creation, why I was not attracting an audience — I was obviously not ranking on Google. No one could find me
I started reading as much as I could about medical practice website development, Google rankings, gaining traction and a following.
I found all these terms I didn’t quite understand:
- Landing Page
- Anchor Text
- SEO
- Inbound Marketing
- Cornerstone Content
- Internal Linking
- Tagging
- Keyword Density
- and so on….
Many physicians and other health care providers hold back from engaging a seasoned, proven medical website development professional because it seems too expensive. I implore you to look beyond the initial numbers — work on a pro-forma and you will soon recognize the value of engaging a professional service.
Many patients are becoming very web savvy. They are hungry for information and they are searching for information. They are searching for your medical practice website! They are researching you! Whether you agree with this trend is not particularly relevant. Patients are searching for information on Facebook. They are interacting with one another on Twitter. 12 to 15% of patients who enter my office mention the Internet, Facebook, or my website as the reason why they are present in my office. A properly constructed medical web presence will also enable numerous efficiencies that will contribute to the bottom line of your practice as we face ongoing fiscal instability in the healthcare space. A patient who has actively explored your website, watched your videos, and read through your comments will result in a far more effective and efficient visit — and will also contribute to improving the patient’s experience — and thus their desire to recommend you to their friends and acquaintances.
Lastly, I personally feel that to ignore your medical practice website, digital and social media, is to ignore your own potential relevance as a healthcare practitioner over the coming years.
When you do choose to engage and venture online, save yourself the aggravation, time and limited expense of engaging with a template driven inexpensive website development firm …
Trust me , I’ve been there.
* Disclaimer: I am now one of those consultants.
Howard, this would make a welcome addition to the Medical Devices Group blog at http://MedicalDevicesGroup.net. Interested? Contact me.