What to do with Your Online Visitors

We're glad to see many of you reaching out to us for more detailed advice on how to implement some of the techniques we've covered thus far in our "What the Heck is SEO" series.  As such, we'd be remiss not to interject a bit of advice on what to do with the increase in traffic some of you have already started to see from your efforts.  So, we're going to take a quick detour into what to do with these online visitors when you get them.

Once your page starts ranking higher on Google & getting more traffic, it's up to you funnel these visitors into your practice by converting them into new patients.  This is a crucial part of your online marketing and one many practices fail to monitor - resulting in paying for some SEO package from an online marketer without getting any new patients to show for it.  But, if you're using the following basic building blocks to convert visitors into patients, you'll be able to turn your SEO efforts into real patients walking through the door of your practice.  Here are a few of the keys to turning visitors into new patients:

Landing Page  -  A page designed to convert a visitor searching for a specific item. For example, on Amazon.com, each product page is a landing page to convert the visitor into a purchaser of the item on the page.  By sending visitors to a landing page for the specific item they're searching for instead of the generic Amazon.com page, Amazon is able to avoid losing the visitor's attention.  With a solid landing page, you can ensure that your messaging reinforces the description on the link that made them click in the first place.

Call-to-Action  -  The call-to-action (CTA) is best defined as the goal of the page, or what is it you want them to do once they visit your online presence. For example, on an Amazon.com page, this is the “Add to Cart” button.  For most Doctor’s websites this will be either the “Call for an Appointment” phone number or a form to "Request an Appointment Online."  Make the CTA prominent & the focus of the page in order to achieve a higher...

Conversion Rate  -  This is the rate at which a visitor executes the CTA.  Continuing with the Amazon.com example, it would be the number of people out of every 100 visitors that add the selected product to their cart for purchase. Amazon boasts a conversion rate of around 6%, meaning 6 out of 100 visitors to an Amazon.com page will purchase the item.  At the risk of appearing absolutely shameless, we've achieved an 11% conversion rate for our doctors' pages on DoctorBase.com.  So, while the industry standard goal of 5% is okay, we suggest setting your sights higher at an very attainable 10%.

Bounce Rate  -  This defines the percentage of visitors that leave the site from visiting this page. This is important because it indicates the page in question has failed to inspire the visitor to act on your call-to-action, or read on by visiting another page.  A good range for a bounce rate can vary quite a bit; but, if your's is getting to be over 50%, it's probably time to start revamping some of the page & its messaging.

These basic principles are where to start turning the traffic from your SEO efforts into new patients for your practice.  Just with some simple math, if you can get 200 visitors a week with a decent conversion rate of 5% - that's 10 potential patients a week.  And, for those of you already #1 on the Google, how great would it be to convert those 2000 visits to 100 phone calls?!?!