Splitting the Code for Chiropractic Site Advancement and Advanced Marketing If you’re here
you’re likely a chiropractor who’s within the showcase for more patients. Welcome! It’s decent to meet you, and we’re happy you’re here since Adjusted Computerized can loan a hand.
today, we’re doing a deep dive into what makes a good chiropractor’s website.
We’ll look at the basics of website development and then explore the methods and tactics that will help you rank well in search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo!
Yes! Digital Marketing Is a Must
People may try to tell you that SEO is dead and you don’t need to invest in online marketing anymore.
They’re 100% wrong.
These days, it’s impossible to grow a business without a positive online presence. Your “digital homebase” should be a professionally designed and developed website enhanced by on-page and off-page SEO tactics, which we’ll explain more below.
Why is an online presence so important? Check out these statistics:
- Google processes about 40,000 queries per second, and half are searches for products and services. And that’s only one search engine! There are dozens more.
- 93% of Americans use the Internet.
- About 35% of small businesses and firms still don’t have websites, which leaves room to leapfrog them.
- 50% of people who do a local search on their smartphone visit the place within a day; 34% of folks using computers or tablets do the same.
In other words, when people are thinking about seeing a chiropractor, most folks will probably start by looking for one online.
Some businesses think they can get away with just a social media page, but they’re also wrong. That may work for a few restaurants, but a medical office needs a website that’s updated frequently and optimized for search engines. It should contain content that anticipates potential patients’ questions and be updated regularly.
Chiropractic Website Development Basics
Where do you begin when developing a website for a chiropractic office? Before getting into the nuts and bolts, it’s essential to establish a solid technical foundation.
Website Foundation: WordPress
If you want your website to operate as a 24-7 salesperson, you’ll need to keep it updated and add fresh content weekly. As such, it’s best to have a robust content management system (CMS).
The most popular option is WordPress. In fact, 43% of digital platforms use it, including big sites like Sony Music, Microsoft, and Vogue Magazine. Joomla, Drupal, and Magento are also widely used content management systems.
Why is it wise to go with a CMS used by millions of other sites? Generally speaking, the security is much better since engineers constantly make updates and repair code vulnerabilities. Plus, programmers develop loads of plugins and apps for the most-used platforms.
Here at Wooflo Digital, we’ve created a customized WordPress backend for our chiropractic clients called “Spacewalker.” But every client gets a custom design, so your website won’t look like everyone else’s. With us, you’ll stand out from the crowd.
A Professional Design
The Internet has been around a long time, and the average person has strong opinions about what makes a site trustworthy and professional.
If a person lands on a platform that looks like it was made in 1997, they’ll run away faster than a cheetah. Additionally, most folks aren’t fond of sites that look like an amateur made them. If you’re serious about a business, its marketing materials — both digital and print — should reflect that.
Presentation matters — especially for a chiropractic office. Your website must be polished and trustworthy. The colors should soothe potential patients and give the impression that you’re a successful firm. In other words, a neon color palette probably isn’t best. You can add personality to the design but keep it professional.
What colors are best for a chiropractic website? The choice is yours, but it may help to know a little color psychology when deciding. People go to art school for years to learn the finer points of picking branding palettes. But here’s a chart explaining general color impacts.
| Color | Notes |
|---|---|
| Red | Red is a versatile color that conveys power and passion. In certain cultures, it’s the color of prosperity and happiness. However, if used indelicately, it could be interpreted as an “angry” hue. Lighter reds are more energetic; darker ones are associated with elegance. |
| Orange | As a bold color, orange operates a lot like red. However, it’s a bit more friendly and inviting. Many brands use orange to convey value. |
| Yellow | Yellow makes most people think of hope, happiness, and cheerfulness. Brighter hues convey energy, while lighter ones evoke a sense of calm. Yellow shades are also good for suggesting a sense of permanence and old money, as darker yellows are associated with antiques and wealth. |
| Green | Green represents new beginnings, growth, and abundance. Green conveys wealth, renewal, stability, and nature. Darker greens, especially when accented with a hint of gold, are also associated with wealth. |
| Blue | Blue is a chameleon color that evokes a range of feelings, including calmness, responsibility, longevity, professionalism, peace, and even spirituality. Darker blues are often used for corporate brands that want to be seen as strong and dependable. |
| Purple | In ancient days, purple could only be extracted from snails, making it the most expensive color to wear. As such, it was reserved for royalty. These days, purple is often associated with luxury. Lighter hues are used to convey rebirth and other springtime themes. |
| Black | Black is the most ubiquitous neutral color, and it often represents power, formality, and elegance. Black oozes sophistication. |
| White | White is associated with virtue, purity, and cleanliness. Many healthcare sites use a lot of white. However, in some Eastern cultures, white is the color of mourning. It’s the ideal hue to convey simplicity, and it allows other colors to pop. |
| Gray | Gray works in conservative and formal designs, yet it’s also modern. It’s a popular color for professional and corporate websites. When done right, gray can be uber elegant. Pure grays are various shades of black; other hues may have blue or brown mixed in. |
| Brown | Brown is associated with wood, earth, and stones. It’s a natural and warm color. Many people subliminally connect brown with dependability, reliability, and steadfastness. Plus, it can help evoke a feeling of wholesomeness. |
| Ivory | Ivory and various creams are sophisticated colors that have the warmth of brown and the coolness of white. They’re muted hues that can kindle a sense of history and dependability. Ivory colors are also calming, which can work well for a chiropractic website. |
Now that we’ve reviewed the basic color choices, let’s take a quick look at what makes a good design for a chiropractic website.
- Clean and Crisp:: Minimalist, tasteful, clean sites work best for doctors’ offices. Avoid busyness.
- Quiet and Calming: You don’t want a website that shouts at people the second they land on it. It’s great to include videos that people can choose to watch, but automated bells, whistles, and flashing bits are not advised. People are probably searching for a chiropractor because they want to cure some ailment or pain. As such, you want them to feel safe and calm.
- Professional, Helpful, and Dependable: You’re not running some rinky-dink practice. You believe in what you do and have helped countless patients live better lives. That should come through in the design.
- Responsive: Websites must look good on all screen sizes, which means having a responsive web design. Whether a potential patient uses a smartphone or big-screen TV to search, your platform must work well.
- Functions Properly: A well-designed website is one that works! Your platform should be intuitive. If something looks like a button, it should function like one. The same goes for menus. Don’t make it difficult to use.
What Makes A Website Work?
What makes a website perform better than others? It depends on several factors, not the least of which is how much regional competition you’re battling. But there are six ingredients to every successful digital marketing campaign: a good programming platform, secure hosting, proper website functionality, informed SEO efforts, a linking strategy, and quality content.
1. A Good Platform Base
Websites should be built on a solid content management platform, like WordPress. Make sure you have a designated person responsible for executing code updates and other digital administrative tasks, like hosting and plugin monitoring. If you don’t keep up with these tasks, you run a greater risk of being hacked.
2. Solid and Secure Hosting
There’s no guarantee that a hacker will never hit you. However, if you maintain a secure hosting account equipped with the right firewalls and anti-breach measures, the chance of attack decreases considerably.
If you’re using a WordPress platform, look into getting Managed WordPress Hosting. The benefits include:
- Access to a staging site
- Added management features
- Scalability advantages
- Easy SSL installation and maintenance
- Access to on-call experts
- Better hacking protection
- Faster loading times
- Upgraded features
- Fewer plugins that slow down the site
- More time to focus on your business and specialty
- Less stress
3. Proper Coding and Functionality
Here’s a shocking website statistic: 90% of people click away from sites that don’t load within five seconds! John Mueller, one of Google’s search advocates, recommends load times of less than three seconds.
What does that mean, practically speaking?
For your website to perform optimally, it should be appropriately coded. Quick loading times, functional menus, and intuitive interfaces are all a must.
4. On-Page and Off-Page SEO
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, one of the most important aspects of your digital promotional efforts. If you want to land atop the search engine result pages (SERPs), you need to invest in SEO. The great news is that the return on investment is often exponential.
What Is On-Page SEO?
On-page SEO is the optimization work you do on your website. Common on-page SEO tactics include:
- Keywords and geo-modifiers
- Quality, structured content that satisfies smart bots
- A well-considered internal linking structure
- A responsive design that looks good on any screen size
- A proper URL structure and metadata
What Is Off-Page SEO?
Off-page SEO is the optimization work you do on other websites and digital platforms that help your website move up the SERPs. Tactics include, but are not limited to:
- Using analytics tools
- Article syndication
- Video development
- Guest posting
- Cultivating foundational backlinks
5. A Strong Link Network
Backlinks are incredibly important if you want to perform well in the SERPs. Not only do you need many links pointing at your site, but they must be quality ones.
And there’s another catch. If your website has backlinks from spammy or low-quality websites, it could hurt your search ranking. Plus, if Google and other search engines suspect you’re deliberately trying to game the system, they reserve the right to ban you from their respective indexes.
In other words, it’s best to hire an expert who knows the ins and out of link building. Failing to do so could lead to big problems.
To learn more about how internal and external linking affects your website’s performance, check out these posts:
- Backlinking Strategies: Variety, Velocity, and Volume: Learn everything you need to know about the whys and hows of backlinks.
- How Impactful Are Backlinks?: We explain, in detail, why backlinks are vital and how to avoid backlink drama that can get you booted from search indexes.
- What Is Anchor Text: This post explains why it’s important that your site is linked with certain phrases.
- SEO Past and Present: A Complete History of Digital Marketing: Take a deep dive into the evolution of digital marketing. In it, we explain how links have played a major role in search algorithms over the years.
6. Quality Content
The importance of frequently published, quality content cannot be stressed enough.
Why is it so vital? Here’s the logic ladder:
- Search algorithm bots are smarter than ever, and they prioritize well-written content that provides value.
- Bots make more visits to websites that post quality content frequently.
- Therefore, sites that post quality, engaging content on a weekly basis have a better chance of ranking higher in the SERPs.
A lot of people think they can handle writing all the blog posts for their practice, but they quickly realize it takes a lot longer than they thought.
That’s where a digital marketing team that specializes in chiropractic promotions comes in handy. We have writers intimately familiar with relevant topics. Plus, they know how to write in a way that satisfies both people and search engine bots.
Standard Pages for a Chiropractic Website
Chiropractic offices should have the following pages and sections on their websites:
- Home page
- About us / services page
- Doctor bio section
- Patient testimonials
- Partnership pages
- Contact form
- Blog
How Much Does a Website Cost?
When you’re looking at purchasing a chiropractic website the cost is pretty variable. You’ll see $40 per month on the low end to $2500 per month on the high end. As a former chiropractor I don’t feel that anyone should be spending more than $500 per month on a website, SEO, and social media combined. If you start to add in Google Adwords PPC then it would be higher, but otherwise $500 should be the max.
At WOOFLO all of our clients get all of our services. I don’t believe in different levels. You either go all in with internet marketing or you save your money. That being said across all of our clients we average a cost of $250 per month. Some people are lower some are higher, but all get our full array of services including; website, social media, expert level SEO, mobile site, blog posting, high end press releases, directory listings, etc… There is really not another company that matches this, but let’s talk about one more thing.
The Reality of Your Google Rank?
What most chiropractors never think about is their Google rank. What I can tell you is that you have to be in the top 5 for the main search in your area to get any new patients with consistency. So if you practice in Chicago, IL you need to rank in the top 5 for “Chiropractor Chicago”. If you don’t you’re probably wasting your money.
So let me ask you this question. Most of the companies in chiropractic have no limits on how many clients they take in an area. Some have dozens in one city. How are they going to be able to do a good job for all of their clients? Are you going to be the special one that they do more for? Are you buying into the lie of the more expensive package to out rank the rest of the people that are using the same company?
At Wooflo we work with a maximum of 2 people in a city. In fact it’s generally one in most cities. If we do have 2 they have different styles of websites. I don’t feel that we can effectively help more than two clients in any given city so we don’t do it. Doing a great job for our clients has to come before our profits. If it doesn’t then we are just another chiropractic website company making false promises.
So Should You Buy a Website?
My thought on this topic is that every office needs to have a website. If you’re a chiropractic office that doesn’t do much marketing and your budget is tight, find a local website builder and put up something simple that patients can see your hours and phone number on. Pay a onetime fee and don’t waste your money every month paying for a low level website.
If you’re goal is to get to the top then you have to find a company that really knows their stuff, that has client limits in cities, and has a reasonable fee. I know I’m biased, but we really are the only company that fits these requirements in the chiropractic field. Give me a call and I think you’ll feel comfortable with the fact that I know my stuff. As I’m writing this I rank #1 for “Chiropractic Marketing” and “Chiropractic Websites”. Our clients that have been with us are seeing the same results.
I hope this post has been helpful. I try to help my fellow chiropractors as much as I can even if we never work together. I believe fully that when I give a lot away I get much more in return. Please let me know if you have any questions. I’m happy to help.
