Content is King

Submitted by Bruce Abel on Mon, 03/14/2016 - 12:43

One of the most important aspects of a practice website is content – the information that you are making available to your patients about their conditions, and the procedures that they will potentially be undergoing.

For you to be seen as the expert in your field (a status that you have spent years of training to achieve) – the content needs to reflect this.  It needs to be comprehensive, accurate and above all else unique.

Your website will typically include two sections entitled “Conditions” and “Procedures”.  We recommend that you provide individual pages for each of the conditions and procedures relevant to your practice. On these pages will be all the information relevant to that condition or procedure. Pages are primarily composed of text but can also include rich media, including: embedded video, PDF documents, and links through to either your own website, or 3rd party websites.

From a Google ranking perspective this content needs to be unique.  Google and the other search engines have very sophisticated algorithms that will pick up whether you have simply cut and pasted from another web source and if so they will penalise you heavily.

Ideally the content should to be authored by you. We accept that you have a day job and that this keeps you very busy, so finding the time to write this content can be a real challenge.  There are a few methods you can employ to expedite the process of writing content.

One strategy is to develop a schedule for yourself to complete the required pages in sections over a dedicated period, rather than swamping yourself with trying to get it done all in one go.  An additional strategy is to dictate it and have your PA type directly into the blank text documents we provide, ready for you to check and approve.

If all of this seems too daunting then a very cost-effective way is to use a copywriter to do the job for you.  Online Medical employ a number of people who have had a specific training in medical journalism and editing.  The text they produce reflects the specific needs of writing for the patient audience, writing for the web and writing with SEO in mind. You will of course need to review the content once it has been written – but overall it’s a great time-saver and will expedite the development process enormously.

It's important to note that we require all content completed and approved before the website goes to our development team. There are quite a few reasons for this, one significant reason is so that the development of the site can includes all the features that may be reliant upon a particular type of content.

For more information view our Copywriting page.