Posts Tagged: marketing for veterinarians

Your veterinary website is often the first impression people get of your practice, your team, and your mission. If you do not have a website (or if your current website needs some serious updating), it is important to build one that truly represents you as a business. While template sites have some benefits, they do not compare to a fully custom website for your business. 

Template Websites

A template website is built from an already-existing template that uses the same basic structure with just a few small design and content changes. Using a template website is a lot like renting a space. Although you can make small cosmetic changes to make the space *feel* more like your own, it is never truly yours. If you want to make serious foundational changes (like adding a window or tearing down a wall), however, you can’t. You only have a limited amount of ways to make the website represent your business.

Additionally, it can be harder to do well with veterinary SEO on a template site because Google sees the templated structure faster than it sees any changes you’ve made. Even when you update photos, alt tags, or even bits of content, Google can tell the rest of the site is templated. When you have a templated site, it is important to remember:

• Your site looks like everyone else’s: When compared side-by-side with another template, it will be easy to tell that the two sites are using the same foundation.
• You don’t own the full site: If you stop working with your current website provider, you will have to recreate parts of your website that you cannot take with you when you go.
• Duplicate content leads to poor SEO rankings: Some templated sites don’t have a big variation with content, which can negatively affect your SEO search rankings.
• You might have problems keeping the site updated: Since you have a limited number of changes you can make to a templated site, there are not always a lot of meaningful changes you can make to help with your rankings. 
• It will be difficult to add onto the site in the future: It can be very difficult to add new pages beyond the scope of the template.

Custom Websites

On the flip side, custom websites are 100% yours. You have a say in every part of the creation process, and you are left with a final product that is a true reflection of your business. You choose everything from colors to photos and additional design elements. If you need to make any updates in the future, you can with ease. Your website will look like your practice and no one else’s. 

Custom websites are more likely to catch Google’s attention when it comes to SEO. This means by building a custom site, you will automatically perform better in search results before you even work on your veterinary marketing. No templates to mess with your rankings here.

When you use a custom site, you know you:

• Completely own the site: You own the design and the content
• You decide what it looks like: You have the power to cater the site to your business and its needs.
• Have fully-optimized SEO controls: This includes content, meta information, technical code parameters, and more.
• Can create custom content: Custom content helps you rank highly on Google.
• Better search engine rankings: Your site will perform better in search results.
• Have an up-to-date site: Template sites are often bogged down with outdated plugins, security concerns, or update risks.
• Are using a responsive website: Websites built with responsive website design coding are smart—these intelligent websites know whether they are being viewed on a mobile device or a large screen TV, and they adjust accordingly.

You deserve the best for your veterinary website, and Beyond Indigo Pets can give you just that. Our custom sites are beautifully designed and SEO-optimized at launch to ensure you start out with a bang. To learn more about our sites and our other veterinarian marketing services, please call (877) 244-9322 or fill out our form.

Veterinary marketing helps you show the world what you do best—provide top tier veterinary care for pets in your area. Marketing is the ideal way to share information with people who are searching for it (and for the services you provide). Test out these veterinarian marketing ideas to be sure that users can find you when they need you:

Create a Custom Website

Your veterinary website serves as your business card, your digital waiting room, and your first impression for potential customers who might find you in a web search. Using a custom website (not a template) is one of the best ways to showcase your business and what makes it special. This means having a unique design that highlights your branding, but also creating custom content that expresses your voice as a practice. Don’t know where to get started on a new custom website? Don’t worry, we can help!

Expand Your Reach with Pay-Per-Click Ads

Veterinary SEO helps you optimize your website to entice new organic visitors to find you based on keywords, website speed, mobile responsiveness, and other technical factors. If you want to spread your reach even farther, though, you should put some focus on pay-per-click advertising. Putting advertising dollars behind your veterinary marketing efforts means that you can target specific audiences who are the most likely to become clients. You can also make sure your name and your brand reach even farther than they ever have before. 

Showcase Your Client’s Pets on Social Media

Working in a veterinary clinic gives you easy access to a hugely effective marketing tool: cute animal pictures. Sharing your client’s pet pictures on your social media platforms is a quick and simple way to get a lot of engagement from your followers. The more engagement you get, the more your content will be seen. You can also have photo contests to encourage people to share photos (and engage with your page). You might want to add a photo sharing consent line to your intake paperwork to ensure that you have permission to use these photos when you want to. 

Use a Blog to Educate Clients

Blogs are great tools for consistently adding new content to your website, and you can also use them to educate your clients and show your expertise in your field. Try to write at least one blog a month to help your SEO efforts. Think about questions you hear a lot in your practice, and write a blog post that answers the question. This allows you to educate current and new pet owners while making yourself their top source for pet health information. It’ll make you more likely to rank highly in web searches, too.

Introduce Your Team

New and potential clients love to truly get to know who you are as a practice, and there’s no better way to do that than to feature the smiling faces of your hard-working team. Personal touches like this help you make the transition from being seen as a business to a partner in pet care. Here are a few ways you can showcase your team and add a personal feel to your veterinary marketing:

• Social media posts
• Staff bios on your website
• Add a Meet the Doctor highlight to your home page (or make it a blog series)

Beyond Indigo Pets is a veterinary marketing agency with decades of experience in veterinary marketing, and we want to help you show the world what you do. Our veterinary marketing company also offers custom websites and blogging services to get you more clients. Call (877) 244-9322 or fill out our form to transform your marketing efforts.

When it comes to veterinary SEO, you might be doing a lot of good things for your website, but do you know how to track the results you’re getting? Google’s analytics tracking program changes with the times, and understanding how to interpret the data can help you get the best results.

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