Recently I have been getting emails by PT’s who have their own website with questions about how to generate website traffic. Some of these PT’s are in private practice or offer physical therapy continuing education courses.  I thought it would be a great idea to answer some of these questions here on the blog.

Basically there are many ways you can drive traffic to your physical therapy website. I won’t go through all of them because there are just too many to cover. However I can give you the 5 most effective ways you can start generating traffic to your website that you can use right away. These tips will help increase exposure to your website online and bring in either potential referrals for your clinic or attendees for your PT ceu course.

SEO

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is one of the most effective and popular ways of getting traffic to your website.  By using the right targeted keywords in your website, it can position your website high on the search engine result pages. This makes it easier for potential visitors to see your website and know more about your PT clinic or ceu course.

You can optimize your website for maximum search by choosing keywords your target audience is typing into Google to find your services. For example, if you are a physical therapist with a focus on pediatrics in the Atlanta GA area then you would optimize your site using local keywords like “Atlanta Pediatric Physical Therapist” or “Pediatric Physical Therapy In Atlanta”.

Having two to three main keyword phrases per page should be enough to start driving the right amount of targeted visitors to your website. Below is a screenshot example of someone typing into Google “Atlanta Pediatric Physical Therapy” and the listed results that come up on the first page. You want to have your private practice be one of the first few results listed so a potential patient referral can stumble onto your site early when doing a search for your services.

Placing your keywords in the right place also plays a vital part in the optimization of your website. The best places for your keywords are in the title tags of your website pages, inserting them into your meta tag keywords and meta tag description of all your pages and most importantly in the content of your website pages.  If you are not sure where all these these things belong or don’t how to optimze your website, then you may have to ask your webmaster.  I do offer in-depth SEO training for physical therapists in the
PT Marketing Academy where I explain how to optimize your website for search in step by step video tutorials.

Now what you don’t want to do is stuff your website with all kinds of unrelated keywords. This hit or miss approach is not good SEO practice and it makes your website look super spammy.  When adding your main keywords to your website content make sure it reads well and that it provides value to your reader. Regardless if you attract visitors through good SEO, if your website content reads like crap then no one is going to stick around to read it.

Email Marketing

Sending email newsletters is a good way to keep your message and personal branding in front of your existing patients or email subscribers. With this type of marketing you are connecting with your audience and building a relationship through valuable content you provide to them. This is the best medium to show your expertise by discussing things related to their functional lives ( i.e injury prevention, back safety, postural awareness, etc ).

Some physical therapy newsletters I have read have strategically placed links to their website articles in the newsletter. This forces you to go back to their website.  This is a great idea because it drives the traffic back to your site and it gives your subscribers a chance to learn more about your PT clinic and the services you offer.

You can also encourage your newsletter subscribers to share your content with their social media community on Facebook and Twitter to drive even more potential traffic. Make sure to provide the right call to action buttons in your newsletter so subscribers can share your content with others.  People may forget to share your content after reading it. So giving them a little nudge from a strategically placed call to action button at the end can help get your content get passed along for others to read.

Social Media

Social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube have tons of traffic in them already.  All you need is a virtual pipeline to funnel the targeted traffic from those social media websites to your own.  Below are a few things I have found to be the best way to utilize social media sites and to drive traffic back to your website.

The most effective way to use Social Media:

1. Create discussion groups. Get people talking by creating specific support groups based on the types of patients you see in the clinic. Examples would be groups catering to people dealing with post-op hip replacement, knee replacement, etc. As a PT CEU Instructor, maybe you can create a group around a particular treatment technique used in the clinic and offer case studies to the group. There are many things you can do to get the conversation going and effectively get people to visit your website for more information about you and your services.

2. Provide Q & A sessions for your online communities. By answering questions in your social community you are displaying your expert status in your profession. You will also be looked at as a resource for solid information. That is a good thing! Doing this builds trust and makes people want to learn more about you and your PT practice.

3. Reach out to potential referral makers in your local area ( i.e physicans, surgeons, pain clinics, etc ). The myth is that these types of referral makers do not use social media. Not true at all! They are there in full force looking to connect and create lasting relationships like you and me. So why not connect with these people on social media and offer ways to help improve their patient outcomes. Maybe you can provide an educational inservice at their office for their patients. The goal here is to connect and build a relationship first. Then offer to do something for them initially before asking for the referral.

4. Provide useful and valuable content specifically for your social community and ask them to kindly share your content with others. Articles and video that you create or that you find online that is useful to the community are great ways to build value in your community.

Using these social media tactics consistently will have people wanting to know more about you. This behavior typically drives people to your website to learn more about you.  It has happened to me many times on all of the social media sites I use and is probably one of my best targeted traffic referral source.

Paid Advertising

Pay Per Click or PPC advertising is one of the common methods of advertising a product, company or website. This can also bring a lot of traffic to your website. The only thing is you have to pay for it.

There are some pros and cons when using PPC advertising.  I personally like to receive free traffic but eventually you get to a point where you need to reach a wider audience. So paying for traffic is something you should think about as your need to acquire more online traffic grows.

So let’s talk about the pros of using PPC advertising to bring traffic to your website. PPC ads are like turning on the water facet. You pay the service provider and you get traffic almost instantly! Yes, it’s that simple! It’s probably the fastest way to bring traffic to your website almost immediately.  A good benefit to PPC ads when setting up your campaigns, you can  measure which set of keywords are effective in driving the most amount of converting traffic and then use those same keywords to optimize your website pages as we mentioned earlier.

The cons of using PPC ads include the fact that it can create a hole in your budget if you do not know what you are doing. You have to understand ad copy which is your advertisements verbal or textual content. Another thing is testing multiple ads against each other to see which ads are converting winners and which are the losers. It is a process that if you don’t know much about is best left for someone that does. If you are daring enough to try you can always start off with a small budget to play around with and learn as you go.

If you decide to try PPC Ads to drive traffic here are some places to start:

1. Facebook Ads

2. Google Ads

3. Yahoo and Bing Ads

4. Local Sponsorship Banner Ads. These can be websites that have a local presence in your area and offer banner placement on their website.

I will be providing more blog content on PPC ads in the future. I know it is an area that can seem intimidating but I feel you should have some working knowledge about how it all works.

Offline Marketing Tools

Traditional offline marketing tools are also effective in driving traffic to your website. Some marketers kind of moved away from this type of marketing because of all the hype with the internet and social media. However offline tools can still prove to be very much effective in driving website traffic and increasing the exposure of your physical therapy clinic or ceu course.

Below are some effective offline tools you should remember to stick your website url on to get people to come back and visit you online:

1. Post Cards

2. Business Cards

3. Company Letter Heads

4. Brochures

5. Envelopes

6. Company Voicemails. A simple line that states “you can always reach us through our website” is often effective.

So those were the 5 ways you can drive traffic to your physical therapy website. I go more in depth and explain in detail how to do all 5 traffic generating techniques in the  PT Marketing Academy.  I would advise you to take a look at if you want to learn more about marketing your physical therapy business.

Don’t feel like you have to do all of these things at once to start driving traffic to your site. I’ll admit that it can be a bit overwhelming and an uphill climb to conquer if you are not familiar with how to drive traffic to a website.  I would like to encourage you though to take action on one of these traffic generating techniques. Focus on one for now so that you can start building a steady stream of targeted potential referrals for your PT practice or attendees for your PT ceu course.

If you found this post helpful please share on Facebook and Twitter with the buttons below.Similar Posts:

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Picking a domain name is the first step to creating your online presence.  It is also what you will need to tell your patients, clients, & customers how to find you on the web. In this video tutorial I will give you some tips on how to choose a domain name your patients,  clients & customers will remember even when telling their friends.   You can watch the video above or view the slide presentation below.

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Online blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject such as sports, news, music or a hobby. Most blogs online function more as personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on photos, audio podcasting, videos, or all combined together.

Many physical therapists who have private practices, physical therapy products, and continuing education courses can use blogs to keep in touch with their readers or create a community of readers interested in their subject matter. If you are a physical therapist who focuses on total knee rehab you can talk about total knee surgery and treatment. If your expertise is in rotator cuff injuries you can blog about rotator cuff injuries and treatments. By offering quality expertise in your field you gain trust among your readers and possibly a potential patient or walk-in.

Blogs are affordable compared to the cost of building a website. Most blogs are free or have a low monthly fee to maintain. The most common blog programs available are wordpress blogs or blogger. Both are easy to use and update. Blogs are also very search engine friendly so it will also assist in getting you found easier online.

Here are some things you can do with a blog:

• Post daily tips and information to your readers.
• Share your expertise and become the go to blog for useful posts about a specific topic.
• Search Engines like to spider Blogs because the content is always fresh and constantly being updated!
• There are a lot of directories catering to Blogs online. Some directories allow you to Ping them when you add new content to keep their directories updated.
• Have your visitors subscribe to your blog by leaving a subscribe button on your blog so that interested visitors can get notified when you post.
• Have your blog offer RSS feeds and Podcast feeds of your posts.
• Place links to important information from your website like the services you offer, continuing education courses that you offer, your physical therapy product information, and etc.
• The important social and interactive aspect of blogs is its ability for visitors to post comments on your post. Creating dialogue shows your reader you are a live person behind the blog.
• You do not need to be a programmer or coder to get a blog up and running. For the most part it is very user friendly and easy to start one up.
• You can customize the design and layout of most blogs to cater to the look and feel of your business brand.

If you have not noticed blogs are here to stay. If you are a physical therapist with a private practice, a physical therapy product or an instructor for a continuing education course, you need to start planning on adding a blog to your existing website for the benefits I mentioned above. Any business looking to increase their online exposure, brand,  and social presence in the web 2.0 environment we are in should be thinking this way.

If you have a physical therapy blog, please let us know about it in the comments section below.Similar Posts:

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Hey! It’s Samuel Awosolu here. I thought that I should introduce myself so that you can get to know who I am, what I do and why I can help you. The first thing that you should know about me is that I’m a physical therapist. My background is quite unique so be sure to keep reading.

I can help you grow your Physical Therapy business, increase your clientele and teach you how to market your Physical Therapy products and/or courses online. This will result in a huge improvement of your bottom line. Let’s be honest; we love helping people regain their movement but we also like to eat and pay our bills too. I can help you do just that.

Who I Am and How I Can Help You
As a physical therapist, I’ve worked in several hospitals and other outpatient settings for over 10 years but I’m no longer just working as a  physical therapist. I’m also a self taught web developer and internet marketing strategist.  It sounds pretty interesting, doesn’t it? It really is a fun and enjoyable job.

In the past when I wasn’t working in a hospital, I worked part time as a freelance internet marketing consultant. I was pleased to help numerous companies and entrepreneurs with their website promotions, increasing website traffic, generating fresh and new viable leads and other online marketing strategies geared to the industry. These activities are absolutely vital if you’re going to use the power of the internet to build your Physical Therapy business. I also coach physical therapists and bring them up to speed on the newest tactics to increase website traffic, make their visitors call for an appointment and sell their products successfully through innovative online marketing strategies.

Recently, my spare time “hobby” has been taking up a lot more of my time than I had ever anticipated. It has become a full time job for me and I am incredibly excited about it.  Honestly, I enjoy helping other Physical Therapists grow their businesses with online marketing strategies as well as through my coaching programs.

Along with my online marketing teaching and coaching skills, I have several physical therapy related websites and a variety of non-healthcare related sites as well. I personally maintain and continue to grow all of them.

I am also a website domain collector. That “habit” is getting really bad too! OK, so I’m a domain name hoarder, shoot me! I collect domain names like a Civil War buff collects relics. I do this mostly because I have learned that the start to a good website is having a great domain name. If the name doesn’t fit, you might as well quit.

Why This Blog? Why Now?
I started this blog so that I can give online marketing tips and other advice to physical therapists because we aren’t always the best when it comes to marketing strategies. Even though good marketing skills are such a vital part of our business, it was never part of the curriculum that we studied to become professional physical therapists. I don’t think it ever will be part of the physical therapist’s training either.  Because marketing wasn’t taught during our physical therapy education in school, most of us are left to teach ourselves in the art of self-promotion. Without this skill, we cannot survive and grow our private practices, clinics or sell our physical therapy products and CEU courses, etc.  Once I started learning internet marketing strategies on my own, I found the best ways to promote myself and market my physical therapy websites, I knew that I had an obligation to share this information with my fellow colleagues.

I’m a bit of a fanatic about this blog so it will be updated quite frequently. I will personally share the best marketing tips and internet strategies that I’ve learned over the years as an internet marketer. This way, you don’t have to learn them on your own through years of frustrating trial and error attempts. The fact that I’m a physical therapist who has also become very knowledgeable about internet marketing strategies is a huge advantage for you. I know exactly what you need to do to get visitors to your website or blog and make them act. That is the key to success in this business.

Further, I know what you shouldn’t be wasting your time doing as well. How do I know? I know because I’ve learned the hard way. I’ve tried numerous different strategies to see how effective or ineffective they were in the long run. I would really like to help you succeed both online and offline. Traditional marketing techniques are no longer effective and professional physical therapists financially suffer for this. I am here to help you become more visible to potential patients and teach you how to feasibly promote your website or products as well as make your visitors act on the information posted on your website. I can help you to become the success that you were destined to be.

So, start reading my blog now. What are you waiting for? Do you want to live hand to mouth all of your life? Check out how you can increase your physical therapy business and how to make it work for you.

Read some of my blogs and you’ll see why I am the physical therapist guru. It would be wise to subscribe to my blog if you really want to increase traffic to your physical therapy website and gain more interest in your products. My tips will really help to make your business much more successful.

I really do hope that you enjoy your time here and find my tips helpful. Please do me a small favor and leave your comments on the blog posts that I will be sharing with you.  This way I will know that someone with a pulse has read them

To Your Success!

Samuel Awosolu
Physical Therapist | Web Marketing Strategist | Speaker |
 

Some Articles That I Have Written For Others

Advance For Physical Therapy Magazine –> Physical Therapy In Social Media

Physical Therapy Products Magazine –> Internet Marketing For Physical Therapists

Mike Reinold –> Networking With Other Physical Therapy Professionals On Twitter

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Welcome fellow colleagues to  PT Marketing Unleashed. This blog is for all physical therapists wanting to learn how to market their business on the internet. My name is Samuel Awosolu. I am a licensed physical therapist and I am also a web developer and internet marketer. I have gather tons of experience over the years building and marketing websites for small businesses and other individuals. Now I want to show you what I have learned over the years to help you build a commanding presence online.

The first thing I want you to do is sign up for my news feed so you know exactly when a new blog post becomes available. On this blog I will write and demonstrate online and offline strategies, techniques, tips and tactics to help you promote your physical therapy business on the web. I am excited to share with you all that I have learned over the years on web marketing and development. I look forward to teaching and connecting with you as we move forward on this journey!

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• Welcome To PT Marketing Unleashed!