Are you using the internet to market your chiropractic practice? The first step in using the Internet to market your practice is to have a web presence in the form of your own website.

If you don’t have a web site, you can contact a company or individual who specializes in creating web sites. Another option is to perform some of the steps for establishing a site yourself. The initial steps for establishing your own site are:

• Register a domain name for your site.

- A domain name is the Internet address, like a street address, that displays your web site if typed into a web browser. When picking a domain name, pick one that has the extension ending in “.com”. You might want to pick a name that is the name of your practice to make it easy to remember. You can check to see if the domain name you want is available by entering the name you want at godaddy.com. If the name you want is not available, you can get help finding similar names by using a site called nameboy.com. It will cost you approximately $10 a year to register and maintain an available domain name.

• Find a hosting company.

- Once your domain name is registered, you will need a hosting company. A hosting company is a company that maintains the content for your website. In picking a hosting company, the safest approach is to use one of the major national hosting comes like godaddy.com or hostgator.com. Using large national hosting companies like these assures that your website will always be visible and that if you need support, someone will be available twenty four hours a day or seven days a week to assist you or the person you select to maintain your site.

Whether you outsource all of your website work to an individual or company or do some of the work in-house, you must decide on the content for your site- what information will be provided. First, you need to decide the objectives of your site. For example, will the purpose of your site include one or more of the following objectives:

* Provide an information resource for existing patients.
* Provide information for non-patients considering getting treatment from you.

Here are some of the basic pages your web site should contain:

* Home page- the first page everyone sees when they arrive at your site. The home page usually contains summary information about you, your site, and your practice.
* About Us page- This page provides more details about your practice such as your medical training and background, how long you have been in practice, and other related facts.
* Contact Us page- This page provides your telephone number, fax number, email address or a form to be completed to contact you.
* Frequently Asked Question Page- This page provides frequently asked questions about your practice and services and answers to those questions.

In designing your site and deciding on pages, keep in mind that how your site looks and the content it contains may be the first interaction someone has with your practice. The site should be graphically appealing and the content should be grammatically correct and easy to read.

Many other optional pages can be added. In deciding on content, be aware that the more valuable content you provide, the more effective your site will be. Excellent additional content you could add to your site could include articles about effective chiropractic treatment or other health information that patients and potential patients may find useful.

Without your own website, in today’s internet age you are missing an important marketing opportunity for your practice. Without a well constructed site with good content, you could detract rather than add to the image you portray of your practice.

Last, having a website others can’t find or don’t know about is like having a store in the middle of the desert. No one will find you. You must develop and maintain an Internet marketing strategy that drives visitors to your site. The first step is to prominently display your website on all internal material such as business cards and stationary. The second step is to make sure your website address appears in all your advertising such as yellow page ads.

Another important area to focus on is to use proven Internet marketing strategies to make your website visible to people searching for you- for example, searching for you using the Google search engine. In future articles, I will share more advanced web site marketing strategies.

If you don’t have a website, get one! If you do have a website, reevaluate it to make sure it is getting the results for your practice you desire.

Billing Precision, LLC, is a leading-edge chiropractic office profitability management solution. Its all-in-one Internet-based system includes accountable and transparent billing service, state-of-art touch-screen SOAP notes, advanced patient scheduling, and real-time monitoring for compliance and audit exposure. Billing Precision’s unique value stems from its ability to level the playing field with payers and get chiropractors paid in full and on time by capitalizing on modern Internet technology and billing network effect. More at http://www.chiropracticbillingprecision.com

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