Update Your Website and Improve Your Traffic

Once you have created your therapist website, the next step is to ensure you have consistent visitors to your website. Visitors to your website are labeled as ‘traffic’, much like getting real life traffic to walk past your therapy practice in person.

Once visitors know your website exists, they can then begin the process of learning about your services and what you can offer to them.

In the broader scheme of internet criteria, getting traffic to your website also increases your brand authority and authenticity in the online world. This increase in authenticity means your website becomes a trusted source of information and improves the likelihood that your website will become visibly prominent to other visitors.

Of course, the most important part of website traffic is ensuring the traffic you get to your website is from people that can connect with your therapy practice and use your services. This should align with your business goals to find and work with your ideal clients.

Website traffic traditionally comes from the following sources:

• Paid traffic – Google adwords, Social Media advertising etc
• Organic search results – what your ideal client types into their search engine to find your website
• Referral – creating content on your website that is shared and used as referral content amongst other websites that send visitors to your website
• Social media – organic social media sharing (not paid as noted above)
• Direct traffic – visitors who come to your site by entering your domain name URL. Usually from people already familiar with your website details

Each visit you get to your website represents an opportunity you get to share what you can do to help people and build relationships with potential new clients.

Your website represents the impression you make to your potential clients. For that reason, you will want to ensure your website is functional, designed well, and useful to your readers.

When your website no longer provides these features, it’s time for an update. As the internet changes, it’s important to ensure your website is kept up to date to stay relevant. As users of the internet, most of us have become attuned to what makes a well designed and useful website, and subsequently, we also recognise when a website falls short of meeting that criteria.

Some of the most important reasons to update your website include:

• Improve visual appeal – to ensure your website looks current and visually appealing to potential clients
• Usability – websites should be updated to reflect new technology that is introduced over time
• Mobile functionality – ensuring that your website can be viewed across multiple devices as technology changes
• Browser compatibility – ensuring that your website is working well with updates that occur on current browsers such as Chrome, Safari, Edge, Firefox etc
• Adding content – updating your website provides an opportunity to analyse existing content and whether it is meeting the needs of your readers. Google Analytics can help in this analysis. It’s also an opportunity to update older content that may have changed due to changes within therapeutic treatment
• SEO – updating your website means you can change or add SEO to improve your website ranking

The main reason to update is that technology is always changing and this means our website should reflect and be able to interact with those changes. A website designed 10 years ago would have significant capability issues with how people use the internet now.

There are many updates you can make to your website. Some are easy to make in a matter of minutes, and some require help from a website developer if more complex programming understanding is required.

We’ve included 5 easy updates that you can make that will help improve traffic to your website:

1. Analytics and SEO – add keywords, improve metadata, headings etc
2. Content – add photos, a call to action, and improve overall relevancy for your reader
3. Links – ensure all of your links are working. Link to other content within your website, as well as external websites
4. Social media – ensure content is easily shareable to social media. Share your content on your social media channels
5. Functionality – add any plugins that can improve the functionality of your website. This could include adding an online store, language translations, improving website speed performance, appointment bookings, forms, and improved security.

If you have already made the above changes, you can also visit other websites for ideas on how you can improve your website. This might include overall design aesthetics, content ideas, or overall functionality to help your readers.

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