Know-How Exchange : Website Critique

Lisa,

Overall the site looks good. It is very clean and well laid out. It might be a little too clean for my taste. You might want to add a little more color. It seems to be a little bit stark with a bit too much white for me.

You seem to have most of the information that people would be interested in. You may want to add a testimonials page with comments from some past and present clients. This helps people get a better feel of the service from a clients point of view.

In terms of SEO, you may want to have a little longer title that includes the location. You should also add the city and state in both the keywords and the description. People will really be looking for this locally.

I would put the address and contact information in the footer of every page as you want search engines to pick this up and the more times it is displayed the better.

Does HOC send out a newsletter? If so perhaps you want a place that people could subscribe to that.

If they can add a section that has some instruction on some exercises or something of that nature it could really help give people a reason to visit the site. This would in turn give people a reason to link to the site, greatly helping search ranking. Perhaps a blog where the therapists share a new exercise or stretch every week.

Overall you have done a great job. Keep up the good work.

Mike

I'm going to disagree with Donna about the site submission. Just submit your site to Google, Yahoo and MSN. Submitting through a site like submitexpress.com where you need to display their ad in exchange for their "help" is essentially paying for submission to search engines. Don't pay someone to do this and don't pay any site to be listed.

If you want to do SEM (which often means paid-search), then go with Google Adwords. Expect the keywords you want to be expensive, so limit your targeted geographic area as much as possible to reduce your clicks from people that'll never come to your clinic.

If you mean SEO, as in organic search, such as your site being high in organic (not paid) listings for terms like "physical therapy," you've got a long way to go. With the resources you have (I'm guessing based on the fact that you did the site yourself), it's highly unlikely that you'll ever see the first page for any of your keywords. Be leary of anyone who can promise that they can change this for you. You don't have any links to your site and getting quality ones will be very, very difficult for you. This is a big factor in your rankings that you will always struggle with.

You're likely better off focusing on paid search. Do the basics for organic search optimization and make sure that if people seach by company name (type your name into the search box) that you are the first listing. You should be able to do this simply by optimizing your own site and letting Google know it's there. That might be the best you can do. As far as optimizing goes, start by getting rid of that re-direct to /dnn from the main domain. That's a potential ranking issue. It's benign in your case, but a common tactic of not so nice sites and Google will often penalize for it. Have DotNetNuke run off your main domain. Takes a little tinkering, but pretty simple.

DNN can be installed in the root at GoDaddy. It takes a little work, but there are a few walkthroughs online I've seen with just a cursory search. I warn you in advance that it is not simple.

Your best bet might be to move away from GoDaddy because the redirect is a bit potential SEO issue.

JMR

Lots of great insights above.

I've done communications for PT & OT services, and I'm currently working on a campaign for a large group. The therapists' narrative is always the same: "we just need to let them know we're here."

Unfortunately, I see the same thing in the hocpt site. Besides flash. Besides phone numbers, and photos and besides lists of treatments, a service like this must seek to differentiate. Who are you communicating with and what's the point of difference? When I click on "Why Hands On" I get a list of things that the referring physician might understand, but it isn't consumer friendly. The landing page should immediately state why I need this PT provider and not another.

Discovering the point of differentiation is not easy. Much less taxing on the brain it is to rattle of a list like Cranio-mandibular evaluation and treatment, Cyriax soft tissue blah blah, Evaluation and joint mobilization according to Kaltenborn and Maitland, and Myofascial release. That's the world of the PT, and that's always where they seem to want to take the marketer. But that stuff doesn't translate well for consumers. Or, for that matter physicians either. Those are treatments. What's the benefit?

Sometimes you have to ask a lot of questions to find the nugget, but it's there. If you sit down with the therapists and talk about their experience, education, the types of patients they see, where the patients come from and why, you'll likely discover an important truth. I do see they have a tag line, "specializing in manual therapy". That phrase demands a bit more flushing out. It could just be buried in there.

This is a good start, however, it is clearly a site built on a free template. There is nothing there that jumps out at me and says, "We are different" or "special", or gives me a sense that I want to do business with them.

I would get rid of the huge white space at the top. It doesn't do anything positive for the site. If you want the logo at the top of the page, overlay it on the photo of the clinic.

The home page needs more content. There are essentially 4 lines of content there. I'd add another paragraph to boost the SEO.

I find the "Services", "Treatment For", and "Insurance" areas on the left side of the home page to be confusing. I thought at first they were links that didn't work. Then I understood why they were there. You don't want your users to be confused.

The "Early morning and evening hours available" link on the home page that goes to your Contact Us page doesn't make sense to me. If that is an important feature, don't make me click to find your hours. Put them on the home page. You don't want to make people click to another page for just a little tidbit of information. Users tend to feel that is a waste of time.

Instead of having the "Meet our team on" the About Us page, I would create a separate page for the team, and give a bit more information on each team member. You're offering a personal service. People like doing business with people they like. Give this page more personality!

I hope this is helpful.