Build Your Most Effective Website in Minutes for Free!

Do you still not have a website for your dispensary or practice, or does the website you have fail to bring scads of customers through the front door? Even if you don’t know what a blog is, setting one up is the quickest, simplest, cheapest, most effective way to establish a valuable web presence for your small business and bring customers in the door. If you already have a website, consider blogging to improve visibility, bring traffic to your site, and build relationships with your customers or patients.

Here are a few examples of optical blogs:

Optoblog
The Optometry Blog
Brass Monocle Blog

For little or no money, you can have a professional looking website that is easy to maintain and update, and will almost certainly beat out your competitors in local search rankings.

Step 1. Open a blogging account.

There are a number of blogging services out there that will host a blog for you. Perhaps the most well-known are blogger.com, typepad.com, and wordpress.com. Blogger and WordPress are free. Typepad will run you about $5 per month. My nod goes to WordPress.com for the combination of features and price with Typepad a close second. Please, feel free to do your own comparison.

Step 2. Pick a template.

Once you have opened an account, each service has a number of professional-looking templates to choose from. Moreover, most of these template options look better than 90% of the optometrist websites I have visited.

Step 3. Create an “about us” page or featured post.

Include the name of your business, address, phone number, directions, hours, etc. You may also want to include a little blurb about what you do and what makes your business special as well as pictures of you, your staff, and your store front.

Step 4. Start blogging.

Post anything which may be of interest to your customers (e.g. new products, services, or equipment; construction in the street; vacation; a story about you or your business, etc.). Try to make at least one post per week. More is better. Try to use a picture with each post to enrich your readers’ experience. Also try to include terms in your posts potential customers may use in their search for when looking for your services (e.g. optician, optometrist, eye doctor, eyeglasses, contacts, the name of your city or town, etc.). Remember: people are increasingly more likely to google “Montreal optometrist” or “optician 90125” instead of opening their yellow pages.

So now, with very little effort or cost, you have just created a website that is better than most or even all or your competitors’ sites and within several weeks will almost certainly have top 10 results for key local search terms. More importantly, in a short time your new site will be driving business through the front door. Yay!

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2. 10 Reasons You Should Start Blogging Now
3. Laramy-K Optical: Website of the Year 2007
4. 10 Places to Get a Free Business Education
5. Marketing Your Optical on YouTube