Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

Medical & Health professionals today face increasing challenges.

Challenges Professional Health Services Providers Face Online

Today, more than ever, medical and health services providers must find smarter ways to remain competitive and generate new clients. Not only do you have to become more involved in the community you serve, you must also maintain an active presence online. This includes having an effective website and learning how to better promote your services online.

In addition to spending dollars marketing offline, you will probably find (if you haven’t already) that in order to compete, you will need to assign a bigger part of your marketing budget towards the development and maintenance of a website that brings new clients, engages visitors, outperforms the competition in search engines and helps you create a wider degree of reach online.

This means that your website not only has to look great, your pages have to load fast, and your site has to be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that the needs of the website may change in time and some aspects may need to be updated frequently. This requires implementing well-developed website and content management strategy.

One other difficult challenge that health organizations (and most professions) face, is that your site has only about 30 seconds or less to provide users with what they are looking for or they will go away.

“Websites have evolved into central information hubs where service information is still present but enhanced with web portals, hyperlinks to state and federal sites, and a variety of free tools.”

Michael Alter, http://www.accountingweb.com/technology/accounting-software/tips-for-improving-your-website

Online Opportunities For Medical Professionals

As well as facing a number of challenges, there are also loads of online opportunities available for businesses in the health or medical-related profession that are willing to adapt to meet the challenges of the online economy and who can think strategically when it comes to improving their online marketing skills.

This comprehensive guide will help you uncover a number of ways to find more business and improve your online results.

As well as providing useful website improvement tips, we also place special emphasis on the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress platform to power your health or medical-related business website or blog.

To learn more about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress content management system (CMS), see these articles:

• Discover How A Poorly Built Website Can Cost You Potential Clients
• WordPress In Business – An Online Guide To Growing Your Successful Business With A WordPress Site

Practical Tips For Improving Your Medical & Health Clinic Site

We’ll start first by covering the basics. In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve your website and get better results. We show you what pages your site needs, what type of content works best for health or medical websites, ways of improving your layout and navigation, etc.

If you need website planning assistance, go here: A Practical Guide To Web Site Planning For Non-Technical Business Owners

Improving Your Website Pages

Professional business websites need several basic web pages. Let’s review these.

Description Of Products And Services

It’s essential to include a page that explains your products or services. Depending on which area of health you specialize in, your page could include services like:

• Medicine & Surgery – e.g. ear, nose & throat, orthopedics haematology, cosmetic surgery, stroke, rheumatology, weight loss surgery, optometry operating theaters, etc.
• Dentistry – e.g. cosmetic dentistry, holistic dentistry, oral hygiene, restorations, dentofacial orthopedics, emergency dentistry, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. cardiac patient rehabilitation, chronic heart conditions
• Prenatal/Neonatal – e.g. obstetrics, maternity services, etc.
• Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic services – mammography, skin cancer, radiology, women’s health, psychosis, allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology – lab testing and analysis, routine pathology testing, clinical trials, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling – mental health, alcohol, tobacco & other drug services, domestic abuse, wellness, social work services
• Alternative therapies – Chinese medicine, aromatherapy, reiki, yoga, osteopathy, hypnotherapy, etc.
• Other medical services – weight management, podiatry, reproductive endocrinology, speech therapy, medical genetics, artificial limbs, assisted living, home and community care, clinical information, medical equipment, etc.

List all of the services you provide, not just the ones you specialize in. Provide your visitors with information that will educate them about what these services do and direct them to your appointment booking page.

About Us

The ‘About Us’ page needs to describe your business and explain to visitors what your business stands for, its unique approach, supported community projects, etc.

It’s important to mention any business awards, accreditations, certifications, recognitions, publications, associations, etc., that can be used to promote your business and position yourself above the competition.

(List all of your professional awards accreditations, recognitions, certifications, publications, associations, etc. in the About Us page. Image source: squaremedical.com.au)

Your Team

If you are looking for ways to grow your business online or get people to stay longer on your site, then help prospective clients get to know your organization better.

People need to relate to your business. One great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your staff or team members. It should include a photo and a mini bio. Since most visitors won’t be familiar with health or medical terms it should tell who they are and what their specialties are. You may also want to explain what those specialized areas do. It can include social buttons that will allow your site visitors to follow individual team members on their social pages.

On this page, make sure to outline your person’s expertise, how their skills and knowledge add value to your team, and more importantly, how they can help add value to your clients’ business.

(Add an employee page. Image sourced from: southperthchiro.com.au)

We have written a detailed tutorial on how to easily create and add an easy-to-maintain list directory of employees in your site using free plugins here: How To Easily Add A Simple Employee List On Your WordPress Site Without Editing Code

Recruitment Page

This is a listing of job or career opportunities within your clinic. This page should include training offered, benefits, professional development, etc. It should include information about career opportunities in the medical-related industry.

Also include a positions available section in this page. If there are no positions currently available, consider inviting people to return periodically to this page, subscribe to your newsletter, follow your social pages, etc.

Case Studies And Testimonials

Case studies and reviews from clients are a great way to attract potential clients and showcase what type of services you offer. Adding a web page with testimonials from previous clients and case studies also helps your health-related website to establish social proof.

(Add a page with client reviews and case studies. Screenshot source: arrowsmiledental.com)

For a detailed article on using client testimonials and reviews to improve your business results online, go here: Create Better Results Online With Highly Effective Client Testimonials

Contact Page

Having a clean contact page is absolutely necessary.

Your contact page should provide:

• Company Name
• Location
• Telephone
• Facsimile
• Contact email
• Google Map
• Web address
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Links to social media profiles
• Online chat

If you have several locations you should make that clear when showing your address and contact information.

You should also include links to an FAQ section, frequently-visited pages, booking request, support area, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.

Add A Health Blog Section

A blog is a powerful marketing tool for your business. Many blogging platforms typically comprise of a content management system that is easy to use and allows you to promote your business using timely content like events, updates, useful articles and tutorials, discussions on current topics, how-to videos, infographics, etc.

If you already have an existing site, then consider adding a WordPress-powered blog to create more exposure for your company.

If you don’t have a website yet, or if your existing site is hard to manage or not delivering you the results you want, then WordPress can be used as both your website and blog.

Not many people know this, but WordPress can become an automated traffic machine that will attract targeted visitors to your business, simply by adding content on a consistent basis to your website.

(An expertly configured WordPress site can automate your traffic generation)

For more details:

• Web Site Traffic Blueprint – A Complete Guide To Getting More Web Visitors For Your Business Automatically

Legal Information Pages

As a professional business, ensuring that you have a compliant website is important. This is not only important for establishing credibility with visitors, but also to ensure that no laws and regulations are being breached wherever you provide services.

Adding the legal pages below to your website will help keep you out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers, and other potential legal threats or inconveniences:

• Contact Us
• Privacy Policy
• Terms And Conditions
• Website Disclaimer
• Affiliate Agreement
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• DMCA Notice
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Health and Financial Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• and others

We have written a comprehensive article on adding legal pages to your site. Go here to learn more about this: How To Add Legal Pages To Your Site

Tips On How To Improve The Content On Your Site

In today’s highly competitive online economy, the sooner you start to publish good content on your site, the quicker you will begin to see results and differentiate yourself from the competition.

By committing to providing great content with information, advice or tips, you will get your visitors to share your information and come back for more. Using content is the most effective way to inform and teach your visitors and prospects about using your services.

For example, if you provide products or services that help people manage their weight, then some of the areas you can cover as content on your site:

• Common medical conditions that can cause weight gain
• How to develop portion control habits (smaller plate, don’t put food on the table, more vegetables)
• Diet sodas (common ones, side effects, long term results, do they work?)
• Vitamins and minerals that help with weight loss (chromium, calcium, magnesium, etc.)
• And many other content topics

You can also create a series of educational articles that will help your prospective clients understand your medical or health services, by explaining benefits, procedures, costs (including payment plans, insurance coverage, etc).

Use keywords and terminology in your articles that readers will search to find you online.

We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive a comprehensive series of training emails with actionable information and practical tips that will teach you how to drive more traffic to your web site, save money creating useful content that will add value to your visitors and grow your presence online using content marketing. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also 100% FREE!

Ways To Improve Visitor Experience

Improving your website’s user experience (known as UX) will help to keep visitors coming back and engaging with your site. This section will show you ways you can improve visitor engagement and UX.

Content Syndication – RSS Feeds

An RSS feed provides plenty of benefits for your website.

If you provide content that adds value to others, other businesses may want to syndicate your content.

Some of the benefits of syndicating your content to other businesses using RSS feeds, include:

• All of your content updates are in one place
• Doesn’t rely on email
• Your feeds can be shared
• RSS feeds allow users to subscribe
• An RSS feed provides links to your site
• Feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
• RSS provides a number of ways for your readers to receive your content (e.g. subscribers can view your content on their mobile device using different applications)
• RSS is built into WordPress

There are also a number of benefits when it comes to providing information on your site from other sites, such as the fact that you don’t have to write, manage or update the content.

You can find RSS feeds with useful content by searching online for medical and health-related government departments or industry bodies.

For example, here are examples of useful RSS feeds you could add to your site:

• US Department Of Health And Human Services – e.g. Latest news feed: http://www.hhs.gov/rss/news/hhsnews.xml, etc. You can search by departments and choose specific feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Breast cancer, Environmental health, Illnesses and disabilities, Mental health, Smoking and how to quit, etc.) here: http://womenshealth.gov/news/rss/rss-feeds.html
• US National Libraries Of Medicine – For a directory of RSS feeds from well-known medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. ACS Publications, The Psychiatrist, RadioGraphics, The Journal of Physiology, The International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health (www.nih.gov) - Get various feeds on health-related news here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• US Food And Drug Administration (FDA) – Get feeds on fda-related topics like consumer health information updates, MedWatch safety alerts (human medical products), tainted products marked as dietary supplements, animal and veterinary news, etc. and podcasts here: http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/ContactFDA/StayInformed/RSSFeeds
• Department of Health UK (www.gov.uk) – Latest news: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-of-health.atom
• The Department Of Health (Australian Government): http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/xml/rssLatestNews.xml
• Department Of Public Health (Australia – State Level): e.g. Victoria – http://www.health.vic.gov.au/rss/newsfeed.xml
• Centers For Disease Control And Prevention - Find various feeds on health-related news and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
• Medical News Feeds: You can search medical news RSS feeds in places like the NYTimes RSS feeds section (e.g. Research: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Research.xml)
• MedicineNet – MedTerms Medical Word of the Day: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/dailyword.xml. You can also choose individual feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Alzheimer’s Disease, Asthma, Nutrition, Food, & Recipes, Pregnancy, Exercise & Fitness, High Blood Pressure, etc.)
• MedicalNewsToday.com – MNT Medical News Featured Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
• Medical News Today – You can also choose specific RSS feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Eating Disorders, Vascular, Sexual Health/STDs, Preventive Medicine, Parkinson’s Disease, Dyslexia, Alzheimer’s/Dementia, etc.)

You can also just search online for general feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific subjects, e.g. “blindness rss feeds”, “physical therapy rss feeds”, “oncology rss feeds”, etc.

(RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve your site’s UX.)

Checklists & Forms

Checklists and medical forms are a fantastic way to help increase visitor engagement, add value to your readers and provide something unique. Checklists and medical forms can provide users with useful step-by-step instructions and resources to get necessary steps done. They can also be great educational tools.

You can provide checklists and forms (or links to these) covering a range of areas such as:

• Booking appointments
• Checklists for pre or post treatment
• Health checklists and charts for specific systems
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, oral maintenance program, general dentistry, etc.
• Fitness and exercise program checklists and charts
• General charts & infographics (e.g. sugar content in different foods, the importance of sleep at different ages, etc.)

Other Tools

Providing unique tools and applications on your site can help increase visitor engagement and add significant value to users. Calculators are useful tools you can add to your website. Other tools would include things like nutritional tools, and even recipes.

In the next section of this detailed guide, we look at a number of online tools you can add to your site using WordPress plugins that can also help to improve your search engine optimization, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.

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This is the end of part one of this comprehensive guide on ways to improve your medical-related web presence.

To continue, click this link:

• How To Build And Grow Your Health Practice Presence Online Using WordPress – Part Two

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