Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

Health and medical services practitioners face many challenges in the web economy, especially when it comes to growing a successful presence online.

Online Challenges For Health Services Professionals

Now, more than ever, businesses in the medical and health sector must work harder than ever to remain competitive. Not only do you have to be fully involved in the community you serve, you must also maintain a strong digital presence. This includes having a website and searching for smarter ways to promote your health services online.

As well as spending dollars advertising offline, you will probably find (if you haven’t already) that in order to remain competitive, you will need to assign a bigger amount of your marketing budget to develop and manage a website that drives prospective clients, engages visitors, outranks the competition in search engines and social media, and helps to give your business a wider degree of exposure online.

This means that your site not only has to look professional, your pages have to load fast, and be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, the needs of the website will change in time and some aspects will need to be updated frequently. This requires having a well-developed web and content management strategy.

Another challenge that health or medical-related organizations (and most other businesses) face online, is that your site has only about 30 seconds or less to help users find the information they are looking for or they will look elsewhere.

“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 Services Professionals

As well as facing a number of business and technology changes, there are also many online opportunities available for health or medical businesses that are willing to adapt to meet the challenges of the online economy and who can think outside the box about improving their online business marketing skills.

This detailed guide will help you uncover ways and opportunities to generate web traffic and see noticeable improvements in your health or medical-related business presence online.

As well as providing practical tips and information on cost-effective ways to improve your medical website, we also recommend that you consider using the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) to power your health website or blog.

For more information about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress content management system (CMS), go here:

• How A Poorly Designed Web Site Can Cost You Customers And What To Do About It
• How To Grow Your Business Using WordPress

Tips To Improve Your Medical Services And Health-Related Site

In this section we will show you how to improve your health or medical website and get better results. We show you what pages you need, what content works best, your layout and navigation, etc.

If you need assistance or help planning your medical-related website, see this article: A Cost-Saving Guide To Web Site Planning For Business Owners

Essential Website Pages

Professional business websites need several essential web pages. Let’s discuss the pages your  should have and how to set up your website for best results.

Products And Services Page

It’s essential to include a page that describes your services and any products that you offer. Depending on which area of health or medical services you specialize in, your page can list services like:

• Medical And Surgical – e.g. ear, nose and throat, neurosurgery haematology, cosmetic surgery, rehabilitation medicine, respiratory, bariatric surgery, ophtalmology surgical outpatients, etc.
• Dental Services – e.g. general dentistry, holistic dentistry, bad breath treatment, veneers, crowns and bridges, braces, emergency dentistry, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. heart monitoring, chronic heart conditions
• Prenatal & Postnatal – e.g. obstetrics, maternity services, etc.
• Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic services – breast screening, skin cancer, hearing, gynaecology, psychosis, food allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology services – lab testing and analysis, emergency pathology testing, fine-needle aspiration biopsy, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling – mental health services, alcohol, tobacco & other drug counselling, couples, wellbeing, social work services
• Alternative treatments – Chinese medicine, homeopathy, hydrotherapy, tai chi, chiropractic, hypnosis, etc.
• Other medical services/therapies – weight management, othopedics, reproductive endocrinology, speech language therapy, inherited diseases, prosthetics, sleep therapy, home and community care, clinical information, medical supplies, etc.

Make sure to list all of the services you provide. Provide your visitors with information that will educate them about the benefits of using these services and direct them to your contact or appointment booking page.

About Us

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

It’s important to also include any awards, recognitions, certifications, accreditations, publications, associations, etc., that can be used to promote your practice and to set yourself above your competitors.

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

Your Staff

If you are looking for cost-effective ideas to sell more products online, then one of the things you can do, is help your prospective clients get to know, like and trust you, your team and your organization better.

You want potential clients 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 brief bio. Since most visitors will not tend to be well-versed in medical terms your bio descriptions should tell who they are and what they specialize in. It should also explain what those specialized areas do. This page should include social buttons that will allow your site visitors to follow individual staff members on their social networks.

In this page, make sure to outline each staff member’s expertise and qualifications, why they are an invaluable asset to your team, and more importantly, how they can help add value to your clients’ business.

(Make sure to add a page that introduces your staff members to prospective new clients. Image sourced from: southperthchiro.com.au)

If you need help how to create and add an easy-to-update simple team members directory in your site with no coding skills required, go here: How To Add A Simple Staff Directory To Your WordPress Site Without Editing Code

We’re Hiring

List any career opportunities within your practice. This page should include training, benefits, opportunities for advancement, social aspects of working for your business, etc. It should include information about new career opportunities in the health industry.

Include also a positions available section in your page. If there are no positions currently available, consider inviting people to return periodically to the page, subscribe to your updates list, follow your social pages, etc.

Case Studies

Reviews from clients and case studies 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 provides potential clients with social proof.

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

We have created a detailed article on using testimonials, case studies and reviews improve your business online here: How To Achieve Better Results Online Using Knockout Testimonials

Contact Us Page

A clean contact page is absolutely necessary.

Your contact page should include some or all of the following information about your clinic:

• Name Of Your Business
• Physical location
• Telephone
• Fax
• Email
• Google Map
• Web URL
• Contact form
• Request for information – contact details
• Social media URLs
• Live chat

If your business operates out of several areas you want to make that clear when showing your address and contact information.

Consider also including links pointing to the most commonly asked questions page, main pages, online booking request, support area, newsletter, blog, etc.

Blog

A blog can be a very powerful business marketing tool. Most blogging platforms are built around a content management system that is simple to use and allows you to easily promote your business by publishing content like news, new releases, educational articles, opinions on current topics, videos, media presentations, etc.

If you already have an established site, then consider adding a WordPress blog to create more exposure for your medical practice.

If you don’t have a website yet, or if your existing health or medical website is hard to keep updated or not giving you the results you want, then WordPress can become both your website and blog.

Something not many people know about, is that an expertly configured WordPress site can become an automated traffic-generation system that can instantly begin to deliver new targeted traffic to your business, simply by publishing content to your website on a consistent basis.

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

Go here to learn more about this:

• Web Site Traffic Blueprint – Learn How To Create A Web Traffic Generation Machine With WordPress

Legal Pages

It’s crucial to ensure they have a compliant website. This is not only important for building trust and credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that you are not breaching any laws and regulations wherever you do business.

Adding the following legal pages to your site will help you stay out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Google), 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/Financial Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• and others

We have written a detailed article on adding legal pages to your site. Go here to learn more about this: The Importance Of Adding Legal Pages To Your Site

Improving The Content On Your Site

In today’s globally competitive economy, the sooner you start to engage in the practice of content marketing, the faster you will begin to differentiate yourself from competing businesses.

You will want to provide great content with tips and information that will get your visitors sharing your web pages online and coming back for more content. Publishing content is a great way to inform and educate your visitors and prospective clients about your services.

For example, if you provide weight loss services, then some of the areas you could cover in your content include:

• Common medical conditions that can cause weight gain
• Advice on ways to develop portion control habits (smaller plate, don’t put food on the table, more vegetables)
• How to develop an exercise regimen you can enjoy and will stick with
• Vitamins and minerals that help with weight loss (chromium, calcium, magnesium, etc.)
• And many other content topics

You can also create a series of informative articles that will help your your readers gain a better understanding of your health services, by explaining benefits, procedures, costs (including payment plans, insurance coverage, etc).

Use keywords and terminology in your articles that prospective clients will search for.

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

Improve Visitor Engagement And User Experience

Improving 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.

Adding RSS Feeds

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds provide many benefits for your site.

If you provide useful information, other businesses may want to syndicate your content to their visitors.

Some of the benefits of having other businesses syndicate your content, include:

• All of your content updates are kept in one place
• your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Your feed can be shared
• Allows users to subscribe
• A feed provides links back to your site
• Feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
• RSS provides various ways for readers to receive your content (e.g. users can view your content on their mobile device using feed readers)
• RSS is built into WordPress

There are also benefits when it comes to adding syndicated content to your site from other sites, such as the fact that you don’t have to write, manage or update the content.

To find RSS feeds with useful content just search online for medical or health-related government departments or industry bodies.

Here are examples of feeds you could add to a medical or health 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 individual feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Body image, Environmental health, Heart health and stroke, Minority women’s health, Screening tests and vaccines, etc.) here: http://womenshealth.gov/news/rss/rss-feeds.html
• US National Libraries Of Medicine – For a directory of feeds from well-known medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. AHA Journals (American Heart Association Journals), The Psychiatrist, BMJ Medical Humanities, BMJ Tobacco Control, Molecular Biology and Evolution, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health (www.nih.gov) - Get many RSS feeds on health-related news and topics here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• FDA – Find feeds on fda-related news like FDA drug safety, food allergy reports, pet health, cosmetics, etc. and podcasts here: http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/ContactFDA/StayInformed/RSSFeeds
• UK Department Of Health (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. Western Australia – http://www.public.health.wa.gov.au/feed/?types=news
• Centers For Disease Control And Prevention - Get various RSS feeds on health-related news and topics and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
• Medical News: You can search medical news feeds in places like the NYTimes feeds section (e.g. Medical research: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Research.xml)
• MedicineNet.com – MedTerms Medical Word of the Day: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/dailyword.xml. You can also select specific RSS feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Lung Conditions, Men’s health, Neurology, Pediatrics / Healthy Kids, Prevention & Wellness, Women’s Health, etc.)
• MedicalNewsToday.com – Medical News Featured Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
• Medical News Today – You can also select specific RSS feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Abortion, Immune System/Vaccines, Infectious Diseases/Bacteria/Viruses, Hearing/Deafness, Heart Disease, Allergy, Tuberculosis, etc.)

You can also just search online for general feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific areas, e.g. “vascular rss feeds”, “veterinary rss feeds”, “statins rss feeds”, etc.

(RSS feeds can help to improve your medical or health-related website’s UX.)

Add Charts And Checklists

Checklists and educational charts are a great way to increase user engagement and add value to your readers. Forms and checklists can give them step-by-step information and resources to complete necessary tasks. Forms and checklists can also be great educational tools.

Checklists, charts and medical forms could cover areas such as:

• Checklists and forms for booking appointments
• Checklists for post-surgery recovery
• Health checklists and charts for specific medical conditions
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, maintenance program, cosmetic 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 stages of development, etc.)

Provide Unique Tools

Providing useful online tools and applications on your site is a great way to increase visitor engagement and add significant value to your visitors. Calculators are popular tools for your website. Other applications can include things like diagnostic tools, and even recipes.

In the next section, we will be discussing a several online tools you can add to your website using WordPress plugins and themes that can help improve your seo, increase user engagement and generate more visitors to your business.

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This is the end of part one.

Click here to continue reading:

• How To Grow Your Health Clinic Services Presence Online Successfully With WordPress – Part Two

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