Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

Medical & Health professionals today face growing challenges.

Online Challenges For Health And Medical Services Practitioners

Today, more than ever, businesses in the medical industry must work harder than ever to remain competitive. Not only do you have to become more involved in the community you serve, you must also develop and maintain an active presence online. This includes having a dynamic website and learning how to better market your practice online.

As well as spending dollars advertising offline, you will probably find that in order to compete, increasingly larger amounts of their budget need to be assigned towards developing and managing a website that can attract new clients, engage users, outrank the competition in search engines and social media, and help you create wider marketing exposure online.

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

Another challenge that health or medical businesses (and most businesses) face, is that your site has an average of thirty seconds or less to provide visitors with what they need or they will go 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 Providers

As well as facing significant business and technology changes, there are also plenty of online opportunities available for businesses in the health sector that can evolve to meet digital demands and think strategically when it comes to improving their online business marketing skills.

In this detailed guide, you will discover ways to attract and engage more visitors and create noticeable improvements in your online results.

As well as providing general website improvement tips, we also place special emphasis on the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) to power your medical or health-related business website or blog.

To learn more about the benefits and advantages of using WordPress, see the articles below:

• Learn How A Poorly Constructed Website Can Cost You Prospective Clients
• WordPress For Small Business – A Complete Guide To Growing Your Business Using A WordPress Blog

Useful Tips To Improve Your Medical & Health Practice Site

This section will show you ways to improve your medical website and get better results. We will look at what pages your site needs, what content works best for health or medical websites, ways to improve your site’s navigation structure, etc.

If you need help with website planning, read this detailed step-by-step guide we have written: A Money-Saving Guide To Web Site Planning For Business Owners

Improving Your Web Pages

Professional business websites require some essential pages. Let’s take a look at the pages your  need to have and how to set up your medical or health website for best results.

Services And Products

You need a page that describes your services or products. Depending on which area you specialize in, this page could include services such as:

• Medical And Surgical – e.g. anaesthetics, orthopedics diabetes, cancer, geriatric medicine, respiratory, weight loss surgery, ophtalmology surgical outpatients, etc.
• Dental Services – e.g. general dentistry, children’s dentistry, bad breath treatment, veneers, crowns and bridges, orthodontics, emergency dentistry, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. cardiac patient rehabilitation, chronic heart conditions
• Prenatal/Postnatal – e.g. birth suites, midwifery, etc.
• Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic services – breast screens, lung screening, hearing, gynaecology, MRI scanning, allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology services – lab testing and analysis, emergency pathology testing, clinical trials, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling – mental health, alcohol, tobacco & other drug counselling, couples, wellness, social development services
• Alternative therapies – acupuncture, aromatherapy, holistic medicine, shiatsu, chiropractic services, hypnosis, etc.
• Other medical services/therapies – diet and nutrition, othopedics, lymphedema therapy, stomal therapy, medical genetics, prosthetics, assisted living, home and community care, clinical information, medical supplies, etc.

List all of the services you provide. Provide your visitors with information that will educate them about what your services do and direct them to your contact or appointment booking page.

About Us Page

This page should give a description of your business and what your business stands for, its unique approach, causes that you support, etc.

This page should list any awards, accreditations, certifications, recognitions, associations, publications, etc., that could be used to promote your medical services and position yourself above the competition.

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

Your Staff

Are you searching for quicker, simpler and cheaper ideas to sell more products online or get people to interact more on your site? Then help your prospects get to know, like and trust you, your team and your organization better.

You want your business to be relatable. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your team. This page should include a photo and a mini biography. Since most visitors are probably not very well-versed in medical or health terms your descriptions should tell who they are and what they specialize in. It should also explain what those specialized areas do. This page can also include social buttons that will allow your site visitors to follow individual staff members on their social pages.

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

(Make sure to add an employee description page. Screenshot image sourced from: southperthchiro.com.au)

We have written a detailed tutorial about how to add an easy-to-maintain simple team directory to your site without touching code here: How To Easily Create A Simple Employee List In Your WordPress Site With No Coding Skills

Recruitment

This is a listing of job or career opportunities within your organization. It would include training provided, benefits, opportunities for advancement, social activities encouraged or sponsored by your business, etc. You can also include information about career opportunities in the medical-related industry.

Include also 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 updates list, follow your social pages, etc.

Case Studies

Reviews from clients and case studies are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase what kind of services you offer. By adding a page with reviews from clients and case studies, you are also helping to provide visitors social proof.

(Add a page to your site with case studies and reviews from clients. Image sourced from: arrowsmiledental.com)

We have written a comprehensive article about using client testimonials and client reviews to improve your business results online here: Learn How To Improve Your Sales Conversions Using Profit-Boosting User Testimonials

Contact Us

Having a functional contact page is crucial.

Your contact page should provide visitors with some or all of the following information:

• Business Name
• Your physical address
• Telephone
• Facsimile number
• Contact email
• Map
• Website address
• Contact form
• Request for more information – contact details
• Links to social media pages
• Online chat

If your business operates from several areas you will want to make that clear when displaying the address and contact info.

You could also include links to an FAQ page, frequently-visited pages, online booking request, support area, newsletter, blog, etc.

Add A Medical-Related Blog Section

A blog is a very powerful marketing tool. Blogs typically comprise of a content management system that allows you to easily promote your business by publishing content such as news, updates, useful articles, opinions and discussions, videos, media presentations, etc.

If you already have an established health or medical site, then consider adding a WordPress-powered blog to create more exposure for your organization.

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

Very few businesses know that an expertly configured WordPress site can turn your web presence into an automated traffic-generation system that will help deliver targeted traffic to your site, simply by publishing regular content to your web site.

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

To learn more about this go here:

• WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Learn How To Create A Web Traffic-Getting Machine

Legal Pages

It’s extremely important for professional companies to ensure they have a compliant website. This is not only important for establishing trust and credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that you are not breaking any local, regional or federal laws or regulations in whichever location you service.

Depending on what services you provide, adding the legal pages below to your medical-related site will help keep you out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers, and other potential sources of legal threats and inconveniences:

• Contact Us
• Privacy Statement
• Terms Of Use
• Website Disclaimer
• Affiliate Agreement
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• DMCA Notice
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Links Policy
• Health/Financial Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• etc.

We have written a detailed article on adding legal pages to your site here: Why You Need To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

How To Improve The Content On Your Site

In today’s globally competitive economy, the sooner you begin engaging in the practice of content marketing, the faster you will begin to see results and differentiate yourself from other competitors.

Provide useful content with great information, advice and tips that will get your readers sharing it with others and coming back for more content. Content marketing is a great way to inform and teach your visitors and prospective clients about your services.

For example, if you provide solutions that help people manage their weight, then some of the topics you can write about include the following:

• Being overweight vs. being obese – what are the differences?
• How to set realistic, but achievable weight loss goals
• Weight loss pills (common ones, side effects, long term results, do they work?)
• How to avoid late night snacking (e.g. sleep earlier)
• Etc.

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

Include keywords and terminology in your articles that prospective clients 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 that will teach exactly how to drive more traffic to your web site, save money creating high-quality content for your site 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!

Improving User Experience

Improving your site’s user experience (known as UX) helps keep visitors coming back and using your site. This section will show you different ways to improve visitor engagement and UX.

Syndicating Content - RSS Feeds

RSS feeds can help to improve visitor engagement and UX in several ways.

If you provide valuable information, other sites will want to syndicate your content to their visitors.

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

• All of your content updates are in one place
• Doesn’t rely on email
• Your feeds can be shared
• Users can subscribe to your feed
• A feed provides a way for external links to point back to your site
• RSS feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregators
• RSS provides multiple ways for readers to receive your content (e.g. read the content on their mobile device using feed readers)
• It’s built into WordPress

There are also benefits to adding syndicated content to your website from other websites, such as the fact that you don’t have to write, manage or update the content.

You can find RSS feeds with useful content for your website by visiting sites of health and medical-related government departments or well-known industry bodies.

Here are some examples of useful RSS feeds you could add to a medical or health-related site:

• US Department Of Health And Human Services – e.g. Latest news feed: http://www.hhs.gov/rss/news/hhsnews.xml, etc. You can also choose specific feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Body image, Health care for women, Illnesses and disabilities, Menopause, Smoking and how to quit, etc.) here: http://womenshealth.gov/news/rss/rss-feeds.html
• US National Libraries Of Medicine – For a list of feeds from well-known medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. BioMed Central, BMJ Disease in Childhood – Fetal and Neonatal Edition, Journal of Cell Biology, jobs.ac.uk health and medical jobs, BMJ British Journal of Ophthalmology, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health (www.nih.gov) - Get many feeds on health-related news and topics here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• FDA – Get feeds on fda-related topics like criminal investigations, MedWatch safety alerts (human medical products), product recalls, animal and veterinary news, etc. and podcasts here: http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/ContactFDA/StayInformed/RSSFeeds
• UK Department Of Health (https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-of-health) – 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 - Find various health-related news feeds 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. Health news: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Health.xml)
• MedicineNet – Daily Health and Medical News: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/dailyhealth.xml. You can also choose individual feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Lung Conditions, Arthritis, Chronic Pain, Depression, Eyesight, Women’s Health, etc.)
• MedicalNewsToday.com – MNT Medical News Featured Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
• MedicalNewsToday.com – You can also select individual feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Cystic Fibrosis, Arthritis/Rheumatology, Sexual Health/STDs, Dermatology, Smoking/Quit Smoking, Women’s Health/Gynecology, 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. “eating disorders rss feeds”, “quit smoking rss feeds”, “weight loss rss feeds”, etc.

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

Checklists & Forms

Checklists and charts are a fantastic way to help increase user engagement, add value to your visitors and provide something unique. They can provide users with useful step-by-step information and resources to perform a necessary task. Forms and checklists are great client instructional tools.

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

• Booking appointments
• Checklists for pre or post surgery
• Health checklists for specific systems
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, oral maintenance program, cosmetic dentistry, etc.
• Fitness and nutrition program checklists
• General charts & infographics (e.g. caloric level of different foods, the importance of sleep at different ages, etc.)

Unique Tools

Providing unique tools, gadgets and applications on your site is a great way to increase visitor engagement and significantly add value to your visitors. Calculators, for example are some of the most popular tools for your website. Others would include things like diagnostic tools, and even recipes.

In the next section of this guide, we will be discussing a number of WordPress-based tools you can use in your website that can help to improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and generate more visitors to your business.

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This is the end of section 1 of this article on ways to improve your health business web presence.

To continue reading, click here:

• Your Medical Services & Health Practice Website – Improving Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Website With Plugins

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