Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

Medical and health services professionals face a number of challenges in today’s digital economy, especially when it comes to growing a successful presence online.

Online Challenges For Medical And Health Services Professionals

Now, more than ever, medical and health services professionals must work hard to remain competitive and find new clients. 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 website and learning how to better promote your business online.

As well as investing money in offline marketing, you will probably find (if you haven’t already) that in order to compete with other web-marketing savvy medical-related businesses, increasingly larger amounts of their budget will need to be directed to developing and maintaining a website that attracts new clients, engages visitors, outperforms the competition in search engines and social media, and increases your marketing exposure online.

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

Another problem that health businesses face online (as most businesses do for that matter), is that your site has only about thirty seconds or less to give visitors the information 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

Opportunities For Health Services Professionals In The Digital Economy

As well as facing many new challenges, there are also many online opportunities available for businesses in the medical-related profession that are willing to adapt to meet the demands of the online economy and who can think strategically when it comes to marketing themselves better online.

The guide below will help you uncover ways to generate traffic and create noticeable improvements in your online results.

As well as providing general website improvement tips, we also recommend that you consider using the WordPress CMS platform to power your health-related business website.

To learn more about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress content management system, go here:

• Why A Poorly Constructed Website Can Cost You Customers
• The Business Owner’s Guide To Understanding WordPress

Ways To Improve Your Website

In this section we’ll show you ways to improve your website and get better results online. We will look at what pages a health or medical site needs, what type of content works best for health sites, your layout and navigation structure, etc.

If you need website planning assistance, check out the detailed step-by-step guide we have written here: The Website Planning Process: A Comprehensive Guide For Non-Technical Business Owners

Basic Website Pages

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

Services And Products

You need a page that describes your services and any products that you offer. Depending on which area of health or medical services you specialize in, this page could list services like:

• Medical And Surgical – e.g. anaesthetics, orthopedics haematology, oncology, continence management, renal, endoscopy, ophtalmology surgical outpatients, etc.
• Dental Services – e.g. preventive dentistry, children’s dentistry, bad breath treatment, restorations, dentofacial orthopedics, emergency dental, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. cardiac patient rehabilitation, coronary care
• Prenatal/Postnatal – e.g. birth suites, maternity services, etc.
• Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic – breast screening, lung screening, audiology, women’s health, MRI scanning, allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology services – lab testing and analysis, emergency pathology testing, insurance and corporate testing, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling – mental health services, alcohol, tobacco & other drug services, couples, diet and nutrition counselling, social work services
• Alternative treatments – Chinese medicine, homeopathy, hydrotherapy, massage therapy, osteopathy, hypnosis, etc.
• Other medical services/therapies – diet and nutrition, podiatry, reproductive endocrinology, optical services, inherited diseases, prosthetics, hearing aids, home and community care, clinical information, medical equipment, etc.

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 appointment booking page.

About Us

The ‘About Us’ page should give a description of your business and explain to visitors what it stands for, its unique approach, sponsored community activities, etc.

It’s important to mention any awards, accreditations, certifications, recognitions, publications, associations, etc., that you can use to promote your medical services and to set yourself above other competitors.

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

Team Profile

If you are searching for quicker, easier and cheaper ideas to sell more products or services online, then help your prospects get to know, like and trust you, your team and your organization better.

Your business needs to be relatable. One great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your people. It should include a photo and a mini biography. Since most visitors won’t be well-versed in medical or health-related terms it should tell who they are and what their specialties are. It should also explain what those specialized areas do. This page should include social buttons so your site visitors can follow your staff members on their social networks.

In this page, make sure to highlight your team member’s experience, how they add value or contribute to the success of your team, and more importantly, how they will help add value to your clients’ business.

(Add a page that introduces your employees to prospective new clients. Image sourced from: southperthchiro.com.au)

If you need help how to easily create and add an updatable simple employee directory to your website using a free WordPress plugin, refer to this tutorial: How To Easily Add A Simple Employee List To Your WordPress Site

Work For Us

List any job opportunities within the clinic. This page would include type of training provided, benefits, professional development, social aspects of working for your organization, etc. It should include information about new career opportunities in the health or medical-related industry.

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

Testimonials & Case Studies

Reviews from clients and case studies are a great way to attract potential clients and showcase the services you offer. By adding a page with client reviews 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 created a comprehensive article on using case studies, testimonials and reviews to grow your business online here: How To Improve Your Sales With Knockout Client Testimonials

Contact Us Page

Having a functional contact page is essential.

It should include some or all of the following information about your clinic:

• Name Of Your Business
• Your physical address
• Phone number
• Facsimile
• Email address
• Map
• Website URL
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Links to social media networks
• Online Chat/Skype

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

Consider also including links pointing to commonly-asked questions page, main pages, online booking request, support page, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.

Add A Blog Section

A blog is a very powerful business marketing tool. Most blogging platforms typically comprise of a content management system that is simple to use and allows you to easily promote your business using timely content such as news and announcements, updates, educational articles, opinions and discussions, how-to videos, media presentations, etc.

If you already have an established health-related website, then consider adding a WordPress-powered blog to promote your clinic.

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

Something few businesses know about, is that WordPress can turn into an automated traffic-generation machine that can help begin attracting targeted traffic to your website, simply by adding new content to your website on a regular basis.

(An expertly configured WordPress site can generate traffic automatically to your website)

If you would like to know more here:

• Web Site Traffic Blueprint – How To Automatically Grow Your Traffic For Your Business

Legal Pages

It’s essential for professional businesses to make sure they have a compliant website. This is not only important for establishing trust and credibility with visitors, but also to ensure that you are not breaching any laws and regulations wherever your practice is located.

Adding some or all of the following legal pages to your website 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 Policy
• Terms Of Use
• 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

If you want to learn more about adding legal pages to your website, refer to this article: How To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

Improve Your Web Content

In today’s globally competitive economy, the sooner you begin publishing content on your site, the sooner you will begin to see results and differentiate yourself from your competitors.

You want to provide great content with information and tips that will get your readers sharing it with others and coming back for more content. This is a great way to inform and educate site visitors and prospects about using your products and services.

For example, if your business provides weight management services, then some of the areas you can write content about include:

• Emotional causes for weight issues (possible causes, how to identify yours)
• How to ask for support when embarking on a weight loss program (friends, family, weight loss seekers)
• Is using a measuring tape better than a scale when it comes to weight loss progress?
• Useful apps for tracking calories and exercise
• And many other content topics

You can also create a series of educational articles that will help your your prospective clients gain a better understanding of your medical or health services, by explaining benefits, procedures, terminology, etc.

Include the keywords and terminology in your content that your prospective clients will search for 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 show exactly how to drive more traffic to your site, save money creating high-quality content that will add value to your site visitors and grow your website 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 site’s user experience (generally referred to as UX) helps to keep visitors coming back and engaging with your site. This section will show you different ways to improve visitor engagement and user experience.

Syndicate Content Using RSS Feeds

RSS feeds can help to improve your visitor engagement and user experience in several ways.

If you provide information that adds value to others, other sites will want to syndicate your content to their visitors.

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

• All of your updates are in one place
• your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Feeds can be shared online
• Feeds allow for subscribing
• A feed provides a way for links to point back to your content
• Your feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
• There are a number of ways readers can receive your content (e.g. users can view the content on their mobile device using feed readers)
• RSS is built into WordPress

There are also a number of benefits to adding syndicated content to your site 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 loads of useful content for your website by visiting sites of relevant government departments and industry bodies.

Below we have listed some examples of feeds you could add to your site:

• US Department Of Health And Human Services – e.g. Blog feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SelectedHhsBlogPosts, etc. You can search by departments and select individual feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Emergency preparedness, Health care for women, HIV/AIDS, Minority women’s health, Smoking and how to quit, etc.) here: http://womenshealth.gov/news/rss/rss-feeds.html
• US National Libraries Of Medicine – For a list of RSS feeds from various medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. ACS Publications, BMJ Heart, BMJ Sexually Transmitted Infections, Toxicological Sciences, Transplantation – Most Popular Articles, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health (www.nih.gov) - Find many RSS feeds on health-related news here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• US Food And Drug Administration (FDA) – Find RSS feeds on fda-related news like criminal investigations, health fraud, recalls, drugs, etc. and podcasts here: http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/ContactFDA/StayInformed/RSSFeeds
• Department of Health UK (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. NSW – http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/pages/rss.aspx
• Centers For Disease Control And Prevention (www.cdc.gov) - Find various feeds on health-related news and topics and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
• Medical News: You can search medical news RSS feeds in major news publications like the NYTimes RSS feeds section (e.g. Fitness & nutrition: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Nutrition.xml)
• MedicineNet.com – Weekly Health and Medical News Digest: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/weeklyhealth.xml. You can also choose individual feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Medications, Cancer, Cholesterol, Depression, Digestion, Skin, etc.)
• Medical News Today – Featured Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
• Medical News Today – You can also select specific feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Gout, Medicare/Medicaid/SCHIP, Infectious Diseases/Bacteria/Viruses, Dermatology, Diabetes, Litigation/Medical Malpractice, Tuberculosis, etc.)

You can also search online for general feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific areas, e.g. “medical training rss feeds”, “menopause rss feeds”, “huntingtons disease rss feeds”, etc.

(Use RSS feeds to improve your health or medical site’s user experience.)

Checklists & Forms

Adding checklists and charts to your site is a fantastic way to help increase visitor engagement, add value to your readers and set yourself apart from the competition. They can provide useful instructions and resources to get necessary steps completed. Checklists and forms can also be great client educational tools.

You can provide online or downloadable checklists, charts and forms covering a range of areas such as:

• Checklists/forms for booking appointments
• Checklists for pre or post surgery
• Health checklists for specific systems
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, caries prevention program, cosmetic dentistry, etc.
• Weight loss and exercise program checklists and charts
• General charts & infographics (e.g. caloric level of different foods, sleep requirements at different stages of development, etc.)

Other Tools

Providing unique online tools and applications on your website can help increase visitor engagement and add value to your potential clients. Calculators, for example are useful tools for your website. Others could include things like nutritional tools, and even recipes.

In part 2, we take a look at a several WordPress-based tools you can use in your site that can help improve your search engine optimization, improve user engagement and generate more web traffic to your business.

***

This is the end of part one of this article on ways to build your health or medical-related business web presence.

Click here to read Part 2:

• A Practical Guide On How To Successfully Grow A Medical Services & Health-Related Website – Part 2

***

***