Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress
Medical practitioners today face a growing number of challenges.
Challenges Health Professionals Face Online
Now, more than ever, businesses in the medical and health industry must work harder than ever to remain competitive. Not only do you have to participate in the community you serve, you must also develop an active presence online. This includes having an effective website and learning how to better market your business online.
As well as spending money in offline marketing, businesses in the medical or health industry are now finding that increasingly larger amounts of their marketing budget will need to be allocated towards the development and management of a website that brings in clients, engages visitors, outperforms the competition in search engines and helps give them a wider marketing reach online.
This means that your website not only has to look great, your web pages have to be fast-loading, and your site has to be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that your site’s needs will change in time and many areas may need to be updated frequently. This requires a sound web and content management strategy in place.
Another problem that health or medical-related businesses (and most other businesses) face online, is that they have only around thirty seconds to provide users with what they are looking for or they will leave the site.
“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 And Health Businesses
As well as facing significant challenges, there are also loads of online opportunities available for medical practices that are willing to adapt to meet digital challenges and who can think outside the box when it comes to marketing their business better online.
This detailed guide will help you uncover a number of ways to source more clientele and establish stronger online credibility for your medical or health-related business.
As well as providing tips and information on cost-effective ways to improve your business online, we also recommend that you consider using the WordPress content management system (CMS) to power your health or medical website.
For more information about the benefits and advantages of using WordPress, see the articles below:
- Learn Why A Poorly Constructed Web Site Can Cost You Potential Buyers And What To Do About It
- Everything You Need To Know About Growing A Successful Small Business Online Using A WordPress Site
How To Improve Your Website
In this section we will start with the basics and show you ways to improve your medical or health website and get better results. We will look at what pages you need, what type of content works best for health-related websites, tips for improving layout and navigation structure, etc.
If you need additional information about website planning, go here: Planning Your Small Business Web Site: A Cost-Saving Guide For Non-Technical Business Owners
Basic Pages
Professional websites require some basic pages. Let’s discuss these.
Your Services
It’s essential to include a page that lists your products and services. Depending on which area of health or medical services you specialize in, your page could include services such as:
- Medicine & Surgery – e.g. ear, nose and throat, neurosurgery haematology, plastic surgery, hyperbaric medicine, renal, urology, eye diseases palliative care, etc.
- Dentistry – e.g. general dentistry, holistic dentistry, gum disease, veneers, crowns and bridges, dental braces, emergency dentistry services, etc.
- Cardiology – e.g. cardiac monitoring, coronary care
- Prenatal/Neonatal – e.g. birthing, maternity services, etc.
- Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
- Diagnostic services – breast screens, skin cancer, radiology and imaging, gynaecology, psychosis, food allergy testing, etc.
- Pathology – laboratory testing and analysis, routine pathology testing, occupational and environmental testing, speech pathology, etc
- Counselling services – mental health services, alcohol, tobacco & other drug counselling, domestic abuse, wellness coaching, social development services
- Alternative therapies – Chinese medicine, reflexology, reiki, meditation, chiropractic services, hypnosis, etc.
- Other medical services/therapies – diet and nutrition, chiropody, lymphedema therapy, speech therapy, inherited diseases, artificial limbs, hearing aids, home care, sexual health, medical equipment, etc.
List all of the services you provide. Provide your visitors with information that will educate them about what these services do and direct them to your contact or 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, community events, etc.
Remember to also list any business awards, accreditations, recognitions, certifications, associations, publications, etc., that can be used to promote your medical, dental, chiropractic, surgery services, etc. and set yourself above your competitors.
(List all of your business awards accreditations, certifications, recognitions, associations, publications, etc. in the About Us page. Image sourced from: squaremedical.com.au)
Your Staff
Are you looking for quicker and simpler ideas to sell more products online or get prospects to engage more on your site? Then help visitors get to know you and your business better.
You want people to relate to your business. One great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your team members. This page should include a photo and a brief bio. Since most visitors won’t be well-versed in medical terms your descriptions should tell who they are and what they specialize in. You may also want to explain what those specialized areas mean. It should include social buttons so your visitors can follow individual staff members on their social pages.
On this page, make sure to outline your person’s experience, how their skills add value or contribute to the success of your team, and more importantly, how they can help add value to your clients’ business.
(Make sure to add an employee page. Image source: southperthchiro.com.au)
We have written a detailed tutorial about how to easily create and add an updatable simple employee directory to your website without coding skills here: How To Easily Add A Staff List Directory To Your Site: WordPress Plugin Tutorial
Recruitment Page
This is a listing of career opportunities available within the practice. It should include training offered, employee benefits, professional development, etc. It should include information such as the job outlook and upcoming career opportunities in the health or medical industry.
Include also a positions available section in your page. If there are no positions currently available, consider inviting people to return periodically to this page, join your announcements list, follow your social pages, etc.
Case Studies
Case studies and testimonials are a great way to attract potential clients and showcase your services. By adding a page with case studies and client reviews, you are also helping to establish social proof online.
(Add a page to your site with case studies and testimonials. Screenshot image sourced from: arrowsmiledental.com)
We have created a comprehensive article about using case studies, testimonials and client reviews to improve your business results online. If you would like to know more about this here: Learn How To Turn More Visitors Into Qualified Prospects With Compelling Client Testimonials
Contact Us
Having a clean contact page is absolutely necessary.
Your contact page should provide some or all of the following information:
- Name
- Your physical location
- Telephone
- Fax
- Contact email
- Google Map
- Website address
- Contact form
- Contact name
- Links to social media pages
- Online chat feature
If you have different areas you will want to make that clear when showing the address and contact information.
You could also include links to an FAQ section, frequently-visited pages, booking form, support page, newsletter, blog, etc.
Add A Health Or Medical Blog Section
A blog is a very powerful business marketing tool. Blogs typically comprise of a content management system that is simple to use and allows you to promote your business by publishing content such as news, product releases, useful articles, informative posts, educational videos, media presentations, etc.
If you already have an existing site, then consider adding a WordPress-powered blog to market your practice.
If you don’t have a website yet, or if your existing medical or health-related website is hard to keep updated or not delivering you the results you want, then WordPress can become both your business website and your blog.
Not many people know this, but WordPress can turn into an automated traffic-generation machine that will begin attracting new visitors to your business, simply by adding new content on a consistent basis to your website.
(WordPress can drive web traffic automatically to your site)
If you are interested in learning more about this here:
Legal Information Pages
It’s crucially important to ensure they have a compliant website. This is not only important for building credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no local, regional or federal laws or regulations are being breached wherever you practice.
Adding the following legal pages to your website will help keep you 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 Of Use
- Website Disclaimer
- Affiliate Agreement
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- DMCA Notice
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Linking Policy
- Health/Financial Disclaimers
- Refund Policy
- Video/Audio Terms
- etc.
We have written a comprehensive article about adding legal pages to your site here: Why You Need To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site
Tips On How To Improve The Content On Your Website
In today’s globally competitive economy, committing to the practice of content marketing has become one of the key success factors for businesses selling similar products or providing similar services.
Providing great content with useful advice, information and tips will get your readers sharing it with others and coming back for more content. Content marketing is a great way to educate site visitors and prospective clients about your services.
For example, if you provide products or services that help people lose weight, then some of the topics you could cover as content on your site:
- Emotional causes for weight issues (possible causes, how to identify yours)
- How to identify the bad habits you need to correct to ensure sustainable weight loss
- Weight loss pills (common ones, side effects, long term results, do they work?)
- Could a personal chef help you lose weight (what they do, is it affordable)
- Etc.
You can also create a series of educational articles that will help your your prospective clients gain a better understanding of your services, by explaining benefits, procedures, terminology, etc.
Include the keywords in your content that prospective clients will be searching 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 teach you how to drive more traffic to your website, save money creating high-quality content for your site visitors and grow your presence online using content. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also completely FREE!
Tips For Improving Visitor Engagement And User Experience
Improving website user experience (generally referred to 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.
RSS Feeds – Content Syndication
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve 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.
Some of the benefits of syndicating your content to other businesses using RSS feeds, include:
- All of your content updates are kept in one place
- Doesn’t rely on email
- Can be shared
- Allows users to subscribe
- An RSS feed provides a way for links to point back to your content
- Your feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
- RSS provides various ways for your readers to receive your content (e.g. view the content on their mobile device using different applications)
- It’s 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.
To find RSS feeds with useful content just visit sites of relevant government departments or key industry bodies.
Below we have listed examples of feeds containing useful information that you could consider adding to your website:
- US Department Of Health And Human Services – e.g. Blog RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SelectedHhsBlogPosts, etc. You can search by departments and choose specific RSS feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Breast cancer, Environmental health, Illnesses and disabilities, 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 RSS feeds from well-known medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. BMJ Journal of Medical Ethics, The Journal of General Physiology (JGP), Indian Journal of Plastic Surgery, BMJ Archives of Disease, Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
- National Institutes Of Health - Get many RSS feeds on health-related news and topics here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
- US Food And Drug Administration (FDA) – Get FDA-related news feeds (e.g. enforcement reports, FDA drug shortages, 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. NSW – http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/pages/rss.aspx
- Centers For Disease Control And Prevention (www.cdc.gov) - Get various health-related news feeds and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
- Medical News Feeds: You can search medical news feeds in major news publications like the NYTimes RSS feeds section (e.g. Health news: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Health.xml)
- MedicineNet.com – Weekly Health and Medical News Digest: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/weeklyhealth.xml. You can also select specific RSS feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Alzheimer’s Disease, Asthma, Cholesterol, Pediatrics / Healthy Kids, Exercise & Fitness, Hearing, etc.)
- MedicalNewsToday.com – Medical News Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
- MedicalNewsToday.com – You can also choose individual feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Urology/Nephrology, Acid Reflux/GERD, Surgery, Emergency Medicine, Men’s Health, HIV/AIDS, Obesity/Weight Loss/Fitness, etc.)
You can also search online for general feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific areas, e.g. “gerd rss feeds”, “medical malpractice rss feeds”, “MRI rss feeds”, etc.
(Add RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds to improve your medical or health website’s UX.)
Checklists And Charts
Checklists and medical forms are a fantastic way to help increase user engagement and add value to your audience. They can give them useful information and resources to perform necessary tasks. They are great educational tools.
You can provide checklists and forms covering a range of topics such as:
- Checklists and forms for booking appointments
- Checklists for post-surgery recovery
- Health checklists for specific medical conditions
- Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, oral maintenance program, cosmetic dentistry, etc.
- Weight loss 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 online tools and applications on your website is a great way to increase visitor engagement and significantly add value to your visitors. Calculators are useful tools for your website. Other applications would include things like nutritional tools, or even recipes.
In part 2 of this detailed guide, we will be discussing a several online tools you can add to your health-related site using WordPress plugins that can improve your seo, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your business.
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This is the end of part 1.
Click on this link to view Part 2:
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)