Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

Health professionals today face increasing challenges.

Online Challenges For Medical 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 your business serves, you must also develop an active web presence. This includes having a dynamic website and learning better ways to grow your health services online.

As well as investing dollars in offline marketing, you will probably find that in order to compete, increasingly larger amounts of their marketing budget will need to be allocated towards the development and maintenance of a website that brings in leads, engages visitors, outperforms the competition in search engines and helps you create a wider amount of marketing reach online.

This means that your site not only has to look great, your pages have to load fast, and your website layout has to be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, your site’s needs may change over time and many aspects will need to be frequently updated. This requires having a sound website and content management strategy in place.

One other challenge that health providers face with their websites (as most professions do for that matter), is that they have an average of thirty seconds to provide users what 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 Professionals

As well as facing many challenges, there are also plenty of online opportunities available to businesses in the medical-related profession that are willing to evolve to meet digital demands and think progressively about marketing themselves better online.

In this detailed guide, you will learn new ways to attract more visitors and create significant improvements in your online results.

As well as providing general website improvement tips, we also recommend that you consider using the WordPress content management system (CMS) to power your health or medical-related website or blog.

To learn more about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress Content Management System, go here:

• Discover How A Poorly Constructed Web Site Can Cost You Prospective Clients
• Everything You Need To Know To Grow Your Small Business Online Using WordPress

Tips To Improve Your Health Website

This section will show you how to improve your medical or health website and get better results. We show you what pages you need, what content works best, suggestions for improving your site’s layout and navigation structure, etc.

If you need assistance or help planning your health website, check out the guide we have written here: How To Plan Your Web Site - A Basic Guide For Business Owners

How To Improve Your Website Pages

All websites require a number of basic pages. Let’s review these.

Services

You need to include a page that explains your services and any products that you offer. Depending on which area of health you specialize in, your page could list services such as:

• Medicine & Surgery – e.g. ear, nose & throat, neurosurgery hematology, cosmetic surgery, rehabilitation medicine, renal, urology, ophtalmology operating theaters, etc.
• Dental Services – e.g. general dentistry, children’s dentistry, gum disease, teeth whitening, dentofacial orthopedics, emergency dental, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. cardiac patient rehabilitation, coronary care
• Prenatal & Postnatal – e.g. obstetrics, maternity services, etc.
• Child Health services – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic – mammography, lung screening, radiology and imaging, women’s health, psychosis, allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology – lab testing and analysis, emergency pathology testing, occupational and environmental testing, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling – mental health services, alcohol, tobacco & other drug counselling, marriage counselling, diet and nutrition counselling, social work services
• Alternative therapies – Chinese medicine, reflexology, colloidal silver therapy, yoga, osteopathy, hypnosis, etc.
• Other medical services/therapies – weight management, othopedics, lymphedema therapy, speech language therapy, medical genetics, artificial limbs, sleep therapy, home care, clinical information, medical transport, etc.

List all of the services you provide. Educate your visitors about the benefits of using these services and why they should book an appointment.

Who We Are

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

Remember to also include any industry awards, accreditations, recognitions, certifications, publications, associations, etc., that you can use to promote your business and position yourself above similar service providers.

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

Team Profile Page

Are you searching for cost-effective ideas to grow your business online and get prospects to stay longer on your site? Then help prospective clients get to know, like and trust you, your team and your business better.

You want potential clients to relate to your business. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your team. It should include a photo and a brief biography. Since most visitors will not tend to be that well-versed in health or medical-related terms your bio descriptions should tell who they are and what they specialize in. You may also want to explain what those specialized areas mean. This page should include social buttons so your visitors can follow selected team members on their social pages.

On this page, make sure to outline your person’s qualifications, why they are an asset to your team, and more importantly, how they will help add value to your clients’ business.

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

If you need help how to easily add an updatable list of employees in your website with no coding skills required, go here: How To Create A Simple Staff Directory In Your WordPress Site With No Coding Skills

Recruitment

List any career opportunities within the business. This page should include type of training provided, employee benefits, advancement opportunities, social activities encouraged or sponsored by your business, etc. You can include information such as the job outlook and career opportunities in the medical industry.

Maintain a positions available section in your page. If there are no positions currently available, consider inviting people to return periodically to this page, subscribe to your newsletter, follow you on social media, etc.

Testimonials

Case studies and testimonials from past clients are a great way to attract potential clients and showcase the services you offer. Adding a page with case studies and reviews from clients also establishes social proof online.

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

We have created a detailed article on using case studies, testimonials and client reviews improve your business online. For more details, go here: Learn How To Convert More Visitors Into Qualified Prospects With Captivating Testimonials

Contact Us Page

Having a clean contact page is absolutely vital.

Your contact page should provide the following information:

• Business Name
• Your physical location
• Phone number
• Facsimile
• Contact email address
• Map and directions
• Web URL
• Contact form
• Contact name
• Social media URLs
• Online Chat/Skype

If you operate out of multiple areas you want to make this clear when displaying your address and contact information.

Consider also including links to an FAQ page, frequently-visited pages, online booking form, helpdesk, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.

Add A Blog

A blog can be a very powerful marketing tool for your business. Blogs typically include a content management system that allows you to easily promote your business using content like events, updates, useful articles and tutorials, discussions on current topics, promotional videos, webinars, etc.

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

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

Very few businesses know that WordPress can become an automated traffic machine that will help deliver targeted visitors to your web site, simply by adding regular content to your website.

(WordPress can generate traffic automatically to your site)

Go here to learn more about this:

• Web Site Traffic Blueprint – Discover How To Create A Traffic-Getting Machine

Legal Information Pages

As a professional medical or health services practitioner, having a website that complies will all legal requirements online is very important. This is not only important for establishing credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that you are not breaching any laws or regulations wherever you provide services.

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 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
• and others

We have written a comprehensive article on adding legal pages to your site. For more info, see this article: How To Add Legal Pages To Your Site

Ways To Improve The Content On Your Website

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

By providing useful content with great tips, advice and information, you will get your visitors sharing your information online with others and coming back for more content. Content marketing is a great way to educate site visitors and prospects about using your services.

For example, if you provide weight management services, then some of the topics you can write about include the following:

• Potential health issues caused by being overweight
• How to calculate how many calories you consume each day
• Recovering after weight loss surgery – useful tips and recommendations
• How to incorporate an occasional fast food into a healthy diet plan
• And many other content topics

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

Include the keywords and terms in your articles that 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 and practical tips that will show you 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 presence online using content. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also completely FREE!

Ways To Improve Visitor Experience

Improving your user experience (generally referred to as UX) helps you keep visitors coming back and engaging with your site. This section will show you different ways to improve your visitor engagement and user experience.

Syndicating Content With RSS Feeds

RSS feeds provide many benefits for your business.

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

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

• All of your content updates are kept in one place
• Content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Feeds can be shared and picked up by other sites online
• Allows for subscribing
• It provides a way for external links to point back to your content
• RSS feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
• There are multiple ways your readers can receive your content (e.g. users can view the content on their mobile device using a feed reader)
• It’s built into WordPress

There are also a number of benefits 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.

You can find RSS feeds with useful content for your website by searching online for relevant government departments and key industry bodies.

Below we have listed a few feeds you could consider adding to a health or medical-related site:

• US Department Of Health And Human Services – e.g. Blog RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SelectedHhsBlogPosts, etc. You can search by departments and select specific feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Breastfeeding, Environmental health, Heart health and stroke, Menopause, Smoking and how to quit, etc.) here: http://womenshealth.gov/news/rss/rss-feeds.html
• US National Libraries Of Medicine – For a directory of feeds from various medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. BMJ Evidence-Based Nursing, The Journal of General Physiology (JGP), BMJ Sexually Transmitted Infections, BMJ Journal of Clinical Pathology, Transplantation – Most Popular Articles, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health - Find various health-related feeds here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• FDA – Get FDA-related RSS feeds (e.g. enforcement reports, health fraud, product recalls, foods, 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 - Get various feeds on health-related news and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
• Medical News Feeds: You can search medical news feeds in places like the NYTimes feeds section (e.g. Health news: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Health.xml)
• MedicineNet – 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. Allergies, Mental Health, Migraine Headaches, Pregnancy, Digestion, Hearing, etc.)
• Medical News Today – MNT 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. Eye Health/Blindness, Medicare/Medicaid/SCHIP, Pregnancy/Obstetrics, Flu/Cold/SARS, COPD, Prostate/Prostate Cancer, Restless Legs Syndrome, etc.)

You can also just search online for general RSS feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific areas, e.g. “gerd rss feeds”, “food intolerance rss feeds”, “wearable technology rss feeds”, etc.

(Add RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds to provide your visitors with a better user experience.)

Checklists And Forms

Checklists and explanatory charts are a fantastic way to help increase visitor engagement and add value to your visitors. They can give them useful step-by-step instructions and resources to get necessary tasks performed. Charts and checklists are also great client educational tools.

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

• Checklists/forms for booking appointments
• Checklists for pre or post treatment
• Health checklists and charts for specific conditions
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, oral maintenance program, general dentistry, etc.
• Weight loss and exercise program checklists
• General charts & infographics (e.g. acidity level of different foods, the importance of sleep at different ages, etc.)

Unique Tools

Providing unique tools, gadgets and applications on your website is a great way to increase visitor engagement and significantly add value to your potential clients. Calculators are useful tools you can add to your website. Other tools would include things like diagnostic tools, and even recipes.

In the next section of this guide, we take a look at a number of WordPress-based tools you can add to your site that improve your search engine optimization, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your business.

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

Click on this link to view the rest of this guide:

• How To Successfully Build And Grow Your Medical-Related Online – Part 2

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