Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

Health professionals today face increasingly difficult challenges created by the digital economy.

Online Challenges For Medical And Health Services Practitioners

Now, more than ever, medical providers must work hard and find smarter ways to remain competitive and source new clientele. Not only do you have to actively participate in the community your business serves, you must also develop an active digital presence. This includes having an effective web presence and learning how to better market your business online.

As well as spending money in offline marketing, businesses in the health industry are also finding that they need to delegate a bigger portion of their marketing budget to develop and manage a website that can attract leads, engage visitors, outrank the competition in search engines and increase their marketing reach online.

This means that your site not only has to look professional, 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 over time and some areas will need to be updated frequently. This requires having a well-planned website and content management strategy in place.

Another problem that health or medical organizations face online (as most other professions do for that matter), is that they have only around thirty seconds or less to help visitors find what they are looking for or they will find what they are looking for 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

Opportunities For The Medical Profession In The Digital Economy

As well as facing a number of challenges, there are also many online opportunities available for health or medical practices that are willing to adapt to meet the demands of the digital economy and think strategically about marketing their business better online.

The article below will help you uncover new opportunities to source new client accounts and establish stronger online credibility for your business.

As well as providing useful website improvement tips, we also focus on the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress Content Management System to power your medical-related website or blog.

For more information about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress Content Management System (CMS), see the articles below:

• How A Poorly Built Website Can Cost You Customers And What To Do About It
• WordPress And Small Business – The Complete Guide To Growing A Successful Small Business With A WordPress Site

Useful Tips For Improving Your Website

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

If you need any help with website planning, check out the guide we have written here: A Money-Saving Guide To Web Site Planning For Non-Technical Business Owners

Essential Pages

Professional business websites need a number of basic web pages. Let’s go over the pages your  should have and how to structure your website for best results.

Services And Products Description Page

It’s essential to include a page that explains your services or products. Depending on which area of health you specialize in, this page could include services such as:

• Medical And Surgical – e.g. pain management, orthopedics blood disorders, reconstructive surgery, continence management, respiratory, weight loss surgery, ophtalmology emergency surgery, etc.
• Dentistry – e.g. preventive dentistry, holistic dentistry, gum disease, teeth whitening, dental implants, emergency dental services, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. cardiac patient rehabilitation, coronary care
• Prenatal and Postnatal – e.g. birthing, midwifery, etc.
• Child Health services – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic services – breast screens, lung screening, medical imaging, gynaecology, psychosis, allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology – laboratory testing and analysis, emergency pathology testing, fine-needle aspiration, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling services – mental health services, alcohol, tobacco & other drug counselling, marriage counselling, wellness, social work services
• Alternative therapies – Chinese medicine, aromatherapy, functional medicine, meditation, chiropractic, hypnotherapy, etc.
• Other medical services – diet and nutrition, podiatry, fertility services, occupational therapy, inherited diseases, artificial limbs, assisted living, home and community care, sexual health, medical transport, etc.

Make sure to list all of the services you provide, not just the ones you specialize in. Educate your visitors about what these services do and direct them to your appointment booking page.

About Us

This page needs to describe your business and what your business stands for, its unique approach, philanthropy, etc.

It’s important to also include any awards, certifications, recognitions, accreditations, associations, publications, etc., that could be used to promote your medical, dental, chiropractic, surgery services, etc. and position yourself above other competitors.

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

Our Team

If you are looking for ways to sell more products online, then help prospects get to know you and your business better.

Your business needs to be relatable. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your employees. This page should include a photo and a mini bio. Since most visitors won’t be that well-versed in medical or health-related terms it should tell who they are and what their specialties are. You may also want to explain what those specialties mean. This page should also include social buttons that will allow your prospective clients to follow some of your team members on their social networks.

In this page, don’t be afraid to humanize your team members with personal stories, hobbies, etc., but make sure to highlight your person’s expertise, why they are an invaluable 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 team members to prospective new clients. Screenshot image source: southperthchiro.com.au)

To learn more about how to easily add an updatable list of staff members to your website, go here: How To Add A Staff Directory To Your Site: Step-By-Step Tutorial

We’re Hiring

This is a listing of job or career opportunities within your business. It should include training offered, benefits, professional development, etc. You should also include information about additional career opportunities in the medical and 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 this page, subscribe to your updates list, follow you on social media, etc.

Case Studies

Testimonials from past clients and case studies are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase what kind of services you offer. Adding a page with client reviews and case studies also provides prospective clients with social proof online.

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

To learn more about using case studies, testimonials and client reviews to grow your business online, go here: All You Need To Know To Achieve Better Results Online With Engaging Customer Testimonials

Contact Us Page

Having a functional contact page is vitally important.

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

• Company Name
• Location of consulting practice
• Telephone
• Facsimile number
• Contact email address
• Google Map
• Web URL
• Contact form
• Contact name
• Social media links
• Chat feature

If you have multiple locations you will want to make this clear when showing your address and contact information.

Consider also including links to an FAQ page, useful pages, booking request, helpdesk, newsletter, blog, etc.

Blog Section

A blog can be a powerful marketing tool for your business. Many blogging platforms are built around a content management system that is easy to use and allows you to promote your business using timely content such as news and events, updates, educational information, informative posts, how-to videos, webinars, etc.

If you already have an established health or medical website, then consider adding a WordPress blog to market your services.

If you don’t have a website yet, or if your existing health or medical-related site is hard to add new content to or not giving you the results you want, then WordPress can become both your business website and business blog.

Very few people know that an expertly configured WordPress site can turn your web presence into an automated traffic machine that can begin delivering web traffic to your business, simply by publishing new content on a regular basis to your website.

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

Go here to learn more:

• Web Site Traffic Blueprint – A Complete Guide To Generating More Web Traffic For Your Business Automatically Using WordPress

Legal Information

It’s vital for medical practitioners organizations 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 no laws and regulations are being broken wherever you do business.

Depending on what services and products you provide, adding the following legal pages to your website will help you stay out of legal hot water with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Google), and other potential legal threats or inconveniences:

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

We have written a comprehensive article on adding legal pages to your website. Go here to learn more: How To Add Legal Pages To Your Website

Tips For Improving The Content On Your Website

In today’s fiercely competitive global business economy, content marketing has become one of the key business differentiators.

By committing to providing useful content with great tips, advice or information, you will get your visitors to share your web pages and come back for more content. Publishing content is a great way to inform and educate your visitors and prospective clients about your business and services.

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

• Common medical conditions that can cause weight gain
• Is weight loss surgery right for you? (who should get it, risks, success rates)
• Characteristics of different diets, e.g. HCG diet, Raw Food diet, Weight Watchers diet (what these are, how they can benefit you, are they effective)
• How a personal chef can 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 readers gain a better understanding of your services, by explaining benefits, procedures, terminology, etc.

Include the keywords in your content that your prospective clients would 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 easy-to-digest information and practical tips that will teach exactly how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, save money creating useful content for your visitors and grow your business online using content. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also completely FREE!

Ways Of Improving Visitor Engagement And User Experience

Improving website user experience (known 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.

Add RSS Feeds

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve your visitor engagement and UX in a number of different ways.

If you provide useful content, other sites 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
• Doesn’t rely on email
• Your feeds can be shared online
• Allows for subscribing
• An RSS feed provides a way for links to point back to your content
• Your feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
• RSS provides several ways for readers to receive your content (e.g. subscribers can read your 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 website 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 loads of useful content by visiting sites of relevant government departments or respected industry bodies.

Here are examples of useful RSS feeds you could consider adding 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 specific feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Emergency preparedness, Health care for women, Illnesses and disabilities, Mental health, Screening tests and vaccines, 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. Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation, The Psychiatrist, BMJ Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases, The AAPS Journal (American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists), BMJ Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health - Get various feeds on health-related news here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• US Food And Drug Administration (FDA) – Find FDA-related news feeds (e.g. consumer health information, food allergy reports, recalls, 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. Victoria – http://www.health.vic.gov.au/rss/newsfeed.xml
• Centers For Disease Control And Prevention (www.cdc.gov) - Get many feeds on health-related topics 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 select specific feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Alzheimer’s Disease, Asthma, Chronic Pain, Pregnancy, Exercise & Fitness, Women’s Health, etc.)
• Medical News Today – Medical News Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
• Medical News Today – You can also select individual RSS feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Cystic Fibrosis, Multiple Sclerosis, Melanoma/Skin Cancer, Irritable-Bowel Syndrome, Transplants/Organ Donations, Prostate/Prostate Cancer, Clinical Trials/Drug Trials, 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. “obstetrics rss feeds”, “medical innovation rss feeds”, “cancer rss feeds”, etc.

(RSS feeds can help to improve your website’s user experience.)

Checklists And Charts

Adding checklists and medical forms to your site is a fantastic way to increase user engagement and add value to your visitors. Charts and checklists can provide useful step-by-step information and resources to perform necessary steps. They are great client educational tools.

You can provide a range of forms, charts and checklists covering topics such as:

• Booking appointments
• Checklists for post-surgery recovery
• Health checklists for specific systems
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, maintenance program, general dentistry, etc.
• Weight loss and nutrition program checklists and charts
• General charts & infographics (e.g. sugar content in different foods, the importance of sleep at different stages of development, etc.)

Other Tools

Providing unique online tools, gadgets and applications on your website is a great way to increase visitor engagement and add value to your users. Health-related calculators are great tools to add to your website. Others can include things like diagnostic tools, and even recipes.

In part 2, we will be discussing a several WordPress-based tools you can use in your health site that improve your seo, increase user engagement and generate more visitors to your business.

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

To continue, click this link:

• Your Medical Clinic Website – Improving SEO, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Visitors To Your Website Using WordPress Plugins

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