Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

The digital age has not only transformed businesses globally, it has also created increasingly difficult challenges and opportunities for medical professionals.

Challenges Professional Medical And Health Services Practitioners Face Online

Today, more than ever, health and medical services providers must work hard to remain competitive and source new clientele. Not only do you have to participate in the community you serve, you must also develop an active presence online. This includes having a website and learning how to better market your services online.

As well as spending money advertising offline, you will probably find that in order to compete, increasingly larger amounts of their marketing budget need to be directed towards the development and maintenance of a website that brings new clients, engages users, outperforms the competition in search engines and helps you create a wider degree of marketing reach online.

This means that your site not only has to look great, your pages have to be fast-loading, and your website layout has to be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that the needs of the website will change over time and some aspects will need to be updated frequently. This requires a sound web and content management strategy in place.

Another challenge that health businesses (and most businesses) face with their websites, is that your site has around 30 seconds or less to give visitors the information they are searching for 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

Opportunities For The Medical Profession In The Digital Economy

As well as facing a number of significant challenges, there are also plenty of online opportunities available to medical or health-related practices that can evolve to meet digital economy challenges and who can think outside the box in terms of improving their online business marketing skills.

In this detailed guide, you will learn new ways and opportunities to generate more traffic and improve 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 platform to power your health website.

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

• Learn How A Poorly Designed Website Can Cost You Customers And What To Do About It
• The Small Business Owner’s Guide To WordPress

Ways To Improve Your Website

This section looks at how to improve your website and get better results. We will look at what web pages you need, what content you need, navigation structure, etc.

If you need assistance or help planning your website, read this detailed step-by-step guide: A Cost-Saving Guide To Web Site Planning For Business Owners

Improve Your Web Pages

All business websites need several basic web pages. Let’s review these.

Products And Services Description Page

You need a page that explains your services and any products that you offer. Depending on which area you specialize in, your page can include services like:

• Medical And Surgical – e.g. anaesthetics, nephrology endocrinology, oral surgery, aged care, renal, colon/rectal surgery, ophtalmology elective surgery, etc.
• Dental Services – e.g. preventive dentistry, children’s dentistry, oral health, restorations, braces, emergency dentistry, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. heart surgery, chronic heart conditions
• Prenatal and Neonatal – e.g. birth suites, midwifery, etc.
• Child Health services – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic – breast screening, lung screening, audiology, gynaecology, MRI scanning, food allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology – laboratory testing and analysis, emergency pathology testing, occupational and environmental testing, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling – mental health services, alcohol, tobacco & other drug counselling, couples, wellness, social development services
• Alternative treatments – acupuncture, aromatherapy, natural therapy, shiatsu, osteopathy, hypnosis, etc.
• Other medical services/therapies – weight management, podiatry, lymphedema therapy, rehabilitation, inherited diseases, prosthetics, hearing aids, home and community care, sexual health, medical transport, etc.

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

About Us Page

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

Remember to mention any awards, recognitions, accreditations, certifications, publications, associations, etc., that could be used to promote your business and position yourself above your competitors.

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

Staff Page

Are you searching for cost-effective ideas to grow your business online? Then something you can do, is make it easier for your prospects to get to know, like and trust you, your team and your business better.

You want your business to be relatable. One 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 are probably not very well-versed in health terms it should tell who they are and what they specialize in. You may also want to explain what those specialized areas mean. This page can include social buttons that will allow your site visitors to follow some of your team members on their social pages.

On this page, make sure to highlight your employee’s qualifications, why they are an invaluable asset to your team, and more importantly, how they can help add value to your clients’ business.

(Make sure to add a staff page. Image source: southperthchiro.com.au)

To learn more about how to easily add an easy-to-maintain list of staff or team members in a WordPress site without messing with code, go here: How To Easily Add A Simple Employee List To Your WordPress Site With No Coding Skills Required

Career Opportunities

This is a listing of job or career opportunities available within your clinic. It could include training provided, employee benefits, professional development, social activities encouraged or sponsored by your business, etc. It should include case studies of graduates who have risen within your organization and information about new career opportunities in the medical or health-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, join your newsletter, follow you on social media, etc.

Case Studies & Testimonials

Testimonials from past clients and case studies are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase the services you offer. Adding a web page with client reviews and case studies also helps your health or medical website to establish social proof.

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

To learn more about using client case studies and reviews go here: All You Need To Know To Start Getting Better Results Online Using Highly Effective Testimonials

Contact Us

A contact page is vitally important.

Your contact page should provide:

• Name Of Your Business
• Your physical address
• Phone number
• Facsimile number
• Email address
• Google Map and directions
• Website address
• Contact form
• Contact name
• Links to social media networks
• Interactive chat (optional)

If your business services multiple locations you want to make this clear when showing the address and contact information.

You could also include a few links point to commonly-asked questions page, frequently-visited pages, online booking form, support page, newsletter, blog, etc.

Add A Health-Related Blog Section

A blog is a powerful marketing tool for your business. Most blogging platforms typically include a content management system that is simple to use and allows you to promote your business using timely content like announcements, updates, useful articles and tutorials, discussions on current topics, how-to videos, webinars, etc.

If you already have an existing health-related site, then consider adding a WordPress blog to market your medical practice.

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

Not many businesses know this, but WordPress can become an automated traffic-generation machine that can instantly begin delivering web traffic to your web site, simply by adding content to your website on a consistent basis.

(WordPress can automate your traffic generation)

Go here to learn more about this:

• Web Traffic Blueprint – How To Automatically Increase Your Web Visitors For Your Business

Legal Info Pages

As a professional business, ensuring that you have a compliant website is crucially important. This is not only important for building credibility with visitors, but also to ensure that no laws or regulations are being breached in whatever location you do business.

Depending on the services and products you provide, adding some or all of the legal pages below to your medical site will help keep you out of legal hot water with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Facebook), and other potential legal threats and inconveniences:

• Contact Page
• Privacy Statement
• Terms And Conditions
• Website Disclaimer
• Affiliate Agreement
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• DMCA Notice
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Links Policy
• Health Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• and others

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

Ways To Improve The Content On Your Site

In today’s globally competitive 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.

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

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

• Potential health issues caused by being overweight
• How to set realistic, but achievable weight loss goals
• How you eat your food - just as important as what you eat (eat at table, chew slowly)
• Apps for tracking calories and exercise
• Etc.

You can also create a series of informative articles that will help your your readers gain a better understanding of your medical or health services, by explaining benefits, procedures, costs (including payment plans, insurance coverage, etc).

Remember to use the same keywords in your content that your readers 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 you how to drive more traffic to your site, save money creating high-quality content that will add value to your visitors and grow your website using content marketing. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also completely FREE!

Tips For Improving User 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 ways you can improve visitor engagement and UX.

Syndicate Content Using RSS Feeds

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve your visitor engagement and user experience in several ways.

If you provide information that adds value to others, other businesses may 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
• Your feed can be shared and picked up by other sites online
• Feeds allow for subscribing
• An RSS feed provides a way for external links to point back to your site
• Your feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
• RSS provides several ways for readers to receive your content (e.g. users can read your content on their mobile device using feed readers)
• RSS is built into WordPress

There are also benefits when it comes to providing information on 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 loads of useful content for your website by searching online for relevant government departments and well-known industry bodies.

Below we have listed some feeds you could consider adding to your website:

• 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, Fitness and nutrition, HIV/AIDS, Mental health, Pregnancy, 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. Journal of Neurophysiology, Epidemiology – Featured Articles, CDC USA, BMJ Archives of Disease, BMJ Postgraduate Medical Journal, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health (www.nih.gov) - Get various feeds on health-related news here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• FDA – Find FDA-related feeds (e.g. consumer health information, MedWatch safety alerts (human medical products), product recalls, cosmetics, 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 (www.cdc.gov) - Find many health-related RSS 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 – MedTerms Medical Word of the Day: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/dailyword.xml. You can also choose specific feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Allergies, Menopause, Chronic Pain, Pediatrics / Healthy Kids, Eyesight, Infectious Disease, etc.)
• MedicalNewsToday.com – Featured Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
• Medical News Today – You can also choose specific feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Urology/Nephrology, Acid Reflux/GERD, Depression, Sleep/Sleep Disorders/Insomnia, Smoking/Quit Smoking, Nutrition/Diet, Genetics, etc.)

You can also search online for general RSS feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific subjects, e.g. “headache rss feeds”, “cholesterol rss feeds”, “drug trials rss feeds”, etc.

(RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve your health or medical-related site’s UX.)

Provide Charts And Checklists

Checklists and medical forms are a fantastic way to help increase user engagement, add value to your audience and provide something unique. They can provide users with useful step-by-step information and resources to perform necessary steps. They are great instructional tools.

You can provide a range of online or downloadable checklists and forms (or links to these) covering subjects 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, maintenance program, cosmetic dentistry, etc.
• Weight loss and nutrition program checklists
• General charts & infographics (e.g. sugar content in different foods, the importance of sleep at different stages of development, etc.)

Other Tools

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

In the next section of this detailed guide, we take a look at a number of online tools you can use in your health site using WordPress plugins and themes that improve your seo, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your business.

***

This is the end of part 1.

Click here to continue reading:

• Tips For Health Services Practitioners – Improving SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using Plugins & Themes

***

***