Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

The online economy has not only transformed the way business is done worldwide, it has also created growing challenges and great opportunities for medical services practitioners.

Challenges Health Services Professionals Face Online

Today, more than ever, businesses in the medical and health sector must work harder than ever to remain competitive. Not only do you have to be fully involved in the community your business serves, you must also develop a strong digital presence. This includes having a website and searching for smarter ways to promote your medical or health services online.

As well as spending money in offline marketing activities, businesses in the medical or health-related industry are now finding that increasingly larger amounts of their marketing budget need to be directed to develop and maintain a website that can bring in clients, engage visitors, outrank the competition in search engines and social media, and help to create wider reach online.

This means that your website not only has to look professional, your pages have to be fast-loading, and your website has to be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, the needs of the website may change over time and sections will need to be updated frequently. This requires implementing well-planned web and content management strategy.

Another difficult challenge that medical or health organizations (and all other professions) face with their websites, is that they have an average of 30 seconds or less to provide users what they are searching 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

Online Opportunities For Medical And Health Services Professionals

As well as facing a number of significant challenges, there are also loads of online opportunities available to businesses in the medical sector that can evolve to meet the demands of the online economy and can think strategically in terms of improving their online business marketing skills.

In this comprehensive guide, you will learn new opportunities to generate web traffic and build more online credibility for your business.

As well as providing useful website improvement tips, we also recommend that you consider using the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) to power your health or medical-related business website or blog.

To learn more about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform, see the articles below:

• How A Poorly Built Website Can Lose You Money And What To Do About It
• Using WordPress To Grow Your Small Business Online

Practical Tips To Improve Your Website

In this section we will start with the basics and show you how to improve your medical-related website and get better results online. We show you what pages your website needs, what type of content works best for health or medical websites, layout and navigation structure, etc.

If you need additional information about website planning, read this article we have written: A Comprehensive Guide To Web Site Planning For Business Owners

How To Improve Your Web Pages

Professional business websites require several basic pages. Let’s go over these.

Your Services And Products

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

• Medicine & Surgery – e.g. acute pain management, nephrology diabetes, plastic surgery, aged care, respiratory, bariatric surgery, eye diseases operating theaters, etc.
• Dental Services – e.g. cosmetic dentistry, holistic dentistry, oral health, teeth whitening, orthodontics, emergency dentistry, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. heart monitoring, coronary care
• Prenatal and Postnatal – e.g. birth suites, maternity services, etc.
• Child Health services – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic – breast screening, skin cancer, x-ray, pap smears, psychosis, allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology – laboratory testing and analysis, routine pathology testing, fine-needle aspiration, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling – mental health services, alcohol, tobacco & other drug services, domestic abuse, wellness, social development services
• Alternative therapies – Chinese medicine, homeopathy, reiki, meditation, chiropractic, hypnosis, etc.
• Other medical services/therapies – diet and nutrition, sports medicine, reproductive endocrinology, rehabilitation, inherited diseases, prosthetics, hearing aids, home care, sexual health, medical supplies, etc.

List all of the services you provide. Educate your visitors about the benefits of using these services and direct them to your contact or appointment booking page.

About Us Page

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

Remember to include any professional awards, certifications, accreditations, recognitions, publications, associations, etc., that you can use to promote your practice and position yourself above other competitors.

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

Our Team

Are you looking for quicker, simpler and cost-effective ways to sell more products online and increase user interaction on your site? Then one of the things you can do, is help visitors get to know, like and trust your business better.

You want your business to be relatable. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your employees. It should include a photo and a brief biography. Since most visitors are probably not that well-versed in health-related terms your descriptions 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 visitors to follow some of your team members on their social pages.

On this page, don’t be afraid to humanize your team members with personal stories, hobbies, etc., but make sure to outline your employee’s expertise and qualifications, how they add value to your team, and more importantly, how they will help add value to your clients’ business.

(Make sure to add a staff description page. Screenshot image source: southperthchiro.com.au)

For a detailed tutorial on how to create and add a list of employees or team members to your website without coding skills, go here: WordPress Plugin Tutorial: Adding An Employee Directory

Job Opportunities

This is a listing of job opportunities within your business. This page could include training, benefits, advancement opportunities, etc. It should include case studies of recruits who have worked their way up in your organization and information about upcoming career opportunities in the health and medical industry.

Also include 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 updates list, follow your social pages, etc.

Testimonials And Case Studies

Case studies and reviews from clients are a great way to attract potential clients and showcase your services. Adding a page with case studies and client reviews also helps to provide social proof.

(Add a web page with case studies and testimonials from previous clients. Image source: arrowsmiledental.com)

We have written a detailed article about using client case studies and reviews get better results online. Go here to learn more about this: Create Better Results Online With Effective User Testimonials

Contact Page

A clean contact page is absolutely vital.

Your contact page should provide:

• Name
• Physical address
• Phone number
• Facsimile number
• Email address
• Map and directions
• Web address
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Social media links
• Online chat feature

If you operate out of multiple locations you will want to make this clear when displaying the address and contact info.

Consider also including links pointing to commonly-asked questions page, frequently-visited pages, online booking request, helpdesk, newsletter, blog, etc.

Add A Health Or Medical-Related-Related Blog

A blog is a powerful marketing tool for your business. Many blogging platforms typically include a content management system that allows you to easily promote your business using content such as news, updates, useful articles and tutorials, informative posts, how-to videos, webinars, etc.

If you already have an established health or medical-related site, then consider adding a WordPress-driven blog to promote your medical company.

If you don’t have a website yet, or if your existing website is very hard to add new content to or not delivering you the results you want, then WordPress can be used both as your business website and blog.

Very few businesses know that WordPress can turn into an automated traffic-generation machine that can begin delivering targeted traffic to your website, simply by publishing new content on a consistent basis to your website.

(WordPress can drive new traffic automatically to your website)

For more details:

• WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint – Learn How To Turn Your Website Into An Automated Traffic Generation Machine

Legal Information

As a professional business, having a website that complies will all legal requirements online is crucially important. This is not only important for building trust and credibility with visitors, but also to ensure that no laws and regulations are being breached in whichever region you service.

Depending on the services and products you provide, adding some or all of the legal pages below to your medical-related site will help keep you out of legal hot water with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Google), and other potential 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 Links 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, see this article: How To Add Legal Pages To Your Site

How To Improve Your Web Content

In today’s ultra-competitive online economy, the sooner you begin engaging in the practice of content marketing, the sooner you will begin to see results and differentiate yourself from your competitors.

Provide great content with useful information, advice and tips that will get your readers to share your information with others and come back for more. Content marketing is the most effective way to inform and teach your visitors and prospective clients about your business and services.

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

• Potential health issues caused by being overweight
• How to calculate how many calories you burn each day
• How to incorporate exercise into your weight loss program
• Vitamins and minerals that aid in weight loss (chromium, calcium, magnesium, etc.)
• Etc.

You can also create a series of informative articles that will help your your prospective clients understand your medical or health-related services, by explaining benefits, procedures, terminology, etc.

Use keywords in your content that your prospective clients would search for 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 that will teach exactly how to drive more traffic to your site, save money creating useful content for your site visitors and grow your business online using content marketing. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also 100% FREE!

Improve User Experience

Improving your site’s user experience (known as UX) will help to keep visitors coming back and using your site. This section will show you different ways to improve your visitor engagement and user experience.

Add RSS Feeds

An RSS feed provides many benefits for your business.

If you provide valuable information, other businesses will want to syndicate your content.

Some of the benefits of syndicating your content to other businesses using RSS feeds, include:

• All of your updates are kept in one place
• Doesn’t rely on email
• Your feed can be shared online
• Allows for subscribing
• It provides a way for links to point back to your site
• Feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
• There are several ways your readers can receive your content (e.g. subscribers can view your content on their mobile device using feed readers)
• RSS is built into WordPress

There are also a number of benefits when it comes to providing valuable information on 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 loads of useful content just search online for medical-related government departments or key industry bodies.

Here are a few feeds you could add to your site:

• US Department Of Health And Human Services – e.g. Latest news feed: http://www.hhs.gov/rss/news/hhsnews.xml, etc. You can also select specific RSS feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Breast cancer, Healthy aging, HIV/AIDS, Minority women’s health, Pregnancy, etc.) here: http://womenshealth.gov/news/rss/rss-feeds.html
• US National Libraries Of Medicine – For a list of feeds from various medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. BMJ Quality and Safety in Health Care, American Association of Neurological Surgeons, Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, The Journal of Physiology, Infectious Agents and Cancer, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health (www.nih.gov) - Get many health-related RSS feeds here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• FDA – Find FDA-related news feeds (e.g. FDA drug safety, food safety reports, recalls, drugs, 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 - Get many feeds on health-related news and 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 feeds section (e.g. Fitness and 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 select individual RSS feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Alzheimer’s Disease, Men’s health, Nutrition, Food, & Recipes, Pregnancy, Sexual Health, Skin, etc.)
• MedicalNewsToday.com – MNT 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. MRSA/Drug Resistance, Pharmacy/Pharmacist, Radiology/Nuclear Medicine, Autism, CJD/vCJD/Mad Cow Disease, Epilepsy, Crohn’s/IBD, etc.)

You can also search online for general RSS feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific subjects, e.g. “hospice care rss feeds”, “women’s health rss feeds”, “premature ejaculation rss feeds”, etc.

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

Checklists And Forms

Checklists and explanatory charts are a great way to help increase visitor engagement, add value to your visitors and provide something unique. They can give them useful step-by-step instructions and resources to perform necessary tasks. Charts and checklists are also great instructional tools.

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

• Checklists and forms for booking appointments
• Checklists for post-surgery recovery
• Health checklists for specific systems
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, active 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 ages, etc.)

Other Tools

Providing useful online tools, gadgets and applications on your website is a great way to increase visitor engagement and add value to your potential clients. Calculators, for example are popular tools for your website. Other applications can include things like diagnostic tools, or even recipes.

In the next section of this detailed article, we look at a several online tools you can add to your website using WordPress plugins and themes that can improve search engine optimization, improve user engagement and drive more traffic to your business.

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This is the end of part one.

Click on this link to keep reading:

• How To Build And Grow Your Medical Services & Health Clinic Business Online – Part 2

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