Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

The digital age has not only transformed business around the world, it has also created a growing number of challenges and great opportunities for health and medical services practitioners.

Online Challenges For Health & Medical Businesses

Now, more than ever, businesses in the medical industry must work harder than ever to remain competitive. Not only do you have to be fully involved in the community you serve, you must also maintain an active web presence. This includes having a website and figuring out smarter ways to promote your medical or health services online.

As well as investing money in offline marketing, you will probably find (if you haven’t already) that in order to remain competitive, you will need to invest a greater amount of your marketing budget towards developing and managing a website that can bring new prospective clients, engage visitors, outrank the competition in search engines and social media, and help you create a wider amount of marketing exposure 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 even more importantly, your site’s needs may change in time and sections may need to be updated often. This requires a well-developed web and content management strategy in place.

One other difficult challenge that health and medical services practitioners (and most other professions) face, is that they have an average of thirty seconds to give visitors what they are looking for or they will go away.

“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 Health & Medical Businesses In The Online Economy

As well as facing many business and technology changes, there are also many online opportunities available for medical-related businesses that can adapt to meet online challenges and can think progressively in terms of improving their online business marketing skills.

This comprehensive guide will help you uncover opportunities to attract more visitors and establish stronger online credibility for your business.

As well as providing useful website improvement tips, we also recommend that you consider using the WordPress platform to power your medical or health website or blog.

For more information about the benefits and advantages of using WordPress, see these articles:

• How A Poorly Designed Web Site Can Lose You Business And What To Do About It
• Everything You Need To Know To Grow Your Business Using A WordPress Site

Practical Tips For Improving Your Health Center Services Website

We’ll start first by going over some basic stuff. In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve your medical website and get better results online. We show you what pages you need, what type of content works best for health or medical-related websites, tips for improving navigation structure, etc.

If you need assistance or help planning your website, visit this page: A Comprehensive Guide To Web Site Planning For Business Owners

Basic Web Pages

All websites need some essential pages. Let’s review these.

Services And Products

You need to include a page that explains your products or services. Depending on which area of health or medical services you specialize in, this page could include services like:

• Medicine & Surgery – e.g. pain management, pulmonology endocrinology, plastic surgery, continence management, renal, colon/rectal surgery, ophtalmology operating theaters, etc.
• Dental Services – e.g. general dentistry, holistic dentistry, oral health, teeth whitening, dentofacial orthopedics, emergency dental, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. cardiac patient rehabilitation, chronic heart conditions
• Prenatal/Postnatal – e.g. obstetrics, maternity services, etc.
• Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic services – mammography, lung screening, oral health, women’s health, magnetic resonance imaging, allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology services – laboratory testing and analysis, emergency pathology testing, fine-needle aspiration cytology, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling – mental health services, alcohol, tobacco & other drug counselling, domestic abuse, wellbeing, social work services
• Alternative treatments – Chinese medicine, aromatherapy, functional medicine, tai chi, chiropractic services, hypnotherapy, etc.
• Other medical services – weight management, chiropody, fertility services, rehabilitation, inherited diseases, prosthetics, mobility, home and community care, sexual health, medical supplies, etc.

List all of the services you provide, not just the ones you specialize in. Educate your visitors about the benefits of using your services and why they should book an appointment.

Who We Are

This page should give a description of your business and what it stands for, its unique approach, causes that you support, etc.

It’s important to mention any awards, accreditations, certifications, recognitions, publications, associations, etc., that can be used to promote your services and position yourself above other competitors.

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

Staff Page

Are you searching for quicker and simpler ideas to sell more products online or increase user interaction with your site? Then one of the things you can do, is help prospects get to know, like and trust your business better.

Prospects need to relate to your business. One great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your people. It should include a photo and a brief bio. Since most visitors are probably not well-versed in health or medical 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. It should include social buttons so your visitors can follow your staff members on their social networks.

In this page, make sure to outline each employee’s expertise and 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 page that introduces your staff members to prospective new clients. Screenshot source: southperthchiro.com.au)

To learn more about how to easily add an easy-to-maintain simple employee directory in your site using free plugins, refer to this tutorial: How To Create A Simple Staff Directory For Your WordPress Site With No Coding Skills

Recruitment Page

List any career opportunities available within your practice. It could include training provided, employee benefits, professional development, etc. It should include information such as the job outlook and upcoming career opportunities in the health 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 contact list, follow your social pages, etc.

Testimonials

Testimonials and case studies are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase what kind of services you offer. Adding a page with case studies and testimonials from previous clients also establishes social proof.

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

We have written extensively on using client testimonials and client reviews get better results online. For more info, see this article: Learn How To Turn More Visitors Into Qualified Prospects With Highly Effective Customer Testimonials

Contact Us

Having a clean contact page is crucial.

It should include some or all of the following information:

• Name Of Your Business
• Your physical address
• Telephone
• Facsimile
• Email
• Google Map
• Web address
• Contact form
• Request for information – contact details
• Links to social media profiles
• Chat/Skype (optional feature)

If you operate from several locations you should make this clear when showing the address and contact information.

You can also include links to an FAQ page, main pages, booking request, support area, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.

Add A Health Blog Section

A blog can be a very powerful marketing tool for your business. Many blogging platforms typically comprise of a content management system that allows you to promote your business using content like announcements, updates, useful articles, informative posts, promotional videos, media presentations, etc.

If you already have an existing medical or health website, then consider adding a WordPress-driven blog to create more exposure for your medical practice.

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

Very few people know that WordPress can turn your web presence into an automated traffic system that can help attract new visitors to your website, simply by adding new content to your website on a consistent basis.

(WordPress can automate your traffic generation)

To learn more about this go here:

• Website Traffic Blueprint – Discover How To Turn Your Website Into A Web Traffic Machine

Legal Information Pages

Having a compliant website is important. This is not only important for establishing credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that you are not breaking laws or regulations wherever you do business.

Adding the legal pages below to your health site will help you stay out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers, and other potential legal threats or inconveniences:

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

We have written a detailed article about adding legal pages to your site. For more details, go here: What You Need To Know About Adding Legal Pages To Your Website

How To Improve Your Content

In today’s ultra-competitive global business economy, the ability to deliver valuable content to visitors at no cost has become one of the key business differentiators.

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

For example, if you provide products that help people lose weight, then some of the areas you could publish content about include the following:

• What is BMI (what it stands for, what it does, how to calculate yours)
• How to figure out how many calories you consume each day
• How you eat your food - just as important as what you eat (eat at table, chew slowly)
• Vitamins and minerals that help with weight loss (chromium, calcium, magnesium, etc.)
• And many other content topics

You can also create a series of informative articles that will help your your prospective clients gain a better understanding of your services, by explaining benefits, procedures, terminology, etc.

Include keywords and terms in your content that your prospective clients 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 and practical tips that will show you how to drive more traffic to your web site, save money creating high-quality content that will add value to your visitors and grow your website using content. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also completely FREE!

Ways To Improve Visitor Engagement And User Experience

Improving your website’s user experience (known as UX) helps to keep visitors coming back and engaging with your site. This section will show you ways you can improve your visitor engagement and UX.

Syndicating Content With RSS Feeds

An RSS feed provides lots of benefits for your health or medical-related business.

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 feeds can be shared
• Feeds allow users to subscribe
• A feed provides a way for external links to point back to your content
• RSS feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
• RSS provides multiple ways for readers to receive your content (e.g. subscribers can read the content on their mobile device using different applications)
• RSS is built into WordPress

There are also a number of benefits when it comes to providing valuable content on your site from other sites, 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 for your website, visit sites of medical-related government departments or industry bodies.

For example, here are a few useful RSS feeds you could consider adding to your website:

• US Department Of Health And Human Services – e.g. Blog posts RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SelectedHhsBlogPosts, etc. You can search by departments and select individual feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Breast cancer, Fitness and nutrition, HIV/AIDS, Menopause, Smoking and how to quit, etc.) here: http://womenshealth.gov/news/rss/rss-feeds.html
• US National Libraries Of Medicine – For a list of feeds from well-known medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. PhysiologicalReviews, The Psychiatrist, BMJ Sexually Transmitted Infections, Toxicological Sciences, BMJ British Journal of Ophthalmology, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health (www.nih.gov) - Find many health-related news feeds here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• US Food And Drug Administration (FDA) – Find FDA-related news feeds (e.g. consumer health information updates, MedWatch safety alerts (human medical products), product 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. NSW – http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/pages/rss.aspx
• Centers For Disease Control And Prevention (www.cdc.gov) - Find various feeds on health-related news and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
• Medical News Feeds: You can search medical news RSS feeds in major news publications like the NYTimes feeds section (e.g. Medical research: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Research.xml)
• MedicineNet.com – Daily Health and Medical News: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/dailyhealth.xml. You can also choose individual RSS feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Allergies, Men’s health, Neurology, Depression, Sexual Health, Sleep, etc.)
• Medical News Today – Featured Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
• MedicalNewsToday.com – You can also select individual RSS feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Stem Cell Research, Arthritis/Rheumatology, Pregnancy/Obstetrics, Sleep/Sleep Disorders/Insomnia, Rehabilitation/Physical Therapy, Women’s Health/Gynecology, Restless Legs Syndrome, etc.)

You can also search online for general RSS feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific topics, e.g. “drug resistance rss feeds”, “back pain rss feeds”, “genetics rss feeds”, etc.

(Add RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds to improve your website’s user experience.)

Provide Checklists & Forms

Checklists and medical forms are a great way to increase visitor engagement, add value to your readers and set yourself apart from the competition. Checklists and medical forms can give them useful step-by-step information and resources to complete a task. Checklists and charts are also great educational tools.

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

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

Online Tools

Providing useful online tools and applications on your website can help increase visitor engagement and add significant value to your visitors. Health-related calculators are great tools you can add to your website. Other applications can include things like nutritional tools, or even recipes.

In the next section of this guide, we take a look at a number of WordPress-based tools you can use in your site that improve your seo, improve user engagement and generate more web traffic to your business.

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This is the end of part 1 of this step-by-step article on ways to grow your medical business web presence.

Click on this link to continue reading:

• Online Business Tips For Health Services Practitioners – WordPress Plugins And Themes For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Better User Engagement And Traffic Generation

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