Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

Health and medical services providers today are facing increasing challenges thanks to the web economy.

Challenges Medical Services Practitioners Face Online

Now, more than ever, health services providers must find smarter ways to stand apart from their competition and source new clients. Not only do you have to be fully involved in the community you serve, you must also develop and maintain an active presence online. This includes having a website and learning how to better market your practice online.

In addition to spending money advertising offline, you will probably find (if you haven’t already) that in order to remain competitive, increasingly larger amounts of their marketing budget will need to be delegated to developing and maintaining a website that brings new prospects, engages visitors, outperforms the competition in search engines and helps to increase your marketing exposure online.

This means that your website not only has to look great, your web pages have to be fast-loading, and your website has to be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that your site’s needs may change over time and sections may need to be updated often. This requires a well-developed website and content management strategy in place.

One other challenge that medical services providers face with their websites, as most professions do for that matter, is that they have only around thirty seconds to help visitors find what they need 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 The Medical Profession In The Digital Economy

As well as facing many new business and technology changes, there are also loads of online opportunities available for health or medical-related businesses that can evolve to meet digital demands and think strategically in terms of improving their online marketing skills.

In this article, you will learn about ways and opportunities to attract new client accounts and establish online credibility for your medical or health business.

As well as providing tips and information on cost-effective ways to improve your medical or health website, we also recommend that you consider using the WordPress Content Management System to power your health-related business website or blog.

For more information about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress Content Management System (CMS), go here:

• How A Poorly Built Web Site Can Cost You Business
• Everything You Need To Know About Growing Your Small Business Online With WordPress

How To Improve Your Health Website

This section looks at how to improve your health or medical-related website and get better results. We show you what pages you need, what content you need, ways to improve your layout and navigation, etc.

If you need assistance or help planning your website, go here: How To Plan Your Business Web Site: A Useful Blueprint For Non-Technical Business Owners

Essential Pages

Professional websites require a number of essential pages. Let’s discuss the pages your  need to have and how to set up your medical or health website for best results.

Services And Products Page

You need a page that describes your services and any products that you offer. Depending on which area you specialize in, this page could list services like:

• Medicine & Surgery – e.g. anaesthetics, neurosurgery diabetes, plastic surgery, stroke, rheumatology, weight loss surgery, optometry emergency surgery, etc.
• Dental Services – e.g. general dentistry, children’s dentistry, bad breath treatment, restorations, orthodontics, emergency dental, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. heart surgery, chronic heart conditions
• Prenatal & Neonatal – e.g. obstetrics, midwifery, etc.
• Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic – breast screens, lung screening, audiology, pap smears, magnetic resonance imaging, allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology services – lab testing and analysis, emergency pathology testing, insurance and corporate testing, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling – mental health services, alcohol, tobacco & other drug counselling, domestic abuse, wellness coaching, social development services
• Alternative therapies – Chinese medicine, homeopathy, reiki, tai chi, chiropractic services, hypnotherapy, etc.
• Other medical services/therapies – weight management, chiropody, lymphedema therapy, optical services, neurosciences, artificial limbs, mobility, home care, clinical information, medical transport, etc.

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

About Us Page

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

It should include any awards, accreditations, recognitions, certifications, associations, publications, etc., that you can use to promote your practice and position yourself above similar service providers.

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

Our Team

Are you looking for quicker, simpler and cost-effective ways to sell more products or services online? Then one of the things you can do, is help your prospective clients get to know, like and trust you and your organization better.

Your business needs to be relatable. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your staff or team members. It should include a photo and a mini bio. Since most visitors are probably not familiar with health-related terms your descriptions should tell who they are and what their specialties are. You may also want to explain what those specialized areas do. This page should also include social buttons that will allow your prospective clients to follow some of your staff members on their social networks.

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

(Add an employee description page. Image sourced from: southperthchiro.com.au)

To learn more about how to create and add an easy-to-manage simple staff directory to your site using free WordPress plugins, go here: How To Create A Simple Staff Directory For Your WordPress Site With No Coding Skills Required

Work With Us

This is a listing of job opportunities available within the practice. This page would include training offered, benefits, professional development, etc. You can include information about upcoming career opportunities in the medical and health 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, subscribe to your newsletter, follow you on social media, etc.

Case Studies And Testimonials

Case studies and reviews from clients are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase your services. By adding a page with testimonials and case studies, you are also helping to establish social proof online for your business.

(Add a page with client reviews and case studies. Image source: arrowsmiledental.com)

We have written extensively about using testimonials, case studies and reviews to improve your business results online. For more info, see this article: How To Create Better Results Online Using Knockout Testimonials

Contact Us Page

Having a contact page is crucial.

Your contact page should provide:

• Name Of Your Business
• Street address of consulting practice
• Telephone
• Facsimile number
• Contact email
• Map
• Web URL
• Contact form
• Request for more information – who to contact
• Links to social media pages
• Online chat (optional)

If your business operates from several areas you will want to make that clear when displaying your address and contact info.

Consider also including links to an FAQ page, useful pages, online booking request, support area, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.

Add A Health Or Medical-Related Blog Section

A blog is a powerful marketing tool for your business. Most blogging platforms typically include a content management system that is easy to use and allows you to promote your business by publishing content like events, new releases, useful articles and tutorials, informative posts, videos, infographics, etc.

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

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 serve as both your website and business blog.

You probably don’t know this, but an expertly configured WordPress site can become an automated traffic-generation machine that will begin delivering a stream of targeted visitors to your site, simply by publishing content on a consistent basis to your website.

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

If you would like to know more about this here:

• Web Traffic Blueprint – Discover How To Turn Your WordPress Blog Into An Automated Traffic Machine

Legal Information Pages

It’s vitally important for medical professionals businesses to make sure they have a website that complies will all legal requirements online. This is not only important for establishing credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that you are not breaching any local, regional and federal laws and regulations in whichever area or location you service.

Depending on the products and services you provide, adding the legal pages below to your website will help keep you out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers, and other potential sources of threats and legal inconveniences:

• Contact Us
• Privacy Policy
• Terms And Conditions 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
• etc.

To learn more about adding legal pages to your site, see this article: Adding Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

Improve Your Web Content

In today’s globally competitive economy, having a sound content marketing strategy has become one of the key differentiators for businesses that sell similar products or provide similar services.

You want to provide great content with advice, information and tips that will get your visitors to share your information with others online and come back for more content. This is the most effective way to inform and educate your visitors and prospective clients about your services.

For example, if you provide products or services that help people manage their weight, then some of the areas you could cover in your content include:

• Emotional causes for weight issues (possible causes, identifying yours)
• How to identify the bad habits you need to correct to ensure permanent weight loss
• Comparing different diets, e.g. Low carb diet, GI diet, Volumetrics diet (what these are, how they can benefit you, how effective they are)
• Could a personal chef 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 health-related services, by explaining benefits, procedures, terminology, etc.

Remember to use the same keywords and terminology in your articles that readers 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 show you how to drive more traffic to your website, save money creating useful content that will add value to 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!

Improving Visitor Experience

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

RSS Feeds – Content Syndication

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds provide lots of benefits for your site.

If you provide information that adds value to others, 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 content updates are kept in one place
• your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Your feeds can be shared
• Feeds allow users to subscribe
• It provides links to your site
• RSS feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
• There are several ways your readers can receive your content (e.g. subscribers can read your content on their mobile device using a feed reader)
• It’s built into WordPress

There are also a number of benefits when it comes 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 loads of useful content for your website by visiting sites of relevant government departments and industry bodies.

For example, here are examples of RSS feeds containing useful information that you could add to your 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 choose specific RSS feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Body image, Fitness and nutrition, Illnesses and disabilities, 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 RSS feeds from leading medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. BMJ Disease in Childhood – Education and Practice, BMJ Journal of Medical Genetics, CDC USA, BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine, Respiratory Research, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health - Find many RSS feeds on health-related topics here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• FDA – Find FDA-related feeds (e.g. criminal investigations, food safety, tainted products, 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. Victoria – http://www.health.vic.gov.au/rss/newsfeed.xml
• 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 feeds by going to 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 feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Alzheimer’s Disease, Mental Health, Cold & Flu, Depression, Prevention & Wellness, Travel Health, etc.)
• MedicalNewsToday.com – Medical News 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. Stem Cell Research, Ebola, Sexual Health/STDs, Body Aches, Bones/Orthopedics, Tropical Diseases, Restless Legs Syndrome, etc.)

You can also search online for general feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific areas, e.g. “medical training rss feeds”, “autism rss feeds”, “wearable technology rss feeds”, etc.

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

Adding Forms

Checklists and educational charts are a fantastic way to help increase user engagement and add value to your readers. Checklists and medical forms can provide users with useful step-by-step information and resources to get necessary steps performed. Forms and checklists can also be great educational tools.

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

• Booking appointments
• Checklists for pre or post surgery
• Health checklists for specific systems
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, oral hygiene program, cosmetic dentistry, etc.
• Weight loss and nutrition program checklists
• General charts & infographics (e.g. caloric level of different foods, sleep requirements at different ages, etc.)

Provide Unique Tools

Providing useful online tools and applications on your website is a great way to increase visitor engagement and add value to your visitors. Health-related calculators, for example, are popular tools for your website. Other tools could include things like diagnostic tools, or even recipes.

In the next section of this guide, we will be discussing a number of online tools you can use in your health-related site using WordPress plugins that can also help to improve your seo, improve user engagement and generate more visitors to your business.

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This is the end of section 1 of this step-by-step article on ways to improve your medical or health web presence.

Click on this link to keep reading:

• Your Health Website – WordPress Plugins And Themes For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Better User Engagement And Traffic Generation

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