Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress
The web economy has not only transformed business globally, it has also created many challenges and opportunities for the health or medical industry.
Challenges Medical Services Professionals Face Online
Today, more than ever, health and medical services professionals must work harder to remain competitive and obtain new clients. Not only do you have to participate in the community you serve, you must also maintain an active digital presence. This includes having an effective website and figuring out better ways to market your practice online.
As well as investing dollars in offline marketing activities like advertising on local newspapers, ads in industry publications and magazines, radio and tv, etc., businesses in the medical-related industry are now also finding that increasingly larger amounts of their marketing budget need to be allocated towards the development and maintenance of a website that attracts clients, engages users, outranks the competition in search engines and social media, and increases their marketing exposure online.
This means that your website not only has to look professional, load fast, and your website has to be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that the needs of your website may change over time and some areas may need to be updated frequently. This requires the implementation of a well-planned web and content management strategy.
One other challenge that health or medical businesses face with their websites (as other professions do for that matter), is that they have an average of 30 seconds or less to help users 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 Health & Medical Businesses In The Online Economy
As well as facing significant challenges, there are also loads of online opportunities available for businesses in the medical or health-related profession that can evolve to meet the demands of the online economy and can think outside the box in terms of improving their online marketing skills.
This article will help you uncover new opportunities to attract new business and see significant improvements in your business online.
As well as providing general website improvement tips, we also place special emphasis on the benefits and advantages of using WordPress to power your health-related website or blog.
For more information about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress Content Management System (CMS), see these articles:
Tips To Improve Your Website
This section will show you ways to improve your website and get better results online. We show you what pages you need, what content works best for medical websites, ways of improving your layout and navigation, etc.
If you need website planning assistance, see this article we have written: How To Plan A Web Site - A Money-Saving Primer For Business Owners
Your Website Pages
Professional business websites need a number of essential web pages. Let’s take a look at these.
Description Of services And Products
It’s essential to include a page that explains your products and services. Depending on which area of health or medical services you specialize in, this page can list services like:
- Medicine & Surgery – e.g. ear, nose & throat, orthopedics blood disorders, reconstructive surgery, aged care, rheumatology, bariatric surgery, ophtalmology palliative care, etc.
- Dental Services – e.g. general dentistry, children’s dentistry, gum disease, veneers, crowns and bridges, orthodontics, emergency dentistry services, etc.
- Cardiology – e.g. cardiac surgery, coronary care
- Prenatal & Neonatal – e.g. birthing, maternity services, etc.
- Child Health services – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
- Diagnostic – breast screens, skin cancer, audiology, pap smears, psychosis, 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, domestic abuse, wellbeing, social work services
- Alternative therapies – acupuncture, homeopathy, hydrotherapy, tai chi, chiropractic services, hypnotherapy, etc.
- Other medical services/therapies – diet and nutrition, sports medicine, reproductive services, stomal therapy, neurosciences, artificial limbs, mobility, home care, sexual health, medical supplies, etc.
List all of the services you provide. Provide your visitors with information that will educate them about what your services do and direct them to your contact or appointment booking page.
Who We Are
The ‘About Us’ page needs to describe your business and explain to visitors what it stands for, its unique approach, supported community activities, etc.
Remember to also list any professional awards, recognitions, certifications, accreditations, publications, associations, etc., that can be used to promote your services and to position yourself above similar service providers.
(List all of your awards recognitions, certifications, accreditations, publications, associations, etc. in your About page. Screenshot image source: squaremedical.com.au)
Team
Are you looking for quicker, easier and cheaper ideas to sell more products online and get visitors to stay longer on your site? Then make it easier for prospective clients to get to know, like and trust your organization better.
Potential clients need to relate to your business. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your people. This page should include a photo and a brief biography. Since most visitors won’t be that well-versed in medical terms your descriptions should tell who they are and what they specialize in. It should also explain what those specialized areas mean. It can include social buttons so your visitors can follow some of your staff members on their social networks.
On this page, make sure to outline your person’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.
(Add an employee description page. Image source: southperthchiro.com.au)
We have written a detailed tutorial about how to create and add a list directory of staff members in your web site with no coding skills required here: How To Easily Create A Simple Staff Directory In Your WordPress Site With No Coding Skills Required
Work For Us
List any job or career opportunities available within your practice. This page can include training, employee benefits, professional development, social activities encouraged or sponsored by your business, etc. You should also include information about new career opportunities in the health industry.
Maintain a positions available section in your page. If there are no positions currently available, consider inviting people to return periodically to the page, join your announcements list, follow your social pages, etc.
Testimonials
Case studies and client reviews are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase your services. Adding a web page with reviews from clients and case studies also establishes social proof.
(Add a page to your site with reviews from clients and case studies. Image source: arrowsmiledental.com)
We have written extensively on using testimonials, case studies and client reviews improve your business online. Learn more here: Achieve Better Results Online With Captivating Client Testimonials
Contact Us
Having a contact page is absolutely vital.
Your contact page should include some or all of the following information:
- Name Of Your Business
- Your physical location
- Telephone number
- Fax
- Map
- Web address
- Contact form
- Name of person to contact
- Links to social media pages
- Online chat
If your business services different areas you will want to make this clear when displaying your address and contact info.
Consider also including links pointing to the most commonly asked questions page, main pages, online booking form, helpdesk, newsletter, blog, etc.
Add A Blog
A blog can be a powerful marketing tool. Many blogging platforms are built around a content management system that is easy to use and allows you to easily promote your business using content such as the latest announcements, updates, training articles and tutorials, opinions and discussions, videos, webinars, etc.
If you already have an existing website, then consider adding a WordPress-driven blog to market your medical organization.
If you don’t have a website yet, or if your existing website is hard to keep updated or not delivering you the results you want, then WordPress can act as both your website and business blog.
Not many people know this, but WordPress can become an automated traffic-generation machine that can help attract targeted traffic to your business, simply by adding content to your website on a consistent basis.
(An expertly configured WordPress site can drive traffic automatically to your website)
Go here to learn more about this:
Legal Info Pages
It’s crucially important for professional organizations to make sure they have a website that complies will all legal requirements online. This is not only important for building trust and credibility with visitors, but also to ensure that you are not breaking local, regional and federal laws and regulations wherever you practice.
Adding the following legal pages to your medical-related site will help you stay out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers, and other potential sources of legal threats and inconveniences:
- Contact Us
- Privacy Policy
- Terms And Conditions
- 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
To learn more about adding legal pages to your site, refer to this article: How To Add Legal Pages To Your Website
Tips For Improving The Content On Your Site
In today’s ultra-competitive online economy, the sooner you begin to engage in the practice of content marketing, the faster you will begin to see results and differentiate yourself from other competing businesses.
You will want to provide great content with information, advice and tips that will get your readers to share your web pages and come back for more content. Content marketing is a great way to inform and educate site visitors and prospective clients about using your products and services.
For example, if you provide weight management services, then some of the topics you could cover as content on your site:
- What is BMI (what it stands for, what it does, how to calculate yours)
- What are calories and how understanding them aids in weight loss
- Incorporating exercise into your busy schedule
- How to make right choices when eating at restaurants
- Etc.
You can also create a series of educational articles that will help your your prospective clients gain a better understanding of your medical or health services, by explaining benefits, procedures, costs (including payment plans, insurance coverage, etc).
Include keywords and terminology in your content that readers 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 that will teach you how to drive more traffic to your web site, save money creating useful content that will add value to your site visitors and grow your business online using content marketing strategies. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also completely FREE!
Improve Visitor Experience
Improving your user experience (known as UX) will help you keep visitors coming back and using your site. This section will show you ways you can improve your visitor engagement and UX.
Content Syndication – RSS Feeds
RSS feeds provide many benefits for your business.
If you provide content that adds value to others, other businesses will want to syndicate your content to their visitors.
Some of the benefits of syndicating your content to other sites using RSS feeds, include:
- All of your content updates are kept in one place
- Doesn’t rely on email
- Your feeds can be shared
- Users can subscribe to your feed
- A feed provides links back to your content
- Feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
- RSS provides various ways for your readers to receive your content (e.g. subscribers can view your content on their mobile device using a feed reader)
- RSS is built into WordPress
There are also a number of benefits when it comes to adding syndicated content to 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 visit sites of relevant government departments or respected industry bodies.
Below we have listed some useful RSS feeds you could consider adding 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 choose individual feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Body image, Healthy aging, Illnesses and disabilities, 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 well-known medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. Journal of Applied Physiology, Journal of Biological Chemistry, CDC USA, Current Psychiatry, 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 health-related news feeds here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
- US Food And Drug Administration (FDA) – Get feeds on fda-related topics like enforcement reports, food safety reports, tainted products marked as dietary supplements, tobacco news, 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. NSW – http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/pages/rss.aspx
- Centers For Disease Control And Prevention (www.cdc.gov) - Get many RSS feeds on health-related topics and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
- Medical News Feeds: You can search medical news feeds in places like the NYTimes RSS feeds section (e.g. Fitness and nutrition: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Nutrition.xml)
- MedicineNet – Daily Health and Medical News: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/dailyhealth.xml. You can also choose specific feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Alzheimer’s Disease, Asthma, Neurology, Diabetes, Exercise & Fitness, High Blood Pressure, etc.)
- MedicalNewsToday.com – MNT Featured Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
- Medical News Today – You can also select individual feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Anxiety/Stress, Arthritis/Rheumatology, Fibromyalgia, Conferences, Bones/Orthopedics, HIV/AIDS, Huntingtons Disease, etc.)
You can also search online for general feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific subjects, e.g. “multiple sclerosis rss feeds”, “AIDS rss feeds”, “liver disease rss feeds”, etc.
(Use RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds to improve your website’s UX.)
Adding Checklists
Adding checklists and explanatory charts to your site is a great way to help increase user engagement, add value to your audience and set yourself apart from the competition. They can give them useful information and resources to perform necessary steps. They can also be great instructional tools.
You can provide a range of checklists, charts and forms covering areas such as:
- Checklists/forms for booking appointments
- Checklists for post-surgery recovery
- Health checklists for specific conditions
- Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, caries prevention program, cosmetic dentistry, etc.
- Fitness and nutrition program checklists
- General charts & infographics (e.g. acidity level of different foods, sleep requirements at different ages, etc.)
Provide Online Tools
Providing unique online tools, gadgets and applications on your site is a great way to increase visitor engagement and add significant value to your visitors. Health-related calculators, for example, are great tools you can add to your website. Others could include things like diagnostic tools, or even recipes.
In the next section, we will look at a number of WordPress-based tools you can add to your website that improve seo, improve user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.
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