Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

Medical or Health professionals today are facing increasing challenges thanks to the online economy.

Online Challenges For Medical & Health Businesses

Today, more than ever, businesses in the health and medical sector must work harder than ever to remain competitive. Not only do you have to participate in the community your business serves, you must also maintain an active presence online. This includes having an effective website and learning smarter ways to promote your medical or health services online.

In addition to investing money in offline marketing activities like advertising on newspapers, ads in industry publications and magazines, radio and television, etc., you will probably find that in order to compete, you will need to allocate a greater amount of your marketing budget towards the development and maintenance of a website that brings new clients, engages visitors, outranks the competition in search engines and social media, and helps give you a wider amount of reach online.

This means that your website not only has to look professional, your pages have to load fast, and be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that your site’s needs will change over time and some aspects will need to be frequently updated. This requires having a well-planned website and content management strategy.

Another difficult challenge that health businesses face with their websites, as do all other businesses for that matter, is that they have an average of 30 seconds to provide users what they need or they will look 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 Medical And Health Businesses In The Web Economy

As well as facing a number of challenges, there are also plenty of online opportunities available to businesses in the medical or health-related profession that are willing to adapt to meet the demands of the digital economy and who can think outside the box about marketing their services better online.

This guide will help you uncover new ways to attract more visitors and improve your online results.

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

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

• How A Poorly Built Web Site Can Lose You Prospective Buyers And What To Do About It
• Everything You Need To Know About Growing A Successful Business Online With A WordPress Blog

Practical Tips To Improve Your Website

We’ll start first by covering the basic information you need. In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve your website and get better results online. We will look at what web pages you need, what type of content works best for medical or health websites, your layout and navigation structure, etc.

If you need assistance or help planning your website, see this detailed guide: Planning Your Small Business Web Site - A Money-Saving Blueprint For Business Owners

How To Improve Your Website Pages

Professional business websites require several essential pages. Let’s discuss these.

Services Description Page

It’s essential to include a page that lists your services and any products that you offer. Depending on which area of health you specialize in, this page could list services like:

• Medical And Surgical – e.g. anaesthetics, neurosurgery diabetes, reconstructive surgery, aged care, rheumatology, gastroenterology, eye diseases emergency surgery, etc.
• Dentistry – e.g. preventive dentistry, holistic dentistry, oral health, restorations, implants, emergency dental, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. heart monitoring, coronary care
• Prenatal and Neonatal – e.g. birth suites, midwifery, etc.
• Child Health services – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic – breast screens, skin cancer, medical imaging, gynaecology, psychosis, food allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology – laboratory testing and analysis, routine pathology testing, food and water testing, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling services – mental health, alcohol, tobacco & other drug services, marriage counselling, diet and nutrition counselling, social work services
• Alternative treatments – acupuncture, homeopathy, functional medicine, massage therapy, osteopathy, hypnotherapy, etc.
• Other medical services – diet and nutrition, chiropody, fertility services, physiotherapy, medical genetics, artificial limbs, sleep therapy, home care, sexual health, medical supplies, etc.

List all of the services you provide, not just the ones you specialize in. Provide your visitors with information that will educate them about what your services do and direct them to your appointment booking page.

About Us Page

The ‘About Us’ page should give a description of your business and explain to visitors what it stands for, its unique approach, community events, etc.

This page should also mention any awards, accreditations, recognitions, certifications, associations, publications, etc., that can be used to promote your services and to set yourself above other competitors.

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

Team Profile

Are you searching for ways to grow your business online and get people to stay longer on your site? Then make it easier for visitors to get to know, like and trust you and your business better.

Prospective clients need to relate to your business. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your employees or team members. This page should include a photo and a brief bio. Since most visitors will not tend to be well-versed in medical-related terms your bio descriptions should tell who they are and what their specialties are. It should also explain what those specialized areas do. This page should include social buttons so your site visitors can follow selected staff members on their social networks.

On this page, make sure to outline your team member’s expertise, how their skills add value or contribute to the success of your team, and more importantly, how they can help add value to your clients’ business.

(Add a staff description page. Screenshot source: southperthchiro.com.au)

If you need help how to easily add a simple and easy-to-update simple employee directory in your website without using code, see this tutorial: How To Add A Simple Employee Directory On Your WordPress Site With No Coding Skills

Work For Us

List any job opportunities within your company. It could include type of training provided, benefits, advancement opportunities, social aspects of working for your business, etc. You can include case studies of graduates who have established a solid career path thanks to your business and information such as the job outlook and career opportunities in the health-related industry.

Include also 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 contact list, follow your social pages, etc.

Testimonials

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

(Add a web page with case studies and testimonials from previous clients. Screenshot image sourced from: arrowsmiledental.com)

We have written extensively about using case studies, testimonials and user reviews get better results online. For more details, go here: How To Improve Your Visitor-To-Sales Conversions Using Awesome Testimonials

Contact Us

A clean contact page is crucial.

Your contact page should provide some or all of the following information:

• Name Of Your Business
• Physical address
• Phone
• Fax
• Contact email address
• Map and directions
• Web address
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Links to social media pages
• Live chat (optional)

If your business services multiple locations you will want to make that clear when showing your address and contact info.

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

Add A Blog Section

A blog can be a very powerful business marketing tool. Blogs typically include a content management system that is simple to use and allows you to easily promote your business using content such as news and announcements, new releases, useful articles and tutorials, discussions on current topics, how-to videos, webinars, etc.

If you already have an existing website, then consider adding a WordPress blog to promote your business.

If you don’t have a website yet, or if your existing 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 business website and business blog.

Very few people know that WordPress can become an automated traffic-generation machine that can begin attracting a stream of new visitors to your site, simply by publishing new content on a consistent basis to your website.

(WordPress can drive traffic automatically to your site)

For more info, see this article:

• Website Traffic Blueprint – How To Create An Automated Web Traffic Generation Machine With WordPress

Legal Info Pages

Having a compliant website is crucially important. This is not only important for building trust and credibility with visitors, but also to ensure that no laws or regulations are being broken wherever you practice.

Adding the following legal pages to your medical or health-related 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 Us
• Privacy Statement
• 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
• etc.

We have written a detailed article on adding legal pages to your site. Go here to learn more about this: The Importance Of Adding Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

Ways To Improve The Content On Your Site

In today’s highly competitive global economy, the sooner you start engaging in the practice of content marketing, the faster you will begin to differentiate yourself from other competitors.

Provide great content with useful advice, information or tips that will get your visitors sharing your information with others online and coming back for more. Using content is the most effective way to inform and educate your visitors and prospective clients about using your services and products.

For example, if you provide weight management services, then some of the areas you could cover in your content include:

• What to do before starting any weight loss program (e.g. consult with doctor, record measurements, set goals, etc.)
• How to develop portion control habits (smaller plate, don’t put food on the table, more vegetables)
• Diet sodas (common ones, side effects, long term results, do they work?)
• What salad dressings can ruin your weight loss program (and healthier choices)
• Etc.

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

Use keywords in your content that your readers will be searching to find you online.

We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive regular training emails with actionable information that will teach exactly how to drive more traffic to your site, save money creating high-quality 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 100% FREE!

Ways Of Improving Visitor Experience

Improving your website’s 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 your visitor engagement and user experience.

RSS Feeds

RSS feeds provide many benefits for your health or medical business.

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

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

• All of your content updates are in one place
• Content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Your feed can be shared and picked up by other sites online
• Allows users to subscribe
• It provides links back to your content
• RSS feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
• RSS provides several ways for readers to receive your content (e.g. read your content on their mobile device using different applications)
• RSS is built into WordPress

There are also benefits to providing valuable information 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 just visit sites of relevant government departments and well-known industry bodies.

Here are a few feeds you could consider adding to a health or medical-related website:

• US Department Of Health And Human Services – e.g. Latest news feed: http://www.hhs.gov/rss/news/hhsnews.xml, etc. You can search by departments and choose individual RSS feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Body image, Healthy aging, Illnesses and disabilities, Menopause, Violence against women, etc.) here: http://womenshealth.gov/news/rss/rss-feeds.html
• US National Libraries Of Medicine – For a directory of feeds from leading medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. Journal of Applied Physiology, Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC), Indian Journal of Plastic Surgery, Radiology, Neuropsychopharmacology, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health (www.nih.gov) - Find various health-related RSS feeds here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• FDA – Get feeds on fda-related news and topics like enforcement reports, food allergy reports, pet health, animal and veterinary news, etc. and podcasts here: http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/ContactFDA/StayInformed/RSSFeeds
• UK Department Of Health (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 (www.cdc.gov) - Find many health-related news feeds and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
• Medical News: You can search medical news feeds in major news publications like the NYTimes feeds section (e.g. Fitness and nutrition: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Nutrition.xml)
• MedicineNet.com – MedTerms Medical Word of the Day: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/dailyword.xml. You can also choose individual RSS feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Medications, Men’s health, Neurology, Diet & Weight Management, Prevention & Wellness, Skin, etc.)
• Medical News Today – Medical News 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. Cardiovascular/Cardiology, Stroke, Blood/Hematology, Swine Flu, Medical Devices/Diagnostics, Allergy, Huntingtons Disease, etc.)

You can also search online for general RSS feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific subjects, e.g. “gout rss feeds”, “autism rss feeds”, “crohn’s rss feeds”, etc.

(RSS feeds can help to improve your medical website’s UX.)

Add Downloadable Checklists And Forms

Adding checklists and explanatory charts to your site is a great way to help increase visitor engagement, add value to your readers and set yourself apart from the competition. Forms and checklists can give them step-by-step instructions and resources to get necessary tasks performed. Forms and checklists are also great client instructional tools.

Forms, charts and checklists could cover topics such as:

• Checklists/forms for booking appointments
• Checklists for post-surgery recovery
• Health checklists and charts for specific systems
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, active maintenance program, cosmetic dentistry, etc.
• Fitness and nutrition program checklists and charts
• General charts & infographics (e.g. sugar content in different foods, the importance of sleep at different ages, etc.)

Online Tools

Providing unique online tools, gadgets and applications on your site can help increase visitor engagement and significantly add value to your potential clients. Calculators, for example are popular tools for your website. Other applications could include things like diagnostic tools, or even recipes.

In part two of this guide, we will be discussing a several online tools you can use in your website using WordPress plugins and themes that can help improve your search engine optimization, improve user engagement and drive more traffic to your business.

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This is the end of part 1 of this guide on ways to grow your health web presence.

To view Part Two, click here:

• A Complete Guide On How To Build And Grow Your Health-Related Website – Part 2

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