Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress
Health professionals today face a number of challenges.
Challenges Professional Medical And Health Services Providers Face Online
Now, more than ever, medical practitioners must work harder to remain competitive and obtain new clients. Not only do you have to actively participate in the community you serve, you must also develop and maintain a strong web presence. This includes having a website and learning how to better market your medical or health services services online.
In addition to spending dollars advertising offline, you will probably find (if you haven’t already) that in order to remain competitive, increasingly larger amounts of their budget need to be directed to develop and manage a website that attracts clients, engages visitors, outperforms the competition in search engines and helps you create a wider degree of reach online.
This means that your site not only has to look great, your pages have to be fast-loading, and your site has to be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, the needs of your website will change over time and many areas may need to be frequently updated. This requires implementing well-planned website and content management strategy.
One other problem that health or medical organizations (and all other businesses) face, is that your site has only about 30 seconds to help visitors find what they are searching 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 Medical Providers In The Online Economy
As well as facing a number of business and technology changes, there are also plenty of online opportunities available to health businesses that are willing to adapt to meet the challenges of the online economy and who can think outside the box in terms of marketing their business better online.
This article will help you uncover new ways to attract more potential clients and establish stronger online credibility for your medical or health-related business.
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 website.
For more information about the benefits and advantages of using WordPress, see these articles:
- Discover Why A Poorly Designed Website Can Cost You Money
- Using WordPress To Grow Your Small Business Online
Useful Tips To Improve Your Website
In this section we will show you ways to improve your website and get better results. We show you what pages a medical or health-related site needs, what content works best for medical or health sites, your layout and navigation, etc.
If you need additional information about website planning, check out the article we have written here: The Website Planning Process - A Cost-Saving Blueprint For Non-Technical Business Owners
Your Website Pages
Professional business websites require several essential web pages. Let’s go over these.
Products And Services
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, your page could list services such as:
- Medical And Surgical – e.g. anaesthetics, nephrology diabetes, reconstructive surgery, stroke, rheumatology, bariatric surgery, ophtalmology operating theaters, etc.
- Dental Services – e.g. general dentistry, holistic dentistry, bad breath treatment, veneers, crowns and bridges, dental braces, emergency dental, etc.
- Cardiology – e.g. cardiac patient rehabilitation, coronary care
- Prenatal and Neonatal – e.g. obstetrics, midwifery, etc.
- Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
- Diagnostic services – mammography, lung screening, radiology, women’s health, psychosis, food allergy testing, etc.
- Pathology – laboratory testing and analysis, routine pathology testing, fine-needle aspiration cytology, speech pathology, etc
- Counselling – mental health, alcohol, tobacco & other drug services, trauma counselling, diet and nutrition counselling, social development services
- Alternative therapies – acupuncture, aromatherapy, hydrotherapy, yoga, chiropractic, hypnosis, etc.
- Other medical services/therapies – weight management, chiropody, fertility services, stomal therapy, inherited diseases, prosthetics, sleep therapy, home care, community health, 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
The ‘About Us’ page needs to describe your business and what it stands for, its unique approach, philanthropy, etc.
It’s important to mention any awards, accreditations, certifications, recognitions, publications, associations, etc., that can be used to promote your business and set yourself above similar service providers.
(List all of your professional awards recognitions, accreditations, certifications, associations, publications, etc. in the About Us page. Screenshot source: squaremedical.com.au)
Our Team
If you are looking for inexpensive ideas to grow your business online or increase user interaction on your site, then something you can do, is help your prospects get to know you, your team and your organization better.
Prospects need to relate to your business. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your employees or team members. It should include a photo and a brief biography. Since most visitors won’t be familiar with medical-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 can also include social buttons that will allow your prospective clients to follow individual staff members on their social pages.
In this page, make sure to highlight each staff member’s experience, how they 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 page that introduces your employees to prospective new clients. Screenshot image sourced from: southperthchiro.com.au)
We have written a detailed tutorial about how to easily create and add a simple and easy-to-update list directory of employees or team members in your WordPress site here: Adding A Staff Directory In WordPress
Career Opportunities Page
List any career opportunities available within your practice. It should include training provided, benefits, professional development, etc. You can also include information about new career opportunities in the medical-related industry.
Also include a positions available section in this page. If there are no positions currently available, consider inviting people to return periodically to this page, subscribe to your newsletter, follow you on social media, etc.
Testimonials & Case Studies
Testimonials and case studies are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase the services you offer. Adding a web page with testimonials from past clients and case studies also helps to provide social proof online.
(Add a page with reviews from clients and case studies. Screenshot source: arrowsmiledental.com)
We have created a comprehensive article on using testimonials, case studies and reviews to grow your business online. Go here to learn more about this: Learn How To Improve Your Sales With Engaging Client Testimonials
Contact Page
Having a clean contact page is essential.
It should include some or all of the following information about your practice:
- Name Of Your Business
- Street address of business
- Phone
- Fax number
- Contact email
- Google Map and directions
- Web address
- Contact form
- Contact name
- Social media links
- Online Chat/Skype (optional)
If your business operates out of several areas you should make that clear when showing the address and contact information.
Consider also including links pointing to commonly-asked questions page, frequently-visited pages, booking form, support page, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.
Blog Section
A blog is a very powerful marketing tool for your business. Blogs typically comprise of a content management system that allows you to promote your business by publishing content like announcements, updates, training information, opinions and discussions, videos, media presentations, etc.
If you already have an established medical or health site, then consider adding a WordPress blog to promote your services.
If you don’t have a website yet, or if your existing health or medical 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 website and blog.
Something few businesses know about, is that an expertly configured WordPress site can become an automated traffic-generation system that can begin delivering new visitors to your site, simply by adding regular content to your website.
(WordPress can generate new traffic automatically to your site)
To learn more about this go here:
Legal Pages
It’s vitally important for medical and health services professionals companies to make sure they have a website that complies will all legal requirements online. This is not only important for establishing trust and credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that you are not breaching any laws or regulations wherever you practice.
Adding the following legal pages to your health or medical-related site will help keep you out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers, and other potential 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 Links Policy
- Health Disclaimers
- Refund Policy
- Video/Audio Terms
- etc.
We have written a comprehensive article on adding legal pages to your site here: Adding Legal Pages To Your Site
Tips On How To Improve The Content On Your Website
In today’s globally competitive economy, the sooner you start to publish great content on your site, the quicker you will begin to differentiate yourself from the competition.
You want to provide useful content with great tips, advice or information that will get your readers sharing your information and coming back for more. Publishing content is a great way to inform and educate your visitors and prospective clients about your business and services.
For example, if you provide services that help people manage their weight, then some of the topics you can write content about include:
- Being overweight vs. being obese – what are the differences?
- How to get support for your weight loss efforts (friends, family, weight loss seekers)
- Is using a measuring tape better than a scale when it comes to weight loss progress?
- How to curb the late night urges for a snack (e.g. drink water with lemon)
- And many other content topics
You can also create a series of educational articles that will help your your readers understand your health-related services, by explaining benefits, procedures, costs (including payment plans, insurance coverage, etc).
Include keywords and terminology in your articles that prospective clients will search 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 you how to drive more traffic to your site, save money creating high-quality content that will add value to your 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!
Ways To Improve Visitor Engagement And User Experience
Improving your website’s user experience (known as UX) will help to keep visitors coming back and engaging with your site. This section will show you different ways to improve your visitor engagement and UX.
Syndicating Content Using RSS Feeds
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve your visitor engagement and UX in a number of different ways.
If you provide content that adds value to others, other sites may want to syndicate your content to their visitors.
Some of the benefits of having other businesses syndicate your content, include:
- All of your content updates are in one place
- your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
- Your feeds can be shared
- Feeds allow users to subscribe
- An RSS feed provides a way for links to point back to your content
- RSS feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregators
- RSS provides several ways for readers to receive your content (e.g. view your content on their mobile device using different applications)
- It’s built into WordPress
There are also a number of benefits when it comes to providing great 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 useful RSS feeds for your website, search online for medical or health-related government departments and well-known industry bodies.
Here are some examples of RSS feeds containing useful information that you could add to a health or medical-related website:
- US Department Of Health And Human Services – e.g. Blog RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SelectedHhsBlogPosts, etc. You can also select individual feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Body image, Environmental health, Illnesses and disabilities, Minority women’s health, 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 leading medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. ACS Publications, BMJ Disease in Childhood – Fetal and Neonatal Edition, BMJ Sexually Transmitted Infections, Toxicological Sciences, Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, 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) – Get FDA-related RSS feeds (e.g. consumer health information updates, food allergy reports, product recalls, animal and veterinary news, etc.) and podcasts here: http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/ContactFDA/StayInformed/RSSFeeds
- UK Department Of Health (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. Western Australia – http://www.public.health.wa.gov.au/feed/?types=news
- Centers For Disease Control And Prevention - Find many health-related RSS feeds 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. Health news: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Health.xml)
- MedicineNet – Weekly Health and Medical News Digest: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/weeklyhealth.xml. You can also select individual feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Medications, Men’s health, Neurology, Depression, Prevention & Wellness, HIV, etc.)
- MedicalNewsToday.com – Medical News Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
- MedicalNewsToday.com – You can also choose individual feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Anxiety/Stress, Pulmonary System, Blood/Hematology, Cholesterol, Endocrinology, HIV/AIDS, MRI/PET/Ultrasound, etc.)
You can also just search online for general RSS feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific areas, e.g. “HPV vaccine rss feeds”, “irritable-bowel syndrome rss feeds”, “statins rss feeds”, etc.
(RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve your medical or health site’s user experience.)
Adding Charts & Checklists
Adding checklists and educational charts to your site is a great way to help increase user engagement and add value to your readers. Checklists and medical forms can provide useful step-by-step information and resources to perform tasks. Forms and checklists can also be great educational tools.
Checklists, charts and medical forms can address topics such as:
- Checklists and forms for booking appointments
- Checklists for pre or post treatment
- Health checklists for specific systems
- Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, caries prevention program, general dentistry, etc.
- Fitness and nutrition program checklists and charts
- General charts & infographics (e.g. caloric level of different foods, the importance of sleep at different ages, etc.)
Unique Tools
Providing unique tools and applications on your website can help increase visitor engagement and add value to your visitors. Health-related calculators, for example, are useful tools you can add to your website. Other tools could include things like diagnostic tools, and even recipes.
In the next section of this guide, we take a look at a number of online tools you can use in your website using WordPress plugins and themes that improve search engine optimization, improve user engagement and generate more web traffic to your business.
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This is the end of section one.
Click on this link to access Part 2:
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