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 number of difficult challenges and great opportunities for businesses offering medical services.

Online Challenges For Health Businesses

Now, more than ever, businesses in the health industry must work harder than ever to remain competitive. Not only do you have to become more involved in the community your business serves, you must also maintain an active digital presence. This includes having a website and learning how to better market your health services online.

In addition to investing dollars 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 towards developing and managing a website that attracts clients, engages visitors, outranks the competition in search engines and social media, and helps you gain a wider amount of exposure online.

This means that your site not only has to look great, load fast, and be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that your site’s needs may change in time and sections will need to be updated frequently. This requires having a sound web and content management strategy in place.

Another challenge that medical services providers (and most other businesses) face with their websites, is that your site has only about 30 seconds to help users find what they are searching for 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 Services Providers In The Online Economy

As well as facing significant 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 online economy and can think strategically about improving their online marketing skills.

In this detailed guide, you will learn opportunities to attract and engage more visitors and establish stronger online credibility for your business.

As well as providing tips and information on cost-effective ways to improve your web presence, we also place special emphasis on the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress content management system (CMS) to power your health website.

For more information about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress Content Management System (CMS), see the articles below:

• Why A Poorly Constructed Website Can Lose You Potential Customers And What To Do About It
• WordPress In Small Business – The Complete Guide To Building Your Successful Small Business Using WordPress

Ways To Improve Your Website

This section looks at ways to improve your website and get better results online. We will look at what pages a medical-related website needs, what type of content works best for medical or health-related websites, ways of improving navigation structure, etc.

If you need help with website planning, go here: The Website Planning Process Explained: A Money-Saving Guide For Business Owners

Essential Pages

All websites require a number of essential web pages. Let’s review these.

Services And Products

You need a page that describes your services and products. Depending on which area of health you specialize in, your page can include services like:

• Medicine & Surgery – e.g. pain management, nephrology hematology, cosmetic surgery, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, respiratory, bariatric surgery, optometry day surgery, etc.
• Dental Services – e.g. general dentistry, holistic dentistry, bad breath treatment, teeth whitening, dental implants, emergency dentistry, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. cardiac monitoring, chronic heart conditions
• Prenatal/Postnatal – e.g. birth suites, midwifery, etc.
• Child Health services – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic services – breast screening, lung screening, radiology and imaging, gynaecology, magnetic resonance imaging, allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology services – laboratory testing and analysis, emergency pathology testing, fine-needle aspiration, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling services – mental health, alcohol, tobacco & other drug services, domestic abuse, wellbeing, social work services
• Alternative therapies – acupuncture, homeopathy, hydrotherapy, massage therapy, chiropractic, hypnotherapy, etc.
• Other medical services – diet and nutrition, othopedics, fertility services, physiotherapy, medical genetics, prosthetics, assisted living, home and community care, clinical information, medical supplies, etc.

List all of the services you provide. Provide your visitors with information that will educate them about the benefits of using your services and direct them to your contact or appointment booking page.

About Us

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

Remember to also include any awards, certifications, recognitions, accreditations, associations, publications, etc., that you can use to promote your business and set yourself above the competition.

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

Meet Your Staff

If you are looking for quicker, simpler and cheaper ideas to sell more products online, then one of the things you can do, is make it easier for your prospects to get to know you and your organization better.

You want prospects to relate to your business. One great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your employees. It should include a photo and a brief biography. Since most visitors will not tend to be well-versed in 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 do. This page should also include social buttons that will allow your prospective clients to follow your staff members on their social pages.

In this page, make sure to outline each employee’s qualifications, why they are an invaluable asset to your team, and more importantly, how they will help add value to your clients’ business.

(Make sure to add an employee description page. Image sourced from: southperthchiro.com.au)

We have created a detailed tutorial on how to easily create and add an easy-to-maintain list directory of staff members to your website here: Adding A Staff List Directory To Your Site: Plugin Tutorial

Job Opportunities

This is a listing of job or career opportunities within your clinic. This page could include training, benefits, opportunities for advancement, etc. You can also include case studies of trainees who have established a solid career path thanks to your organization and information such as the job outlook and new career opportunities in the medical or health-related 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 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 page with testimonials and case studies also helps your medical-related business to establish social proof online.

(Add a page with case studies and reviews from clients. Screenshot source: arrowsmiledental.com)

We have created a comprehensive article about using testimonials, case studies and reviews get better results online. Go here to learn more about this: Discover How To Turn More Visitors Into Qualified Prospects With Engaging Client Testimonials

Contact Page

A contact page is essential.

It should provide the following information about your organization:

• Company Name
• Your physical address
• Phone number
• Facsimile
• Email
• Google Map
• Web URL
• Contact form
• Request for more information – contact details
• Links to social media profiles
• Chat feature

If your business services several areas you should make that clear when displaying the address and contact information.

You should also include links to an FAQ page, frequently-visited pages, online booking request, helpdesk, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.

Add A Blog Section

A blog is a very powerful business marketing tool. Blogs typically comprise of a content management system that is simple to use and allows you to easily promote your business using content like news, new releases, useful information, discussions on current topics, videos, media presentations, etc.

If you already have an established website, then consider adding a WordPress-driven blog to promote your medical clinic.

If you don’t have a website yet, or if your existing medical-related website is hard to keep updated with new content or not delivering you the results you want, then WordPress can serve both as your business website and blog.

Very few people know that an expertly configured WordPress site can turn your web presence into an automated traffic-generation machine that can instantly begin to attract targeted traffic to your website, simply by adding new content to your website on a regular basis.

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

Go here to learn more:

• Web Traffic Blueprint – Discover How To Turn Your WordPress Site Into A Traffic Generation Machine

Legal Pages

It’s crucially important to have a compliant website. This is not only important for building trust and credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no laws and regulations are being broken in whatever area you service.

Depending on what services you provide, adding the following legal pages to your website will help you stay out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Google), and other potential legal threats or inconveniences:

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

Go here if you want to learn more adding legal pages to your website: The Importance Of Adding Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

Improving The Content On Your Website

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

By committing to providing great content with useful information or tips, you will get your readers sharing your information and coming back for more content. Publishing content is a great way to educate your visitors and prospects about your business and services.

For example, if your business provides weight management services, then some of the areas you can cover in your content include:

• What is fiber and how can it help you with weight loss?
• How to identify the bad habits you need to correct to ensure sustainable weight loss
• Dieting pills (common ones, side effects, long term results, do they work?)
• Vitamins and minerals that aid in weight loss (chromium, calcium, magnesium, etc.)
• Etc.

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

Use the same keywords and terms in your content that your prospective clients would search for 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 web site, save money creating useful content that will add value to your site visitors and grow your website using content marketing. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also 100% FREE!

Ways Of Improving Visitor Experience

Improving user experience (known as UX) helps you keep visitors coming back and using your site. This section will show you different ways to improve your visitor engagement and UX.

RSS Feeds

Adding RSS feeds can help to improve your visitor engagement and user experience in a number of different ways.

If you provide content that adds value to others, other sites will want to syndicate your content to their visitors.

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

• All of your updates are kept in one place
• your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Feeds can be shared and picked up by other sites online
• Users can subscribe to your feed
• It provides links to your content
• RSS feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
• There are a number of ways readers can receive your content (e.g. subscribers can read the content on their mobile device using feed readers)
• It’s built into WordPress

There are also a number of benefits to providing valuable information on your site from other websites, such as the fact that you don’t have to write, manage or update the content.

You can find RSS feeds with useful content by visiting sites of health and medical-related government departments or key industry bodies.

For example, here are some examples of RSS feeds you could consider adding to your site:

• US Department Of Health And Human Services – e.g. Blog posts feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SelectedHhsBlogPosts, etc. You can also select specific feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Body image, Fitness and nutrition, Heart health and stroke, Minority women’s health, Violence against women, 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. The Journal of Experimental Medicine (JEM), Nutrition Journal, The Journal of Immunology, Neurology.org, Transplantation – Most Popular Articles, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health - Find many feeds on health-related news and topics here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• FDA – Find FDA-related RSS feeds (e.g. FDA drug safety, MedWatch safety alerts (human medical products), tainted products, drugs, 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. Western Australia – http://www.public.health.wa.gov.au/feed/?types=news
• Centers For Disease Control And Prevention - Find many RSS feeds on health-related topics 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. Health news: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Health.xml)
• MedicineNet.com – MedTerms Medical Word of the Day: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/dailyword.xml. You can also choose specific feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Medications, Men’s health, Chronic Pain, Depression, Exercise & Fitness, Women’s Health, etc.)
• Medical News Today – Medical News Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
• Medical News Today – You can also choose individual RSS feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Colorectal Cancer, Pharmacy/Pharmacist, Fibromyalgia, Sleep/Sleep Disorders/Insomnia, Medical Devices/Diagnostics, Epilepsy, Huntingtons Disease, etc.)

You can also search online for general RSS feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific topics, e.g. “ADHD rss feeds”, “medical innovation rss feeds”, “statins rss feeds”, etc.

(Use RSS feeds to improve your site’s user experience.)

Checklists & Forms

Checklists and educational charts are a fantastic way to increase visitor engagement, add value to your visitors and provide something unique. Forms and checklists can provide visitors with useful instructions and resources to get necessary tasks performed. Checklists and charts are great educational tools.

Checklists, charts and medical forms could include areas such as:

• Checklists/forms for booking appointments
• Checklists for pre or post treatment
• Health checklists for specific conditions
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, oral maintenance program, general 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.)

Add Online Tools

Providing useful tools, gadgets and applications on your site can help increase visitor engagement and add value to potential clients. Calculators, for example are useful tools for your website. Others would include things like nutritional tools, or even recipes.

In part two of this detailed guide, we look at a several online tools you can add to your site using WordPress plugins that can improve seo, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your business.

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This is the end of section one.

To view the rest of this guide, click here:

• Your Health Practice Website – Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Visitors To Your Site Generation With WordPress Plugins And Themes

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