Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

Medical and Health professionals today are facing significant and difficult challenges thanks to the digital economy.

Challenges Health And Medical Services Practitioners Face Online

Now, more than ever, medical services practitioners must find smarter ways to remain competitive and obtain new clientele. Not only do you have to become actively involved in the community you serve, you must also develop a strong presence online. This includes having a dynamic website and learning how to better market your business online.

In addition to investing dollars in offline marketing activities such as advertising on local newspapers, ads in industry publications and magazines, radio and tv, etc., you will probably find (if you haven’t already) that in order to compete with other web-marketing savvy health-related businesses, you will need to designate a larger share of your budget to develop and manage a website that brings new prospective clients, engages users, outperforms the competition in search engines and social media, and helps increase your marketing exposure online.

This means that your site not only has to look great, your web pages have to load fast, and your website layout has to be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that the needs of the website may change over time and some areas may need to be frequently updated. This requires a sound website and content management strategy in place.

One other challenge that medical providers face (as do most other businesses for that matter), is that they have around 30 seconds to help users find what they are looking for or they will leave the site.

“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

Online Opportunities For Medical And Health Services Professionals

As well as facing significant business and technology changes, there are also loads of online opportunities available to businesses in the health or medical-related industry that can evolve to meet the demands of the online economy and who can think progressively in terms of improving their online business marketing skills.

In this comprehensive guide, you will discover ways to increase traffic and build more online credibility for your business.

As well as providing useful website improvement tips, we also recommend that you consider using the WordPress content management system to power your health or medical website or blog.

To learn more about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress content management system, see the articles below:

• Discover How A Poorly Constructed Website Can Lose You Prospective Clients And What To Do About It
• Using WordPress To Grow Your Business

Useful Tips For Improving Your Medical Services & Health Center Website

This section explains ways to improve your website and get better results online. We show you what pages you need, what content works best, tips for improving your site’s layout and navigation, etc.

If you need website planning assistance, check out the detailed guide we have written here: How To Plan Your Web Site: A Useful Guide For Business Owners

Improving Your Website Pages

All websites need several basic pages. Let’s go over these.

Services Page

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

• Medical And Surgical – e.g. anaesthetics, nephrology endocrinology, oncology, rehabilitation medicine, respiratory, urology, ophtalmology emergency surgery, etc.
• Dental Services – e.g. preventive dentistry, holistic dentistry, gum disease, veneers, crowns and bridges, implants, emergency dental services, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. cardiac monitoring, coronary care
• Prenatal and Postnatal – e.g. birthing, midwifery, etc.
• Child Health services – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic – breast screening, lung screening, audiology, gynaecology, MRI scanning, allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology services – lab testing and analysis, emergency pathology testing, clinical trials, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling services – mental health services, alcohol, tobacco & other drug counselling, marriage counselling, diet and nutrition counselling, social work services
• Alternative treatments – acupuncture, homeopathy, holistic medicine, massage therapy, osteopathy, hypnotherapy, etc.
• Other medical services/therapies – weight management, sports medicine, fertility services, occupational therapy, neurosciences, prosthetics, sleep therapy, home and community care, clinical information, medical equipment, etc.

Make sure to 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 these services do and direct them to your appointment booking page.

Who We Are

This page needs to describe your business and what it stands for, its unique approach, causes that you support, etc.

Remember to also include any industry awards, accreditations, recognitions, certifications, associations, publications, etc., that could be used to promote your medical, dental, chiropractic, surgery services, etc. and to set yourself above your competitors.

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

Meet The Team

If you are looking for ideas to sell more products or services online or get people to stay longer on your site, then something you can do, is help your visitors 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 employees. This page should include a photo and a mini biography. Since most visitors are probably not familiar with health-related terms your descriptions should tell who they are and what their specialties are. It should also explain what those specialized areas do. It should also include social buttons that will allow your prospective clients to follow some of your team members on their social networks.

In this page, make sure to highlight each person’s experience, how their skills and knowledge contribute to the success of your team, and more importantly, how they can help add value to your clients’ business.

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

To learn more about how to easily create and add an updatable directory of employees or team members in your web site using free plugins, refer to this tutorial: Adding A Staff List Directory To Your WordPress Site: WordPress Plugin Tutorial

Job Opportunities

This is a listing of job opportunities available within your clinic. It would include training, benefits, advancement opportunities, social aspects of working for your organization, etc. You should also include stories of graduates who have established a solid career path thanks to your organization and information such as the job outlook and additional career opportunities in the medical or health-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 the page, join your newsletter, follow your social pages, etc.

Case Studies & Testimonials

Case studies and client reviews are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase your services. By adding a page with client reviews and case studies, you are also helping to provide prospective clients with social proof.

(Add a page to your site with case studies and client reviews. Screenshot source: arrowsmiledental.com)

We have written a detailed article on using testimonials and reviews to improve your business results online. For more details: Achieve Better Results Online Using Meaningful User Testimonials

Contact Us

Having a clean contact page is crucial.

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

• Business Name
• Address
• Phone
• Facsimile
• Email
• Map and directions
• Web address
• Contact form
• Contact name
• Links to social media pages
• Chat

If your business operates in different locations you should make that clear when showing your address and contact information.

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

Add A Health Or Medical Blog

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 using content like announcements, updates, useful articles, opinions and discussions, promotional videos, infographics, etc.

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

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

Not many people know this, but an expertly configured WordPress site can turn into an automated traffic-generation system that can help begin driving web traffic to your business, simply by adding regular content to your site.

(An expertly configured WordPress site can automate your traffic generation)

To learn more about this go here:

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

Legal Information Pages

It’s really important to ensure they have a compliant website. This is not only important for establishing trust and credibility with visitors, but also to ensure that no local, regional and federal laws or regulations are being broken in whatever location you do business.

Adding some or all of the legal pages below to your medical or health site will help keep you out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Google), and other potential sources of legal threats and 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 and Financial Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• and others

If you want to learn more about adding legal pages to your website, see this article: Adding Legal Pages To Your Website

Tips On How To Improve The Content On Your Website

In today’s globally competitive economy, the sooner you start to publish content on your site, the quicker you will begin to see results and differentiate yourself from other competing businesses.

Providing great content with tips, advice and information will get your readers sharing it with others and coming back for more. This is the most effective way to inform and teach site visitors and prospects about your services.

For example, if your business provides weight loss services, then some of the topics you can publish content about include the following:

• What to do before starting any weight loss program (e.g. consult with doctor, record measurements, set goals, etc.)
• How to get support for your weight loss efforts (friends, family, weight loss seekers)
• Incorporating exercise into your weight loss program
• How to curb the late night urges for a snack (e.g. drink water with lemon)
• And endless other content topics

You can also create a series of educational articles that will help your prospective clients gain a better understanding of your services, by explaining benefits, procedures, costs (including payment plans, insurance coverage, etc).

Remember to use the same keywords in your content that your readers will be searching 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 site, save money creating useful content for your 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!

Tips For Improving Visitor Engagement And User Experience

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

Content Syndication – RSS Feeds

Using RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve your visitor engagement and user experience in several ways.

If you provide information that adds value to others, other businesses may want to syndicate your content to their visitors.

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

• All of your updates are kept in one place
• your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• RSS feeds can be shared online
• Users can subscribe to your RSS feed
• An RSS feed provides a way for links to point back to your content
• Your feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregators
• RSS provides various ways for readers to receive your content (e.g. users can read 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 adding syndicated content to your website 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 by visiting sites of health and medical-related government departments or well-known industry bodies.

Below we have listed a few RSS feeds containing useful information that you could add to your site:

• US Department Of Health And Human Services – e.g. Blog posts feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SelectedHhsBlogPosts, etc. You can search by departments and select specific feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Body image, Fitness and nutrition, HIV/AIDS, Mental health, Pregnancy, etc.) here: http://womenshealth.gov/news/rss/rss-feeds.html
• US National Libraries Of Medicine – For a directory of feeds from well-known medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation, BMJ Disease in Childhood – Fetal and Neonatal Edition, JCI – The Journal of Clinical Investigation, BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine, Molecular Biology and Evolution, 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 RSS feeds here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• US Food And Drug Administration (FDA) – Find FDA-related news feeds (e.g. FDA drug safety, FDA drug shortages, tainted products marked as dietary supplements, 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. NSW – http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/pages/rss.aspx
• Centers For Disease Control And Prevention (www.cdc.gov) - Find many health-related feeds and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
• Medical News Feeds: You can search medical news feeds in places like the NYTimes feeds section (e.g. Research: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Research.xml)
• MedicineNet – Daily Health and Medical News: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/dailyhealth.xml. You can also choose individual RSS feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Alzheimer’s Disease, Mental Health, Chronic Pain, Pregnancy, Eyesight, HIV, etc.)
• Medical News Today – MNT Featured Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
• MedicalNewsToday.com – You can also select specific RSS feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Cardiovascular/Cardiology, Complementary Medicine/Alternative Medicine, Surgery, Dermatology, Diabetes, Pediatrics/Children’s Health, Medical Practice Management, etc.)

You can also search online for general RSS feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific subjects, e.g. “pharma industry rss feeds”, “gastrointestinal rss feeds”, “psychology rss feeds”, etc.

(Add RSS feeds to improve your medical or health-related website’s user experience.)

Add Forms & Checklists

Adding checklists and medical forms 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 useful information and resources to complete necessary steps. They are also great instructional tools.

You can provide online or downloadable forms and checklists covering a range of subjects such as:

• Checklists and forms for booking appointments
• Checklists for pre or post treatment
• Health checklists and charts for specific systems
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, oral hygiene program, general dentistry, etc.
• Fitness and exercise program checklists and charts
• General charts & infographics (e.g. caloric level of different foods, sleep requirements at different stages of development, etc.)

Adding Online Tools

Providing unique online tools and applications on your site can help increase visitor engagement and add value to your visitors. Health-related calculators are useful tools for your website. Others can include things like nutritional tools, and even recipes.

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

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This is the end of part one.

To view Part 2, click this link:

• The Complete Guide On How To Grow A Medical-Related Website – Part Two

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