Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

Medical services providers face many challenges in the web economy, especially when it comes to growing their presence online.

Challenges Medical Professionals Face Online

Today, more than ever, health and medical services professionals must find smarter ways to stand apart from their competition and source new clientele. Not only do you have to maintain an active presence in the community your business serves, you must also maintain an active web presence. This includes having an effective web presence and searching for smarter ways to grow your medical or health services online.

As well as investing money marketing offline, you will probably find that in order to compete, you will need to allocate a more significant portion of your budget to develop and manage a website that brings in leads, engages users, outperforms the competition in search engines and helps to give you a wider amount of exposure online.

This means that your website not only has to look professional, your web pages have to load fast, and be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that the needs of the website will change over time and sections will need to be updated often. This requires implementing well-developed website and content management strategy.

One other difficult challenge that health organizations face (as do most other professions for that matter), is that your site has an average of 30 seconds or less to provide visitors what they are looking for or they will go 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 Digital Economy

As well as facing a number of business and technology changes, there are also many online opportunities available to health or medical practices that can evolve to meet digital economy challenges and think outside the box in terms of improving their online business marketing skills.

This guide will help you uncover new ways to attract and engage new visitors and see noticeable improvements in your online results.

As well as providing practical tips and information on cost-effective ways to improve your web presence, we also recommend that you consider using the WordPress content management system to power your health or medical business website.

To learn more about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform, go here:

• Discover How A Poorly Built Website Can Cost You Prospective Clients And What To Do About It
• Mastering WordPress – The Business Owner’s Guide

Practical Tips To Improve Your Website

In this section we’ll show you ways to improve your website and get better results. We will look at what pages your website needs, what type of content works best for health or medical-related websites, your navigation structure, etc.

If you need assistance or help planning your medical or health website, read this detailed guide we have written: The Web Site Planning Process Explained: A Comprehensive Blueprint For Non-Technical Business Owners

Ways To Improve Your Web Pages

All websites need a number of basic web pages. Let’s review these.

Description Of Services

You need to include a page that explains your products or services. Depending on which area of health you specialize in, this page could list services like:

• Medical And Surgical – e.g. ear, nose and throat, pulmonology blood disorders, cosmetic surgery, neurology, renal, infection control, eye diseases palliative care, etc.
• Dentistry – e.g. cosmetic dentistry, holistic dentistry, oral hygiene, veneers, crowns and bridges, dental braces, emergency dental services, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. cardiac patient education, chronic heart conditions
• Prenatal and Neonatal – e.g. birth suites, midwifery, etc.
• Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic services – mammography, skin cancer, x-ray, gynaecology, MRI scanning, food allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology – laboratory testing and analysis, emergency pathology testing, clinical trials, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling services – mental health services, alcohol, tobacco & other drug counselling, trauma counselling, wellness, social development services
• Alternative therapies – acupuncture, homeopathy, colloidal silver therapy, massage therapy, chiropractic services, hypnosis, etc.
• Other medical services – weight management, othopedics, fertility services, physiotherapy, inherited diseases, artificial limbs, hearing aids, home care, clinical information, medical equipment, 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 these services do and direct them to your contact or appointment booking page.

About Us

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

It should also list any industry awards, recognitions, certifications, accreditations, publications, associations, etc., that could be used to promote your practice and set yourself above your competitors.

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

Team Profile

If you are looking for simple ideas to grow your business online, then make it easier for your visitors to get to know, like and trust you, your team and your business better.

Potential clients need to relate to your business. One great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your people. This page should include a photo and a mini biography. Since most visitors will not tend to be well-versed in health-related terms your bio descriptions should tell who they are and what they specialize in. It should also explain what those specialized areas mean. This page can also include social buttons that will allow your prospective clients to follow some of your staff members on their social pages.

On this page, make sure to highlight your employee’s experience, why they are an asset to your team, and more importantly, how they will help add value to your clients’ business.

(Add a page that introduces your employees or team members to prospective new clients. Image sourced from: southperthchiro.com.au)

If you need help how to easily create and add an easy-to-maintain list directory of staff or team members in WordPress using a free WP plugin, refer to this tutorial: Adding A Staff List Directory

We’re Hiring

List any job opportunities available within the clinic. This page can include training, employee benefits, professional development, etc. You should also include information about new career opportunities in the medical or health 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 announcements list, follow you on social media, etc.

Testimonials

Testimonials and case studies are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase your services. Adding a web page with case studies and reviews from clients also establishes social proof.

(Add a web page with reviews from clients and case studies. Image sourced from: arrowsmiledental.com)

If you want to learn more about using testimonials, case studies and client reviews, see this article: Turn More Visitors Into Qualified Leads With Compelling Testimonials

Contact Page

A functional contact page is absolutely vital.

It should provide:

• Name Of Your Business
• Physical address
• Telephone
• Fax
• Email
• Map and directions
• Web URL
• Contact form
• Request for more information – who to contact
• Social media URLs
• Interactive chat feature (optional)

If you operate in several locations you want to make that clear when displaying the address and contact information.

Consider also including a few links point to the most commonly asked questions page, main pages, online booking request, helpdesk, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.

Add A Health Or Medical Blog

A blog is a powerful marketing tool. Blogs are built around a content management system that is easy to use and allows you to promote your business using content like events, updates, educational information, discussions on current topics, educational videos, infographics, etc.

If you already have an existing site, then consider adding a WordPress-powered blog to create more exposure for your company.

If you don’t have a website yet, or if your existing website is very hard to keep updated or not giving you the results you want, then WordPress can be used both as your business website and blog.

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

(WordPress can drive new visitors automatically to your site)

Go here to learn more about this:

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

Legal Information

As a professional business, having a website that complies will all legal requirements online is crucially important. This is not only important for building trust and credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that you are not contravening any laws and regulations wherever you provide services.

Depending on what services and products you provide, adding some or all of the following legal pages to your website will help keep you out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers, and other potential sources of legal threats and inconveniences:

• Contact Us
• Privacy Statement
• Terms And Conditions Of Use
• Website Disclaimer
• Affiliate Agreement
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• DMCA Notice
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Health/Financial Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• etc.

If you want to learn more about adding legal pages to your website, see this article: What You Need To Know About Adding Legal Pages To Your Site

Improve The Content On Your Website

In today’s globally competitive economy, being generous with information has become one of the key differentiators for businesses that sell similar products or provide similar services.

By providing useful content with great information, advice or tips, you will get your visitors sharing your web pages with others and coming back for more content. This is a great way to educate your visitors and prospects about using your services and products.

For example, if your business provides solutions that help people lose weight, then some of the topics you could write content about include:

• Nutrients your body needs on a daily basis (protein, carbs, minerals, fats, vitamins)
• How to identify the bad habits you need to correct to ensure permanent weight loss
• How to recover physically and emotionally after weight loss surgery – useful tips and suggestions
• Could a personal chef help you lose weight (what they do, is it affordable)
• Etc.

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

Remember to use specific keywords and terminology in your content that your 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 easy-to-digest information and practical tips that will show 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 business online using content. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also 100% FREE!

Ways Of Improving Visitor Engagement And User Experience

Improving website 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 user experience.

Syndicate Content With 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 businesses may want to syndicate your content.

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
• Feeds can be shared and picked up by other sites online
• Users can subscribe to your feed
• An RSS feed provides links to your site
• Feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
• RSS provides multiple ways for readers to receive your content (e.g. subscribers can read the content on their mobile device using a feed reader)
• It’s built into WordPress

There are also a number of benefits to providing valuable content on your site 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 for your website by searching online for medical and health-related government departments and well-known industry bodies.

Below we have listed some examples of useful RSS feeds you could consider adding to your site:

• US Department Of Health And Human Services – e.g. Blog RSS 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, 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 RSS feeds from leading medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. Rheumatology, BMJ Journal of Medical Genetics, Journal of Cell Biology, Neurology.org, 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) - Get various RSS feeds on health-related topics here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• US Food And Drug Administration (FDA) – Get feeds on fda-related topics like consumer health information updates, food safety, tainted products, animal and veterinary 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 - Get many health-related feeds and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
• Medical News Feeds: You can search medical news RSS feeds in major news publications like the NYTimes feeds section (e.g. Medical research: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Research.xml)
• MedicineNet – MedTerms Medical Word of the Day: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/dailyword.xml. You can also select individual RSS feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Lung Conditions, Arthritis, Nutrition, Food, & Recipes, Depression, Exercise & Fitness, Travel Health, etc.)
• MedicalNewsToday.com – MNT Medical News 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. Cardiovascular/Cardiology, Medicare/Medicaid/SCHIP, Muscular Dystrophy/ALS, Emergency Medicine, Alcohol/Addiction/Illegal Drugs, Allergy, Obesity/Weight Loss/Fitness, etc.)

You can also search online for general feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific subjects, e.g. “pulmonary system rss feeds”, “drugs addiction rss feeds”, “drug trials rss feeds”, etc.

(Using RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve your website’s user experience.)

Checklists & Charts

Adding checklists and medical forms to your site is a fantastic way to help increase visitor engagement and add value to your audience. Forms and checklists can provide users with useful information and resources to perform tasks. Forms and checklists can also be great instructional tools.

Forms, charts and checklists can include topics such as:

• Booking appointments
• Checklists for post-surgery recovery
• Health checklists for specific conditions
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, maintenance program, cosmetic 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 stages of development, etc.)

Online Tools

Providing useful tools, gadgets and applications on your site is a great way to increase visitor engagement and add value to your visitors. Calculators are some of the most popular tools for your website. Other tools can include things like diagnostic tools, or even recipes.

In part 2 of this guide, we discuss a number of online tools you can use in your website using WordPress plugins and themes that improve your seo, increase user engagement and generate more web traffic to your business.

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This is the end of part one.

To view the rest of this article, click here:

• Tips For Health Providers – Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using WordPress Plugins

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