Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

The digital business age has not only revolutionised businesses around the world, it has also created a number of difficult challenges and great opportunities for medical-related businesses.

Online Challenges For The Medical Profession

Now, more than ever, businesses in the health sector must work harder than ever to remain competitive. Not only do you have to maintain an active presence in the community your business serves, you must also develop a strong digital presence. This includes having an effective website and searching for better ways to grow your services online.

In addition to investing money in offline marketing activities, businesses in the medical or health-related industry are now also finding that they need to delegate a more significant part of their marketing budget to develop and maintain a website that attracts new prospective clients, engages visitors, outranks the competition in search engines and helps to increase their reach online.

This means that your site not only has to look professional, your web pages have to be fast-loading, and your website layout has to be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, your site’s needs may change over time and some areas may need to be updated often. This requires having a sound web and content management strategy in place.

One other difficult challenge that health or medical-related organizations face with their websites (as do other professions for that matter), is that they have only about thirty seconds to help visitors find 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 Health Providers

As well as facing many challenges, there are also many online opportunities available for medical or health-related businesses that can adapt to meet digital challenges and who can think strategically about improving their online marketing skills.

This comprehensive article will help you uncover a number of ways to attract and engage new visitors and establish stronger online credibility for your health-related business.

As well as providing general website improvement tips, we also emphasize the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress content management system to power your health or medical website.

For more information about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress Content Management System, go here:

• Learn Why A Poorly Built Web Site Can Cost You Money And What To Do About It
• Learn How To Grow Your Small Business With A WordPress Blog

Ways To Improve Your Medical Website

This section explains ways to improve your website and get better results. We show you what pages your site needs, what content works best, ways to improve layout and navigation, etc.

If you need assistance or help planning your medical or health-related website, read this guide: A Cost-Saving Guide To Web Site Planning For Non-Technical Business Owners

Your Web Pages

All websites need some basic pages. Let’s take a look at the pages your  need to have and how to structure your website for best results.

Services And Products

You need a page that explains your services or products. Depending on which area you specialize in, this page can include services such as:

• Medicine & Surgery – e.g. pain management, nephrology hematology, maxillofacial surgery, stroke, renal, bariatric surgery, ophtalmology day surgery, etc.
• Dental Services – e.g. preventive dentistry, holistic dentistry, bad breath treatment, veneers, crowns and bridges, dental implants, emergency dental, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. heart monitoring, coronary care
• Prenatal/Postnatal – e.g. obstetrics, maternity services, etc.
• Child Health services – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic services – breast screening, lung screening, hearing, women’s health, magnetic resonance imaging, food allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology services – laboratory testing and analysis, routine pathology testing, clinical trials, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling – mental health services, alcohol, tobacco & other drug services, trauma counselling, diet and nutrition counselling, social development services
• Alternative treatments – Chinese medicine, homeopathy, functional medicine, shiatsu, osteopathy, hypnosis, etc.
• Other medical services/therapies – diet and nutrition, podiatry, lymphedema therapy, speech therapy, medical genetics, artificial limbs, assisted living, home care, sexual health, medical supplies, 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.

About Us

This page needs to describe your business and explain to visitors what your business stands for, its unique approach, philanthropy, etc.

It should also list any awards, recognitions, accreditations, certifications, publications, associations, etc., that can be used to promote your medical, dental, chiropractic, surgery services, etc. and to set yourself above your competitors.

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

Meet The Team

Are you looking for cost-effective ways to grow your business online or get people to stay longer on your site? Then help your prospects get to know, like and trust you and 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 staff. It should include a photo and a mini bio. Since most visitors won’t be familiar with medical-related terms it should tell who they are and what they specialize in. You may also want to explain what those specialized areas mean. It can also include social buttons so your visitors can follow individual staff members on their social networks.

In this page, don’t be afraid to show the human side of your team members with personal stories, hobbies, etc., but make sure to highlight each employee’s expertise, why they are an invaluable asset to your team, and more importantly, how they can help add value to your clients’ business.

(Add a page that introduces your team to prospective new clients. Image source: southperthchiro.com.au)

To learn more about how to easily create and add an updatable simple team members directory in a WordPress site with no coding skills required, go here: Plugin Tutorial: Adding A Staff List Directory To Your Site

Work For Us

This is a listing of job opportunities within your clinic. It can include training offered, employee benefits, professional development, etc. You can include stories of recruits who have established a solid career path thanks to your organization and information about career opportunities in the health or medical-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 this page, join your newsletter, follow your social pages, etc.

Testimonials And Case Studies

Case studies and testimonials are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase the services you offer. Adding a page with case studies and testimonials also helps to provide social proof online.

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

We have written extensively on using testimonials, case studies and client reviews improve your business online. To learn more about this go here: How To Improve Your Sales Using Profit-Boosting Customer Testimonials

Contact Us

A functional contact page is essential.

It should include:

• Business Name
• Physical location
• Phone number
• Fax
• Email
• Google Map
• Website URL
• Contact form
• Contact name
• Social media links
• Live chat feature

If you operate out of several areas you want to make this clear when showing the address and contact info.

Consider also including a few links point to the most commonly asked questions page, main pages, booking form, support page, newsletter, blog, etc.

Blog

A blog is a powerful business marketing tool. Blogs typically comprise of a content management system that is easy to use and allows you to easily promote your business using timely content like news and announcements, product releases, useful information, opinions on current topics, educational videos, media presentations, etc.

If you already have an established health-related website, then consider adding a WordPress-powered blog to promote your business.

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

Something few businesses know about, is that an expertly configured WordPress site can turn your web presence into an automated traffic machine that will begin driving new visitors to your website, simply by publishing regular content to your site.

(WordPress can drive web traffic automatically to your website)

Go here to learn more about this:

• Website Traffic Blueprint – A Complete Guide To Driving More Website Traffic Automatically

Legal Pages

It’s vital for professional organizations to make sure they have a compliant website. This is not only important for building trust and credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no laws or regulations are being broken wherever you practice.

Depending on the services you provide, adding some or all of the legal pages below to your site 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 Links Policy
• Health/Financial Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• and others

We have written a comprehensive article about adding legal pages to your site. For more info, see this article: How To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

Tips For Improving The Content On Your Site

In today’s highly competitive global economy, the sooner you start publishing good content on your site, the faster you will begin to differentiate yourself from other competing businesses.

By committing to providing useful content with tips, advice and information, you will get your visitors sharing your information and coming back for more. This is a great way to inform and educate your visitors and prospective clients about your business and services.

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

• What is BMI (what it stands for, what it does, how to calculate yours)
• How to identify the bad habits that need to be corrected to ensure lifetime weight loss
• Diet sodas (common ones, side effects, long term results, do they work?)
• How to incorporate an occasional fast food into a healthy diet plan
• And many other content topics

You can also create a series of educational articles that will help your your readers gain a better understanding of your health services, by explaining benefits, procedures, terminology, etc.

Include the keywords and terms in your articles that your prospective clients will be searching for.

We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive a comprehensive series of training emails with actionable information and practical tips that will show exactly how to drive more traffic to your site, save money creating useful content that will add value to your site visitors and grow your presence online using content marketing strategies. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also 100% FREE!

Improving User Experience

Improving 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 UX.

RSS Feeds

RSS feeds can help to improve visitor engagement and user experience in several ways.

If you provide valuable content, other sites will want to syndicate your content.

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

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

There are also a number of benefits 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.

To find useful RSS feeds just visit sites of health-related government departments or respected industry bodies.

For example, here are some RSS feeds containing useful information that you could consider adding to a medical or health website:

• US Department Of Health And Human Services – e.g. Blog posts RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SelectedHhsBlogPosts, etc. You can also choose specific RSS feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Body image, Health care for women, Illnesses and disabilities, Mental health, Smoking and how to quit, etc.) here: http://womenshealth.gov/news/rss/rss-feeds.html
• US National Libraries Of Medicine – For a directory of feeds from various medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. PhysiologicalReviews, Neuroanatomy, The Journal of Immunology, BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine, Infectious Agents and Cancer, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health - Get many RSS feeds on health-related news here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• FDA – Find FDA-related RSS feeds (e.g. enforcement reports, food safety, recalls, tobacco news, etc.) and podcasts here: http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/ContactFDA/StayInformed/RSSFeeds
• Department of Health UK (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) - Get many RSS feeds on health-related news and topics and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
• Medical News Feeds: 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. Alzheimer’s Disease, Cancer, Neurology, Diet & Weight Management, Senior Health, Infectious Disease, 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, Lupus, Fibromyalgia, Veterinary, Primary Care/General Practice, Breast Cancer, MRI/PET/Ultrasound, etc.)

You can also search online for general RSS feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific topics, e.g. “pharmacist rss feeds”, “medical malpractice rss feeds”, “huntingtons disease rss feeds”, etc.

(Use RSS feeds to improve your website’s UX.)

Checklists And Charts

Adding checklists and educational charts to your site is a fantastic way to increase visitor engagement and add value to your audience. They can provide step-by-step instructions and resources to perform a necessary task. Checklists and charts are great instructional tools.

Forms, charts and checklists could address topics such as:

• Checklists/forms for booking appointments
• Checklists for pre or post surgery
• Health checklists and charts for specific systems
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, caries prevention program, cosmetic dentistry, etc.
• Fitness and exercise program checklists and charts
• General charts & infographics (e.g. acidity level of different foods, sleep requirements at different stages of development, etc.)

Online Tools

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

In part two, we will look at a number of WordPress plugins and themes you can add to your site that can help improve your search engine optimization, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your business.

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This is the end of part one of this step-by-step guide on ways to build your medical-related business presence online.

Click here to continue:

• The Step-By-Step Guide On How To Grow Your Medical Services And Health-Related Website Successfully – Part 2

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