Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

The digital economy has not only revolutionised the way business is done globally, it has also created increasingly difficult challenges and great opportunities for health providers.

Online Challenges For Medical & Health Practitioners

Today, more than ever, medical practitioners must work harder to remain competitive and source new clients. Not only do you have to become actively involved in the community you serve, you must also develop an active digital presence. This includes having a website and searching for better ways to market your medical services online.

As well as spending dollars advertising offline on newspapers, ads in industry publications and magazines, radio and television spots, etc., businesses in the medical industry are now also finding that increasingly larger amounts of their budget will need to be delegated towards the development and management of a website that brings in prospective clients, engages users, outperforms the competition in search engines and social media, and helps to give them wider exposure online.

This means that your site not only has to look professional, load fast, and your website layout has to be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, the needs of the website will change over time and many areas will need to be updated frequently. This requires the implementation of a well-planned web and content management strategy.

Another difficult challenge that medical services professionals (and most other businesses) face online, is that they have around 30 seconds or less to give visitors what they are searching for or they will find what they are looking for 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 And Health Services Professionals In The Online Economy

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

The article below will help you uncover a number of ways to generate traffic and establish stronger online credibility for your medical-related business.

As well as providing general website improvement tips, we also recommend that you consider using the WordPress CMS platform to power your health website.

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

• Why A Poorly Constructed Web Site Can Lose You Business
• WordPress And Small Business – A Complete Guide To Building Your Successful Small Business With WordPress

Useful Tips For Improving Your Website

Let’s start by covering some basics. In this section, we’ll look at how to improve your health or medical website and get better results. We show you what pages your site needs, what content works best for medical or health websites, suggestions for improving layout and navigation structure, etc.

If you need assistance or help planning your website, see this detailed guide: A Money-Saving Guide To Web Site Planning For Non-Technical Business Owners

Your Web Pages

All websites need several basic pages. Let’s go over the pages your  need to have and how to structure your website for best results.

Services

It’s essential to have a page that describes your services or products. Depending on which area you specialize in, this page could list services such as:

• Medicine & Surgery – e.g. anaesthetics, pulmonology endocrinology, plastic surgery, rehabilitation medicine, rheumatology, gastroenterology, optometry surgical outpatients, etc.
• Dental Services – e.g. general dentistry, holistic dentistry, oral health, veneers, crowns and bridges, orthodontics, emergency dentistry, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. heart monitoring, coronary care
• Prenatal and Neonatal – e.g. birthing, midwifery, etc.
• Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic services – breast screens, lung screening, radiology, pap smears, MRI scanning, food allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology services – laboratory testing and analysis, emergency pathology testing, insurance and corporate testing, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling services – mental health, alcohol, tobacco & other drug counselling, domestic abuse, wellness, social development services
• Alternative therapies – acupuncture, homeopathy, functional medicine, shiatsu, osteopathy, hypnosis, etc.
• Other medical services – weight management, podiatry, reproductive endocrinology, optical services, neurosciences, artificial limbs, assisted living, home care, sexual health, medical transport, 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 why they should choose you.

About Us Page

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

It should include any business awards, accreditations, recognitions, certifications, associations, publications, etc., that can be used to promote your medical services and position yourself above other competitors.

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

Meet Our Team

Are you looking for quicker, easier and cost-effective ideas to sell more products online? Then help prospective clients get to know your organization better.

You want prospective clients to relate to your business. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your employees or team members. This page should include a photo and a mini bio. Since most visitors will not tend to be well-versed in health or medical-related terms your bio descriptions should tell who they are and what their specialties are. You may also want to explain what those specialized areas do. It should include social buttons so your site visitors can follow individual team members on their social networks.

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

(Make sure to add a staff page. Image source: southperthchiro.com.au)

To learn more about how to add an easy-to-maintain simple team members directory in your web site using a free WordPress plugin, go here: Adding A Staff List Directory: Step-By-Step Tutorial

Career Opportunities

List any job or career opportunities available within the company. This page should include training, benefits, professional development, etc. You can include information such as the job outlook and additional career opportunities in the health and medical industry.

Maintain 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 contact list, follow you on social media, etc.

Testimonials

Testimonials and case studies are a great way to attract potential clients and showcase your services. By adding a page with reviews from clients and case studies, you will also help to provide visitors social proof.

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

If you want to learn more about using testimonials and client reviews, see this article: How To Improve Your Conversions Using Awesome Testimonials

Contact Page

A clean contact page is crucial.

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

• Name Of Your Business
• Address
• Phone
• Facsimile
• Contact email
• Google Map
• Website URL
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Links to social media pages
• Chat feature

If your business services different locations you should make this clear when displaying your address and contact information.

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

Add A Health Blog Section

A blog can be a very powerful marketing tool for your business. Blogs typically include a content management system that is simple to use and allows you to easily promote your business using timely content like events, updates, educational articles, informative posts, how-to videos, webinars, etc.

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

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

Very few businesses know that an expertly configured WordPress site can become an automated traffic-generation machine that can help begin attracting web traffic to your web site, simply by publishing new content on a regular basis to your website.

(WordPress can drive web traffic automatically to your site)

Go here to learn more about this:

• Web Site Traffic Blueprint – Discover How To Increase Your Website Traffic For Your Business Using WordPress

Legal Pages

It’s very important for medical and health services practitioners companies to have a website that complies will all legal requirements online. This is not only important for building trust with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no laws and regulations are being contravened wherever you do business.

Adding the legal pages below to your site will help you stay out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers, and other potential legal threats and inconveniences:

• Contact Page
• Privacy Policy
• 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.

Go here for a detailed article about adding legal pages to your website: How To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

Improving The Content On Your Website

In today’s highly competitive online economy, the practice of content marketing has become one of the key success differentiators for businesses that sell similar products or provide similar services.

By providing great content with useful tips, advice or information, you will get your readers to share your information with others and come back for more. Using content is a great way to educate your visitors and prospective clients about your services.

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

• Nutrients your body needs on a daily basis (protein, carbs, minerals, vitamins, fats)
• Is weight loss surgery right for you? (who should get it, risks, success rates)
• How you eat your food - just as important as what you eat (eat at table, chew slowly)
• How to make right choices when eating out at any restaurant
• And many other content topics

You can also create a series of informative articles that will help your your readers understand your medical or health-related services, by explaining benefits, procedures, costs (including payment plans, insurance coverage, etc).

Use keywords in your content that your prospective clients will search for.

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 teach exactly how to drive more traffic to your web site, save money creating useful content that will add value to your visitors and grow your presence online using content marketing. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also 100% FREE!

Improving Visitor Experience

Improving your user experience (generally referred to as UX) will help to keep visitors coming back and engaging with your site. This section will show you ways you can improve visitor engagement and UX.

Adding RSS Feeds

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

If you provide valuable content, other sites will 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
• Content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Feeds can be shared and picked up by other sites online
• Users can subscribe to your RSS feed
• An RSS feed provides a way for external links to point back to your content
• Feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
• RSS provides several ways for readers to receive your content (e.g. subscribers can view 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 site from other websites, such as the fact that you don’t have to write, manage or update the content.

To find RSS feeds with useful content for your website, visit sites of health or medical-related government departments or key industry bodies.

Here are examples of feeds containing useful information that you could consider adding to a medical website:

• 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 individual RSS feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Breast cancer, Health care for women, Illnesses and disabilities, Mental health, Screening tests and vaccines, 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. BMJ Disease in Childhood – Education and Practice, Bionet RSS, Stem Cells, jobs.ac.uk health and medical jobs, Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, 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 topics here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• US Food And Drug Administration (FDA) – Get RSS feeds on fda-related news like consumer health information updates, FDA drug shortages, pet health, tobacco 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. Western Australia – http://www.public.health.wa.gov.au/feed/?types=news
• Centers For Disease Control And Prevention (www.cdc.gov) - Find various health-related feeds and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
• Medical News: You can search medical news feeds in places like the NYTimes RSS feeds section (e.g. Health news: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Health.xml)
• MedicineNet.com – 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. Lung Conditions, Mental Health, Cholesterol, Pediatrics / Healthy Kids, Sexual Health, Skin, etc.)
• Medical News Today – MNT Featured Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
• Medical News Today – You can also choose specific feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Gout, Pharmacy/Pharmacist, Health Insurance, Aid/Disasters, Transplants/Organ Donations, Tropical Diseases, Ear, Nose and Throat, etc.)

You can also just search online for general feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific subjects, e.g. “medical insurance rss feeds”, “disasters rss feeds”, “crohn’s rss feeds”, etc.

(Add RSS feeds to improve your site’s UX.)

Checklists & Forms

Checklists and medical forms are a great way to help increase visitor engagement and add value to your visitors. Checklists and medical forms can provide step-by-step information and resources to complete necessary tasks. Checklists and charts are also great client instructional tools.

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

• Checklists/forms for booking appointments
• Checklists for pre or post surgery
• Health checklists for specific medical conditions
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, active 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 ages, etc.)

Unique Tools

Providing unique tools and applications on your site is a great way to increase visitor engagement and significantly add value to potential clients. Calculators, for example are great tools you can add to your website. Others would include things like diagnostic tools, or even recipes.

In part 2 of this detailed guide, we will look at a number of online tools you can add to your website using WordPress plugins and themes that improve your search engine optimization, improve user engagement and generate more visitors to your business.

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This is the end of part 1.

Click here to read Part 2:

• Grow Your Medical Services And Health-Related Website – Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Traffic Using Plugins

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