Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

Health and medical professionals today face increasing challenges.

Online Challenges For The Health & Medical Profession

Now, more than ever, health and medical services providers must work hard and find smarter ways to stand out from their competition and generate new clients. Not only do you have to participate in the community you serve, you must also maintain a strong web presence. This includes having a dynamic website and learning how to better market your business online.

In addition to investing dollars marketing offline, businesses in the health industry are also finding that they will need to invest a more significant amount of their budget to develop and maintain a website that attracts clients, engages users, outperforms the competition in search engines and helps to give their business a wider marketing reach online.

This means that your site not only has to look professional, your pages have to load fast, and your website has to be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, your site’s needs will change in time and sections will need to be frequently updated. This requires implementing sound web and content management strategy.

Another difficult challenge that medical and health services providers (and other businesses) face online, is that they have around thirty seconds or less to give users what they are searching for or they will go elsewhere to find what they need.

“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 Health & Medical Businesses

As well as facing a number of significant challenges, there are also loads of online opportunities available for businesses in the health-related sector that can adapt to meet online challenges and who can think progressively when it comes to improving their online business marketing skills.

In this guide, you will learn about new opportunities to increase traffic and build more online credibility for your health-related business.

As well as providing tips and information on ways to improve your health or medical web presence, we also focus on the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform to power your medical or health business website.

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

• How A Poorly Constructed Website Can Cost You Prospective Customers And What To Do About It
• Everything You Need To Know About Growing Your Small Business Online Using WordPress

Useful Tips To Improve Your Website

This section will show you ways to improve your website and get better results. We show you what pages you need, what type of content works best for health or medical sites, layout and navigation, etc.

If you need website planning assistance, go here: How To Plan A Website - A Practical Guide For Non-Technical Business Owners

Improve Your Website Pages

Professional business websites require a number of basic pages. Let’s discuss the pages your  need to have and how to structure your health or medical-related website for best results.

Services

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

• Medicine & Surgery – e.g. ear, nose and throat, pulmonology haematology, cancer, aged care, renal, infection control, optometry operating theaters, etc.
• Dental Services – e.g. cosmetic dentistry, holistic dentistry, oral health, teeth whitening, dentofacial orthopedics, emergency dental, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. heart surgery, chronic heart conditions
• Prenatal/Neonatal – e.g. obstetrics, midwifery, etc.
• Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic services – breast screening, lung screening, medical imaging, women’s health, psychosis, food allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology – laboratory testing and analysis, routine pathology testing, fine-needle aspiration, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling services – mental health services, alcohol, tobacco & other drug counselling, domestic abuse, diet and nutrition counselling, social work services
• Alternative treatments – Chinese medicine, homeopathy, hydrotherapy, tai chi, chiropractic, hypnotherapy, etc.
• Other medical services – weight management, othopedics, fertility services, stomal therapy, medical genetics, artificial limbs, hearing aids, home and community 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.

Who We Are

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

It’s important to also list any medical-related awards, accreditations, certifications, recognitions, associations, publications, etc., that can be used to promote your business and to position yourself above similar service providers.

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

Your Staff Page

Are you searching for simple ideas to sell more products online? Then something you can do, is make it easier for prospective clients to get to know your business better.

You want prospective clients to relate to your business. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your staff members. This page should include a photo and a mini biography. Since most visitors will not tend to be familiar with medical-related terms your bio descriptions should tell who they are and what they specialize in. It should also explain what those specialized areas do. This page can include social buttons so your prospective clients can follow selected staff members on their social pages.

On this page, make sure to outline your employee’s expertise, how they add value to your team, and more importantly, how they will help add value to your clients’ business.

(Add an employee page. Screenshot source: southperthchiro.com.au)

We have written a detailed tutorial on how to add an easy-to-maintain directory of staff members in your web site here: Adding An Employee Directory

Work With Us

List any career opportunities within the company. This page could include training, employee benefits, professional development, social activities promoted or sponsored by your organization, etc. It should include case studies of graduates who have worked their way up in your organization and information about new career opportunities in the health and medical industry.

Also include a positions available section in your page. If there are no positions currently available, consider inviting people to return periodically to the page, join your newsletter, follow you on social media, etc.

Case Studies

Reviews from clients and case studies are a great way to attract potential clients and showcase what type of services you offer. By adding a page with case studies and testimonials from past clients, you are also helping to will also be providing visitors social proof online for your business.

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

We have written a detailed article about using case studies, testimonials and user reviews to grow your business online. Go here to learn more about this: Achieve Better Results Online With Profit-Boosting Testimonials

Contact Us Page

A contact page is absolutely necessary.

Your contact page should include:

• Name Of Your Business
• Physical location
• Phone number
• Fax number
• Email address
• Google Map
• Web URL
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Social media web addresses
• Chat feature (optional feature)

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

Consider also including links to an FAQ page, main pages, online booking request, support area, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.

Add A Blog Section

A blog can be a powerful marketing tool for your business. Blogs are built around a content management system that is easy to use and allows you to easily promote your business by publishing content such as news, updates, educational articles, discussions on current topics, educational videos, infographics, etc.

If you already have an medical or health site, then consider adding a WordPress blog to promote your practice.

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

Something not many people know about, is that WordPress can become an automated traffic-generation machine that will help begin to attract new visitors to your business, simply by adding new content to your website on a regular basis.

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

To learn more about this go here:

• Website Traffic Blueprint – How To Turn Your WordPress Web Site Into A Web 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 credibility with visitors, but also to ensure that no local, regional and federal laws or regulations are being broken wherever you provide services.

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

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

We have written a detailed article about adding legal pages to your website. You can learn more about this here: The Importance Of Adding Legal Pages To Your Website

Improve Your Web Content

In today’s ultra-competitive online business economy, the ability to deliver valuable content free of charge has become one of the key differentiators for businesses that sell similar products or provide similar services.

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

For example, if you provide weight loss services, then some of the topics you could write content about include:

• What’s the difference between being overweight and obese?
• How to ask for support when embarking on a weight loss program (friends, family, weight loss seekers)
• How to recover physically and emotionally after weight loss surgery – useful tips and recommendations
• How a personal chef can help you lose weight (what they do, is it affordable)
• Etc.

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

Include keywords and terminology in your content that your readers will search for online.

We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive regular training emails with actionable information and practical tips that will show you how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, save money creating high-quality content for your site 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!

Improve Visitor Experience

Improving your site’s user experience (known as UX) will help keep visitors coming back and using your site. This section will show you ways you can improve visitor engagement and UX.

RSS Feeds – Content Syndication

An RSS feed provides lots of benefits for your health business.

If you provide valuable information, other businesses will 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 content updates are in one place
• Doesn’t rely on email
• Your feed can be shared online
• Users can subscribe to your RSS feed
• An RSS feed provides links back to your content
• Your feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
• RSS provides several ways for your readers to receive your content (e.g. users can view your content on their mobile device using feed readers)
• RSS is built into WordPress

There are also benefits to adding syndicated content to your site 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 relevant government departments or respected industry bodies.

For example, here are examples of useful RSS feeds you could add to a health-related site:

• US Department Of Health And Human Services – e.g. Blog feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SelectedHhsBlogPosts, etc. You can also choose individual RSS feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Breastfeeding, Fitness and nutrition, Illnesses and disabilities, 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 RSS feeds from various medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. BioMed Central, Bionet RSS, JCI – The Journal of Clinical Investigation, Neurology.org, BMJ Postgraduate Medical Journal, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health - Get many health-related RSS feeds here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• FDA – Find FDA-related RSS feeds (e.g. consumer health information, food allergies, tainted products, tobacco news, etc.) and podcasts here: http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/ContactFDA/StayInformed/RSSFeeds
• UK Department Of Health (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 - 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 RSS feeds in major news publications like the NYTimes RSS feeds section (e.g. Medical research: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Research.xml)
• MedicineNet.com – Weekly Health and Medical News Digest: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/weeklyhealth.xml. You can also select specific RSS feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Allergies, Arthritis, Nutrition, Food, & Recipes, Pregnancy, Eyesight, Sleep, etc.)
• MedicalNewsToday.com – Medical News 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. Eating Disorders, Seniors/Aging, Pregnancy/Obstetrics, Pancreatic Cancer, Smoking/Quit Smoking, HIV/AIDS, MRI/PET/Ultrasound, etc.)

You can also search online for general feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific subjects, e.g. “lymphedema rss feeds”, “tropical diseases rss feeds”, “huntingtons disease rss feeds”, etc.

(RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve your health or medical website’s UX.)

Checklists And Forms

Checklists and educational charts are a fantastic way to help increase visitor engagement, add value to your audience and set yourself apart from the competition. Checklists and medical forms can provide useful instructions and resources to complete a task. Checklists and forms can also be great instructional tools.

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

• Booking appointments
• Checklists for pre or post surgery
• Health checklists for specific conditions
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, maintenance program, general dentistry, etc.
• Weight loss and exercise program checklists and charts
• General charts & infographics (e.g. acidity level of different foods, sleep requirements at different stages of development, etc.)

Other Tools

Providing unique tools, gadgets and applications on your website can help increase visitor engagement and significantly add value to your visitors. Health-related calculators, for example, are popular tools for your website. Others would include things like diagnostic tools, and even recipes.

In the next section, we discuss a several online tools you can use in your medical or health site using WordPress plugins and themes that can help to improve your seo, improve user engagement and generate more web traffic to your business.

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This is the end of part 1.

Click on this link to keep reading:

• Grow Your Medical Clinic Website – WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increasing User Engagement And Generating More Visitors To Your Website

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