Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

The digital age has not only transformed business globally, it has also created growing challenges and great opportunities for the medical or health sector.

Challenges Medical Providers Face Online

Today, more than ever, businesses in the medical industry must work harder than ever to remain competitive. Not only do you have to participate in the community you serve, you must also maintain a strong web presence. This includes having an effective website and learning how to better promote your health services online.

As well as spending money advertising offline, you will probably find (if you haven’t already) that in order to remain competitive, increasingly larger amounts of their marketing budget will need to be assigned towards the development and maintenance of a website that will bring new prospective clients, engage users, outrank the competition in search engines and social media, and increase your marketing exposure online.

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

One other difficult challenge that medical businesses face with their websites (as do most other businesses for that matter), is that your site has only about thirty seconds or less to provide users with 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 Businesses In The Online Economy

As well as facing many challenges, there are also loads of online opportunities available for businesses in the health or medical profession that can evolve to meet online challenges and think progressively when it comes to marketing their business services better online.

This guide will help you uncover new opportunities to source more client accounts and establish stronger 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 business website or blog.

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

• Why A Poorly Designed Website Can Cost You Customers And What To Do About It
• Learn How To Grow Your Small Business With WordPress

Useful Tips For Improving Your Health Clinic Website

In this section we’ll show you how to improve your health website and get better results online. We will look at what pages your website needs, what type of content you need, your navigation structure, etc.

If you need website planning assistance, read this detailed guide: The Website Planning Process: A Useful Guide For Non-Technical Business Owners

Your Website Pages

Professional business websites need a number of essential pages. Let’s take a look at the pages your  should have and how to structure your website for best results.

Description Of services And Products

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

• Medical And Surgical – e.g. acute pain management, orthopedics blood disorders, plastic surgery, stroke, rheumatology, weight loss surgery, ophtalmology palliative care, etc.
• Dental Services – e.g. cosmetic dentistry, children’s dentistry, oral hygiene, veneers, crowns and bridges, braces, emergency dental services, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. heart monitoring, chronic heart conditions
• Prenatal/Neonatal – e.g. birthing, maternity services, etc.
• Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic – mammography, lung screening, medical imaging, pap smears, MRI scanning, food allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology – lab testing and analysis, routine pathology testing, clinical trials, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling services – mental health, alcohol, tobacco & other drug services, trauma counselling, diet and nutrition counselling, social work services
• Alternative treatments – acupuncture, aromatherapy, natural therapy, meditation, osteopathy, hypnosis, etc.
• Other medical services/therapies – weight management, podiatry, fertility services, speech therapy, medical genetics, prosthetics, sleep therapy, 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 the benefits of using your services and direct them to your appointment booking page.

About Us

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

It’s important to also list any industry awards, recognitions, accreditations, certifications, publications, associations, etc., that could be used to promote your business and to position yourself above the competition.

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

Staff

Are you searching for quicker and easier ways to sell more products or services online? Then one of the things you can do, is help your prospects get to know, like and trust you and 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 employees or team members. This page should include a photo and a mini biography. Since most visitors won’t be familiar with health terms it should tell who they are and what their specialties are. It should also explain what those specialties mean. It can also include social buttons so your site visitors can follow some of your staff members on their social pages.

In this page, make sure to highlight your team member’s expertise and qualifications, 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 team to prospective new clients. Image sourced from: southperthchiro.com.au)

To learn more about how to easily add an easy-to-update simple team members directory in WordPress using a free WP plugin, go here: How To Add An Employee List Directory: Tutorial

Recruitment

This is a listing of career opportunities available within the organization. It could include training provided, employee benefits, professional development, etc. It should include stories of graduates who have risen within your company and information such as the job outlook and additional career opportunities in the health-related industry.

Maintain 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 you on social media, etc.

Testimonials And Case Studies

Customer reviews and case studies are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase the services you offer. Adding a web page with testimonials from past clients and case studies also provides social proof online.

(Add a page to your site with testimonials from previous clients and case studies. Image sourced from: arrowsmiledental.com)

We have written extensively on using client case studies and client reviews get better results online here: Improve Your Conversions Using Engaging Client Testimonials

Contact Page

A functional contact page is crucial.

It should provide:

• Company Name
• Your physical address
• Phone
• Facsimile
• Contact email address
• Google Map
• Website URL
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Links to social media profiles
• Online chat feature

If you operate in multiple areas you want to make that clear when showing the address and contact info.

Consider also including links to an FAQ page, main pages, booking request, helpdesk, newsletter, blog, etc.

Blog

A blog is a very powerful marketing tool for your business. Many blogging platforms are built around a content management system that is easy to use and allows you to promote your business using content like the latest announcements, updates, educational articles and tutorials, informative posts, how-to videos, webinars, etc.

If you already have an established medical-related site, then consider adding a WordPress-driven blog to market your medical services.

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

Something not many people know about, is that an expertly configured WordPress site can turn your web presence into an automated traffic system that will help attract an ongoing stream of new visitors to your business, simply by publishing regular content to your web site.

(WordPress can drive new traffic automatically to your website)

For more details:

• Web Traffic Blueprint – Discover How To Automatically Grow Your Traffic For Your Business

Legal Information

It’s vital to make sure they have a website that complies will all legal requirements online. 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 your practice is located.

Depending on what services you provide, adding some or all of the following legal pages to your health-related site will help you stay out of legal hot water with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Google), and other potential legal threats and inconveniences:

• Contact Page
• Privacy Statement
• 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

To learn more about adding legal pages to your website, see this article: The Importance Of Adding Legal Pages To Your Website

How To Improve The Content On Your Site

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

By providing great content with useful advice and tips, you will get your visitors to share your information and come back for more content. Publishing content is the most effective way to inform and educate site visitors and prospects about your services.

For example, if your business provides products that help people manage their weight, then some of the areas you could cover as content on your site:

• What is fiber and how can it help you with weight loss?
• How to set realistic, but challenging weight loss goals
• Recovering after weight loss surgery – useful tips and recommendations
• Could a personal chef help you lose weight (what they do, is it affordable)
• Etc.

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

Include the keywords and terms in your articles that your prospective clients 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 teach you how to drive more traffic to your site, save money creating useful content for 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 completely FREE!

Improving User Experience

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

Syndicate Content With RSS Feeds

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

If you provide valuable content, other sites 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 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 feed
• A feed provides a way for links to point back to your site
• Feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregators
• There are various ways your readers can receive your content (e.g. view the content on their mobile device using different applications)
• RSS is built into WordPress

There are also benefits to providing great information on your website from other sites, such as the fact that you don’t have to write, manage or update the content.

You can find many useful RSS feeds by searching online for health and medical-related government departments or well-known industry bodies.

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

• US Department Of Health And Human Services – e.g. Latest news feed: http://www.hhs.gov/rss/news/hhsnews.xml, etc. You can also choose specific feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Emergency preparedness, Fitness and nutrition, HIV/AIDS, Minority women’s health, Pregnancy, etc.) here: http://womenshealth.gov/news/rss/rss-feeds.html
• US National Libraries Of Medicine – For a list of feeds from various medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. BMJ Quality and Safety in Health Care, The Journal of General Physiology (JGP), Indian Journal of Plastic Surgery, Current Psychiatry, ADA DOC News, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health - Find many health-related feeds here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• US Food And Drug Administration (FDA) – Find feeds on fda-related news like criminal investigations, MedWatch safety alerts (human medical products), tainted products marked as dietary supplements, radiological health, 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. Victoria – http://www.health.vic.gov.au/rss/newsfeed.xml
• Centers For Disease Control And Prevention (www.cdc.gov) - Get various health-related RSS feeds and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
• Medical News Feeds: You can search medical news feeds by going to publications like the NYTimes feeds section (e.g. Medical research: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Research.xml)
• MedicineNet – Weekly Health and Medical News Digest: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/weeklyhealth.xml. You can also choose individual feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Allergies, Arthritis, Nutrition, Food, & Recipes, Pediatrics / Healthy Kids, Prevention & Wellness, Hearing, etc.)
• MedicalNewsToday.com – Featured 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. Gout, Acid Reflux/GERD, Blood/Hematology, Irritable-Bowel Syndrome, CJD/vCJD/Mad Cow Disease, Dyslexia, Crohn’s/IBD, etc.)

You can also just search online for general RSS feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific subjects, e.g. “ovarian cancer rss feeds”, “transplants rss feeds”, “psychiatry rss feeds”, etc.

(RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve your site’s UX.)

Checklists & Charts

Adding checklists and medical forms to your site is a fantastic way to help increase visitor engagement, add value to your visitors and set yourself apart from the competition. Forms and checklists can provide users with useful step-by-step information and resources to perform steps. They can also be great client educational tools.

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

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

Other Tools

Providing useful online tools, gadgets and applications on your website is a great way to increase visitor engagement and add significant value to users. Health-related calculators are popular tools for your website. Other tools would include things like nutritional tools, or even recipes.

In the next section, we discuss a several online tools you can use in your medical site using WordPress plugins and themes that can help to improve search engine optimization, improve user engagement and drive more traffic to your business.

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This is the end of part one.

Click here to continue:

• Grow Your Medical Services & Health-Related Website – WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increasing User Engagement And Generating More Web Traffic

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