Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

Medical & Health professionals face many challenges in the web economy, especially when it comes to growing their business online.

Online Challenges For Health And Medical Services Practitioners

Now, more than ever, businesses in the medical sector must work harder than ever to remain competitive. Not only do you have to maintain an active presence in the community you serve, you must also develop a strong presence online. This includes having a dynamic website and learning how to better promote your health or medical services services online.

In addition to investing dollars advertising offline, businesses in the medical or health-related industry are now finding that increasingly larger amounts of their marketing budget need to be assigned to develop and manage a website that drives new clients, engages visitors, outperforms the competition in search engines and social media, and helps to increase their marketing exposure online.

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

Another difficult challenge that health and medical services providers face with their websites (as most businesses do for that matter), is that your site has an average of thirty seconds or less to help users find what they need or they will go away.

“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 Businesses In The Digital Economy

As well as facing many new challenges, there are also many online opportunities available for businesses in the health or medical industry that can evolve to meet the demands of the online economy and who can think outside the box in terms of improving their online marketing skills.

In this comprehensive guide, you will learn ways to drive more traffic and establish online credibility for your health or medical-related 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 website.

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

• Why A Poorly Constructed Website Can Lose You Potential Clients And What To Do About It
• How To Grow Your Business With WordPress

Practical Tips For Improving Your Medical And Health Center Site

This section looks at how to improve your website and get better results. We show you what web pages you need, what type of content works best for health-related websites, suggestions for improving layout and navigation structure, etc.

If you need website planning assistance, go here: A Cost-Saving Guide To Website Planning For Business Owners

Improving Your Web Pages

All business websites need some essential pages. Let’s review these.

Description Of Services

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

• Medicine & Surgery – e.g. acute pain management, orthopedics blood disorders, oncology, neurology, renal, gastroenterology, eye diseases surgical outpatients, etc.
• Dental Services – e.g. general dentistry, children’s dentistry, oral hygiene, restorations, dentofacial orthopedics, emergency dentistry, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. cardiac patient rehabilitation, coronary care
• Prenatal and Postnatal – e.g. birthing, maternity services, etc.
• Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic – breast screening, skin cancer, radiology and imaging, pap smears, magnetic resonance imaging, allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology services – lab testing and analysis, emergency pathology testing, clinical trials, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling – mental health, alcohol, tobacco & other drug services, trauma counselling, diet and nutrition counselling, social development services
• Alternative therapies – Chinese medicine, reflexology, reiki, tai chi, chiropractic services, hypnosis, etc.
• Other medical services – diet and nutrition, chiropody, reproductive services, rehabilitation, medical genetics, artificial limbs, mobility, home care, community health, medical transport, 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 your services do and why they should book an appointment.

Who We Are

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

Remember to also include any awards, recognitions, certifications, accreditations, publications, associations, etc., that could be used to promote your business and set yourself above the competition.

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

Your Staff

Are you searching for quicker and easier ideas to sell more products or services online and increase user interaction on your site? Then help your visitors get to know you and your business better.

You want your business to be relatable. One great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your employees. This page should include a photo and a brief biography. Since most visitors won’t be well-versed in medical-related terms it should tell who they are and what they specialize in. It should also explain what those specialties mean. This page can include social buttons so your prospective clients can follow your staff members on their social pages.

In this page, don’t be afraid to humanize your people with personal stories, hobbies, etc., but make sure to highlight your staff member’s experience, why they are an invaluable asset to your team, and more importantly, how they will help add value to your clients’ business.

(Make sure to add an employee description page. Image source: southperthchiro.com.au)

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial on how to create and add an updatable simple team members directory to your web site with no coding skills required, go here: Step-By-Step Tutorial: How To Add A Staff List Directory To Your WordPress Site

Career Opportunities

This is a listing of career opportunities within your business. It should include training, employee benefits, advancement opportunities, social activities sponsored or encouraged by your organization, etc. You should also include information about career opportunities in the medical or health-related industry.

Also include a positions available section in your page. If there are no positions currently available, consider inviting people to return periodically to this page, join your announcements list, follow your social pages, etc.

Case Studies

Testimonials from previous clients and case studies are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase what kind of services you offer. Adding a page with testimonials from past clients and case studies also helps your medical or health-related website to establish social proof.

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

We have written extensively about using client case studies and client reviews get better results online. For more info, see this article: How To Convert More Visitors Into Qualified Prospects With Effective Testimonials

Contact Us Page

Having a functional contact page is essential.

It should provide visitors with some or all of the following:

• Business Name
• Physical address
• Phone number
• Facsimile
• Email address
• Google Map
• Web URL
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Links to social media profiles
• Online chat feature

If your business operates from different locations you want to make that clear when displaying the address and contact info.

You can also include links pointing to the most commonly asked questions page, frequently-visited pages, online booking form, support area, newsletter, blog, etc.

Add A Health-Related Blog

A blog is a very powerful marketing tool. Most blogging platforms typically comprise of a content management system that is easy to use and allows you to promote your business by publishing timely content such as news and announcements, updates, training articles and tutorials, discussions on current topics, how-to videos, media presentations, etc.

If you already have an existing site, then consider adding a WordPress-driven blog to promote your services.

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

Very few businesses know that an expertly configured WordPress site can turn into an automated traffic-generation system that can help begin driving an ongoing stream of new visitors to your web site, simply by publishing content to your website on a consistent basis.

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

Go here to learn more about this:

• Web Traffic Blueprint – A Complete Guide To Generating More Web Visitors For Your Business Automatically Using WordPress

Legal Information Pages

Having a website that complies will all legal requirements online is very important. This is not only important for building trust with prospective clients, but also to ensure that you are not breaching local, regional and federal laws and regulations wherever you provide services.

Adding some or all of the following legal pages to your medical website will help keep you out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Facebook), and other potential legal threats or inconveniences:

• Contact Page
• 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 here: What You Need To Know About Adding Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

Ways To Improve The Content On Your Website

In today’s highly competitive online economy, being generous with content that educates and informs readers has become one of the key differentiators for businesses selling similar products or services.

You will want to provide great content with useful advice, information or tips that will get your visitors sharing your information with others online and coming back for more content. This is a great way to inform and teach your visitors and prospects about using your services and products.

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

• What is BMI (what it stands for, what it does, how to calculate yours)
• How to set realistic, but achievable weight loss goals
• Comparing different diets, e.g. Paleo diet, South Beach diet, Volumetrics diet (what these are, how they work, how effective they are)
• Useful tips that will help you curb the late night urges for a snack (e.g. drink water with lemon)
• And endless other content topics

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

Include the keywords and terms in your articles that prospective clients will search for online.

We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive regular training emails with actionable information that will teach exactly how to drive more traffic to your site, save money creating high-quality content that will add value to your visitors and grow your website using content marketing strategies. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also completely FREE!

Ways Of Improving Visitor Experience

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

Syndicate Content Using RSS Feeds

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve visitor engagement and UX in several ways.

If you provide content that adds value to others, other businesses will want to syndicate your content to their visitors.

Some of the benefits of having other businesses syndicate your content, include:

• All of your updates are kept in one place
• your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Your feed can be shared online
• Users can subscribe to your RSS feed
• A feed provides links back to your content
• RSS feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregators
• RSS provides various ways for your readers to receive your content (e.g. read the content on their mobile device using feed readers)
• RSS is built into WordPress

There are also a number of benefits to providing valuable content on your website from other websites, such as the fact that you don’t have to write, manage or update the content.

To find useful RSS feeds for your website, search online for relevant government departments and industry bodies.

Here are some examples of useful RSS feeds you could consider adding to your website:

• US Department Of Health And Human Services – e.g. Blog RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SelectedHhsBlogPosts, etc. You can also select specific RSS feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Emergency preparedness, Healthy aging, 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 directory of feeds from well-known medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. The Journal of Experimental Medicine (JEM), BMJ Journal of Medical Genetics, TheLancet.com, Neurology.org, Infectious Agents and Cancer, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health - Find various health-related feeds here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• FDA – Get RSS feeds on fda-related news and topics like enforcement reports, food safety reports, recalls, vaccines, blood and biologics, 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. NSW – http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/pages/rss.aspx
• Centers For Disease Control And Prevention (www.cdc.gov) - Find various health-related RSS feeds and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
• Medical News Feeds: You can search medical news RSS feeds by going to publications like the NYTimes RSS feeds section (e.g. Health news: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Health.xml)
• MedicineNet – Weekly Health and Medical News Digest: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/weeklyhealth.xml. You can also choose specific feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Allergies, Menopause, Neurology, Depression, Digestion, Travel Health, 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. Cystic Fibrosis, Pain/Anesthetics, Infectious Diseases/Bacteria/Viruses, Autism, Transplants/Organ Donations, HIV/AIDS, Restless Legs Syndrome, etc.)

You can also search online for general feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific areas, e.g. “muscular dystrophy rss feeds”, “organ donations rss feeds”, “crohn’s rss feeds”, etc.

(Add RSS feeds to provide your visitors with a better user experience.)

Checklists & Forms

Checklists and charts are a fantastic way to help increase visitor engagement, add value to your visitors and provide something unique. Checklists and charts can provide useful step-by-step information and resources to perform a necessary task. They can also be great educational tools.

You can provide online or downloadable checklists, charts and forms (or links to these) covering a range of topics such as:

• Checklists/forms for booking appointments
• Checklists for pre or post treatment
• Health checklists for specific conditions
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, caries prevention program, general dentistry, etc.
• Fitness and exercise program checklists
• General charts & infographics (e.g. caloric level of different foods, the importance of sleep at different ages, etc.)

Add Online Tools

Providing unique online tools, gadgets and applications on your website is a great way to increase visitor engagement and significantly add value to your visitors. Calculators are popular tools for your website. Other applications would include things like nutritional tools, and even recipes.

In part two of this detailed article, we discuss a several WordPress-based tools you can use in your site that can also help improve your seo, improve user engagement and drive more visitors to your business.

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This is the end of section one.

Click on this link to continue reading:

• Tips For Health Professionals – How To Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Traffic Using WordPress Plugins And Themes

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