Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress
The digital business age has not only transformed businesses worldwide, it has also created increasingly difficult challenges and great opportunities for the medical or health-related industry.
Online Challenges For Medical Providers
Now, more than ever, medical providers must find smarter ways to remain competitive and generate new clientele. Not only do you have to become more involved in the community you serve, you must also maintain a strong web presence. This includes having a website and learning smarter ways to promote your health services online.
As well as spending money in offline marketing activities such as advertising on local newspapers, ads in industry publications and magazines, radio and tv, etc., businesses in the medical or health industry are now also finding that increasingly larger amounts of their budget need to be assigned to developing and managing a website that brings in prospective clients, engages visitors, outranks the competition in search engines and social media, and creates a wider exposure online.
This means that your website not only has to look professional, your pages have to load fast, and your site layout has to be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that the needs of the website will change in time and some aspects will need to be updated often. This requires a sound website and content management strategy in place.
Another problem that health-related organizations (and all other businesses) face, is that your site has around 30 seconds to help visitors find the information they are looking for 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
Online Opportunities For Medical Practitioners
As well as facing a number of significant challenges, there are also loads of online opportunities available for businesses in the medical profession that are willing to adapt to meet the challenges of the online economy and who can think strategically when it comes to marketing their services better online.
In this detailed guide, you will discover new ways and opportunities to find more potential clients and create noticeable improvements in your business online.
As well as providing practical tips and information on cost-effective ways to improve your website, we also recommend that you consider using the WordPress CMS platform to power your medical or health-related website.
For more information about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress Content Management System, go here:
- Discover How A Poorly Built Website Can Lose You Potential Clients And What To Do About It
- A Complete Guide To Growing A Successful Business With A WordPress Site
Practical Tips For Improving Your Website
This section will show you how to improve your website and get better results online. We show you what web pages you need, what content works best for medical-related websites, navigation structure, etc.
If you need assistance or help planning your medical-related website, visit this page: Planning Your Small Business Website: A Cost-Saving Guide For Business Owners
Essential Web Pages
Professional business websites need some basic pages. Let’s discuss the pages your need and how to structure your health or medical-related website for best results.
Description Of Products And Services
You need to include a page that explains your services or products. Depending on which area of health or medical services you specialize in, your page can include services like:
- Medicine & Surgery – e.g. pain management, orthopedics endocrinology, oncology, geriatric medicine, renal, urology, eye diseases operating theaters, etc.
- Dentistry – e.g. cosmetic dentistry, children’s dentistry, bad breath treatment, veneers, crowns and bridges, orthodontics, emergency dental, etc.
- Cardiology – e.g. cardiac patient education, chronic heart conditions
- Prenatal/Neonatal – e.g. birth suites, maternity services, etc.
- Child Health services – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
- Diagnostic – breast screens, lung screening, hearing, women’s health, magnetic resonance imaging, allergy testing, etc.
- Pathology services – laboratory testing and analysis, emergency pathology testing, occupational and environmental testing, speech pathology, etc
- Counselling services – mental health services, alcohol, tobacco & other drug counselling, trauma counselling, wellbeing, social work services
- Alternative treatments – acupuncture, homeopathy, reiki, tai chi, osteopathy, hypnosis, etc.
- Other medical services/therapies – diet and nutrition, chiropody, reproductive endocrinology, occupational therapy, medical genetics, artificial limbs, assisted living, home and community care, clinical information, medical equipment, etc.
Make sure to list all of the services you provide. Educate your visitors about what your 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 it stands for, its unique approach, supported community activities, etc.
It’s important to also include any business awards, recognitions, accreditations, certifications, associations, publications, etc., that you can use to promote your services and to set yourself above other competitors.
(List all of your industry awards accreditations, certifications, recognitions, associations, publications, etc. in the About page. Screenshot source: squaremedical.com.au)
Your Team
Are you searching for quicker and simpler ideas to sell more products online and increase user interaction on your site? Then one of the things you can do, is make it easier for prospects to get to know, like and trust you and your organization better.
You want your business to be relatable. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your employees or team members. It should include a photo and a brief bio. Since most visitors are probably not well-versed in health or medical terms your bio descriptions should tell who they are and what they specialize in. You may also want to explain what those specialized areas do. It should also include social buttons that will allow your site visitors to follow selected team members on their social pages.
On this page, make sure to outline each employee’s expertise, how their skills and knowledge add value to your team, and more importantly, how they will help add value to your clients’ business.
(Add a page that introduces your staff or team members to prospective new clients. Screenshot image source: southperthchiro.com.au)
We have created a detailed tutorial on how to easily create and add a list directory of employees or team members to your site using a free plugin here: How To Easily Create A Simple Employee Directory For Your WordPress Site
Work With Us
List any career opportunities within the clinic. This page should include training, employee benefits, opportunities for advancement, social activities promoted or sponsored by your business, etc. You can include information about upcoming career opportunities in the health industry.
Include also a positions available section in your page. If there are no positions currently available, consider inviting people to return periodically to the page, subscribe to your updates list, follow you on social media, etc.
Testimonials
Case studies and testimonials from previous clients are a great way to attract potential clients and showcase the services you offer. Adding a web page with case studies and reviews from clients also helps your health or medical-related site to establish social proof.
(Add a page to your site with case studies and testimonials from past clients. Image sourced from: arrowsmiledental.com)
To learn more about using case studies, testimonials and reviews, refer to this article: How To Convert More Visitors Into Prospects With Powerful Testimonials
Contact Us Page
Having a contact page is essential.
It should provide the following information about your practice:
- Name Of Your Business
- Location
- Telephone
- Facsimile
- Contact email
- Map
- Website address
- Contact form
- Contact name
- Links to social media networks
- Interactive chat
If you operate from different locations you want to make this clear when showing your address and contact information.
You could also include links to an FAQ section, main pages, booking request, support page, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.
Add A Medical-Related Blog Section
A blog is a powerful marketing tool. Many blogging platforms typically include a content management system that allows you to easily promote your business by publishing timely content like news and events, updates, educational articles, opinions on current topics, educational videos, media presentations, etc.
If you already have an established medical or health site, then consider adding a WordPress-powered blog to market your medical organization.
If you don’t have a website yet, or if your existing medical website is hard to keep updated with new content or not delivering you the results you want, then WordPress can serve as both your business website and blog.
Very few people know that WordPress can become an automated traffic machine that can begin attracting web traffic to your site, simply by publishing regular content to your web site.
(An expertly configured WordPress site can automate your traffic generation)
Go here to learn more about this:
Legal Info Pages
It’s essential for health services professionals businesses to make sure they have a compliant website. This is not only important for building trust with visitors, but also to ensure that you are not breaking local, regional or federal laws or regulations wherever you practice.
Depending on the products and services you provide, adding some or all of the legal pages below to your medical website will help keep you out of legal hot water with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers, and other potential legal threats or inconveniences:
- Contact Us
- Privacy Policy
- 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
- etc.
We have written a comprehensive article on adding legal pages to your website. Learn more about this here: Adding Legal Pages To Your Website
Tips On How To Improve Your Web Content
In today’s ultra-competitive online economy, being generous with information has become one of the key business differentiators.
By committing to providing useful content with great information, advice or tips, you will get your visitors sharing your information with others and coming back for more. Using content is the most effective way to educate your visitors and prospective clients about using your services and products.
For example, if you provide services that help people lose weight, then some of the topics you can write about include the following:
- Emotional causes for weight issues (possible causes, identifying yours)
- How small efforts in portion control can help you lose weight
- Dieting pills (common ones, side effects, long term results, do they work?)
- How to make smarter choices choices when eating at restaurants
- Etc.
You can also create a series of educational 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 the same keywords and terms in your content that your readers would search to find you online.
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 website, save money creating useful content that will add value to your visitors and grow your business online using content marketing. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also completely FREE!
Improving Visitor Experience
Improving user experience (generally referred to as UX) helps keep visitors coming back and engaging with your site. This section will show you different ways to improve visitor engagement and UX.
Adding RSS Feeds
Using RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve your visitor engagement and user experience in many 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 kept in one place
- your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
- Your feed can be shared online
- Users can subscribe to your feed
- A feed provides links to your site
- Feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
- RSS provides various ways for your readers to receive your content (e.g. read your content on their mobile device using a feed reader)
- It’s built into WordPress
There are also benefits when it comes 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 useful RSS feeds for your website, visit sites of relevant government departments and key industry bodies.
For example, here are examples of feeds you could consider adding to a 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 search by departments and select specific feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Body image, Fitness and nutrition, HIV/AIDS, Minority women’s health, Violence against women, etc.) here: http://womenshealth.gov/news/rss/rss-feeds.html
- US National Libraries Of Medicine – For a directory of RSS feeds from well-known medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. Haematologica, ADA DiabetesCare , BMJ Injury Prevention, BMJ Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
- National Institutes Of Health - Find various RSS feeds on health-related news here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
- US Food And Drug Administration (FDA) – Get FDA-related news feeds (e.g. consumer health information updates, MedWatch safety alerts (human medical products), product recalls, animal and veterinary 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. Victoria – http://www.health.vic.gov.au/rss/newsfeed.xml
- Centers For Disease Control And Prevention - Get many 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 by going to publications like the NYTimes feeds section (e.g. 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 select individual feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Medications, Cancer, Chronic Pain, Diabetes, Exercise & Fitness, Skin, etc.)
- MedicalNewsToday.com – MNT Featured Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
- MedicalNewsToday.com – You can also choose individual feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Eye Health/Blindness, Immune System/Vaccines, Eczema/Psoriasis, Preventive Medicine, Diabetes, Prostate/Prostate Cancer, Liver Disease/Hepatitis, etc.)
You can also search online for general feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific subjects, e.g. “alternative medicine rss feeds”, “alcohol addiction rss feeds”, “genetics rss feeds”, etc.
(RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve your medical site’s UX.)
Adding Charts And Checklists
Checklists and educational charts are a fantastic way to increase visitor engagement and add value to your audience. Forms and checklists can give them useful step-by-step instructions and resources to get necessary steps performed. They can also be great client instructional tools.
You can provide checklists and forms covering a range of subjects such as:
- Checklists and forms for booking appointments
- Checklists for pre or post treatment
- Health checklists and charts for specific systems
- Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, caries prevention program, general dentistry, etc.
- Fitness and nutrition program checklists and charts
- General charts & infographics (e.g. sugar content in different foods, the importance of sleep at different stages of development, etc.)
Add Other Tools
Providing unique tools, gadgets and applications on your website can help increase visitor engagement and add value to your visitors. Health-related calculators are some of the most popular tools for your website. Others would include things like nutritional tools, and even recipes.
In the next section, we will be discussing a several online tools you can use in your medical or health-related site using WordPress plugins and themes that improve search engine optimization, improve user engagement and drive more traffic to your business.
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This is the end of part 1 of this article on ways to build your medical business online.
Click on this link to continue:
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)