Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress
Medical or Health professionals today face a growing number of challenges.
Challenges Medical & Health Firms Face Online
Today, more than ever, businesses in the health sector must work harder than ever to remain competitive. Not only do you have to actively participate in the community your business serves, you must also maintain an active web presence. This includes having a dynamic website and learning how to better market your practice online.
In addition to spending dollars marketing offline, businesses in the health industry are also finding that they need to designate a larger amount of their budget towards the development and management of a website that can bring in clients, engage visitors, outperform the competition in search engines and help them gain a wider degree of exposure online.
This means that your website not only has to look professional, your web pages have to be fast-loading, and be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, the needs of the website will change over time and sections will need to be frequently updated. This requires the implementation of a well-planned web and content management strategy.
One other problem that health or medical businesses face online, and all other businesses for that matter, is that you have around thirty seconds or less to provide users what they are looking for or they will look 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 Health And Medical Services Practitioners
As well as facing many new challenges, there are also plenty of online opportunities available for businesses in the health or medical industry that are willing to adapt to meet online demands and can think progressively in terms of improving their online marketing skills.
In this article, you will learn about a number of ways to attract new visitors and establish online credibility for your health or medical-related business.
As well as providing general website improvement tips, we also emphasize the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress platform to power your medical business website.
To learn more about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress platform, go here:
- Learn Why A Poorly Designed Web Site Can Cost You Business
- Everything You Need To Know About Growing A Successful Business With A WordPress Site
Practical Tips For Improving Your Medical Services & Health-Related Site
We’ll start first by reviewing the basic information you need. In this section, we’ll look at how to improve your medical or health website and get better results online. We will look at what web pages you need, what type of content works best for medical or health-related websites, layout and navigation structure, etc.
If you need assistance or help planning your website, read this detailed step-by-step guide we have written: The Website Planning Process Explained: A Comprehensive Blueprint For Non-Technical Business Owners
Your Web Pages
Professional websites require a number of essential web pages. Let’s review these.
Your Products And Services
You need to include a page that explains your services and any products that you offer. Depending on which area of health you specialize in, this page could include services like:
- Medicine & Surgery – e.g. ear, nose & throat, orthopedics blood disorders, reconstructive surgery, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, rheumatology, endoscopy, ophtalmology operating theaters, etc.
- Dental Services – e.g. preventive dentistry, holistic dentistry, oral health, teeth whitening, orthodontics, emergency dentistry, etc.
- Cardiology – e.g. cardiac patient education, chronic heart conditions
- Prenatal & Postnatal – e.g. birthing, maternity services, etc.
- Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
- Diagnostic – mammography, lung screening, hearing, women’s health, psychosis, allergy testing, etc.
- Pathology – laboratory testing and analysis, routine pathology testing, insurance and corporate testing, speech pathology, etc
- Counselling – mental health, alcohol, tobacco & other drug counselling, marriage counselling, wellness, social work services
- Alternative treatments – acupuncture, aromatherapy, colloidal silver therapy, tai chi, chiropractic services, hypnotherapy, etc.
- Other medical services – weight management, sports medicine, lymphedema therapy, rehabilitation, medical genetics, artificial limbs, sleep therapy, home care, sexual health, medical transport, etc.
Make sure to list all of the services you provide. Educate your visitors about the benefits of using your services and why they should book an appointment.
Who We Are
This page should give a description of your business and explain to visitors what it stands for, its unique approach, philanthropical donations, etc.
It’s important to also mention any awards, recognitions, certifications, accreditations, associations, publications, etc., that can be used to promote your medical services and position yourself above the competition.
(List all of your business awards accreditations, certifications, recognitions, associations, publications, etc. in your About Us page. Screenshot source: squaremedical.com.au)
Meet The Team
Are you looking for quicker, easier and cost-effective ideas to grow your business online? Then one of the things you can do, is make it easier for your prospects to get to know, like and trust your business better.
Prospects need to relate to your business. One great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your employees. It should include a photo and a mini biography. Since most visitors will not tend to be familiar with medical or health terms your bio descriptions should tell who they are and what their specialties are. It should also explain what those specialized areas do. It can also include social buttons that will allow your prospective clients to follow selected staff members on their social pages.
In this page, make sure to highlight your employee’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 ‘meet the team’ page. Screenshot image sourced from: southperthchiro.com.au)
For a detailed step-by-step tutorial on how to create and add an easy-to-maintain list directory of staff members in a WordPress site without touching code, go here: How To Create A Simple Employee List In Your WordPress Site
Recruitment
List any job or career opportunities available within your company. It could include training, employee benefits, professional development, etc. It should include information about upcoming career opportunities in the 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 this page, subscribe to your updates list, follow your social pages, etc.
Case Studies
Customer reviews and case studies are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase what kind of services you offer. By adding a page with testimonials from previous clients and case studies, you will also help to provide social proof.
(Add a page with case studies and reviews from clients. Screenshot source: arrowsmiledental.com)
We have written a comprehensive article on using testimonials and reviews get better results online. Learn more about this here: Learn How To Convert More Visitors Into Prospects Using Knockout User Testimonials
Contact Page
A contact page is absolutely vital.
It should provide visitors with the following:
- Name Of Your Business
- Location
- Telephone
- Fax
- Contact email address
- Map
- Web address
- Contact form
- Contact name
- Social media URLs
- Chat/Skype (optional feature)
If your business operates in multiple areas you will want to make this clear when displaying the address and contact information.
You can also include links to an FAQ section, main pages, booking form, helpdesk, newsletter, blog, etc.
Blog
A blog can be a very powerful marketing tool. Many blogging platforms typically include a content management system that is simple to use and allows you to easily promote your business by publishing content like news and events, product releases, training articles, informative posts, promotional videos, webinars, etc.
If you already have an existing site, then consider adding a WordPress-powered blog to promote your clinic.
If you don’t have a website yet, or if your existing medical-related website is very hard to add new content to or not delivering you the results you want, then WordPress can be used both as your website and your blog.
Not many people know this, but an expertly configured WordPress site can become an automated traffic-generation system that will begin delivering an ongoing stream of new visitors to your site, simply by publishing content on a regular basis to your website.
(An expertly configured WordPress site can automate your traffic generation)
Go here to learn more about this:
Legal Information Pages
It’s essential to have a compliant website. This is not only important for building credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no laws and regulations are being broken wherever you provide services.
Depending on what services and products you provide, adding the legal pages below to your health 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 And Conditions
- 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
- etc.
To learn more about adding legal pages to your site, refer to this article: Why You Need To Add Legal Pages To Your Site
How To Improve Your Content
In today’s globally competitive economy, the sooner you start publishing content on your site, the sooner you will begin to differentiate yourself from other competitors.
You want to provide useful content with great tips, information or advice that will get your visitors sharing your information and coming back for more. This is the most effective way to inform and teach your visitors and prospective clients about using your products and services.
For example, if your business provides solutions that help people manage their weight, then some of the topics you can write content about include:
- Potential health issues caused by being overweight
- How small efforts in portion control can help your weight loss efforts
- How to incorporate exercise into your busy schedule
- What processed foods can sabotage your diet (and healthier choices)
- Etc.
You can also create a series of informative articles that will help your your prospective clients gain a better understanding of your services, by explaining benefits, procedures, terminology, etc.
Include keywords and terms in your content that your readers will search to find you online.
We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive regular training emails with actionable information that will teach you how to drive more traffic to your site, save money creating useful content that will add value to your site visitors and grow your business online using content. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also 100% FREE!
Tips For Improving Visitor Experience
Improving your site’s user experience (known as UX) will help to keep visitors coming back and using your site. This section will show you ways you can improve visitor engagement and UX.
Content Syndication – RSS Feeds
RSS feeds can help to improve visitor engagement and user experience in a number of different ways.
If you provide information that adds value to others, other sites will want to syndicate your content.
Some of the benefits of syndicating your content to other sites using RSS feeds, include:
- All of your content updates are in one place
- Doesn’t rely on email
- RSS feeds can be shared and picked up by other sites online
- Allows for subscribing
- A feed provides a way for links to point back to your content
- RSS feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
- RSS provides various ways for your readers to receive your content (e.g. view your content on their mobile device using a feed reader)
- It’s built into WordPress
There are also a number of benefits when it comes to providing valuable information 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 just visit sites of relevant government departments or industry bodies.
Below we have listed a few useful RSS feeds you could consider adding to your 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 choose specific feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Body image, Environmental health, Heart health and stroke, Menopause, 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 leading medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science, Neuroanatomy, JCI – The Journal of Clinical Investigation, BMJ Journal of Clinical Pathology, BMJ British Journal of Ophthalmology, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
- National Institutes Of Health - Find many RSS feeds on health-related news here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
- FDA – Get RSS feeds on fda-related news like consumer health information updates, FDA drug shortages, tainted products marked as dietary supplements, radiological health, etc. and podcasts here: http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/ContactFDA/StayInformed/RSSFeeds
- Department of Health UK (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. Western Australia – http://www.public.health.wa.gov.au/feed/?types=news
- Centers For Disease Control And Prevention (www.cdc.gov) - Get many RSS 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 RSS feeds by going to publications like the NYTimes RSS feeds section (e.g. Research: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Research.xml)
- MedicineNet – Daily Health and Medical News: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/dailyhealth.xml. You can also select specific RSS feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Lung Conditions, Asthma, Nutrition, Food, & Recipes, Oral Health, Eyesight, Travel Health, etc.)
- MedicalNewsToday.com – Medical News Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
- MedicalNewsToday.com – You can also select individual feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Anxiety/Stress, Complementary Medicine/Alternative Medicine, Muscular Dystrophy/ALS, Sleep/Sleep Disorders/Insomnia, Bones/Orthopedics, HIV/AIDS, Alzheimer’s/Dementia, etc.)
You can also search online for general feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific topics, e.g. “ebola rss feeds”, “deafness rss feeds”, “MRI rss feeds”, etc.
(Use RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds to provide your visitors with a better user experience.)
Checklists & Charts
Checklists and explanatory charts are a fantastic way to help increase user engagement, add value to your readers and set yourself apart from the competition. Forms and checklists can provide useful instructions and resources to get necessary steps done. Checklists and charts are also great educational tools.
You can provide a range of online or downloadable checklists and forms covering areas such as:
- Booking appointments
- Checklists for pre or post surgery
- Health checklists for specific medical conditions
- Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, caries prevention program, cosmetic dentistry, etc.
- Fitness and exercise program checklists
- General charts & infographics (e.g. acidity level of different foods, the importance of sleep at different stages of development, etc.)
Provide Online Tools
Providing useful tools and applications on your site is a great way to increase visitor engagement and add value to your visitors. Health-related calculators are useful tools for your website. Others would include things like nutritional tools, or even recipes.
In part 2 of this detailed article, we look at a number of online tools you can use in your health or medical-related site using WordPress plugins and themes that can help improve seo, improve user engagement and drive more traffic to your business.
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This is the end of section one.
Click on this link to view the rest of this guide:
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum