Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

Medical & Health professionals face a number of challenges in today’s digital economy, especially in terms of growing a successful business presence online.

Challenges Professional Health Practitioners Face Online

Now, more than ever, businesses in the health and medical industry must work harder than ever to remain competitive. Not only do you have to be fully involved in the community your business serves, you must also develop and maintain a strong presence online. This includes having an effective website and searching for better ways to market your services online.

As well as investing money in offline marketing activities, you will probably find that in order to compete, you will need to invest a bigger part of your marketing budget towards developing and maintaining a website that attracts new prospective clients, engages users, outperforms the competition in search engines and helps give your business wider marketing reach online.

This means that your website not only has to look great, your pages have to be fast-loading, and your website layout has to be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, your site’s needs may change in time and many aspects may need to be updated often. This requires the implementation of a well-developed website and content management strategy.

One other challenge that medical-related organizations face (as do other professions for that matter), is that they have only around thirty seconds or less to give visitors the information they are searching for or they will go 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 & Medical Businesses In The Online Economy

As well as facing a number of significant business and technology changes, there are also many online opportunities available for medical-related businesses that can adapt to meet online economy demands and can think progressively when it comes to marketing themselves better online.

This comprehensive article will help you uncover new ways and opportunities to generate new client accounts and build more 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 WordPress to power your health-related business website.

For more information about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress Content Management System, see these articles:

• How A Poorly Constructed Web Site Can Lose You Customers
• The Beginner’s Guide To Building A Successful Business Using WordPress

Useful Tips For Improving Your Medical Services & Health-Related Site

This section covers how to improve your medical website and get better results. We show you what pages your website needs, what type of content works best, your layout and navigation, etc.

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

Your Web Pages

Professional business websites need some basic web pages. Let’s take a look at these.

Services And Products Page

It’s essential to have a page that explains your products or services. Depending on which area you specialize in, your page can list services such as:

• Medical And Surgical – e.g. acute pain management, neurosurgery endocrinology, cosmetic surgery, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, renal, colon/rectal surgery, ophtalmology elective surgery, etc.
• Dentistry – e.g. general dentistry, children’s dentistry, oral health, restorations, dentofacial orthopedics, emergency dental, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. cardiac monitoring, chronic heart conditions
• Prenatal and Postnatal – e.g. obstetrics, midwifery, etc.
• Child Health services – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic services – breast screens, skin cancer, oral health, pap smears, MRI scanning, food allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology services – lab testing and analysis, emergency pathology testing, food and water testing, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling – mental health services, alcohol, tobacco & other drug services, trauma counselling, diet and nutrition counselling, social development services
• Alternative therapies – Chinese medicine, homeopathy, reiki, massage therapy, chiropractic, hypnosis, etc.
• Other medical services – diet and nutrition, othopedics, reproductive endocrinology, rehabilitation, inherited diseases, artificial limbs, sleep therapy, home care, clinical information, medical supplies, etc.

List all of the services you provide, not just the ones you specialize in. Educate your visitors about the benefits of using your services and direct them to your appointment booking page.

About Us Page

This 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.

This page should list any awards, recognitions, certifications, accreditations, publications, associations, etc., that you can use to promote your medical, dental, chiropractic, surgery services, etc. and position yourself above similar service providers.

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

Team Profile

If you are looking for inexpensive ways to grow your business online or get people to stay longer on your site, then make it easier for visitors to get to know your business better.

Your business needs to be relatable. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your staff. It should include a photo and a mini bio. Since most visitors are probably not very well-versed in medical or health-related terms it should tell who they are and what they specialize in. You may also want to explain what those specialized areas do. This page can also include social buttons so your visitors can follow selected staff members on their social pages.

On this page, make sure to outline each staff member’s expertise and qualifications, why they are an asset to your team, and more importantly, how they can help add value to your clients’ business.

(Make sure to add a team profile page. Image source: southperthchiro.com.au)

If you need help how to easily create and add an easy-to-manage list directory of employees to a WordPress site using a free plugin, go here: How To Easily Create A Simple Employee List In Your WordPress Site With No Coding Skills

Recruitment Page

List any job opportunities within the organization. This page would include type of training provided, benefits, opportunities for advancement, social activities promoted or sponsored by your business, etc. It should include case studies of trainees who have established a solid career path thanks to your business and information about additional career opportunities in the medical-related industry.

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

Case Studies And Testimonials

Case studies and testimonials from previous clients are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase your services. Adding a page with case studies and client reviews also helps your health or medical site to provide social proof.

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

If you want to learn more about using case studies, testimonials and user reviews, see this article: How To Create Better Results Online With Awesome Testimonials

Contact Us Page

Having a functional contact page is absolutely vital.

It should provide some or all of the following information:

• Company Name
• Your physical address
• Telephone number
• Fax
• Email address
• Map
• Web address
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Social media links
• Interactive chat feature (optional feature)

If your business services multiple areas you should make that clear when displaying the address and contact information.

Consider also including a few links point to the most commonly asked questions page, main pages, online booking request, support page, newsletter, blog, etc.

Add A Health Or Medical Blog

A blog can be a very powerful marketing tool. Blogs typically include a content management system that is simple to use and allows you to promote your business by publishing content like news and announcements, new releases, educational articles and tutorials, informative posts, promotional videos, media presentations, etc.

If you already have an existing site, then consider adding a WordPress blog to promote your medical company.

If you don’t have a website yet, or if your existing website is hard to add new content to or not giving you the results you want, then WordPress can serve both as your business website and your blog.

Something not many people know about, is that an expertly configured WordPress site can become an automated traffic-generation machine that can instantly begin driving web traffic to your web site, simply by adding regular content to your site.

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

Go here to learn more:

• Web Site Traffic Blueprint – How To Create A Traffic Generation Machine

Legal Pages

It’s important for professional businesses to make sure they have a compliant website. This is not only important for establishing credibility with visitors, but also to ensure that you are not breaking any local, regional and federal laws or regulations in whatever area you provide services.

Adding the following legal pages to your site will help you stay out of legal hot water with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers, and other potential sources of threats and legal 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/Financial Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• and others

To learn more about adding legal pages to your site, refer to this article: How To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

Improving Your Web Content

In today’s fiercely competitive digital economy, the sooner you start engaging in the practice of content marketing, the faster you will begin to see results and differentiate yourself from your competitors.

Provide great content with information, advice and tips that will get your readers to share your information and come back for more content. Publishing content is the most effective way to educate site visitors and prospects about using your services.

For example, if you provide solutions that help people lose weight, then some of the topics you can write content about include:

• Being overweight vs. being obese – what are the differences?
• How to get support for your weight loss efforts (friends, family, weight loss seekers)
• How to incorporate exercise into your weight loss program
• What salad dressings can ruin your weight loss program (and healthier choices)
• And many other content topics

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

Remember to use keywords and terminology in your articles that your prospective clients will be searching to find you 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 and practical tips that will show exactly how to drive more traffic to your web site, save money creating useful content that will add value to your visitors and grow your business online using content marketing strategies. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also completely FREE!

Tips For Improving Visitor Experience

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

Syndicate Content With RSS Feeds

RSS feeds can help to improve visitor engagement and user experience in many ways.

If you provide valuable information, other sites may want to syndicate your content to their visitors.

Some of the benefits of syndicating your content to other businesses using RSS feeds, include:

• All of your content updates are kept in one place
• Doesn’t rely on email
• Your feed can be shared and picked up by other sites online
• Users can subscribe to your RSS feed
• A feed provides links to your site
• Feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregators
• There are several ways readers can receive your content (e.g. subscribers can read the content on their mobile device using different applications)
• RSS is built into WordPress

There are also benefits to providing valuable information on 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 for your website, visit sites of relevant government departments or respected industry bodies.

Here are some feeds containing useful information that you could add to a medical site:

• US Department Of Health And Human Services – e.g. Blog posts feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SelectedHhsBlogPosts, etc. You can also select specific RSS feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Breastfeeding, Healthy aging, Heart health and stroke, Mental health, Smoking and how to quit, etc.) here: http://womenshealth.gov/news/rss/rss-feeds.html
• US National Libraries Of Medicine – For a list of RSS feeds from leading medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. The Journal of Experimental Medicine (JEM), BMJ Journal of Medical Genetics, American Cancer Society, Indian Journal of Psychiatry, American Institute of Biological Sciences, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health (www.nih.gov) - Get many health-related RSS feeds here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• FDA – Find FDA-related RSS feeds (e.g. criminal investigations, food safety, tainted products, foods, 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 many 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. Fitness & nutrition: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Nutrition.xml)
• MedicineNet.com – Daily Health and Medical News: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/dailyhealth.xml. You can also select specific feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Allergies, Men’s health, Nutrition, Food, & Recipes, Pregnancy, Senior Health, Hearing, etc.)
• MedicalNewsToday.com – MNT Medical News Featured Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
• MedicalNewsToday.com – You can also select individual feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Medical Students/Training, Headache/Migraine, Medical Insurance, Irritable-Bowel Syndrome, Men’s Health, Tropical Diseases, Restless Legs Syndrome, etc.)

You can also just search online for general RSS feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific areas, e.g. “medicaid rss feeds”, “cold rss feeds”, “MRI rss feeds”, etc.

(Add RSS feeds to improve your medical-related site’s UX.)

Provide Forms And Checklists

Adding checklists and educational charts to your site is a great way to increase visitor engagement and add value to your audience. Checklists and medical forms can provide visitors with step-by-step instructions and resources to perform necessary tasks. They are great educational tools.

Forms, charts and checklists can address areas such as:

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

Unique Tools

Providing unique tools and applications on your site is a great way to increase visitor engagement and add significant value to your visitors. Calculators are popular tools for your website. Others would include things like diagnostic tools, or even recipes.

In part 2 of this detailed article, we take a look at a number of WordPress plugins and themes you can add to your website that can help improve seo, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your business.

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This is the end of section 1.

Click on this link to continue:

• How To Build And Grow Your Medical Clinic Website – Part 2

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