Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

The digital economy has not only transformed the way business is done worldwide, it has also created growing challenges and great opportunities for businesses offering medical or health services.

Challenges Health Businesses Face Online

Today, more than ever, medical services professionals must work harder to stand apart from the crowd and obtain new clients. Not only do you have to participate in the community your business serves, you must also maintain an active presence online. This includes having a website and learning how to better market your business online.

In addition to investing money marketing offline, businesses in the medical industry are now finding that they will need to invest a bigger portion of their marketing budget to develop and manage a website that will drive clients, engage users, outperform the competition in search engines and social media, and help create wider marketing exposure online.

This means that your website not only has to look great, your pages have to load fast, and your website has to be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that your site’s needs may change in time and sections may need to be updated often. This requires the implementation of a sound web and content management strategy.

Another challenge that health services professionals face online (as other professions do for that matter), is that they have around thirty seconds or less to give users what they need 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 Medical Services Practitioners In The Web Economy

As well as facing many challenges, there are also many online opportunities available to businesses in the medical or health profession that can adapt to meet the demands of the digital economy and think progressively about improving their online business marketing skills.

This guide will help you uncover new ways to attract more visitors and build more online credibility for your business.

As well as providing tips and information on cost-effective ways to improve your website, we also emphasize the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform to power your health or medical-related website or blog.

To learn more about the benefits and advantages of using WordPress, see the articles below:

• Learn How A Poorly Built Website Can Lose You Business
• Learn How To Grow Your Business With WordPress

Practical Tips For Improving Your Medical & Health Practice Website

In this section we’ll show you how to improve your medical-related website and get better results. We show you what pages your website needs, what content works best, ways to improve your layout and navigation, etc.

If you need additional information about website planning, visit this page: Planning A Website - A Useful Primer For Business Owners

Essential Pages

All business websites need some essential web pages. Let’s take a look at the pages your  need to have and how to structure your website for best results.

Your Services And Products

It’s essential to have a page that lists your services and products. Depending on which area of health or medical services you specialize in, this page can include services such as:

• Medical And Surgical – e.g. ear, nose and throat, neurosurgery hematology, cancer, gerontology, renal, infection control, eye diseases operating theaters, etc.
• Dentistry – e.g. preventive dentistry, holistic dentistry, oral health, teeth whitening, dental implants, emergency dentistry services, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. cardiac patient education, chronic heart conditions
• Prenatal and Postnatal – e.g. birthing, midwifery, etc.
• Child Health services – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic – breast screening, skin cancer, x-ray, pap smears, MRI scanning, food allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology – lab testing and analysis, routine pathology testing, insurance and corporate testing, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling – mental health services, alcohol, tobacco & other drug counselling, domestic abuse, diet and nutrition counselling, social work services
• Alternative treatments – acupuncture, homeopathy, natural therapy, meditation, osteopathy, hypnosis, etc.
• Other medical services – diet and nutrition, chiropody, fertility services, stomal therapy, medical genetics, prosthetics, sleep therapy, home care, clinical information, medical transport, etc.

Make sure to list all of the services you provide. Educate your visitors about what these services do and why they should choose you.

About Us

This page should give a description of your business and what your business stands for, its unique approach, sponsored community projects, etc.

It should also list any awards, recognitions, certifications, accreditations, associations, publications, etc., that can be used to promote your medical services and to set yourself above similar service providers.

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

Our Team

Are you searching for cost-effective ideas to sell more products online? Then make it easier for your prospects to get to know, like and trust your business better.

You want your business to be relatable. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your people. This page should include a photo and a brief bio. Since most visitors will not tend to be well-versed in health-related 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 include social buttons that will allow your site visitors to follow individual staff members on their social pages.

In this page, don’t be afraid to show the human side of your team members with personal stories, hobbies, etc., but make sure to outline your employee’s qualifications, why they are an invaluable asset to your team, and more importantly, how they will help add value to your clients’ business.

(Add a page that introduces your staff to prospective new clients. Image source: southperthchiro.com.au)

We have written a detailed tutorial about how to add an easy-to-update list of staff or team members in your web site using free plugins here: How To Easily Create A Simple Employee Directory In Your WordPress Site

Recruitment Page

List any job or career opportunities available within your company. It would include training offered, benefits, professional development, etc. You can include stories of trainees who have risen within your organization and information about career opportunities in the medical or health-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, join your newsletter, follow you on social media, etc.

Case Studies And Testimonials

Testimonials from past clients and case studies are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase your services. Adding a web page with case studies and testimonials from past clients also helps your health or medical-related site to provide prospective clients with social proof.

(Add a page to your site with case studies and client reviews. Screenshot image sourced from: arrowsmiledental.com)

We have written a comprehensive article on using client testimonials and reviews to improve your business results online here: Learn How To Turn More Visitors Into Prospects With Sales Boosting User Testimonials

Contact Us

A clean contact page is essential.

Your contact page should include some or all of the following information:

• Company Name
• Location
• Phone
• Fax number
• Contact email
• Map and directions
• Website address
• Contact form
• Request for more information – who to contact
• Social media URLs
• Live chat (optional feature)

If your business services different areas you will want to make this clear when showing your address and contact information.

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

Add A Blog

A blog can be a powerful marketing tool. Blogs typically comprise of a content management system that is easy to use and allows you to easily promote your business using content like events, updates, training articles, opinions and discussions, educational videos, webinars, etc.

If you already have an established health or medical-related website, then consider adding a WordPress blog to market your medical company.

If you don’t have a website yet, or if your existing site is very hard to manage or not giving you the results you want, then WordPress can act as both 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 help attract web traffic to your web site, simply by publishing regular content to your website.

(WordPress can generate web traffic automatically to your site)

If you would like to know more about this here:

• Web Traffic Blueprint – How To Automatically Generate More Website Traffic For Your Business With WordPress

Legal Information

As a professional business, ensuring that you have a website that complies will all legal requirements online is important. This is not only important for building credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no local, regional or federal laws and regulations are being broken wherever you provide services.

Depending on the services you provide, adding some or all of the following legal pages to your website will help keep you out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers, and other potential legal threats or inconveniences:

• Contact Us
• Privacy Statement
• Terms And Conditions
• 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

If you want to learn more about adding legal pages to your site, see this article: How To Add Legal Pages To Your Site

Ways To Improve The Content On Your Website

In today’s ultra-competitive digital economy, the sooner you begin engaging in the practice of content marketing, the sooner you will begin to see results and differentiate yourself from other competing businesses.

Providing great content with information, advice or tips will get your visitors sharing your web pages online with others and coming back for more content. Content marketing is a great way to inform and teach site visitors and prospective clients about your business and services.

For example, if your business provides services that help people lose weight, then some of the topics you could cover as content on your site:

• What is BMI (what it stands for, what it does, how to calculate yours)
• How to calculate how many calories you burn each day
• Characteristics of different diets, e.g. Low carb diet, GI diet, Volumetrics diet (what these are, how they work, how effective they are)
• How a personal chef can help you lose weight (what they do, is it affordable)
• And many other content topics

You can also create a series of informative articles that will help your your readers gain a better understanding of your health or medical-related services, by explaining benefits, procedures, terminology, etc.

Include the keywords and terminology in your articles that prospective clients would search for.

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

Ways To Improve Visitor Engagement And User Experience

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

Using RSS Feeds

Adding RSS feeds can help to improve visitor engagement and UX in a number of different ways.

If you provide information that adds value to others, other businesses may want to syndicate your content.

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

• All of your updates are kept in one place
• Doesn’t rely on email
• Your feeds can be shared and picked up by other sites online
• Feeds allow users to subscribe
• It provides links to your site
• Feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregators
• RSS provides various ways for readers to receive your content (e.g. subscribers can view the content on their mobile device using feed readers)
• It’s built into WordPress

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

You can find many useful RSS feeds by visiting sites of medical and health-related government departments or industry bodies.

Below we have listed some feeds you could consider adding to your 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 select individual feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Emergency preparedness, Fitness and nutrition, Illnesses and disabilities, Mental health, Pregnancy, etc.) here: http://womenshealth.gov/news/rss/rss-feeds.html
• US National Libraries Of Medicine – For a list of RSS feeds from various medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. Rheumatology, American Association of Neurological Surgeons, Obesity, Medscape, The New England Journal of Medicine, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health (www.nih.gov) - Get various feeds on health-related news and topics 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), recalls, foods, 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. Victoria – http://www.health.vic.gov.au/rss/newsfeed.xml
• Centers For Disease Control And Prevention - Find various RSS feeds on health-related topics and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
• Medical News: You can search medical news RSS feeds in major news publications like the NYTimes RSS feeds section (e.g. Health news: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Health.xml)
• MedicineNet.com – MedTerms Medical Word of the Day: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/dailyword.xml. You can also select specific RSS feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Allergies, Asthma, Cholesterol, Oral Health, Senior Health, Women’s Health, etc.)
• MedicalNewsToday.com – MNT Featured Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
• MedicalNewsToday.com – You can also select specific feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Lung Cancer, Immune System/Vaccines, Sexual Health/STDs, Emergency Medicine, CJD/vCJD/Mad Cow Disease, Mental Health, Tuberculosis, etc.)

You can also just search online for general feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific subjects, e.g. “dentistry rss feeds”, “irritable-bowel syndrome rss feeds”, “tuberculosis rss feeds”, etc.

(RSS feeds can help to improve your health site’s user experience.)

Checklists And Charts

Adding checklists and explanatory charts to your site is a great way to help increase user engagement and add value to your visitors. Checklists and medical forms can provide users with useful information and resources to get necessary steps done. They are great educational tools.

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

• Booking appointments
• Checklists for post-surgery recovery
• Health checklists and charts for specific medical conditions
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, active maintenance program, general dentistry, etc.
• Fitness and nutrition program checklists
• General charts & infographics (e.g. acidity level of different foods, sleep requirements at different stages of development, etc.)

Add Online Tools

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

In the next section of this guide, we will be discussing a several online tools you can add to your site using WordPress plugins that can improve your search engine optimization, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.

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This is the end of part one of this article on ways to improve your medical-related web presence.

Click here to view Part 2:

• Online Business Tips For Medical And Health Services Practitioners – WordPress Plugins That Can Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation

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