Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

Health practitioners today face growing challenges.

Challenges Health And Medical Professionals 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 participate in the community you serve, you must also maintain a strong presence online. This includes having a website and learning how to better market your practice online.

As well as investing dollars in offline marketing activities, businesses in the medical industry are now finding that they need to assign a larger share of their marketing budget towards the development and management of a website that can bring new clients, engage visitors, outperform the competition in search engines and help to create wider marketing reach online.

This means that your site not only has to look professional, your web pages have to load fast, and be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, the needs of the website will change in time and sections will need to be updated often. This requires implementing well-planned web and content management strategy.

Another challenge that medical or health organizations face online, as most other businesses do for that matter, is that they have around thirty seconds to give users the information they are looking for or they will leave and 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 Medical & Health Services

As well as facing many business and technology changes, there are also plenty of online opportunities available for medical or health practices that can adapt to meet digital economy challenges and can think progressively when it comes to marketing their business services better online.

In this guide, you will learn about ways to find more client accounts and build more online credibility for your business.

As well as providing tips and information on ways to improve your medical-related web presence, we also recommend that you consider using the WordPress Content Management System to power your medical-related business website.

To learn more about the benefits and advantages of using WordPress, go here:

• Learn How A Poorly Constructed Website Can Cost You Prospective Buyers
• A Complete Guide To Building A Successful Business Using WordPress

How To Improve Your Medical & Health Services Site

Let’s start by reviewing some basics. In this section, we’ll look at how to improve your health-related website and get better results online. We show you what pages your website needs, what content works best, navigation structure, etc.

If you need assistance or help planning your medical-related website, go here: Planning Your Small Business Website - A Practical Blueprint For Business Owners

Improving Your Website Pages

Professional websites require a number of basic pages. Let’s discuss the pages your  need to have and how to set up your website for best results.

Your Products And Services

You need to include a page that describes your services and products. Depending on which area of health you specialize in, your page can list services such as:

• Medicine & Surgery – e.g. acute pain management, orthopedics hematology, cancer, incontinence, renal, weight loss surgery, optometry surgical outpatients, etc.
• Dentistry – e.g. general dentistry, children’s dentistry, gum disease, teeth whitening, braces, emergency dentistry services, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. heart surgery, coronary care
• Prenatal/Neonatal – e.g. obstetrics, maternity services, etc.
• Child Health services – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic – breast screening, lung screening, hearing, women’s health, MRI scanning, food allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology services – laboratory testing and analysis, emergency pathology testing, food and water testing, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling – mental health services, alcohol, tobacco & other drug services, domestic abuse, diet and nutrition counselling, social development services
• Alternative treatments – acupuncture, aromatherapy, holistic medicine, yoga, chiropractic services, hypnosis, etc.
• Other medical services – diet and nutrition, chiropody, lymphedema therapy, optical services, neurosciences, artificial limbs, hearing aids, home care, sexual health, medical transport, etc.

List all of the services you provide. Educate your visitors about what your services do and direct them to your appointment booking page.

About Us Page

The ‘About Us’ page should give a description of your business and what your business stands for, its unique approach, philanthropy, etc.

Remember to list any business awards, accreditations, recognitions, certifications, publications, associations, etc., that you can use to promote your business and set yourself above other competitors.

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

Staff Page

If you are looking for quicker and simpler ways to grow your business online or increase user interaction with your site, then something you can do, is make it easier for visitors to get to know, like and trust your business better.

You want prospective clients to relate to your business. One great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your staff members. This page should include a photo and a mini bio. Since most visitors will not tend to be familiar with medical terms your bio descriptions should tell who they are and what their specialties are. It should also explain what those specialized areas do. This page should include social buttons so your visitors can follow selected staff members on their social networks.

In this page, make sure to outline your person’s 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 staff description page. Image sourced from: southperthchiro.com.au)

To learn more about how to add a directory of staff members in your web site without using code, go here: How To Easily Create A Simple Staff Directory In Your WordPress Site With No Coding Skills Required

Career Opportunities Page

List any career opportunities available within your business. It would include training provided, employee benefits, opportunities for advancement, social activities encouraged or sponsored by your organization, etc. You can include information such as the job outlook and upcoming career opportunities in the medical industry.

Maintain 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 & Testimonials

Testimonials and case studies are a great way to attract potential clients and showcase the services you offer. Adding a page with case studies and reviews from clients also helps your medical or health website to establish social proof online.

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

We have written extensively about using testimonials, case studies and reviews to improve your business results online. For more info, see this article: Turn More Visitors Into Prospects Using Powerful Customer Testimonials

Contact Us

A functional contact page is vitally important.

Your contact page should provide visitors with some or all of the following:

• Name
• Your physical location
• Telephone
• Fax number
• Email address
• Map and directions
• Website address
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Links to social media networks
• Online chat

If you operate out of different areas you will want to make this clear when displaying the address and contact information.

Consider also including links to an FAQ page, useful pages, booking form, helpdesk, newsletter, blog, etc.

Add A Medical Or Health Blog

A blog can be a very powerful marketing tool for your business. Blogs typically comprise of a content management system that is simple to use and allows you to promote your business using timely content like news and announcements, new releases, training information, opinions on current topics, promotional videos, webinars, etc.

If you already have an established medical-related website, then consider adding a WordPress blog to create more exposure for your services.

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

Not many businesses know this, but an expertly configured WordPress site can turn your web presence into an automated traffic system that will help deliver new targeted traffic to your site, simply by adding regular content to your web site.

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

Go here to learn more about this:

• Website Traffic Blueprint – Learn How To Automatically Get More Web Traffic For Your Business Using WordPress

Legal Info Pages

Having a website that complies will all legal requirements online is extremely important. This is not only important for building trust and credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that you are not contravening laws and regulations wherever your practice is located.

Depending on the services and products you provide, adding some or all of the following legal pages to your site will help you stay out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Google), and other potential sources of legal threats and inconveniences:

• Contact Us
• Privacy Policy
• Terms And Conditions
• Website Disclaimer
• Affiliate Agreement
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• DMCA Notice
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Links Policy
• Health Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• and others

We have written a detailed article on adding legal pages to your website. To learn more about this go here: Why You Need To Add Legal Pages To Your Website

How To Improve The Content On Your Website

In today’s globally competitive economy, the sooner you start to publish great content on your site, the sooner you will begin to see results and differentiate yourself from the competition.

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

For example, if you provide weight loss services, 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)
• What are calories and how understanding them helps in weight loss
• How you eat your food - just as important as what you eat (eat at table, chew slowly)
• How to make right choices when eating in restaurants
• And endless other content topics

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

Include keywords and terms in your articles that your readers will search for.

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 website or blog, save money creating useful content that will add value to your site visitors and grow your presence online using content marketing strategies. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also completely FREE!

Improve Visitor Engagement And User Experience

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

Syndicating Content Using RSS Feeds

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds provide many benefits for your website.

If you provide valuable content, other businesses will want to syndicate your content.

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

• All of your updates are kept in one place
• Content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• RSS feeds can be shared
• Feeds allow users to subscribe
• A feed provides a way for links to point back to your site
• Your feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
• There are various ways your readers can receive your content (e.g. view your content on their mobile device using different applications)
• RSS is built into WordPress

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

To find RSS feeds with loads of useful content for your website, visit sites of relevant government departments or well-known industry bodies.

Below we have listed a few RSS feeds containing useful information that you could add to a medical or health site:

• US Department Of Health And Human Services – e.g. Blog feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SelectedHhsBlogPosts, etc. You can also select individual feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Emergency preparedness, Fitness and nutrition, Heart health and stroke, Minority women’s health, Screening tests and vaccines, 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. Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention (American Association for Cancer Research), Human Molecular Genetics, CDC USA, Journal of Cell Science, Neuropsychopharmacology, 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 feeds here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• FDA – Get FDA-related RSS feeds (e.g. enforcement reports, MedWatch safety alerts (human medical products), pet health, animal and veterinary news, 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. Western Australia – http://www.public.health.wa.gov.au/feed/?types=news
• Centers For Disease Control And Prevention (www.cdc.gov) - Get many feeds on health-related topics and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
• Medical News: 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.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. Lung Conditions, Asthma, Nutrition, Food, & Recipes, Pediatrics / Healthy Kids, Exercise & Fitness, Sleep, etc.)
• MedicalNewsToday.com – MNT 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. Ovarian Cancer, Immune System/Vaccines, Blood/Hematology, Menopause, Rehabilitation/Physical Therapy, Women’s Health/Gynecology, Personal Monitoring/Wearable Technology, etc.)

You can also search online for general RSS feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific areas, e.g. “vascular rss feeds”, “parkinson’s disease rss feeds”, “premature ejaculation rss feeds”, etc.

(RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve your health or medical site’s UX.)

Checklists & Forms

Checklists and explanatory charts are a great way to increase visitor engagement, add value to your readers and provide something unique. Charts and checklists can provide users with useful step-by-step instructions and resources to perform tasks. Forms and checklists are also great instructional tools.

Checklists, charts and medical forms could include areas such as:

• Booking appointments
• Checklists for post-surgery recovery
• Health checklists for specific conditions
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, caries prevention program, cosmetic dentistry, etc.
• Weight loss and nutrition program checklists
• General charts & infographics (e.g. caloric level of different foods, sleep requirements at different ages, etc.)

Provide Other Tools

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

In the next section, we will be discussing a number of WordPress-based tools you can use in your site that can help improve your seo, improve user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.

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This is the end of section 1.

Click here to access Part 2:

• Grow Your Medical & Health Center Services Website – Improving Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Traffic To Your Website Generation Using WordPress Plugins And Themes

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