Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

Medical and health services providers today face many new challenges created by the web economy.

Online Challenges For The Health Profession

Now, more than ever, businesses in the medical and health sector must work harder than ever to remain competitive. Not only do you have to participate in the community your business serves, you must also develop and maintain a strong presence online. This includes having an effective web presence and learning how to better promote your practice online.

In addition to investing money in offline marketing activities such as advertising on newspapers, ads in industry publications and magazines, radio and tv spots, etc., businesses in the medical-related industry are also finding that increasingly larger amounts of their marketing budget will need to be delegated to develop and maintain a website that will drive new leads, engage visitors, outperform the competition in search engines and social media, and give their business a wider degree of marketing reach online.

This means that your website not only has to look professional, load fast, and be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that the needs of the website may change over time and many aspects will need to be frequently updated. This requires the implementation of a well-planned web and content management strategy.

Another problem that medical practitioners (and all other businesses) face with their websites, is that they have an average of 30 seconds or less to provide visitors what they are searching 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

Opportunities For Health & Medical Services

As well as facing a number of significant business and technology changes, there are also loads of online opportunities available for medical or health-related practices that are willing to adapt to meet online economy demands and who can think strategically when it comes to marketing their business better online.

This guide will help you uncover new opportunities to attract and engage more visitors and establish online credibility for your business.

As well as providing tips and information on ways to improve your health business online, we also recommend that you consider using WordPress to power your health-related website.

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

• Discover How A Poorly Built Website Can Lose You Customers And What To Do About It
• Using WordPress To Grow Your Small Business

Useful Tips To Improve Your Website

Let’s start by going over some basics. In this section, we’ll look at how to improve your medical or health website and get better results online. We show you what pages a medical website needs, what content you need, your layout and navigation structure, etc.

If you need additional information about website planning, see this detailed guide: A Basic Guide To Web Site Planning For Business Owners

Ways To Improve Your Web Pages

Professional business websites require a number of essential pages. Let’s go over these.

Description Of services And Products

It’s essential to have a page that explains your services and any products that you offer. Depending on which area of health or medical services you specialize in, your page could list services like:

• Medical And Surgical – e.g. ear, nose and throat, neurosurgery endocrinology, maxillofacial surgery, continence management, renal, weight loss surgery, ophtalmology operating theaters, etc.
• Dentistry – e.g. general dentistry, holistic dentistry, oral health, restorations, orthodontics, emergency dentistry, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. heart monitoring, coronary care
• Prenatal/Postnatal – e.g. obstetrics, midwifery, etc.
• Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic services – mammography, skin cancer, oral health, gynaecology, MRI scanning, food allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology – laboratory testing and analysis, emergency pathology testing, clinical trials, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling services – mental health, alcohol, tobacco & other drug counselling, trauma counselling, wellness, social development services
• Alternative therapies – Chinese medicine, aromatherapy, reiki, massage therapy, chiropractic services, hypnotherapy, etc.
• Other medical services – weight management, sports medicine, lymphedema therapy, rehabilitation, inherited diseases, artificial limbs, assisted living, home care, community health, medical equipment, etc.

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

About Us Page

The ‘About Us’ page needs to describe your business and explain to visitors what it stands for, its unique approach, sponsored community programs, etc.

It’s important to also include any business awards, accreditations, certifications, recognitions, associations, publications, etc., that you can use to promote your business and set yourself above similar service providers.

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

Your Team

If you are looking for inexpensive ideas to grow your business online, then make it easier for your prospects to get to know you and your organization better.

You want prospective clients to relate to your business. One great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your team. This page should include a photo and a mini biography. Since most visitors will not tend to be well-versed in 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 can include social buttons that will allow your site visitors to follow individual team members on their social networks.

On this page, make sure to highlight each team member’s expertise and 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 team members to prospective new clients. Image source: southperthchiro.com.au)

We have created a detailed tutorial on how to easily add an updatable list of employees or team members to your web site with no coding skills required here: How To Easily Add A Simple Staff Directory To Your WordPress Site Without Editing Code

Job Opportunities Page

This is a listing of job or career opportunities within the clinic. This page could include training provided, employee benefits, professional development, social aspects of working for your business, etc. You should also include case studies of graduates who have worked their way up in your organization and information about upcoming career opportunities in the medical industry.

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

Testimonials And Case Studies

Client reviews and case studies are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase the services you offer. Adding a web page with case studies and reviews from clients also establishes social proof online.

(Add a page with case studies and testimonials from past clients. Image sourced from: arrowsmiledental.com)

If you want to learn more about using testimonials and reviews, see this article: How To Get Better Results Online Using Standout Client Testimonials

Contact Page

Having a clean contact page is essential.

It should provide some or all of the following information:

• Business Name
• Your physical address
• Telephone
• Facsimile number
• Contact email
• Map
• Website address
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Social media links
• Chat

If your business services different locations you should make this clear when displaying the address and contact information.

You could also include links pointing to the most commonly asked questions page, main pages, booking request, support page, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.

Add A Medical-Related Blog

A blog can be a very powerful business marketing tool. Blogs typically comprise of a content management system that is easy to use and allows you to promote your business by publishing content such as news and events, product releases, training articles, opinions and discussions, promotional videos, infographics, etc.

If you already have an established website, then consider adding a WordPress-powered blog to promote your medical organization.

If you don’t have a website yet, or if your existing health or medical-related website is very hard to manage or not delivering you the results you want, then WordPress can become both your website and your blog.

Not many people know this, but an expertly configured WordPress site can turn into an automated traffic machine that will help begin to deliver targeted traffic to your business, simply by adding new content to your website on a regular basis.

(WordPress can automate your traffic generation)

Go here to learn more:

• Web Site Traffic Blueprint – How To Increase Your Web Visitors For Your Business

Legal Pages

It’s crucial to have a compliant website. This is not only important for building trust with prospective clients, but also to ensure that you are not breaching any local, regional and federal laws and regulations wherever you provide services.

Depending on what services and products you provide, adding the following legal pages to your website will help keep you out of legal hot water with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Google), and other potential legal threats or 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

We have written a comprehensive article about adding legal pages to your site. To learn more about this go here: Why You Need To Add Legal Pages To Your Site

Ways To Improve The Content On Your Site

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

Providing useful content with great advice and tips will get your readers sharing it with others and coming back for more. This is the most effective way to educate site visitors and prospective clients about your business and services.

For example, if you provide weight management services, then some of the areas you can publish content about include the following:

• What is fiber and how can it help you with weight loss?
• How to identify the bad habits you need to correct to ensure permanent weight loss
• Is hypnosis and effective weight loss treatment?
• Apps for tracking calories and exercise
• And many other content topics

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

Include the keywords and terminology in your articles that your prospective clients will be searching for 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 teach you how to drive more traffic to your web site, save money creating useful content for your visitors and grow your website using content marketing. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also 100% FREE!

Improve Visitor Engagement And User Experience

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

RSS Feeds

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

If you provide content that adds value to others, other sites will want to syndicate your content to their visitors.

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

• All of your content updates are in one place
• Doesn’t rely on email
• RSS feeds can be shared online
• Users can subscribe to your RSS feed
• An RSS feed provides a way for external links to point back to your site
• Feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
• There are multiple ways your readers can receive your content (e.g. read the content on their mobile device using a feed reader)
• It’s built into WordPress

There are also a number of benefits 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 useful RSS feeds just visit sites of health or medical-related government departments or respected industry bodies.

For example, here are examples of feeds you could consider adding to a medical 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 individual feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Breastfeeding, Health care for women, Illnesses and disabilities, Menopause, Smoking and how to quit, 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. PhysiologicalReviews, ADA ClinicalDiabetes, BMJ Injury Prevention, BMJ Archives of Disease, Infectious Agents and Cancer, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health - Find various feeds on health-related news here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• US Food And Drug Administration (FDA) – Find RSS feeds on fda-related topics like consumer health information updates, health fraud, pet health, animal and veterinary news, 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) - Find many health-related feeds and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
• Medical News: 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 choose specific RSS feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Medications, Asthma, Cholesterol, Pregnancy, Exercise & Fitness, Skin, etc.)
• Medical News Today – Medical News Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
• MedicalNewsToday.com – You can also select specific RSS feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Cystic Fibrosis, Immune System/Vaccines, Infectious Diseases/Bacteria/Viruses, Dermatology, CJD/vCJD/Mad Cow Disease, Medical Innovation, Genetics, etc.)

You can also just search online for general RSS feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific subjects, e.g. “eczema rss feeds”, “pancreatic cancer rss feeds”, “liver disease rss feeds”, etc.

(Using RSS feeds can help to improve your site’s UX.)

Provide Forms & Checklists

Checklists and charts are a great way to increase visitor engagement, add value to your audience and set yourself apart from the competition. Checklists and charts can provide users with useful information and resources to complete necessary steps. Checklists and charts are also great client educational tools.

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

• Booking appointments
• Checklists for post-surgery recovery
• Health checklists for specific systems
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, caries prevention program, general dentistry, etc.
• Fitness and exercise program checklists
• General charts & infographics (e.g. acidity level of different foods, sleep requirements at different ages, etc.)

Online Tools

Providing unique online tools and applications on your website is a great way to increase visitor engagement and add value to your potential clients. Health-related calculators are some of the most popular tools for your website. Other applications can include things like nutritional tools, and even recipes.

In part 2 of this guide, we will look at a several WordPress-based tools you can add to your medical or health-related website that can improve your seo, improve user engagement and drive more visitors to your business.

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This is the end of section one of this comprehensive guide on ways to improve your medical business presence online.

To continue reading, click this link:

• How To Successfully Build And Grow A Health Clinic Services Business Online With WordPress – Part 2

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