Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

Health and medical services practitioners face many challenges in the digital economy, especially when it comes to growing a presence online.

Online Challenges For Medical Services Practitioners

Today, more than ever, medical and health services practitioners must find smarter ways to remain competitive and obtain new clients. Not only do you have to be fully involved in the community your business serves, you must also develop an active presence online. This includes having a dynamic website and figuring out smarter ways to promote your services online.

As well as spending dollars advertising offline on newspapers, ads in industry publications and magazines, radio and television spots, etc., businesses in the health industry are now also finding that increasingly larger amounts of their budget will need to be directed to developing and managing a website that attracts new prospective clients, engages visitors, outperforms the competition in search engines and helps increase their marketing reach online.

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

One other challenge that health or medical organizations face online (as do other professions for that matter), is that your site has only around thirty seconds to help users find what they are looking 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 The Medical Profession In The Online Economy

As well as facing many business and technology changes, there are also plenty of online opportunities available to businesses in the medical sector that are willing to evolve to meet the challenges of the online economy and think strategically in terms of marketing themselves better online.

The guide below will help you uncover ways to attract new client bookings and create significant improvements in your online results.

As well as providing useful website improvement tips, we also emphasize the benefits and advantages of using WordPress to power your health website.

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

• Learn Why A Poorly Constructed Website Can Lose You Potential Customers And What To Do About It
• WordPress For Small Business – A Beginner’s Guide To Growing A Successful Small Business With WordPress

Practical Tips For Improving Your Website

Let’s start by going over some basic stuff. In this section, we’ll look at how to improve your health or medical-related website and get better results. We show you what pages you need, what content works best, layout and navigation, etc.

If you need assistance or help planning your website, visit this page: The Website Planning Process: A Cost-Saving Blueprint For Business Owners

Improving Your Web Pages

Professional websites need several basic pages. Let’s go over the pages your  should have and how to structure your medical or health-related website for best results.

Services

You need to include a page that describes your services and any products that you offer. Depending on which area you specialize in, this page could include services such as:

• Medical And Surgical – e.g. anaesthetics, pulmonology blood disorders, cancer, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, respiratory, gastroenterology, eye diseases emergency surgery, etc.
• Dentistry – e.g. preventive dentistry, holistic dentistry, cleaning services, teeth whitening, dental implants, emergency dentistry, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. cardiac surgery, coronary care
• Prenatal & Neonatal – e.g. birth suites, maternity services, etc.
• Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic – breast screens, lung screening, oral health, gynaecology, magnetic resonance imaging, food allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology services – lab testing and analysis, emergency pathology testing, fine-needle aspiration, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling – mental health, alcohol, tobacco & other drug counselling, marriage counselling, diet and nutrition counselling, social development services
• Alternative therapies – Chinese medicine, homeopathy, reiki, yoga, chiropractic services, hypnotherapy, etc.
• Other medical services – diet and nutrition, podiatry, reproductive endocrinology, speech therapy, medical genetics, prosthetics, sleep therapy, home care, clinical information, medical equipment, etc.

List all of the services you provide, not just the ones you specialize in. Educate your visitors about what these services do 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, philanthropy, etc.

This page should include any awards, recognitions, accreditations, certifications, publications, associations, etc., that can be used to promote your services and set yourself above the competition.

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

Our Team

If you are looking for simple ideas to sell more products online or increase user interaction on your site, then one of the things you can do, is help prospects get to know your business better.

People need to relate to your business. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your people. It should include a photo and a mini biography. Since most visitors won’t be familiar with health terms it should tell who they are and what they specialize in. It should also explain what those specialized areas do. This page should include social buttons so your site visitors can follow selected team members on their social networks.

In this page, don’t be afraid to humanize your people with personal stories, hobbies, etc., but make sure to highlight your person’s expertise, how their skills contribute to the success of your team, and more importantly, how they will help add value to your clients’ business.

(Add a ‘meet the team’ page. Image source: southperthchiro.com.au)

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial on how to add an easy-to-manage list of staff or team members in your website using free plugins, go here: WordPress Plugin Tutorial: How To Add A Staff Directory To Your WordPress Site

Recruitment

List any career opportunities available within the company. It should include training offered, employee benefits, professional development, etc. You can include information about new career opportunities in the medical or health-related 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, subscribe to your newsletter, follow you on social media, etc.

Testimonials

Case studies and client reviews are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase your services. Adding a web page with reviews from clients and case studies also helps your medical or health-related website to provide social proof online.

(Add a page with case studies and testimonials. Screenshot source: arrowsmiledental.com)

To learn more about using case studies, testimonials and reviews, refer to this article: All You Need To Know To Start Getting Better Results Online With More Effective Customer Testimonials

Contact Us Page

Having a contact page is absolutely necessary.

Your contact page should provide:

• Business Name
• Location
• Phone
• Facsimile number
• Contact email
• Google Map
• Web URL
• Contact form
• Request for information – contact details
• Links to social media profiles
• Chat feature

If your business services different locations you should make that clear when showing your address and contact information.

Consider also including links to an FAQ section, useful pages, booking form, support area, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.

Add A Health Or Medical Blog

A blog is a very powerful marketing tool for your business. Blogs typically include a content management system that allows you to easily promote your business by publishing timely content such as news and events, updates, useful information, opinions and discussions, how-to videos, infographics, etc.

If you already have an health or medical site, then consider adding a WordPress-powered blog to promote your business.

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

Very few businesses know that WordPress can turn into an automated traffic machine that will help begin delivering targeted visitors to your web site, simply by publishing regular content to your site.

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

For more info, see this article:

• Web Site Traffic Blueprint – A Complete Guide To Growing Your Web Traffic Automatically Using WordPress

Legal Information Pages

It’s vital to ensure they have a website that complies will all legal requirements online. This is not only important for building trust with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no laws or regulations are being breached wherever you provide services.

Depending on the products and services you provide, adding the legal pages below to your health or medical site will help you stay out of legal hot water with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers, and other potential sources of legal threats and inconveniences:

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

We have written a comprehensive article about adding legal pages to your site. If you would like to learn more about this here: What You Need To Know About Adding Legal Pages To Your Website

Tips For Improving Your Web Content

In today’s fiercely competitive digital economy, being generous with information has become one of the key business differentiators.

Provide useful content with great tips and information that will get your readers sharing your information and coming back for more. Using content is the most effective way to inform and teach site visitors and prospective clients about your business and services.

For example, if your business provides solutions that help people manage their weight, then some of the topics you can cover as content on your site:

• Emotional causes for weight issues (possible causes, identifying yours)
• The role portion control plays in helping you achieve weight loss results
• Why using a measuring tape is better than a scale when it comes to weight loss progress
• How to incorporate a little fast food into a healthier diet plan
• 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 services, by explaining benefits, procedures, costs (including payment plans, insurance coverage, etc).

Remember to use the same keywords and terminology in your articles that prospective clients would search 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 that will show you how to drive more traffic to your site, save money creating high-quality 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 100% FREE!

Ways Of Improving Visitor Engagement And User Experience

Improving user experience (generally referred to 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 user experience.

Using RSS Feeds

RSS feeds provide many benefits for your health or medical-related business.

If you provide useful information, other sites may want to syndicate your content.

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

• All of your content updates are kept in one place
• Content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Can be shared online
• Users can subscribe to your feed
• An RSS feed provides links back to your content
• Your feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
• RSS provides several ways for your readers to receive your content (e.g. subscribers can view the content on their mobile device using different applications)
• It’s built into WordPress

There are also benefits when it comes to providing information on 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 useful content just search online for relevant government departments and industry bodies.

For example, here are a few RSS 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 choose individual RSS feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Emergency preparedness, Healthy aging, Heart health and stroke, Menopause, Screening tests and vaccines, 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. The Oncologist, Neuroanatomy, RadioGraphics, Radiology, American Institute of Biological Sciences, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health - Get many RSS feeds on health-related news here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• US Food And Drug Administration (FDA) – Get FDA-related RSS feeds (e.g. consumer health information updates, MedWatch safety alerts (human medical products), product recalls, cosmetics, etc.) and podcasts here: http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/ContactFDA/StayInformed/RSSFeeds
• Department of Health UK (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. NSW – http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/pages/rss.aspx
• Centers For Disease Control And Prevention (www.cdc.gov) - Get many health-related feeds and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
• Medical News Feeds: You can search medical news feeds in major news publications like the NYTimes feeds section (e.g. Health news: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Health.xml)
• MedicineNet – 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. Alzheimer’s Disease, Cancer, Neurology, Oral Health, Eyesight, Travel Health, etc.)
• Medical News Today – Medical News Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
• Medical News Today – You can also select specific feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Pharma Industry/Biotech Industry, Ebola, Radiology/Nuclear Medicine, Pancreatic Cancer, CJD/vCJD/Mad Cow Disease, Biology/Biochemistry, Huntingtons Disease, etc.)

You can also search online for general feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific subjects, e.g. “surgery rss feeds”, “hearing rss feeds”, “hepatitis rss feeds”, etc.

(Use RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds to improve your health-related website’s user experience.)

Checklists & Forms

Adding checklists and charts to your site is a fantastic way to increase visitor engagement and add value to your audience. Checklists and medical forms can give them step-by-step instructions and resources to perform necessary steps. They are also great client educational tools.

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

• Booking appointments
• Checklists for pre or post treatment
• Health checklists for specific conditions
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, caries prevention program, general dentistry, etc.
• Fitness and nutrition program checklists and charts
• General charts & infographics (e.g. sugar content in different foods, sleep requirements at different stages of development, etc.)

Unique Tools

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

In the next section, we take a look at a number of WordPress plugins you can use in your website that can help to improve your search engine optimization, improve user engagement and drive more visitors to your business.

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This is the end of section one of this guide on ways to grow your medical or health-related web presence.

To continue, click here:

• How To Grow Your Health & Medical Center Business Online With WordPress – Part 2

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