Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

The digital information age has not only transformed the way business is done globally, it has also created new challenges and opportunities for medical or health-related businesses.

Online Challenges For The Medical Profession

Now, more than ever, medical practitioners must work harder and find smarter ways to stand apart from their competition and obtain new clients. Not only do you have to be fully involved in the community your business serves, you must also maintain an active web presence. This includes having an effective web presence and learning how to better promote your practice online.

In addition to spending money in offline marketing activities, you will probably find (if you haven’t already) that in order to remain competitive, you will need to delegate a bigger amount of your budget to developing and managing a website that drives new clients, engages visitors, outperforms the competition in search engines and social media, and helps give you wider marketing reach online.

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

Another problem that health services providers face with their websites, as do all other professions for that matter, is that you have around thirty seconds to give 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 The Health Profession In The Web Economy

As well as facing many new challenges, there are also many online opportunities available for businesses in the medical or health industry that are willing to adapt to meet online challenges and who can think progressively in terms of improving their online business marketing skills.

In this comprehensive guide, you will learn about new ways and opportunities to attract new clients and see noticeable improvements in your online results.

As well as providing tips and information on ways to improve your health web presence, we also place special emphasis on the benefits and advantages of using WordPress to power your health or medical website.

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

• Learn How A Poorly Designed Website Can Lose You Money And What To Do About It
• WordPress In Business – The Beginner’s Guide To Growing A Successful Small Business Using A WordPress Blog

How To Improve Your Website

This section looks at ways to improve your website and get better results online. We will look at what pages a health-related website needs, what type of content works best for health sites, your layout and navigation, etc.

If you need additional information about website planning, check out the article we have written here: The Web Site Planning Process Explained - A Practical Primer For Non-Technical Business Owners

Ways To Improve Your Web Pages

All websites require a number of basic pages. Let’s review these.

Services Page

You need a page that explains your services and products. Depending on which area you specialize in, your page can list services like:

• Medical And Surgical – e.g. anaesthetics, pulmonology endocrinology, oncology, aged care, rheumatology, infection control, eye diseases palliative care, etc.
• Dental Services – e.g. cosmetic dentistry, holistic dentistry, oral health, restorations, orthodontics, emergency dental services, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. cardiac surgery, coronary care
• Prenatal/Neonatal – e.g. birthing, maternity services, etc.
• Child Health services – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic – breast screens, skin cancer, radiology and imaging, pap smears, psychosis, allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology – lab testing and analysis, emergency pathology testing, occupational and environmental testing, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling services – mental health, alcohol, tobacco & other drug counselling, marriage counselling, wellness coaching, social development services
• Alternative treatments – acupuncture, homeopathy, holistic medicine, shiatsu, chiropractic, hypnosis, etc.
• Other medical services – weight management, podiatry, reproductive endocrinology, speech language therapy, medical genetics, prosthetics, mobility, home care, community health, medical supplies, etc.

Make sure to list all of the services you provide. Educate your visitors about the benefits of using your services and why they should book an appointment with you.

Who We Are

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

This page should list any medical-related awards, accreditations, certifications, recognitions, publications, associations, etc., that could be used to promote your business and to position yourself above your competitors.

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

Meet Our Team

If you are looking for quicker, easier and cheaper ideas to grow your business online, then something you can do, is make it easier for prospective clients to get to know you, your team and your organization better.

Your business needs to be relatable. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your staff members. It should include a photo and a brief biography. Since most visitors will not tend to be very well-versed in health or medical terms it should tell who they are and what their specialties are. You may also want to explain what those specialized areas mean. It should include social buttons that will allow your visitors to follow your staff members on their social pages.

On this page, make sure to outline each person’s qualifications, how they add value to your team, and more importantly, how they will help add value to your clients’ business.

(Make sure to add a page that introduces your staff or team members to prospective new clients. Image sourced from: southperthchiro.com.au)

To learn more about how to easily create and add an easy-to-manage simple team members directory to your site using free WordPress plugins, see this tutorial: How To Easily Add A Simple Staff Directory To Your WordPress Site Without Editing Code

Recruitment

List any job opportunities available within the business. This page should include training, benefits, advancement opportunities, etc. You can also include information about new career opportunities in the health and medical industry.

Include also 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.

Testimonials And Case Studies

Case studies and reviews from clients are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase what kind of services you offer. By adding a page with case studies and testimonials from previous clients, you will also help to provide prospective clients with social proof online for your business.

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

We have written extensively about using testimonials, case studies and reviews to improve your business results online. If you would like to learn more here: Learn How To Achieve Better Results Online With Compelling Testimonials

Contact Page

Having a clean contact page is absolutely necessary.

Your contact page should provide visitors with the following:

• Company Name
• Location
• Phone
• Facsimile number
• Email
• Map
• Web address
• Contact form
• Contact name
• Links to social media profiles
• Chat/Skype

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

You could also include links pointing to the most commonly asked questions page, useful pages, online booking request, support page, newsletter, blog, etc.

Add A Medical-Related Blog Section

A blog is a powerful business marketing tool. Many blogging platforms typically include a content management system that allows you to easily promote your business using content like events, updates, educational information, informative posts, educational videos, media presentations, etc.

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

If you don’t have a website yet, or if your existing health-related site is hard to keep updated or not delivering you the results you want, then WordPress can be used both as your business website and your blog.

Not many businesses know this, but WordPress can turn into an automated traffic system that can instantly begin delivering an ongoing stream of new visitors to your website, simply by publishing regular content to your web site.

(WordPress can drive web traffic automatically to your website)

You can learn more here:

• Web Site Traffic Blueprint – How To Automatically Generate More Traffic For Your Business Using WordPress

Legal Information Pages

It’s very important for medical professionals companies to have a compliant website. This is not only important for establishing credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that you are not contravening any laws or regulations wherever you provide services.

Depending on the services you provide, adding the following legal pages to your health or medical site will help you stay out of legal hot water with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Facebook), and other potential legal threats and inconveniences:

• Contact Page
• Privacy Statement
• Terms Of Use
• 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

Go here if you want to learn more adding legal pages to your website: The Importance Of Adding Legal Pages To Your Site

Improving The Content On Your Website

In today’s highly competitive global business economy, the sooner you begin to publish great content on your site, the faster you will begin to differentiate yourself from other competitors.

Providing great content with useful information, advice and tips will get your visitors sharing your information online with others and coming back for more. Publishing content is the most effective way to inform and educate site visitors and prospective clients about using your products and services.

For example, if your business provides weight management services, then some of the areas you could write content about include:

• Potential health issues caused by being overweight
• How to get support for your weight loss efforts (friends, family, weight loss seekers)
• How you eat your food is just as important as what you eat (eat at table, chew slowly)
• How to incorporate a little fast food into a healthier diet plan
• Etc.

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

Use keywords in your articles that readers 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 and practical tips that will show exactly how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, save money creating high-quality content for your visitors and grow your presence online using content. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also completely FREE!

Improving Visitor Engagement And User Experience

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

RSS Feeds – Content Syndication

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

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

Some of the benefits of having other businesses syndicate your content, include:

• All of your updates are in one place
• Content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• RSS feeds can be shared
• Allows for subscribing
• A feed 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 your content on their mobile device using different applications)
• It’s built into WordPress

There are also benefits when it comes 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 for your website by searching online for medical-related government departments and well-known industry bodies.

Below we have listed a few feeds you could consider adding to a medical-related website:

• 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, Environmental health, Illnesses and disabilities, Menopause, Pregnancy, etc.) here: http://womenshealth.gov/news/rss/rss-feeds.html
• US National Libraries Of Medicine – For a list of feeds from well-known medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. BMJ Journal of Medical Ethics, The Psychiatrist, Journal of Cell Biology, Radiology, Infectious Agents and Cancer, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health - Get many health-related feeds here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• US Food And Drug Administration (FDA) – Get feeds on fda-related news and topics like FDA drug safety, FDA drug shortages, recalls, drugs, 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. NSW – http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/pages/rss.aspx
• Centers For Disease Control And Prevention - Find various feeds on health-related topics 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 RSS feeds section (e.g. Research: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Research.xml)
• MedicineNet – MedTerms Medical Word of the Day: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/dailyword.xml. You can also select individual RSS feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Medications, Men’s health, Nutrition, Food, & Recipes, Diet & Weight Management, Eyesight, Hearing, etc.)
• MedicalNewsToday.com – Medical News Featured 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. Colorectal Cancer, Seniors/Aging, Radiology/Nuclear Medicine, Conferences, CJD/vCJD/Mad Cow Disease, Respiratory/Asthma, Erectile Dysfunction/Premature Ejaculation, etc.)

You can also search online for general feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific topics, e.g. “caregivers rss feeds”, “disasters rss feeds”, “IBD rss feeds”, etc.

(RSS feeds can help to improve your health or medical website’s UX.)

Checklists And Charts

Checklists and medical forms are a fantastic way to increase user engagement, add value to your readers and set yourself apart from the competition. Forms and checklists can give them useful step-by-step instructions and resources to perform a task. Charts and checklists are great client educational tools.

You can provide forms and checklists covering a range of subjects such as:

• Booking appointments
• Checklists for post-surgery recovery
• Health checklists for specific conditions
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, oral maintenance program, general dentistry, etc.
• Weight loss and nutrition program checklists
• General charts & infographics (e.g. sugar content in different foods, sleep requirements at different ages, etc.)

Add Online Tools

Providing unique tools and applications on your site can help increase visitor engagement and add significant value to your visitors. Calculators are useful tools for your website. Other tools could include things like diagnostic tools, or even recipes.

In the next section, we look at a number of online tools you can use in your website 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 section 1 of this guide on ways to build your medical business presence online.

To view the rest of this article, click this link:

• Grow Your Medical Services & Health Center Website – WordPress Plugins And Themes That Can Help Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation

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