Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

The online economy has not only revolutionised businesses globally, it has also created a number of difficult challenges and opportunities for businesses in the health-related sector.

Challenges Health & Medical Services Face Online

Now, more than ever, medical providers must work hard and find smarter ways to stand out from their competition and obtain new clients. Not only do you have to become more involved in the community your business serves, you must also develop a strong presence online. This includes having a dynamic website and learning how to better market your services online.

In addition to investing money in offline marketing activities like advertising on local newspapers, ads in industry publications and magazines, radio and television spots, etc., businesses in the medical or health-related industry are now finding that increasingly larger amounts of their marketing budget will need to be allocated to develop and manage a website that can attract new prospective clients, engage users, outperform the competition in search engines and social media, and create wider reach online.

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

One other problem that medical and health services practitioners face with their websites (and most businesses for that matter), is that your site has an average of thirty seconds or less to provide users what they are searching 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 & Health Profession In The Online Economy

As well as facing a number of business and technology changes, there are also plenty of online opportunities available to businesses in the medical-related profession that are willing to adapt to meet online challenges and who can think strategically in terms of marketing their business better online.

In this article, you will discover new ways to attract more visitors and see noticeable improvements in your health-related business presence online.

As well as providing general 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 the articles below:

• Discover Why A Poorly Constructed Website Can Cost You Money
• The Small Business Owner’s Guide To Understanding WordPress

Useful Tips For Improving Your Medical Website

We’ll start first by covering the basics. In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve your medical website and get better results. We will look at what pages you need, what type of content works best, your navigation structure, etc.

If you need website planning assistance, check out the article we have written here: A Comprehensive Guide To Web Site Planning For Business Owners

Essential Pages

All business websites need a number of essential web pages. Let’s discuss the pages your  should have and how to set up your website for best results.

Services Page

You need a page that lists your products and services. Depending on which area of health or medical services you specialize in, this page could include services such as:

• Medicine & Surgery – e.g. acute pain management, orthopedics endocrinology, oral surgery, stroke, respiratory, weight loss surgery, eye diseases day surgery, etc.
• Dentistry – e.g. cosmetic dentistry, holistic dentistry, oral health, teeth whitening, dental implants, emergency dentistry services, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. cardiac patient rehabilitation, coronary care
• Prenatal/Postnatal – e.g. obstetrics, midwifery, etc.
• Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic services – mammography, skin cancer, radiology and imaging, pap smears, psychosis, allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology – lab testing and analysis, routine pathology testing, clinical trials, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling services – mental health services, alcohol, tobacco & other drug counselling, marriage counselling, wellness coaching, social development services
• Alternative therapies – Chinese medicine, homeopathy, hydrotherapy, shiatsu, chiropractic, hypnotherapy, etc.
• Other medical services/therapies – weight management, podiatry, reproductive services, optical services, medical genetics, prosthetics, hearing aids, home and community care, sexual health, medical equipment, etc.

Make sure to list all of the services you provide, not just the ones you specialize in. Provide your visitors with information that will educate them about what your services do and why they should book an appointment with you.

Who We Are

The ‘About Us’ page needs to describe your business and what it stands for, its unique approach, philanthropic donations, etc.

It’s important to list any health-related awards, recognitions, certifications, accreditations, associations, publications, etc., that could be used to promote your practice and to set yourself above the competition.

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

Your Staff Page

If you are searching for cost-effective ideas to sell more products online, then help prospective clients get to know, like and trust you and your business better.

Prospects need to relate to your business. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your team members. This page should include a photo and a brief bio. Since most visitors won’t be familiar with medical or health-related terms it should tell who they are and what they specialize in. It should also explain what those specialties mean. This page can include social buttons that will allow your site visitors to follow selected staff members on their social pages.

On this page, don’t be afraid to show the human side of your people with personal stories, hobbies, etc., but make sure to highlight your staff member’s experience, why they are an asset to your team, and more importantly, how they can help add value to your clients’ business.

(Add an employee page. Image sourced from: southperthchiro.com.au)

If you need help how to add an easy-to-manage simple team members directory to your web site using free plugins, refer to this tutorial: How To Easily Create A Simple Employee Directory In Your WordPress Site With No Coding Skills

Career Opportunities Page

This is a listing of job opportunities available within your organization. This page can include training, employee benefits, advancement opportunities, etc. You can also include case studies of recruits who have established a solid career path thanks to your company and information about upcoming career opportunities in the health-related industry.

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

Case Studies

Case studies and testimonials are a great way to attract potential clients and showcase what type of services you offer. Adding a page with reviews from clients and case studies also provides prospective clients with social proof.

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

If you want to learn more about using testimonials and reviews, see this article: Improve Your Conversions With Meaningful Testimonials

Contact Us Page

A clean contact page is vitally important.

Your contact page should include:

• Company Name
• Address
• Phone number
• Fax
• Email
• Map and directions
• Website URL
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Social media URLs
• Online chat feature (optional feature)

If your business operates from multiple locations you will want to make that clear when showing the address and contact information.

You could also include links to an FAQ section, useful pages, online booking form, support area, newsletter, blog, etc.

Add A Health Or Medical Blog

A blog can be a very 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 timely content like the latest announcements, updates, training articles and tutorials, opinions and discussions, videos, media presentations, etc.

If you already have an existing site, then consider adding a WordPress blog to promote your business.

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

You are probably not aware of this, but an expertly configured WordPress site can turn into an automated traffic machine that can instantly begin to attract targeted visitors to your website, simply by adding regular content to your site.

(WordPress can generate new traffic automatically to your website)

For more details, go here:

• Web Traffic Blueprint – Learn How To Drive More Web Visitors For Your Business With WordPress

Legal Pages

It’s essential to ensure they have a compliant website. This is not only important for building trust with visitors, but also to ensure that no laws and regulations are being broken in whatever location you service.

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

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

We have written a comprehensive article about adding legal pages to your website here: The Importance Of Adding Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

Improve The Content On Your Site

In today’s fiercely competitive global economy, being generous with information has become one of the key differentiators for businesses that sell similar products or provide similar services.

Providing useful content with great information, tips and advice will get your visitors to share your web pages and come back for more. Publishing content is a great way to educate site visitors and prospective clients about using your services and products.

For example, if your business provides solutions that help people lose weight, then some of the areas you could write content about include:

• Common medical conditions that can cause weight gain
• The role portion control plays in helping you you lose weight
• Is using a measuring tape better than a scale when it comes to weight loss progress?
• Vitamins and minerals that aid in weight loss (chromium, calcium, magnesium, etc.)
• Etc.

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

Include keywords and terminology in your content that readers 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 show exactly how to drive more traffic to your website, save money creating useful content that will add value to your 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 Of Improving Visitor Engagement And User Experience

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

Use RSS Feeds

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

If you provide content that adds value to others, other sites 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 in one place
• Content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Your feed can be shared
• Users can subscribe to your feed
• A feed provides a way for links to point back to your site
• RSS feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
• There are multiple ways readers can receive your content (e.g. subscribers can read your content on their mobile device using feed readers)
• RSS is built into WordPress

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

You can find RSS feeds with loads of useful content by visiting sites of relevant government departments or industry bodies.

Below we have listed a few useful RSS feeds you could consider adding to your site:

• US Department Of Health And Human Services – e.g. Blog posts feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SelectedHhsBlogPosts, etc. You can also select individual RSS feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Body image, Healthy aging, Illnesses and disabilities, Mental health, 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. BioMed Central, ADA DiabetesCare , Indian Journal of Plastic Surgery, Toxicological Sciences, ADA DOC News, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health - Find many health-related RSS 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, health fraud, pet health, drugs, 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. Western Australia – http://www.public.health.wa.gov.au/feed/?types=news
• Centers For Disease Control And Prevention - Find various health-related feeds and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
• Medical News Feeds: You can search medical news feeds by going to publications like the NYTimes RSS feeds section (e.g. Medical research: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Research.xml)
• MedicineNet.com – Weekly Health and Medical News Digest: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/weeklyhealth.xml. You can also choose individual feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Alzheimer’s Disease, Arthritis, Chronic Pain, Diet & Weight Management, Senior Health, Skin, etc.)
• Medical News Today – Medical News Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
• Medical News Today – You can also choose individual RSS feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Schizophrenia, Ebola, Blood/Hematology, Neurology/Neuroscience, Diabetes, Epilepsy, Personal Monitoring/Wearable Technology, etc.)

You can also just search online for general feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific areas, e.g. “surgery rss feeds”, “preventive medicine rss feeds”, “restless legs syndrome rss feeds”, etc.

(Add RSS feeds to provide your visitors with a better UX.)

Add Online Checklists

Adding checklists and educational charts to your site is a fantastic way to help increase user engagement, add value to your readers and set yourself apart from the competition. They can give them useful step-by-step information and resources to perform steps. They are also great client instructional tools.

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

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

Online Tools

Providing useful tools, gadgets and applications on your site is a great way to increase visitor engagement and add value to your potential clients. Calculators are useful tools to add to your website. Other applications could include things like nutritional tools, and even recipes.

In part 2 of this detailed article, we will look at a number of online tools you can use in your site using WordPress plugins that improve your search engine optimization, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your business.

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This is the end of section one.

Click here to continue reading:

• A Complete Guide On How To Successfully Build And Grow A Medical And Health Clinic Online – Part 2

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