Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress
The digital age has not only revolutionised business around the world, it has also created increasingly difficult challenges and great opportunities for health services providers and financial service providers.
Online Challenges For Health Practitioners
Now, more than ever, medical services professionals must find smarter ways to remain competitive and generate new clients. Not only do you have to become actively involved in the community your business serves, you must also maintain a strong web presence. This includes having an effective web presence and learning how to better promote your services online.
In addition to investing money advertising offline, businesses in the medical industry are also finding that increasingly larger amounts of their marketing budget will need to be assigned to developing and maintaining a website that attracts prospects, engages users, outperforms the competition in search engines and helps them gain a wider reach online.
This means that your site not only has to look great, your web pages have to load fast, and be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, the needs of your website may change in time and sections will need to be updated often. This requires implementing sound website and content management strategy.
One other challenge that medical organizations face, as most other businesses do for that matter, is that your site has only about thirty seconds or less to provide visitors with what they are searching for or they will go elsewhere to find what they need.
“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 Businesses In The Online Economy
As well as facing many business and technology changes, there are also many online opportunities available for businesses in the medical industry that can adapt to meet online economy demands and who can think outside the box about improving their online marketing skills.
The guide below will help you uncover a number of ways to increase web traffic and establish stronger online credibility for your business.
As well as providing practical tips and information on ways to improve your web presence, we also recommend that you consider using the WordPress CMS platform to power your health-related business website or blog.
For more information about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress content management system (CMS), see the articles below:
- How A Poorly Designed Website Can Lose You Customers And What To Do About It
- Learn How To Grow Your Small Business Using A WordPress Blog
Practical Tips For Improving Your Website
This section covers ways to improve your health or medical website and get better results online. We show you what pages a medical-related website needs, what content works best for health websites, your navigation structure, etc.
If you need assistance or help planning your health or medical-related website, go here: How To Plan Your Website: A Comprehensive Primer For Non-Technical Business Owners
Basic Website Pages
All business websites require a number of basic web pages. Let’s discuss these.
Services And Products Page
You need to include a page that describes your services or products. Depending on which area of health or medical services you specialize in, this page could include services like:
- Medicine & Surgery – e.g. ear, nose & throat, nephrology haematology, oncology, gerontology, respiratory, gastroenterology, eye diseases surgical outpatients, etc.
- Dental Services – e.g. cosmetic dentistry, holistic dentistry, cleaning services, teeth whitening, braces, emergency dentistry, etc.
- Cardiology – e.g. cardiac patient education, coronary care
- Prenatal & Neonatal – e.g. obstetrics, midwifery, etc.
- Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
- Diagnostic – breast screening, skin cancer, medical imaging, women’s health, MRI scanning, allergy testing, etc.
- Pathology services – lab testing and analysis, routine pathology testing, occupational and environmental testing, speech pathology, etc
- Counselling – mental health services, alcohol, tobacco & other drug counselling, couples, diet and nutrition counselling, social development services
- Alternative treatments – acupuncture, reflexology, colloidal silver therapy, shiatsu, chiropractic, hypnosis, etc.
- Other medical services – weight management, othopedics, lymphedema therapy, stomal therapy, inherited diseases, artificial limbs, mobility, home and community care, community health, medical supplies, etc.
List all of the services you provide. Educate your visitors about what these services do and direct them to your appointment booking page.
About Us
This page needs to describe your business and what your business stands for, its unique approach, community activities, etc.
Remember to list any awards, recognitions, accreditations, certifications, publications, associations, etc., that could be used to promote your medical, dental, chiropractic, surgery services, etc. and to position yourself above your competitors.
(List all of your awards accreditations, recognitions, certifications, publications, associations, etc. in the About Us page. Image source: squaremedical.com.au)
Meet Our Team
Are you searching for simple ideas to grow your business online or get prospects to stay longer on your site? Then something you can do, is help your visitors get to know you and your business better.
You want potential clients to relate to your business. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your team. This page should include a photo and a brief biography. Since most visitors will not tend to be that well-versed in medical or health-related terms your descriptions should tell who they are and what their specialties are. It should also explain what those specialized areas do. It can also include social buttons that will allow your prospective clients to follow your 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 outline each person’s expertise, why they are an invaluable asset 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 employees to prospective new clients. Screenshot image source: southperthchiro.com.au)
To learn more about how to easily add a simple and easily updatable directory of employees to your web site using free WP plugins, refer to this tutorial: How To Easily Add A Staff List Directory To Your WordPress Site: Step-By-Step Tutorial
Career Opportunities
This is a listing of job or career opportunities within your organization. It should include training offered, benefits, professional development, social aspects of working with your business, etc. You can also include information such as the job outlook and upcoming career opportunities in the health-related industry.
Also include 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 you on social media, etc.
Case Studies
Client reviews and case studies are a great way to attract potential clients and showcase the services you offer. By adding a page with testimonials from previous clients and case studies, you are also helping to are also establishing social proof for your business.
(Add a web page with client reviews and case studies. Screenshot source: arrowsmiledental.com)
We have created a comprehensive article on using testimonials and client reviews improve your business online here: How To Create Better Results Online Using Highly Effective Testimonials
Contact Page
Having a contact page is essential.
Your contact page should include:
- Name
- Physical location
- Phone
- Fax
- Email address
- Google Map
- Web address
- Contact form
- Name of person to contact
- Social media web addresses
- Live chat (optional)
If your business services different locations you want to make that clear when showing your address and contact information.
Consider also including a few links point to commonly-asked questions page, main pages, online booking form, support area, newsletter, blog, etc.
Add A Blog Section
A blog can be a powerful business marketing tool. Many blogging platforms typically comprise of a content management system that allows you to promote your business using timely content such as news, updates, training articles, opinions and discussions, how-to videos, media presentations, etc.
If you already have an health-related website, then consider adding a WordPress-driven blog to market your services.
If you don’t have a website yet, or if your existing medical-related website is very hard to add new content to or not delivering you the results you want, then WordPress can be used as both your business website and business blog.
Not many businesses know this, but WordPress can become an automated traffic machine that can instantly deliver targeted visitors to your web site, simply by adding content to your website on a regular basis.
(WordPress can generate web traffic automatically to your site)
Go here to learn more about this:
Legal Information Pages
As a professional business, ensuring that you have a compliant website is really important. This is not only important for establishing trust and credibility with visitors, but also to ensure that you are not contravening local, regional and federal laws or regulations wherever you do business.
Depending on what services you provide, adding some or all of the legal pages below to your site will help keep you out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Facebook), and other potential sources of threats and legal inconveniences:
- Contact Page
- Privacy Policy
- 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 detailed article on adding legal pages to your site. If you would like to learn more here: The Importance Of Adding Legal Pages To Your Site
How To Improve Your Content
In today’s ultra-competitive online economy, content marketing has become one of the key business differentiators.
By providing useful content with great information, advice and tips, you will get your visitors to share your information and come back for more content. Using content is the most effective way to educate site visitors and prospective clients about your business and services.
For example, if you provide weight loss services, then some of the areas you could write about include the following:
- What is BMI (what it stands for, what it does, how to calculate yours)
- How to set realistic, but achievable weight loss goals
- How to recover physically and emotionally after weight loss surgery – useful tips and suggestions
- How to incorporate an occasional fast food into a healthier diet plan
- Etc.
You can also create a series of informative articles that will help your prospective clients gain a better understanding of your health services, by explaining benefits, procedures, costs (including payment plans, insurance coverage, etc).
Remember to use keywords and terminology in your articles that prospective clients will search for online.
We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive regular training emails with easy-to-digest information and practical tips that will teach exactly how to drive more traffic to your web site, save money creating high-quality content that will add value to your site visitors and grow your business online using content marketing strategies. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also completely FREE!
Ways To Improve 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 your visitor engagement and UX.
RSS Feeds – Content Syndication
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds provide many benefits for your health business.
If you provide content that adds value to others, other businesses may want to syndicate your content to their visitors.
Some of the benefits of having other businesses syndicate your content, include:
- All of your updates are in one place
- your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
- Feeds can be shared
- Users can subscribe to your feed
- A feed provides a way for links to point back to your content
- RSS feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
- There are various ways readers can receive your content (e.g. users can read your content on their mobile device using different applications)
- It’s built into WordPress
There are also a number of benefits to providing great information on your site from other sites, such as the fact that you don’t have to write, manage or update the content.
To find useful RSS feeds for your website, visit sites of relevant government departments and well-known industry bodies.
For example, here are some examples of RSS feeds you could consider adding to your 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 select individual feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Breast cancer, Fitness and nutrition, HIV/AIDS, 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 feeds from leading medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science, The Journal of General Physiology (JGP), European Heart Journal, Journal of Cell Science, Respiratory Research, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
- National Institutes Of Health (www.nih.gov) - Find various feeds on health-related topics here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
- FDA – Find RSS feeds on fda-related news like consumer health information, FDA drug shortages, product recalls, vaccines, blood and biologics, 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. Victoria – http://www.health.vic.gov.au/rss/newsfeed.xml
- Centers For Disease Control And Prevention - Find many health-related news feeds and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
- Medical News Feeds: You can search medical news RSS feeds in places like the NYTimes RSS 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 choose individual RSS feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Alzheimer’s Disease, Men’s health, Migraine Headaches, Oral Health, Digestion, Women’s Health, etc.)
- MedicalNewsToday.com – Featured 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. Public Health, Bird Flu/Avian Flu, ADHD/ADD, Flu/Cold/SARS, Transplants/Organ Donations, Allergy, Psychology/Psychiatry, 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. “dentistry rss feeds”, “hearing rss feeds”, “alzheimer’s rss feeds”, etc.
(RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve your website’s user experience.)
Adding Forms
Checklists and charts are a fantastic way to help increase user engagement and add value to your audience. Checklists and charts can provide useful instructions and resources to perform a necessary task. Checklists and charts can also be great client instructional tools.
You can provide online or downloadable forms and checklists covering a range of areas such as:
- Booking appointments
- Checklists for pre or post treatment
- Health checklists for specific conditions
- Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, maintenance program, general dentistry, etc.
- Weight loss and nutrition program checklists and charts
- General charts & infographics (e.g. sugar content in different foods, sleep requirements at different stages of development, etc.)
Other Tools
Providing useful online tools, gadgets and applications on your website is a great way to increase visitor engagement and add value to potential clients. Health-related calculators are popular tools for your website. Others can include things like diagnostic tools, or even recipes.
In part 2, we will look at a several online tools you can add to your site using WordPress plugins that can help improve seo, increase user engagement and generate more traffic to your business.
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This is the end of section one of this guide on ways to grow your medical business web presence.
Click on this link to continue:
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