Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

Health providers today face a number of challenges.

Online Challenges For Health Practitioners

Now, more than ever, businesses in the medical industry must work harder than ever to remain competitive. Not only do you have to become actively 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 promote your health or medical services services online.

As well as investing dollars in offline marketing, you will probably find (if you haven’t already) that in order to compete, increasingly larger amounts of their marketing budget will need to be delegated towards the development and maintenance of a website that attracts new prospective clients, engages visitors, outperforms the competition in search engines and helps you gain wider marketing exposure online.

This means that your site not only has to look great, load fast, and be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, the needs of your website will change over time and many aspects may need to be frequently updated. This requires a sound web and content management strategy in place.

One other problem that medical or health organizations face (as most businesses do for that matter), is that your site has around thirty seconds or less to provide visitors 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 Health & Medical Profession In The Web Economy

As well as facing a number of challenges, there are also plenty of online opportunities available for medical or health practices that are willing to evolve to meet the challenges of the online economy and think strategically about marketing their business services better online.

This detailed guide will help you uncover new ways and opportunities to attract more visitors and improve your online results.

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

For more information about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress Content Management System (CMS), see these articles:

• Learn How A Poorly Built Web Site Can Lose You Customers And What To Do About It
• The Small Business Owner’s Guide To Using WordPress

Practical Tips To Improve Your Website

We’ll start first by covering some basics. In this section, we’ll look at how to improve your health or medical-related website and get better results. We will look at what pages you need, what content works best, suggestions for improving your site’s layout and navigation, etc.

If you need help with website planning, read this article we have written: A Comprehensive Guide To Web Site Planning For Business Owners

Essential Website Pages

Professional business websites require several essential web pages. Let’s review the pages your  need and how to structure your website for best results.

Description Of Products And Services

You need a page that describes your services or products. Depending on which area you specialize in, your page could list services such as:

• Medical And Surgical – e.g. anaesthetics, pulmonology hematology, oral surgery, incontinence, renal, endoscopy, eye diseases palliative care, etc.
• Dentistry – e.g. cosmetic dentistry, holistic dentistry, cleaning services, restorations, braces, emergency dentistry, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. cardiac patient education, coronary care
• Prenatal/Neonatal – e.g. birth suites, midwifery, etc.
• Child Health services – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic services – mammography, skin cancer, medical imaging, women’s health, MRI scanning, allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology services – lab testing and analysis, emergency pathology testing, clinical trials, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling – mental health, alcohol, tobacco & other drug counselling, couples, diet and nutrition counselling, social work services
• Alternative treatments – acupuncture, aromatherapy, reiki, yoga, chiropractic, hypnosis, etc.
• Other medical services/therapies – diet and nutrition, chiropody, fertility services, occupational therapy, medical genetics, prosthetics, sleep therapy, home and community care, sexual health, medical supplies, etc.

Make sure to list all of the services you provide. Provide your visitors with information that will educate them about what your services do and why they should book an appointment.

Who We Are

The ‘About Us’ page should give a description of your business and what it stands for, its unique approach, community participation, etc.

Remember to also list any health-related awards, certifications, accreditations, recognitions, publications, associations, etc., that you can use to promote your services and set yourself above similar service providers.

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

Your Team

Are you looking for quicker, easier and cheaper ideas to grow your business online or get visitors to engage more with your site? Then something you can do, is make it easier for your prospects to get to know, like and trust your business better.

Prospects need to relate to your business. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your employees or team members. It should include a photo and a mini biography. Since most visitors won’t be well-versed in health-related terms your descriptions should tell who they are and what their specialties are. It should also explain what those specialties mean. It should also include social buttons so your site visitors can follow some of your team members on their social pages.

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

(Add an employee description page. Screenshot image sourced from: southperthchiro.com.au)

To learn more about how to add an updatable simple team directory in a WordPress site using free WP plugins, refer to this tutorial: How To Create A Simple Staff List In Your WordPress Site Without Editing Code

Work For Us

This is a listing of job opportunities available within the clinic. This page can include training provided, employee benefits, opportunities for advancement, etc. You can include information such as the job outlook and upcoming career opportunities in the health-related industry.

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

Testimonials

Case studies and client reviews are a great way to attract potential clients and showcase the services you offer. Adding a web page with reviews from clients and case studies also helps your health site to provide prospective clients with social proof.

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

We have written a detailed article about using case studies, testimonials and user reviews get better results online here: All You Need To Know To Start Getting Better Results Online With Highly Effective Testimonials

Contact Us

A clean contact page is absolutely necessary.

Your contact page should provide:

• Name
• Physical location
• Telephone
• Facsimile
• Email address
• Google Map and directions
• Web address
• Contact form
• Request for more information – contact details
• Links to social media pages
• Interactive chat (optional)

If your business operates out of several locations you should make that clear when showing the address and contact info.

You should also include a few links point to the most commonly asked questions page, frequently-visited pages, online booking request, support area, newsletter, blog, etc.

Add A Health Or Medical Blog

A blog can be a very powerful marketing tool for your business. Many blogging platforms are built around a content management system that allows you to easily promote your business by publishing content such as news, updates, training articles, opinions and discussions, promotional videos, media presentations, etc.

If you already have an established health or medical site, then consider adding a WordPress-powered blog to create more exposure for your medical services.

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

Something not many businesses know about, is that an expertly configured WordPress site can turn into an automated traffic machine that can begin to attract targeted traffic to your site, simply by publishing new content to your website on a regular basis.

(An expertly configured WordPress site can drive new traffic automatically to your site)

For more details, go here:

• Web Traffic Blueprint – How To Automatically Grow Your Web Traffic For Your Business

Legal Pages

As a professional business, ensuring that you have a website that complies will all legal requirements online is crucially important. This is not only important for building trust with visitors, but also to ensure that no local, regional or federal laws or regulations are being breached in whatever location you do business.

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

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

We have written a detailed article about adding legal pages to your website. Go here to learn more about this: The Importance Of Adding Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

Improving Your Web Content

In today’s ultra-competitive global business economy, the sooner you begin to publish great content on your site, the sooner you will begin to differentiate yourself from the competition.

Providing useful content with great tips and information will get your visitors sharing it with others and coming back for more content. This is a great way to inform and educate site visitors and prospective clients about using your products and services.

For example, if you provide weight management services, then some of the topics you could cover in your content include:

• Emotional causes for weight issues (possible causes, identifying yours)
• How small efforts in portion control can help achieve weight loss results
• Characteristics of different diets, e.g. Paleo diet, Mediterranean diet, Jenny Craig diet (what these are, how they can benefit you, are they effective)
• Could a personal chef help you lose weight (what they do, is it affordable)
• Etc.

You can also create a series of informative articles that will help your prospective clients understand your services, by explaining benefits, procedures, terminology, etc.

Remember to use relevant keywords in your content that readers will search for online.

We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive a comprehensive series of training emails with actionable information that will show exactly 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!

Improving Visitor Engagement And User Experience

Improving user experience (known as UX) helps you keep visitors coming back and using your site. This section will show you ways you can improve visitor engagement and user experience.

Adding RSS Feeds

RSS feeds can help to improve visitor engagement and UX in several ways.

If you provide valuable content, 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
• Doesn’t rely on email
• RSS feeds can be shared online
• Feeds allow users to subscribe
• It provides links back to your content
• Feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
• There are several ways your readers can receive your content (e.g. read the content on their mobile device using different applications)
• RSS is built into WordPress

There are also benefits to adding syndicated content to your site from other sites, 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 health-related government departments and key industry bodies.

For example, here are some examples of useful RSS feeds you could consider adding to a health-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 select individual RSS feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Body image, Fitness and nutrition, 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 feeds from well-known medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. Rheumatology, JAMA & Archives, Journal of Cell Biology, jobs.ac.uk health and medical jobs, American Institute of Biological Sciences, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health - Find various RSS feeds on health-related news and topics here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• FDA – Get FDA-related RSS feeds (e.g. consumer health information updates, food allergy reports, tainted products, cosmetics, 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. Victoria – http://www.health.vic.gov.au/rss/newsfeed.xml
• Centers For Disease Control And Prevention - Find various health-related RSS 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 feeds section (e.g. Fitness and nutrition: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Nutrition.xml)
• MedicineNet – Daily Health and Medical News: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/dailyhealth.xml. You can also select individual feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Medications, Asthma, Chronic Pain, Oral Health, Prevention & Wellness, Thyroid, etc.)
• MedicalNewsToday.com – Featured Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
• MedicalNewsToday.com – You can also select specific feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Pharma Industry/Biotech Industry, Caregivers/Homecare, Health Insurance, Regulatory Affairs/Drug Approvals, Nursing/Midwifery, Epilepsy, Cancer/Oncology, etc.)

You can also search online for general RSS feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific areas, e.g. “fibromyalgia rss feeds”, “veterinary rss feeds”, “crohn’s rss feeds”, etc.

(Add RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds to improve your medical-related site’s user experience.)

Add Charts And Checklists

Checklists and explanatory charts are a great way to help increase user engagement, add value to your readers and provide something unique. They can provide visitors with useful information and resources to get necessary tasks completed. They can also be great instructional tools.

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

• Booking appointments
• Checklists for pre or post surgery
• Health checklists for specific conditions
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, maintenance program, cosmetic dentistry, etc.
• Fitness and exercise program checklists and charts
• General charts & infographics (e.g. sugar content in different foods, the importance of sleep at different ages, etc.)

Add Other Tools

Providing useful tools and applications on your website can help increase visitor engagement and significantly add value to potential clients. Calculators, for example are useful tools for your website. Other applications can include things like diagnostic tools, or even recipes.

In the next section, we discuss a number of WordPress-based tools you can add to your health or medical-related site that can also help improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.

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This is the end of section one.

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

• Online Business Tips For Health Professionals – WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Better User Engagement And Driving More Web Traffic

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