Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

Health practitioners face a number of challenges in the web economy, especially when it comes to growing a successful business presence online.

Online Challenges For Medical And Health Practitioners

Now, more than ever, medical or health practices must work harder to remain competitive and find new clientele. Not only do you have to become actively involved in the community your business serves, you must also maintain a strong digital presence. This includes having a website and figuring out better ways to grow your business online.

As well as investing money in offline marketing activities like advertising on local newspapers, ads in industry publications and magazines, radio and tv spots, etc., you will probably find (if you haven’t already) that in order to compete, increasingly larger amounts of their marketing budget need to be assigned to developing and maintaining a website that drives new prospects, engages users, outperforms the competition in search engines and social media, and helps to increase your presence online.

This means that your site not only has to look professional, your pages have to be fast-loading, and your site layout has to be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that your site’s needs may change in time and sections will need to be updated often. This requires a well-planned web and content management strategy in place.

Another challenge that medical or health-related organizations face online, as other professions do for that matter, is that you have only around 30 seconds or less to help users find what they are searching for or they will find what they are looking for 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

Online Opportunities For Health Professionals

As well as facing many challenges, there are also loads of online opportunities available for medical or health practices that can adapt to meet digital economy demands and think outside the box about marketing themselves better online.

In this detailed guide, you will learn about a number of ways to generate traffic and build more online credibility for your business.

As well as providing general website improvement tips, we also recommend that you consider using the WordPress content management system to power your medical or health-related website or blog.

For more information about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress content management system (CMS), see these articles:

• Discover How A Poorly Built Web Site Can Lose You Customers
• Learning WordPress – The Business Owner’s Guide

Useful Tips For Improving Your Website

In this section we’ll show you how to improve your website and get better results online. We show you what web pages you need, what content works best for health-related websites, ways of improving your site’s navigation structure, etc.

If you need additional information about website planning, see this article: The Website Planning Process Explained - A Money-Saving Primer For Business Owners

Your Website Pages

All websites need several essential web pages. Let’s take a look at these.

Description Of Services

You need a page that explains your services or products. Depending on which area of health or medical services you specialize in, this page can list services such as:

• Medical And Surgical – e.g. anaesthetics, nephrology hematology, plastic surgery, geriatric medicine, renal, endoscopy, optometry palliative care, etc.
• Dentistry – e.g. preventive dentistry, children’s dentistry, oral health, veneers, crowns and bridges, braces, emergency dentistry, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. cardiac patient education, chronic heart conditions
• Prenatal/Postnatal – e.g. obstetrics, midwifery, etc.
• Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic – mammography, skin cancer, x-ray, women’s health, MRI scanning, allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology – laboratory testing and analysis, emergency pathology testing, food and water testing, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling – mental health services, alcohol, tobacco & other drug services, trauma counselling, wellness coaching, social work services
• Alternative therapies – Chinese medicine, homeopathy, natural therapy, tai chi, chiropractic, hypnosis, etc.
• Other medical services – weight management, sports medicine, reproductive endocrinology, occupational therapy, inherited diseases, artificial limbs, hearing aids, home and community care, community health, medical equipment, etc.

List all of the services you provide. Educate your visitors about what these services do and why they should book an appointment.

About Us

This page should give a description of your business and explain to visitors what your business stands for, its unique approach, philanthropical donations, etc.

Remember to also mention any professional awards, certifications, accreditations, recognitions, associations, publications, etc., that can be used to promote your practice and position yourself above other competitors.

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

Meet The Team

If you are looking for inexpensive ideas to grow your business online, then help your prospects get to know you, your team and your business better.

Your business needs to be relatable. 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 will not tend to be well-versed in medical or health terms your descriptions should tell who they are and what they specialize in. You may also want to explain what those specialized areas mean. It should include social buttons that will allow your site visitors to follow your team members on their social pages.

In this page, make sure to highlight your employee’s qualifications, how they contribute to the success of your team, and more importantly, how they will help add value to your clients’ business.

(Add a team profile page. Screenshot image sourced from: southperthchiro.com.au)

To learn more about how to easily add a simple and easy-to-manage simple employee directory in your web site without using code, go here: How To Add A Staff Directory: Tutorial

Work For Us

List any job opportunities available within your clinic. It can include training, employee benefits, professional development, social aspects of working for your business, etc. You can also include stories of graduates who have worked their way up in your business and information about career opportunities in the health or medical industry.

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

Case Studies & Testimonials

Client reviews and case studies are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase your services. Adding a page with case studies and client reviews also helps to provide social proof online.

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

We have written a comprehensive article on using testimonials and user reviews get better results online. For more details, go here: Turn More Visitors Into Prospects With Knockout Customer Testimonials

Contact Us Page

Having a contact page is crucial.

It should provide the following information:

• Business Name
• Address
• Phone
• Facsimile number
• Contact email
• Google Map
• Website URL
• Contact form
• Contact name
• Social media URLs
• Interactive chat feature (optional feature)

If you operate in several locations you should make that clear when showing your address and contact info.

Consider also including links to an FAQ section, useful pages, booking request, support page, newsletter, blog, etc.

Add A Blog Section

A blog is a very powerful marketing tool for your business. Blogs are built around a content management system that allows you to easily promote your business using content like announcements, updates, educational articles, informative posts, how-to videos, infographics, etc.

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

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

You may not be aware of this, but an expertly configured WordPress site can turn into an automated traffic-generation machine that can drive an ongoing stream of targeted visitors to your site, simply by adding content to your website on a regular basis.

(WordPress can automate your traffic generation)

Learn more about this here:

• Web Site Traffic Blueprint – Discover How To Create A Traffic-Getting Machine

Legal Pages

It’s important for health providers companies to have a compliant website. This is not only important for establishing trust and credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that you are not breaching any laws and regulations wherever your business is located.

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

• Contact Page
• Privacy Statement
• Terms And Conditions 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

We have written a comprehensive article about adding legal pages to your website. If you would like to learn more here: How To Add Legal Pages To Your Website

How To Improve The Content On Your Site

In today’s globally competitive economy, the sooner you start to engage in the practice of content marketing, the sooner you will begin to see results and differentiate yourself from the competition.

You want to provide useful content with great tips, information and advice that will get your readers to share your web pages and come back for more. Publishing content is the most effective way to inform and educate site visitors and prospective clients about using your services and products.

For example, if your business provides products that help people manage their weight, then some of the topics you could write about include the following:

• Common medical conditions that can cause weight gain
• How to get support for your weight loss efforts (friends, family, weight loss seekers)
• Dieting pills (common ones, side effects, long term results, do they work?)
• 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 prospective clients gain a better understanding of your services, by explaining benefits, procedures, costs (including payment plans, insurance coverage, etc).

Use keywords and terms in your content that prospective clients will search 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 that will show exactly 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 business online using content. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also 100% FREE!

Improving User Experience

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

Content Syndication – RSS Feeds

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve your visitor engagement and UX in several ways.

If you provide useful content, other sites 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
• Content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Can be shared and picked up by other sites online
• Users can subscribe to your feed
• It provides a way for links to point back to your site
• Your feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
• There are several ways your readers can receive your content (e.g. subscribers can view your content on their mobile device using different applications)
• RSS is built into WordPress

There are also benefits when it comes to providing content on your site from other sites, 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 for your website by visiting sites of relevant government departments or respected industry bodies.

For example, here are some examples of feeds you could consider adding to a health or medical-related website:

• US Department Of Health And Human Services – e.g. Blog feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SelectedHhsBlogPosts, etc. You can also choose specific RSS feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Breast cancer, Environmental health, Heart health and stroke, Menopause, Pregnancy, etc.) here: http://womenshealth.gov/news/rss/rss-feeds.html
• US National Libraries Of Medicine – For a list of feeds from leading medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. PhysiologicalReviews, Bionet RSS, TheLancet.com, Journal of Cell Science, American Institute of Biological Sciences, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health (www.nih.gov) - Find many health-related feeds here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• US Food And Drug Administration (FDA) – Get FDA-related feeds (e.g. consumer health information, FDA drug shortages, recalls, drugs, etc.) and podcasts here: http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/ContactFDA/StayInformed/RSSFeeds
• UK Department Of Health (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. NSW – http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/pages/rss.aspx
• Centers For Disease Control And Prevention - Find many health-related feeds and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
• Medical News: You can search medical news feeds in places like the NYTimes feeds section (e.g. Fitness and nutrition: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Nutrition.xml)
• MedicineNet.com – MedTerms Medical Word of the Day: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/dailyword.xml. You can also choose specific feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Lung Conditions, Men’s health, Cholesterol, Pregnancy, Digestion, HIV, etc.)
• MedicalNewsToday.com – Medical News Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
• MedicalNewsToday.com – You can also select specific feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Hypertension, Vascular, Depression, Swine Flu, Rehabilitation/Physical Therapy, Tropical Diseases, Genetics, etc.)

You can also search online for general feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific areas, e.g. “cystic fibrosis rss feeds”, “asthma rss feeds”, “psychology rss feeds”, etc.

(Adding RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve your website’s user experience.)

Add Online Checklists & Charts

Checklists and medical forms are a fantastic way to help increase visitor engagement and add value to your readers. They can provide step-by-step instructions and resources to complete tasks. Checklists and forms are also great client instructional tools.

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

• Booking appointments
• Checklists for post-surgery recovery
• Health checklists and charts for specific medical conditions
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, oral hygiene program, general dentistry, etc.
• Weight loss and nutrition program checklists
• General charts & infographics (e.g. acidity level of different foods, the importance of sleep at different ages, etc.)

Unique Tools

Providing useful tools, gadgets and applications on your site can help increase visitor engagement and significantly add value to your visitors. Calculators are popular tools for your website. Other applications would include things like nutritional tools, or even recipes.

In the next section, we will look at a number of WordPress plugins you can add to your health-related site that can improve search engine optimization, improve user engagement and generate more web traffic to your business.

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This is the end of section one.

To view Part 2, click here:

• How To Build And Grow A Health & Medical Center Web Presence – Part 2

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