Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

Medical professionals face many challenges in the digital economy, especially when it comes to growing a business presence online.

Online Challenges For Medical Services Providers

Today, more than ever, medical services professionals must work harder to remain competitive and generate new clients. Not only do you have to be fully involved in the community you serve, you must also maintain an active web presence. This includes having an effective website and searching for smarter ways to grow your medical or health 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 budget need to be assigned to developing and managing a website that can bring new prospective clients, engage users, outperform the competition in search engines and help increase your presence online.

This means that your website not only has to look professional, load fast, and be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that your site’s needs will change over time and many areas will need to be frequently updated. This requires the implementation of a well-developed website and content management strategy.

One other problem that health services providers (and all other professions) face, is that you have an average of thirty seconds or less to provide visitors with what they are looking for or they will look 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 Health Professionals

As well as facing a number of significant challenges, there are also plenty of online opportunities available to businesses in the medical profession that are willing to evolve to meet the challenges of the digital economy and who can think strategically when it comes to improving their online business marketing skills.

In this comprehensive guide, you will learn new ways to generate web traffic and create noticeable improvements in your online results.

As well as providing useful website improvement tips, we also place special emphasis on the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform to power your medical or health business website.

To learn more about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress content management system (CMS), go here:

• Why A Poorly Built Web Site Can Lose You Money
• Learn How To Grow Your Business With WordPress

Useful Tips For Improving Your Website

We’ll start first by going over the basics. In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve your website and get better results online. We will look at what pages you need, what type of content works best for health-related websites, layout and navigation, etc.

If you need website planning assistance, see this detailed guide: How To Plan A Web Site: A Comprehensive Primer For Business Owners

Your Web Pages

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

Services Description Page

It’s essential to include a page that describes your products or services. Depending on which area of health you specialize in, this page could include services such as:

• Medicine & Surgery – e.g. ear, nose & throat, nephrology blood disorders, maxillofacial surgery, geriatric medicine, respiratory, gastroenterology, ophtalmology surgical outpatients, etc.
• Dental Services – e.g. preventive dentistry, children’s dentistry, bad breath treatment, veneers, crowns and bridges, implants, emergency dentistry, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. heart surgery, coronary care
• Prenatal/Neonatal – e.g. birth suites, midwifery, etc.
• Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic services – breast screening, skin cancer, audiology, women’s health, magnetic resonance imaging, allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology services – laboratory testing and analysis, emergency pathology testing, insurance and corporate testing, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling – mental health, alcohol, tobacco & other drug services, trauma counselling, wellbeing, social development services
• Alternative treatments – Chinese medicine, aromatherapy, natural therapy, meditation, osteopathy, hypnotherapy, etc.
• Other medical services/therapies – diet and nutrition, podiatry, reproductive services, speech language therapy, medical genetics, artificial limbs, assisted living, home and community care, sexual health, medical transport, etc.

List all of the services you provide. Provide your visitors with information that will educate them about the benefits of using these services and direct them to your contact or appointment booking page.

Who We Are

This page needs to describe your business and what it stands for, its unique approach, community projects, etc.

It should list any awards, accreditations, recognitions, certifications, associations, publications, etc., that can be used to promote your medical services and position yourself above similar service providers.

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

Your Team

Are you searching for quicker, easier and cost-effective ideas to sell more products or services online and get prospects to stay longer on your site? Then make it easier for prospective clients to get to know your organization better.

Potential clients need to relate to your business. One great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your employees. It should include a photo and a mini bio. Since most visitors will not tend to be that well-versed in health or medical-related terms your bio descriptions should tell who they are and what their specialties are. You may also want to explain what those specialized areas do. It should include social buttons that will allow your site visitors to follow selected staff members on their social pages.

In this page, make sure to highlight your employee’s experience, why they are an invaluable asset to your team, and more importantly, how they can help add value to your clients’ business.

(Add a staff page. Image sourced from: southperthchiro.com.au)

We have written a detailed tutorial about how to create and add a simple and easily updatable list directory of employees or team members in your website using a free plugin here: How To Easily Create A Simple Staff Directory In Your WordPress Site With No Coding Skills Required

Work With Us

List any job opportunities within the business. This page should include training, employee benefits, advancement opportunities, social activities sponsored by your organization, etc. It should include stories of trainees who have worked their way up in your business and information about career opportunities in the medical or health-related industry.

Also include a positions available section in this 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.

Testimonials And Case Studies

Case studies and client reviews are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase your services. By adding a page with case studies and client reviews, you are also helping to establish social proof online for your business.

(Add a page to your site with case studies and testimonials from previous clients. Screenshot image source: arrowsmiledental.com)

We have created a comprehensive article about using client testimonials and reviews get better results online. To learn more about this go here: Create Better Results Online With Meaningful Customer Testimonials

Contact Us

Having a functional contact page is crucial.

It should provide visitors with some or all of the following:

• Name Of Your Business
• Street address of clinic
• Phone
• Facsimile number
• Contact email address
• Google Map and directions
• Web URL
• Contact form
• Request for information – contact details
• Links to social media networks
• Live chat

If your business operates in multiple areas you want to make that clear when displaying the address and contact info.

You can also include links pointing to the most commonly asked questions page, main pages, booking form, support area, newsletter, blog, etc.

Add A Medical Blog

A blog can be a powerful marketing tool for your business. Most blogging platforms typically comprise of a content management system that is simple to use and allows you to easily promote your business by publishing timely content like news and events, updates, training articles, discussions on current topics, videos, media presentations, etc.

If you already have an established medical-related website, then consider adding a WordPress-driven blog to create more exposure for your medical practice.

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

Not many businesses know this, but WordPress can turn into an automated traffic machine that can instantly begin delivering targeted traffic to your business, simply by adding regular content to your web site.

(WordPress can automate your traffic generation)

Go here to learn more about this:

• WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint – Learn How To Generate More Web Visitors For Your Business

Legal Info Pages

As a professional business, having a website that complies will all legal requirements online is extremely important. This is not only important for building trust with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no laws or regulations are being contravened wherever you practice.

Adding the following legal pages to your website will help keep you out of legal hot water with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers, and other potential sources of legal threats and 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 and Financial Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• etc.

We have written a detailed article on adding legal pages to your website. Go here to learn more: What You Need To Know About Adding Legal Pages To Your Site

How To Improve Your Content

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

By committing to providing great content with useful tips or information, you will get your readers sharing your web pages and coming back for more. Content marketing is the most effective way to inform and educate your visitors and prospects about using your products and services.

For example, if you provide services that help people manage their weight, then some of the areas you can write content about include:

• What to do before you start any weight loss program (e.g. consult with doctor, record measurements, set goals, etc.)
• What calories really are and how they play a role in weight loss
• Comparing different diets, e.g. Low carb diet, Mediterranean diet, Nutrisystem diet (what these are, how they can benefit you, are they effective)
• A guide to making the smarter choices choices when eating at restaurants
• And many other content topics

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

Remember to include the same keywords and terms in your articles that your prospective clients would search for.

We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive a comprehensive series of training emails with actionable information and practical tips that will show you how to drive more traffic to your site, save money creating useful content that will add value to your 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!

Tips For Improving Visitor Engagement And User Experience

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

RSS Feeds – Content Syndication

An RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed provides many benefits for your health or medical business.

If you provide information that adds value to others, other sites may want to syndicate your content.

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

• All of your updates are kept in one place
• your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Your feed can be shared and picked up by other sites online
• Users can subscribe to your RSS feed
• A feed provides a way for external links to point back to your content
• Feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
• RSS provides several ways for readers to receive your content (e.g. view the content on their mobile device using different applications)
• It’s built into WordPress

There are also benefits when it comes to providing great content on your site from other sites, such as the fact that you don’t have to write, manage or update the content.

To find RSS feeds with useful content just visit sites of relevant government departments and industry bodies.

For example, here are some useful RSS feeds you could consider adding to your site:

• US Department Of Health And Human Services – e.g. Blog feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SelectedHhsBlogPosts, etc. You can also select specific feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Body image, 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 various medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. ACS Publications, BMJ Disease in Childhood – Fetal and Neonatal Edition, Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, Neurology.org, BMJ British Journal of Ophthalmology, 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
• US Food And Drug Administration (FDA) – Get feeds on fda-related topics like FDA drug safety, health fraud, product recalls, radiological health, 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. Western Australia – http://www.public.health.wa.gov.au/feed/?types=news
• Centers For Disease Control And Prevention - Get many health-related RSS feeds 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 feeds section (e.g. Fitness and nutrition: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Nutrition.xml)
• MedicineNet – 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. Allergies, Men’s health, Neurology, Pregnancy, Eyesight, Infectious Disease, etc.)
• Medical News Today – Featured Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
• MedicalNewsToday.com – You can also select specific RSS feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Pharma Industry/Biotech Industry, Pain/Anesthetics, Health Insurance, Dermatology, COPD, Sports Medicine/Fitness, Huntingtons Disease, etc.)

You can also just search online for general feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific subjects, e.g. “vaccines rss feeds”, “plastic surgery rss feeds”, “genetics rss feeds”, etc.

(Using RSS feeds can help to improve your website’s UX.)

Provide Forms

Checklists and educational charts are a fantastic way to help increase visitor engagement and add value to your readers. Charts and checklists can provide visitors with step-by-step instructions and resources to complete a task. Checklists and charts can also be great client instructional tools.

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

• Checklists and forms for booking appointments
• Checklists for pre or post treatment
• Health checklists and charts for specific systems
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, caries prevention program, general dentistry, etc.
• Weight loss and nutrition program checklists and charts
• General charts & infographics (e.g. sugar content in different foods, the importance of sleep at different ages, etc.)

Provide Unique Tools

Providing unique online tools, gadgets and applications on your site can help increase visitor engagement and add value to potential clients. Calculators, for example are great tools you can add to your website. Others could include things like diagnostic tools, or even recipes.

In the next section of this detailed article, we look at a several WordPress plugins you can add to your medical-related site that can also help improve your seo, improve user engagement and generate more web traffic to your business.

***

This is the end of part 1 of this guide on ways to grow your health or medical web presence.

Click here to keep reading:

• How To Grow Your Health And Medical Center Website – Part Two

***

***