Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress
Medical services providers today face significant challenges.
Online Challenges For The Health And Medical Profession
Now, more than ever, businesses in the medical and health 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 and maintain an active presence online. This includes having an effective web presence and learning how to better promote your medical or health services services online.
As well as spending money in offline marketing activities, businesses in the health-related industry are also finding that increasingly larger amounts of their marketing budget need to be directed to develop and manage a website that will bring in prospective clients, engage visitors, outrank the competition in search engines and social media, and help give them a wider amount of marketing reach online.
This means that your site not only has to look great, your web pages have to be fast-loading, and your site has to be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that the needs of your website may change over time and sections may need to be frequently updated. This requires having a sound website and content management strategy in place.
Another difficult challenge that health services professionals face with their websites, as do all other professions for that matter, is that your site has around 30 seconds to give users the information they need or they will go elsewhere to get their needs met.
“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 And Health Profession In The Web Economy
As well as facing many new challenges, there are also many online opportunities available to businesses in the health or medical-related profession that can evolve to meet digital economy demands and can think strategically in terms of improving their online marketing skills.
This guide will help you uncover ways to increase web traffic and build more online credibility for your business.
As well as providing tips and information on ways to improve your web presence, we also emphasize the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform to power your health business website or blog.
For more information about the benefits and advantages of using WordPress, go here:
- Discover Why A Poorly Built Web Site Can Lose You Customers And What To Do About It
- WordPress For Small Business Owners – A Complete Guide To Building A Successful Small Business With WordPress
Useful Tips To Improve Your Health & Medical Practice Services Website
In this section we’ll start with the basics and show you how to improve your health or medical-related website and get better results online. We will look at what pages a health site needs, what type of content works best, tips for improving your site’s layout and navigation structure, etc.
If you need website planning assistance, go here: A Practical Guide To Website Planning For Business Owners
Your Website Pages
All business websites require a number of basic pages. Let’s take a look at these.
Description Of Services
It’s essential to include a page that lists your products and services. Depending on which area of health you specialize in, your page could include services such as:
- Medicine & Surgery – e.g. ear, nose & throat, neurosurgery blood disorders, cancer, neurology, renal, endoscopy, ophtalmology surgical outpatients, etc.
- Dental Services – e.g. cosmetic dentistry, children’s dentistry, oral hygiene, restorations, braces, emergency dentistry, etc.
- Cardiology – e.g. heart monitoring, coronary care
- Prenatal & Postnatal – e.g. birthing, midwifery, etc.
- Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
- Diagnostic – breast screens, lung screening, radiology, women’s health, psychosis, food allergy testing, etc.
- Pathology services – laboratory testing and analysis, emergency pathology testing, food and water testing, speech pathology, etc
- Counselling services – mental health, alcohol, tobacco & other drug services, trauma counselling, wellness, social development services
- Alternative therapies – Chinese medicine, aromatherapy, natural therapy, shiatsu, chiropractic, hypnotherapy, etc.
- Other medical services/therapies – weight management, chiropody, reproductive services, physiotherapy, medical genetics, prosthetics, mobility, 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 direct them to your appointment booking page.
About Us
The ‘About Us’ page should give a description of your business and what it stands for, its unique approach, causes that you support, etc.
It’s important to also list any awards, accreditations, certifications, recognitions, publications, associations, etc., that you can use to promote your business and set yourself above other competitors.
(List all of your business awards recognitions, accreditations, certifications, publications, associations, etc. in the About page. Screenshot source: squaremedical.com.au)
Meet Our Team
If you are searching for inexpensive ways to sell more products online or get people to stay longer on your site, then something you can do, is make it easier for your prospective clients to get to know 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 employees or team members. It should include a photo and a mini bio. Since most visitors won’t be well-versed in medical-related terms your bio descriptions should tell who they are and what their specialties are. It should also explain what those specialties mean. It should include social buttons so your visitors can follow selected team members on their social pages.
In 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 team member’s experience, why they are an asset to your team, and more importantly, how they will help add value to your clients’ business.
(Make sure to add a staff description page. Screenshot image sourced from: southperthchiro.com.au)
We have written a detailed tutorial on how to add an easy-to-update list directory of staff or team members to WordPress here: How To Easily Create A Simple Employee List In Your WordPress Site With No Coding Skills Required
Job Opportunities
List any career opportunities available within the company. It would include type of training provided, benefits, professional development, social aspects of working for your business, etc. You can also include stories of recruits who have worked their way up in your organization and information about additional career opportunities in the health 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 updates list, follow your social pages, etc.
Case Studies & Testimonials
Testimonials and case studies are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase what type of services you offer. Adding a page with testimonials from past clients and case studies also helps your medical or health-related site to provide visitors social proof online.
(Add a web page with case studies and client reviews. Image sourced from: arrowsmiledental.com)
To learn more about using testimonials, case studies and client reviews, refer to this article: Learn How To Convert More Visitors Into Qualified Prospects With Engaging Testimonials
Contact Us Page
Having a clean contact page is absolutely vital.
It should include some or all of the following information about your center:
- Name
- Your address
- Phone
- Fax
- Email address
- Map and directions
- Web URL
- Contact form
- Request for more information – contact details
- Social media URLs
- Online chat (optional feature)
If your business services multiple locations you will want to make that clear when displaying the address and contact information.
You can also include a few links point to commonly-asked questions page, frequently-visited pages, booking request, support area, newsletter, blog, etc.
Add A Medical Blog Section
A blog is a very powerful marketing tool for your business. Most blogging platforms typically include a content management system that is easy to use and allows you to promote your business using content like announcements, updates, training articles and tutorials, opinions on current topics, videos, infographics, etc.
If you already have an existing health or medical-related site, then consider adding a WordPress blog to market your clinic.
If you don’t have a website yet, or if your existing medical or health-related website is hard to keep updated or not delivering you the results you want, then WordPress can serve as both your business website and blog.
Very few businesses know that an expertly configured WordPress site can turn into an automated traffic-generation machine that will begin attracting targeted traffic to your web site, simply by publishing content on a regular basis to your website.
(WordPress can automate your traffic generation)
For more details:
Legal Information
As a professional business, having a website that complies will all legal requirements online is very important. This is not only important for establishing trust and credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that you are not breaching any local, regional or federal laws and regulations wherever you provide services.
Adding the legal pages below to your health-related site will help you stay out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Google), and other potential legal threats and inconveniences:
- Contact Us
- Privacy Policy
- Terms And Conditions Of Use
- Website Disclaimer
- Affiliate Agreement
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- DMCA Notice
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Links Policy
- Health/Financial Disclaimers
- Refund Policy
- Video/Audio Terms
- and others
We have written a comprehensive article about adding legal pages to your site. To learn more, go here: What You Need To Know About Adding Legal Pages To Your Site
Tips For Improving Your Web Content
In today’s globally competitive economy, the sooner you begin to engage in the practice of content marketing, the faster you will begin to see results and differentiate yourself from the competition.
You want to provide great content with useful tips, information or advice that will get your readers sharing your information online with others and coming back for more. Using content is the most effective way to inform and educate your visitors and prospects about your business and services.
For example, if your business provides weight loss services, then some of the topics you could cover as content on your site:
- What to do before starting any weight loss program (e.g. consult with doctor, record measurements, set goals, etc.)
- Tips for developing portion control habits (smaller plate, don’t put food on the table, more vegetables)
- Tips for developing an exercise plan you can enjoy and will stick with
- How to incorporate a little fast food into a healthier diet plan
- Etc.
You can also create a series of informative articles that will help your your prospective clients gain a better understanding of your medical or health services, by explaining benefits, procedures, costs (including payment plans, insurance coverage, etc).
Use keywords and terminology in your articles that your readers will search for.
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 you how to drive more traffic to your website, save money creating high-quality content that will add value to your site visitors and grow your presence online using content. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also 100% FREE!
Ways To Improve Visitor Experience
Improving user experience (known as UX) helps you keep visitors coming back and engaging with your site. This section will show you ways you can improve your visitor engagement and user experience.
Syndicate Content With RSS Feeds
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve visitor engagement and user experience in a number of different ways.
If you provide content that adds value to others, other businesses will 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
- your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
- RSS feeds can be shared and picked up by other sites online
- Users can subscribe to your feed
- An RSS feed provides links to your site
- Your feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
- RSS provides a number of ways for your readers to receive your content (e.g. read the content on their mobile device using different applications)
- RSS is built into WordPress
There are also benefits when it comes 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 RSS feeds with loads of useful content for your website by searching online for relevant government departments and respected industry bodies.
Here are examples of useful RSS feeds you could add to your site:
- 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 choose individual RSS feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Breast cancer, Fitness and nutrition, Illnesses and disabilities, Minority women’s 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. Journal of Applied Physiology, Nutrition Journal, Indian Journal of Plastic Surgery, Journal of Cell Science, Molecular Biology and Evolution, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
- National Institutes Of Health - Get various RSS feeds on health-related news here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
- FDA – Find FDA-related feeds (e.g. consumer health information updates, health fraud, pet health, 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. Western Australia – http://www.public.health.wa.gov.au/feed/?types=news
- Centers For Disease Control And Prevention - Get various health-related feeds and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
- Medical News Feeds: You can search medical news feeds in places like the NYTimes RSS feeds section (e.g. Fitness & 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 RSS feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Lung Conditions, Menopause, Neurology, Pregnancy, Sexual Health, Thyroid, etc.)
- MedicalNewsToday.com – MNT Medical News Featured Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
- Medical News Today – You can also select specific RSS feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Eating Disorders, Medicare/Medicaid/SCHIP, Blood/Hematology, Lymphoma/Leukemia/Myeloma, Nursing/Midwifery, Nutrition/Diet, Erectile Dysfunction/Premature Ejaculation, etc.)
You can also just search online for general RSS feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific topics, e.g. “pregnancy rss feeds”, “rehabilitation rss feeds”, “premature ejaculation rss feeds”, etc.
(RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve your medical site’s user experience.)
Checklists & Forms
Adding checklists and explanatory charts to your site is a great way to help increase user engagement and add value to your visitors. Checklists and medical forms can provide step-by-step information and resources to complete necessary tasks. Checklists and charts can also be great instructional tools.
You can provide online or downloadable forms and checklists covering a range of subjects such as:
- Checklists/forms for booking appointments
- Checklists for pre or post surgery
- Health checklists for specific medical conditions
- Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, oral maintenance program, cosmetic dentistry, etc.
- Fitness and exercise program checklists
- General charts & infographics (e.g. sugar content in different foods, the importance of sleep at different ages, etc.)
Adding Other Tools
Providing useful online tools and applications on your site is a great way to increase visitor engagement and significantly add value to your visitors. Calculators are useful tools to add to your website. Others could include things like nutritional tools, and even recipes.
In part two of this guide, we discuss a several online tools you can use in your site using WordPress plugins and themes that can also help to improve your seo, improve user engagement and generate more web traffic to your business.
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This is the end of part one.
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