Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

The digital information age has not only revolutionized business around the world, it has also created a growing number of challenges and opportunities for medical professionals.

Challenges Professional Health And Medical Services Practitioners Face Online

Now, more than ever, health or medical practices must find smarter ways to stand out from the crowd and obtain new clients. Not only do you have to actively participate in the community your business serves, you must also develop a strong presence online. This includes having an effective web presence and learning how to better promote your services online.

In addition to investing dollars advertising offline on local newspapers, ads in industry publications and magazines, radio and tv, etc., businesses in the medical or health-related industry are now also finding that increasingly larger amounts of their marketing budget will need to be allocated towards the development and management of a website that brings in clients, engages visitors, outperforms the competition in search engines and social media, and helps to give them a wider exposure 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 the needs of the website may change in time and sections may need to be updated often. This requires a well-developed website and content management strategy in place.

One other challenge that medical or health-related organizations face with their websites (as do most businesses for that matter), is that you have only around thirty seconds to give users the information they need or they will go away.

“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 Services Providers

As well as facing many challenges, there are also many online opportunities available for businesses in the medical-related sector that can evolve to meet the challenges of the online economy and can think outside the box when it comes to improving their online business marketing skills.

This article will help you uncover new opportunities to generate traffic and create noticeable improvements in your business presence online.

As well as providing general website improvement tips, we also emphasize the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) to power your medical or health business website or blog.

For more information about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress platform, see the articles below:

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

Useful Tips For Improving Your Medical Website

Let’s start by reviewing some basic stuff. In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve your medical-related website and get better results. We show you what pages a health site needs, what type of content works best for health websites, your layout and navigation, etc.

If you need website planning assistance, see this detailed guide we have written: A Comprehensive Guide To Web Site Planning For Business Owners

Your Website Pages

All business websites require a number of basic web pages. Let’s take a look at these.

Description Of Services

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

• Medical And Surgical – e.g. pain management, pulmonology endocrinology, cosmetic surgery, hyperbaric medicine, rheumatology, infection control, optometry emergency surgery, etc.
• Dental Services – e.g. preventive dentistry, holistic dentistry, gum disease, teeth whitening, dental implants, emergency dentistry, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. cardiac patient education, coronary care
• Prenatal & Postnatal – e.g. birthing, maternity services, etc.
• Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic – breast screens, skin cancer, hearing, women’s health, magnetic resonance imaging, allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology services – lab testing and analysis, routine pathology testing, insurance and corporate testing, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling – mental health services, alcohol, tobacco & other drug counselling, trauma counselling, diet and nutrition counselling, social development services
• Alternative therapies – acupuncture, homeopathy, colloidal silver therapy, tai chi, chiropractic, hypnotherapy, etc.
• Other medical services/therapies – weight management, podiatry, reproductive services, speech language therapy, medical genetics, artificial limbs, mobility, home care, clinical information, medical equipment, etc.

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 why they should choose you.

About Us Page

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

Remember to also include any awards, accreditations, certifications, recognitions, associations, publications, etc., that can be used to promote your medical, dental, chiropractic, surgery services, etc. and set yourself above similar service providers.

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

Meet The Team

If you are looking for inexpensive ideas to grow your business online or get people 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. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your staff or team members. This page should include a photo and a brief bio. Since most visitors are probably not familiar with medical-related terms your descriptions should tell who they are and what they specialize in. It should also explain what those specialties mean. It should include social buttons so your site visitors can follow individual staff members on their social pages.

In this page, make sure to highlight your staff member’s expertise, how their skills and knowledge contribute to the success of 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 create and add a simple team members directory to WordPress without coding skills, refer to this step-by-step tutorial: How To Add An Employee Directory

Recruitment Page

List any career opportunities available within the organization. This page can include training offered, benefits, opportunities for advancement, social aspects of working with your organization, etc. It should include information about 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 contact list, follow you on social media, etc.

Case Studies & Testimonials

Case studies and client reviews are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase the services you offer. Adding a web page with case studies and testimonials from past clients also helps to establish social proof online.

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

We have written extensively on using case studies, testimonials and reviews to improve your business results online. For more details, go here: How To Improve Your Visitor-To-Sales Conversions Using Compelling Testimonials

Contact Page

Having a contact page is absolutely vital.

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

• Name
• Your physical location
• Telephone
• Fax number
• Contact email address
• Map
• Web address
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Social media URLs
• Live chat feature

If your business operates from several locations you will want to make this clear when displaying your address and contact information.

You could also include links to an FAQ page, main pages, online booking form, support area, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.

Add A Blog

A blog is a very powerful marketing tool for your business. Blogs are built around a content management system that is simple to use and allows you to promote your business by publishing content like news and events, updates, educational articles and tutorials, opinions and discussions, promotional videos, infographics, etc.

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

If you don’t have a website yet, or if your existing health or medical website is very hard to add new content to or not delivering you the results you want, then WordPress can act as both your business website and blog.

You may not have been told about this, but WordPress can turn into an automated traffic machine that will help begin driving targeted visitors to your business, simply by publishing new content to your website on a regular basis.

(WordPress can automate your traffic generation)

Go here to learn more:

• Web Site Traffic Blueprint – How To Automatically Get More Website Traffic For Your Business

Legal Information Pages

It’s essential for professional businesses to ensure they have a website that complies will all legal requirements online. This is not only important for building credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that you are not contravening laws and regulations in whatever location you do business.

Adding the following legal pages to your website will help you stay out of legal hot water with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Google), and other potential legal threats or inconveniences:

• Contact Page
• Privacy Statement
• Terms Of Use
• Website Disclaimer
• Affiliate Agreement
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• DMCA Notice
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Health Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• etc.

Go here if you want to learn more adding legal pages to your website: Why You Need To Add Legal Pages To Your Site

Improving The Content On Your Website

In today’s fiercely competitive online business economy, the ability to deliver valuable content to visitors at no cost has become one of the key business differentiators.

By providing great content with useful information, advice and tips, you will get your readers to share your information and come back for more. Using content is a great way to inform and educate your visitors and prospective clients about your business and services.

For example, if your business provides weight management services, then some of the topics you can publish content about include the following:

• What is fiber and how can it help you with weight loss?
• How to identify the bad habits you need to correct to ensure sustainable weight loss
• How you eat your food - just as important as what you eat (eat at table, chew slowly)
• Vitamins and minerals that aid in weight loss (chromium, calcium, magnesium, etc.)
• Etc.

You can also create a series of informative articles that will help your your prospective clients understand your medical-related services, by explaining benefits, procedures, costs (including payment plans, insurance coverage, etc).

Use keywords and terminology in your articles that your readers will be searching to find you online.

We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive regular training emails with easy-to-digest information that will teach exactly how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, save money creating high-quality content that will add value to your visitors and grow your website using content marketing strategies. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also 100% FREE!

Ways To Improve Visitor Experience

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

RSS Feeds

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

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

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

• All of your content updates are in one place
• your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• RSS feeds can be shared
• Users can subscribe to your feed
• It provides a way for links to point back to your content
• Your feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
• RSS provides several ways for your readers to receive your content (e.g. subscribers can view your content on their mobile device using feed readers)
• It’s built into WordPress

There are also benefits when it comes to adding syndicated content to your website 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 medical-related government departments and well-known industry bodies.

Below we have listed a few feeds containing useful information that you could consider adding to your website:

• US Department Of Health And Human Services – e.g. Blog feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SelectedHhsBlogPosts, etc. You can search by departments and select individual feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Breast cancer, Environmental health, Heart health and stroke, Menopause, Smoking and how to quit, etc.) here: http://womenshealth.gov/news/rss/rss-feeds.html
• US National Libraries Of Medicine – For a list of RSS feeds from leading medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. PhysiologicalReviews, BMJ Heart, JCI – The Journal of Clinical Investigation, Occupational Medicine, The International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, 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
• US Food And Drug Administration (FDA) – Find FDA-related feeds (e.g. criminal investigations press releases, FDA drug shortages, recalls, animal and veterinary news, 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. Western Australia – http://www.public.health.wa.gov.au/feed/?types=news
• Centers For Disease Control And Prevention - Get many RSS feeds on health-related topics and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
• Medical News Feeds: You can search medical news feeds by going to publications like the NYTimes RSS feeds section (e.g. Health news: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Health.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. Alzheimer’s Disease, Mental Health, Nutrition, Food, & Recipes, Diabetes, Sexual Health, Hearing, etc.)
• Medical News Today – 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. Schizophrenia, Fertility, Fibromyalgia, Aid/Disasters, Endocrinology, Nutrition/Diet, Tuberculosis, etc.)

You can also search online for general RSS feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific subjects, e.g. “vascular rss feeds”, “plastic surgery rss feeds”, “weight loss rss feeds”, etc.

(Use RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds to improve your site’s user experience.)

Add Online Forms

Adding checklists and explanatory charts to your site is a great way to increase user engagement and add value to your readers. Checklists and medical forms can provide users with useful information and resources to complete a task. They are great instructional tools.

Forms, charts and checklists could cover topics such as:

• Checklists and forms for booking appointments
• Checklists for post-surgery recovery
• Health checklists and charts for specific systems
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, maintenance program, general dentistry, etc.
• Weight loss and exercise program checklists
• General charts & infographics (e.g. caloric level of different foods, the importance of sleep at different stages of development, etc.)

Unique Tools

Providing unique online tools and applications on your website can help increase visitor engagement and add value to potential clients. Health-related calculators, for example, are useful tools you can add to your website. Others could include things like diagnostic tools, and even recipes.

In part two, we will be discussing a several online tools you can use in your website using WordPress plugins and themes that improve your seo, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your business.

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This is the end of part 1 of this comprehensive article on ways to improve your medical business online.

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

• A Complete Guide On How To Build And Grow A Medical Services And Health-Related Presence Online Successfully – Part 2

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