Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

The web economy has not only revolutionized the way business is done around the world, it has also created many challenges and opportunities for the medical or health-related industry.

Challenges Health Providers Face Online

Now, more than ever, medical services providers must work hard and find smarter ways to stand apart from the crowd and find new clients. Not only do you have to be fully involved in the community your business serves, you must also develop and maintain an active presence online. This includes having an effective website and learning better ways to grow your business online.

As well as spending dollars advertising offline, businesses in the health or medical industry are also finding that they will need to designate a greater share of their budget to developing and maintaining a website that drives leads, engages visitors, outranks the competition in search engines and social media, and helps increase their presence online.

This means that your website not only has to look professional, your pages have to load fast, and be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, your site’s needs may change over time and sections will need to be updated frequently. This requires a well-planned website and content management strategy in place.

Another challenge that medical or health-related businesses face, as all other businesses do for that matter, is that your site has only around thirty seconds to give visitors the information they are searching for 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 Businesses In The Online Economy

As well as facing significant business and technology changes, there are also plenty of online opportunities available to businesses in the health-related industry that can adapt to meet the demands of the online economy and think outside the box about marketing their business better online.

This guide will help you uncover new ways and opportunities to drive more traffic and see noticeable improvements in your business presence online.

As well as providing general website improvement tips, we also recommend that you consider using the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) to power your medical or health website or blog.

For more information about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress content management system, go here:

• Discover Why A Poorly Designed Web Site Can Lose You Business And What To Do About It
• How To Grow Your Small Business With A WordPress Blog

Useful Tips For Improving Your Website

We’ll start first by reviewing some basic stuff. In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve your medical website and get better results online. We will look at what web pages you need, what content works best for health or medical websites, useful tips for improving your site’s layout and navigation structure, etc.

If you need website planning assistance, see this detailed guide we have written: How To Plan Your Business Web Site: A Comprehensive Blueprint For Non-Technical Business Owners

Your Website Pages

Professional business websites require a number of basic pages. Let’s review these.

Services And Products Page

You need to include a page that describes your products and services. Depending on which area of health you specialize in, your page could list services such as:

• Medicine & Surgery – e.g. acute pain management, orthopedics hematology, oral surgery, stroke, rheumatology, infection control, ophtalmology palliative care, etc.
• Dental Services – e.g. cosmetic dentistry, holistic dentistry, oral hygiene, teeth whitening, dentofacial orthopedics, emergency dental services, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. cardiac patient rehabilitation, coronary care
• Prenatal & Neonatal – e.g. birthing, midwifery, etc.
• Child Health services – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic – breast screens, lung screening, audiology, pap smears, MRI scanning, allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology – lab testing and analysis, emergency pathology testing, food and water testing, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling services – mental health services, alcohol, tobacco & other drug services, marriage counselling, wellness coaching, social work services
• Alternative therapies – acupuncture, aromatherapy, hydrotherapy, meditation, osteopathy, hypnotherapy, etc.
• Other medical services – diet and nutrition, podiatry, lymphedema therapy, optical services, inherited diseases, prosthetics, assisted living, home care, sexual health, medical transport, etc.

Make sure to list all of the services you provide. Educate your visitors about the benefits of using your services and direct them to your appointment booking page.

About Us Page

The ‘About Us’ page needs to describe your business and explain to visitors what your business stands for, its unique approach, philanthropical donations, etc.

It’s important to list any awards, recognitions, certifications, accreditations, publications, associations, etc., that could be used to promote your services and to position yourself above other competitors.

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

Your Staff

Are you looking for quicker and simpler ideas to sell more products or services online or get people to stay longer on your site? Then help your prospective clients get to know, like and trust you and your organization better.

You want prospects to relate to your business. One great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your team members. It should include a photo and a mini biography. Since most visitors won’t be well-versed in health or medical terms your descriptions should tell who they are and what their specialties are. You may also want to explain what those specialties mean. It should include social buttons so your visitors can follow your team members on their social networks.

On this page, don’t be afraid to humanize your people with personal stories, hobbies, etc., but make sure to outline each employee’s expertise and qualifications, why they are an asset to your team, and more importantly, how they can help add value to your clients’ business.

(Make sure to add a staff description page. Screenshot image sourced from: southperthchiro.com.au)

To learn more about how to easily add an easy-to-maintain list directory of staff members to your website without using code, refer to this step-by-step tutorial: How To Create A Simple Employee Directory For Your WordPress Site Without Editing Code

Career Opportunities

List any career opportunities within your practice. It can include type of training provided, benefits, professional development, social aspects of working for your business, etc. You can also include information such as the job outlook and upcoming 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 newsletter, follow you on social media, etc.

Case Studies

Case studies and reviews from clients are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase your services. Adding a page with case studies and client reviews also provides social proof.

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

To learn more about using testimonials and client reviews, see this article: Discover How To Turn More Visitors Into Qualified Leads Using Engaging Testimonials

Contact Us Page

A contact page is vitally important.

It should include some or all of the following information:

• Business Name
• Your physical address
• Telephone
• Fax number
• Contact email
• Google Map
• Website address
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Social media URLs
• Chat feature

If you have multiple areas you should make this clear when displaying the address and contact information.

You should also include links to an FAQ page, main pages, online booking request, helpdesk, newsletter, blog, etc.

Add A Medical Blog Section

A blog can be a 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 timely content like news and events, updates, useful information, informative posts, how-to videos, media presentations, etc.

If you already have an medical or health-related website, then consider adding a WordPress-driven blog to market your clinic.

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

Very few businesses know that WordPress can turn your web presence into an automated traffic system that can instantly attract targeted traffic to your web site, simply by publishing regular content to your website.

(WordPress can automate your traffic generation)

Go here to learn more:

• Website Traffic Blueprint – A Complete Guide To Generating More Traffic Automatically

Legal Information

Having a website that complies will all legal requirements online is essential. 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 following legal pages to your health-related website will help keep you out of legal hot water with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers, and other potential legal threats or inconveniences:

• Contact Us
• 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 to learn more about adding legal pages to your site: The Importance Of Adding Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

Improve Your Web Content

In today’s globally competitive economy, the ability to deliver valuable content to visitors free of charge has become one of the key differentiators for businesses selling similar products or services.

Provide great content with useful information, advice and tips that will get your visitors to share your information with others and come back for more. Content marketing is a great way to inform and teach your visitors and prospects about using your services and products.

For example, if you provide products or services that help people manage their weight, then some of the areas you can cover in your content include:

• What to do before starting any weight loss program (e.g. consult with doctor, record measurements, set goals, etc.)
• How to identify the bad habits you need to correct to ensure sustainable weight loss
• Recovering after weight loss surgery – useful tips and suggestions
• Vitamins and minerals that help with 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 health or medical services, by explaining benefits, procedures, terminology, etc.

Use the same keywords and terminology in your content that prospective clients will search for.

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 web site, save money creating high-quality 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 completely FREE!

Improving User Experience

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

Syndicate Content Using RSS Feeds

RSS feeds can help to improve your visitor engagement and user experience in several ways.

If you provide useful content, other businesses may want to syndicate your content.

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

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

There are also benefits to adding syndicated content to your site from other websites, 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 relevant government departments and well-known industry bodies.

For example, here are a few 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 feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Body image, Environmental health, HIV/AIDS, Mental health, Pregnancy, etc.) here: http://womenshealth.gov/news/rss/rss-feeds.html
• US National Libraries Of Medicine – For a list of RSS feeds from various medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. Journal of Applied Physiology, JAMA & Archives, BMJ Sexually Transmitted Infections, BMJ Tobacco Control, Respiratory Research, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health - Get various feeds on health-related news and topics here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• FDA – Get FDA-related feeds (e.g. consumer health information updates, health fraud, tainted products, 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. Western Australia – http://www.public.health.wa.gov.au/feed/?types=news
• Centers For Disease Control And Prevention (www.cdc.gov) - Find many health-related news feeds and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
• Medical News Feeds: You can search medical news RSS feeds in major news publications like the NYTimes feeds section (e.g. Fitness and nutrition: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Nutrition.xml)
• MedicineNet.com – Weekly Health and Medical News Digest: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/weeklyhealth.xml. You can also select specific feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Lung Conditions, Arthritis, Nutrition, Food, & Recipes, Oral Health, Exercise & Fitness, Thyroid, etc.)
• MedicalNewsToday.com – Medical News Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
• MedicalNewsToday.com – You can also choose specific RSS feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Eating Disorders, Dentistry, Asbestos/Mesothelioma, Cholesterol, Primary Care/General Practice, GastroIntestinal/Gastroenterology, Cancer/Oncology, etc.)

You can also search online for general RSS feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific topics, e.g. “depression rss feeds”, “HIV rss feeds”, “erectile dysfunction rss feeds”, etc.

(Use RSS feeds to provide your visitors with a better user experience.)

Checklists & Forms

Checklists and medical forms are a fantastic way to help increase visitor engagement and add value to your readers. They can provide visitors with useful step-by-step information and resources to complete necessary steps. Checklists and charts are great client educational tools.

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

• Checklists/forms for booking appointments
• Checklists for pre or post surgery
• Health checklists and charts for specific systems
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, maintenance program, general dentistry, etc.
• Fitness and exercise program checklists
• General charts & infographics (e.g. sugar content in different foods, the importance of sleep at different stages of development, etc.)

Online Tools

Providing useful tools, gadgets and applications on your website can help increase visitor engagement and add value to your visitors. Calculators, for example are popular tools for your website. Others can include things like diagnostic tools, and even recipes.

In the next section of this detailed guide, we will be discussing a several WordPress plugins you can use in your medical or health site that improve seo, improve user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.

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This is the end of section 1 of this article on ways to build your health or medical business presence online.

To continue, click this link:

• Grow Your Medical Services Website – Improving Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using WordPress Plugins & Themes

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