Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

The digital economy has not only transformed businesses around the world, it has also created increasingly difficult challenges and opportunities for businesses offering medical or health-related services.

Challenges Professional Health Services Practitioners Face Online

Today, more than ever, medical businesses must work hard and find smarter ways to remain competitive and source 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 a dynamic website and learning how to better market your medical services online.

As well as spending money marketing offline, businesses in the health industry are now finding that they will need to invest a more significant amount of their marketing budget towards the development and management of a website that brings new clients, engages users, outranks the competition in search engines and social media, and helps give them wider marketing reach online.

This means that your website not only has to look professional, your web pages have to be fast-loading, and your website layout has to be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, the needs of your website will change over time and some aspects will need to be frequently updated. This requires a well-developed website and content management strategy in place.

One other challenge that medical businesses (and most 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 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

Online Opportunities For Health And Medical Services Practitioners

As well as facing significant challenges, there are also many online opportunities available to medical practices that can evolve to meet digital economy challenges and can think outside the box about marketing themselves better online.

The article below will help you uncover opportunities to find new clientele and establish online credibility for your medical or health-related business.

As well as providing practical tips and information on ways to improve your web presence, we also recommend that you consider using the WordPress CMS platform to power your medical or health website.

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

• Learn How A Poorly Built Website Can Lose You Money And What To Do About It
• WordPress And Small Business – An Online Guide To Growing Your Successful Business With WordPress

Useful Tips For Improving Your Website

In this section we’ll start with the basics and show you ways to improve your health or medical-related website and get better results online. We will look at what pages your site needs, what content you need, navigation structure, etc.

If you need assistance or help planning your health or medical website, see this guide: A Comprehensive Guide To Website Planning For Non-Technical Business Owners

Your Website Pages

Professional business websites need several essential web pages. Let’s go over the pages your  need and how to set up your health website for best results.

Products And Services

You need to include a page that explains your products or services. Depending on which area you specialize in, your page could include services such as:

• Medicine & Surgery – e.g. ear, nose and throat, orthopedics diabetes, reconstructive surgery, stroke, rheumatology, colon/rectal surgery, ophtalmology operating theaters, etc.
• Dental Services – e.g. general dentistry, holistic dentistry, bad breath treatment, restorations, braces, emergency dental, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. cardiac patient education, chronic heart conditions
• Prenatal and Postnatal – e.g. birth suites, maternity services, etc.
• Child Health services – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic – breast screening, skin cancer, radiology, gynaecology, psychosis, allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology – lab testing and analysis, routine pathology testing, food and water testing, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling services – mental health, alcohol, tobacco & other drug services, marriage counselling, wellbeing, social work services
• Alternative therapies – acupuncture, homeopathy, reiki, massage therapy, chiropractic, hypnosis, etc.
• Other medical services – weight management, othopedics, fertility services, speech language therapy, inherited diseases, artificial limbs, sleep therapy, home care, sexual health, medical supplies, etc.

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

About Us

This page needs to describe your business and explain to visitors what it stands for, its unique approach, causes that you support, etc.

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

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

Staff Page

If you are searching for cost-effective ideas to sell more products or services online, then make it easier for your visitors to get to know you and your organization better.

You want people to relate to your business. One 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 mini bio. Since most visitors will not tend to be familiar with medical or health-related terms your descriptions should tell who they are and what their specialties are. You may also want to explain what those specialized areas mean. This page can include social buttons so your prospective clients can follow individual team members on their social networks.

On this page, make sure to outline each 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.

(Add a ‘meet the team’ page. Image source: southperthchiro.com.au)

We have written a detailed tutorial about how to create and add an updatable list directory of staff or team members to your web site without coding skills here: Adding A Staff List Directory: Step-By-Step Tutorial

Job Opportunities Page

List any career opportunities within your clinic. It could include training provided, employee benefits, professional development, etc. It should include stories of recruits who have risen within your company and information such as the job outlook and career opportunities in the medical and health 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 your social pages, etc.

Testimonials And Case Studies

Case studies and client reviews are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase your services. Adding a page with case studies and reviews from clients also helps your health or medical website to provide visitors social proof online.

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

We have created a comprehensive article about using testimonials, case studies and reviews get better results online here: Achieve Better Results Online With Effective User Testimonials

Contact Us

A contact page is absolutely necessary.

Your contact page should provide visitors with some or all of the following:

• Company Name
• Physical location
• Telephone number
• Fax
• Contact email address
• Map and directions
• Website address
• Contact form
• Request for information – who to contact
• Social media URLs
• Chat/Skype (optional)

If your business services different areas you will want to make this clear when showing your address and contact information.

You could also include a few links point to commonly-asked questions page, frequently-visited pages, booking request, helpdesk, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.

Add A Medical-Related Blog

A blog is a powerful marketing tool. Blogs are built around a content management system that allows you to easily promote your business by publishing timely content such as news and events, updates, training articles and tutorials, informative posts, videos, infographics, etc.

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

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

Very few people know that an expertly configured WordPress site can become an automated traffic system that will begin delivering web traffic to your web site, simply by publishing content to your website on a regular basis.

(WordPress can automate your traffic generation)

For more info, see this article:

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

Legal Information

As a professional medical services provider, ensuring that you have a compliant website is extremely important. This is not only important for establishing trust and credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no local, regional or federal laws or regulations are being contravened wherever you practice.

Adding some or all of the legal pages below to your medical-related site will help you stay out of legal hot water with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers, and other potential sources of 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 Linking Policy
• Health Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• and others

We have written a comprehensive article about adding legal pages to your site. To learn more about this go here: Why You Need To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

How To Improve Your Web Content

In today’s globally competitive economy, the sooner you begin to publish good content on your site, the sooner you will begin to see results and differentiate yourself from your competitors.

Providing great content with tips, advice and information will get your readers to share your web pages with others and come back for more content. Using content is a great way to educate site visitors and prospects about using your services and products.

For example, if your business provides products or services that help people lose weight, then some of the areas you could cover in your web content include:

• Nutrients your body needs on a daily basis (protein, carbs, vitamins, minerals, fats)
• What are calories and how understanding them helps in weight loss
• Weight loss pills (common ones, side effects, long term results, do they work?)
• Could a personal chef help you lose weight (what they do, is it affordable)
• And endless other content topics

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

Include the keywords and terminology in your content that 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 show you how to drive more traffic to your site, save money creating useful content for 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 completely FREE!

Ways To Improve Visitor Engagement And User Experience

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

Use RSS Feeds

An RSS feed provides plenty of benefits for your medical-related business.

If you provide content that adds value to others, other sites will 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
• your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Can be shared online
• Users can subscribe to your RSS feed
• It provides links to your content
• RSS feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
• RSS provides various ways for your readers to receive your content (e.g. users can read the content on their mobile device using a feed reader)
• RSS is built into WordPress

There are also a number of benefits when it comes to providing information 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 loads of useful content for your website, visit sites of health or medical-related government departments or key industry bodies.

Below we have listed some examples of feeds you could consider adding to a health-related site:

• US Department Of Health And Human Services – e.g. Blog posts RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SelectedHhsBlogPosts, etc. You can search by departments and select specific RSS feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Breast cancer, Environmental health, 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 leading medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. Rheumatology, Human Molecular Genetics, Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, Neurology.org, Infectious Agents and Cancer, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health - Get many health-related feeds here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• FDA – Get FDA-related news feeds (e.g. consumer health information, MedWatch safety alerts (human medical products), product recalls, tobacco news, 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. NSW – http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/pages/rss.aspx
• Centers For Disease Control And Prevention (www.cdc.gov) - Get many health-related feeds and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
• Medical News: You can search medical news feeds in major news publications like the NYTimes feeds section (e.g. Health news: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Health.xml)
• MedicineNet.com – Weekly Health and Medical News Digest: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/weeklyhealth.xml. You can also choose specific RSS feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Allergies, Men’s health, Nutrition, Food, & Recipes, Diet & Weight Management, Digestion, Hearing, etc.)
• MedicalNewsToday.com – Medical News Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
• Medical News Today – You can also choose specific feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Colorectal Cancer, Multiple Sclerosis, Muscular Dystrophy/ALS, Emergency Medicine, Back Pain, Allergy, Medical Practice Management, etc.)

You can also just search online for general feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific topics, e.g. “cardiovascular rss feeds”, “disasters rss feeds”, “weight loss rss feeds”, etc.

(Add RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds to provide your visitors with a better UX.)

Adding Downloadable Checklists And Forms

Adding checklists and explanatory charts to your site is a fantastic way to increase visitor engagement and add value to your audience. They can provide visitors with useful information and resources to get necessary steps performed. Checklists and forms can also be great client educational tools.

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

• Booking appointments
• Checklists for post-surgery recovery
• Health checklists and charts for specific conditions
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, active maintenance program, cosmetic 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.)

Provide Online Tools

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

In the next section of this detailed article, we discuss a several online tools you can add to your website using WordPress plugins that can help improve your search engine optimization, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your business.

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This is the end of part 1.

To view Part Two, click this link:

• Grow Your Medical Center Website – How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using WordPress Plugins

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