Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

The digital economy has not only transformed businesses globally, it has also created new challenges and great opportunities for health professionals and financial service providers.

Online Challenges For Health Businesses

Now, more than ever, medical practitioners must work harder and find smarter ways to remain competitive and generate new clients. Not only do you have to maintain an active presence 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 promote your services online.

In addition to investing money in offline marketing activities like advertising on local newspapers, ads in industry publications and magazines, radio and tv, etc., you will probably find (if you haven’t already) that in order to remain competitive, increasingly larger amounts of their budget need to be delegated to develop and manage a website that can drive new clients, engage users, outperform the competition in search engines and social media, and help to increase your reach online.

This means that your site not only has to look great, your pages have to load fast, and your site layout has to be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, the needs of your website will change in time and some areas will need to be frequently updated. This requires the implementation of a well-planned web and content management strategy.

One other problem that health or medical-related businesses face, and most other professions for that matter, is that they have only about 30 seconds or less to provide users what 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 & Medical Businesses In The Online Economy

As well as facing a number of challenges, there are also many online opportunities available for medical or health-related businesses that can evolve to meet digital challenges and can think progressively in terms of marketing themselves better online.

In this article, you will discover a number of ways to attract more visitors and establish stronger online credibility for your health or medical-related business.

As well as providing useful website improvement tips, we also recommend that you consider using the WordPress content management system (CMS) to power your health-related website or blog.

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

• Discover Why A Poorly Designed Website Can Lose You Business And What To Do About It
• Using A WordPress Blog To Grow Your Business

Useful Tips To Improve Your Medical Services And Health Clinic Website

We’ll start first by covering the basic stuff. In this section, we’ll look at how to improve your health website and get better results online. We show you what pages a medical or health-related website needs, what type of content works best for health-related sites, layout and navigation, etc.

If you need website planning assistance, visit this page: A Money-Saving Guide To Web Site Planning For Business Owners

Your Web Pages

Professional business websites require a number of essential pages. Let’s go over these.

Description Of Services

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

• Medicine & Surgery – e.g. ear, nose and throat, neurosurgery endocrinology, oncology, gerontology, renal, weight loss surgery, ophtalmology emergency surgery, etc.
• Dentistry – e.g. cosmetic dentistry, holistic dentistry, oral hygiene, veneers, crowns and bridges, dental implants, emergency dental, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. cardiac patient education, coronary care
• Prenatal and Neonatal – e.g. birth suites, midwifery, etc.
• Child Health services – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic – breast screening, lung screening, x-ray, women’s health, psychosis, food allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology services – laboratory testing and analysis, routine pathology testing, fine-needle aspiration cytology, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling – mental health services, alcohol, tobacco & other drug counselling, couples, diet and nutrition counselling, social development services
• Alternative treatments – acupuncture, homeopathy, functional medicine, massage therapy, chiropractic, hypnotherapy, etc.
• Other medical services/therapies – diet and nutrition, podiatry, reproductive endocrinology, speech therapy, inherited diseases, artificial limbs, hearing aids, home care, clinical information, medical supplies, etc.

List all of the services you provide. Educate your visitors about what your services do and why they should book an appointment.

About Us Page

The ‘About Us’ page should give a description of your business and what it stands for, its unique approach, philanthropical donations, etc.

Remember to also include any professional awards, certifications, recognitions, accreditations, associations, publications, etc., that could be used to promote your business and to position yourself above other competitors.

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

Meet Our Team

If you are searching for quicker, simpler and cheaper ways to grow your business online or get people to stay longer on your site, then one of the things you can do, is make it easier for your prospects to get to know, like and trust you and your business better.

You want your business to be relatable. One great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your people. This page should include a photo and a brief bio. Since most visitors won’t be familiar with health terms it should tell who they are and what they specialize in. You may also want to explain what those specialized areas mean. This page should include social buttons that will allow your visitors to follow individual team members on their social pages.

On this page, make sure to outline each team member’s expertise, 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 page that introduces your staff to prospective new clients. Image sourced from: southperthchiro.com.au)

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial about how to add an easy-to-manage list directory of employees in your site using free WP plugins, go here: Step-By-Step Tutorial: Adding An Employee Directory

Recruitment Page

This is a listing of job or career opportunities within the business. It can include training offered, benefits, advancement opportunities, etc. You should also include stories of recruits who have worked their way up in your company and information about new career opportunities in the medical-related industry.

Maintain a positions available section in this page. If there are no positions currently available, consider inviting people to return periodically to this page, subscribe to your announcements list, follow you on social media, etc.

Case Studies And Testimonials

Reviews from clients and case studies are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase your services. Adding a page with testimonials from past clients and case studies also helps to provide potential clients with social proof.

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

If you want to learn more about using case studies, testimonials and reviews, see this article: How To Turn More Visitors Into Qualified Leads With Highly Effective User Testimonials

Contact Us

A clean contact page is crucial.

Your contact page should provide some or all of the following information about your consulting practice:

• Name
• Location
• Phone
• Fax number
• Contact email
• Map and directions
• Website URL
• Contact form
• Contact name
• Social media URLs
• Live Chat/Skype

If your business services several areas you should make that clear when showing the address and contact information.

Consider also including links pointing to the most commonly asked questions page, frequently-visited pages, booking request, support area, newsletter, blog, etc.

Add A Health Blog Section

A blog is a very powerful marketing tool for your business. Blogs are built around a content management system that allows you to easily promote your business using content like news, updates, training articles and tutorials, opinions and discussions, videos, media presentations, etc.

If you already have an existing medical or health site, then consider adding a WordPress-powered blog to promote your medical organization.

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

You probably don’t know this, but an expertly configured WordPress site can become an automated traffic-generation machine that will drive new targeted traffic to your site, simply by publishing regular content to your website.

(WordPress can drive traffic automatically to your website)

Go here to learn more:

• WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – A Complete Guide To Getting More Web Visitors Automatically

Legal Information Pages

It’s extremely important to make sure they have a compliant website. This is not only important for building trust with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no local, regional or federal laws or regulations are being contravened in whichever location you provide services.

Depending on the products and services you provide, adding some or all of the following legal pages to your medical-related website will help you stay out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Facebook), and other potential legal threats or inconveniences:

• Contact Page
• Privacy Policy
• 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.

If you want to learn more about adding legal pages to your site, see this article: How To Add Legal Pages To Your Website

Improve The Content On Your Website

In today’s highly competitive global economy, being generous with content that educates and informs visitors has become one of the key differentiators for businesses.

By providing great content with information, advice or tips, you will get your readers sharing your web pages and coming back for more content. Publishing content is a great way to educate your visitors and prospective clients about your business and services.

For example, if you provide weight loss services, then some of the areas you can cover as content on your site:

• Emotional causes for weight issues (possible causes, identifying yours)
• Weight loss surgery – benefits vs risks (who should get it, risks, rates of success)
• Is hypnosis and effective weight loss treatment?
• Could a personal chef help you lose weight (what they do, is it affordable)
• And many other content topics

You can also create a series of educational articles that will help your your readers understand your health services, by explaining benefits, procedures, terminology, etc.

Use keywords in your articles that your prospective clients will search to find you online.

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 teach you 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 business online using content. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also completely FREE!

Ways Of Improving 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 different ways to improve your visitor engagement and user experience.

RSS Feeds

RSS feeds provide plenty of benefits for your business.

If you provide information that adds value to others, 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 feed can be shared online
• RSS feeds allow for subscribing
• It provides a way for external links to point back to your content
• Feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
• There are multiple ways your readers can receive your content (e.g. users can view your content on their mobile device using feed readers)
• It’s built into WordPress

There are also a number of benefits 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 many useful RSS feeds for your website by visiting sites of medical and health-related government departments and respected industry bodies.

For example, here are some RSS feeds you could add to your 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 choose specific feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Breast cancer, Fitness and nutrition, Heart health and stroke, Minority women’s health, Violence against women, 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. BMJ Evidence-Based Nursing, BMJ Journal of Medical Genetics, JCI – The Journal of Clinical Investigation, Medscape, 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 – Get RSS feeds on fda-related topics like criminal investigations press releases, food safety reports, product recalls, cosmetics, 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. Victoria – http://www.health.vic.gov.au/rss/newsfeed.xml
• Centers For Disease Control And Prevention - Get many health-related 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. Health news: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Health.xml)
• MedicineNet.com – Daily Health and Medical News: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/dailyhealth.xml. You can also choose specific RSS feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Alzheimer’s Disease, Men’s health, Cold & Flu, Depression, Digestion, Women’s Health, etc.)
• Medical News Today – MNT Featured Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
• MedicalNewsToday.com – You can also choose individual feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Urology/Nephrology, Pharmacy/Pharmacist, Palliative Care/Hospice Care, Menopause, Diabetes, Sports Medicine/Fitness, Erectile Dysfunction/Premature Ejaculation, etc.)

You can also search online for general feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific areas, e.g. “compliance rss feeds”, “disasters rss feeds”, “crohn’s rss feeds”, etc.

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

Checklists And Forms

Adding checklists and medical forms to your site is a great way to increase visitor engagement and add value to your audience. They can provide visitors with step-by-step information and resources to complete tasks. They are also great client instructional tools.

You can provide forms and checklists covering a range of topics such as:

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

Add Other Tools

Providing useful tools, gadgets and applications on your website is a great way to increase visitor engagement and add value to your visitors. Health-related calculators, for example, are useful tools you can add to your website. Other applications would include things like diagnostic tools, and even recipes.

In the next section, we take a look at a number of 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 drive more traffic to your business.

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This is the end of section one of this guide on ways to grow your health business presence online.

To view Part 2, click here:

• The Ultimate Guide On How To Successfully Grow Your Medical Services & Health Center Website Using WordPress – Part Two

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