Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

The digital economy has not only transformed the way business is done around the world, it has also created growing challenges and great opportunities for businesses in the medical-related sector.

Challenges Medical & Health Businesses Face Online

Today, more than ever, medical professionals must find smarter ways to remain competitive and generate new clientele. Not only do you have to be fully involved 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 business online.

In addition to spending dollars advertising offline on local newspapers, ads in industry publications and magazines, radio and television, etc., businesses in the medical or health-related industry are now finding that they need to allocate a bigger portion of their budget to develop and maintain a website that drives leads, engages visitors, outranks the competition in search engines and helps to create wider marketing exposure online.

This means that your website not only has to look great, load fast, and your site layout has to be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, your site’s needs may change in time and sections may need to be frequently updated. This requires a well-developed web and content management strategy.

Another difficult challenge that medical organizations (and other professions) face, is that your site has an average of thirty seconds or less to help users find what they need or they will go elsewhere.

“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 Online Economy

As well as facing many new business and technology changes, there are also plenty of online opportunities available to businesses in the health or medical industry that can adapt to meet online challenges and can think progressively when it comes to marketing their services better online.

The article below will help you uncover ways to source new business and establish stronger online credibility for your business.

As well as providing useful website improvement tips, we also focus on the benefits and advantages of using WordPress to power your health-related business website.

To learn more about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform, go here:

• How A Poorly Designed Website Can Lose You Money
• Everything You Need To Know To Grow Your Business With A WordPress Site

Useful Tips To Improve Your Medical Clinic Website

We’ll start first by covering the basic stuff. In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve your website and get better results online. We show you what pages you need, what type of content you need, navigation structure, etc.

If you need assistance or help planning your health or medical website, check out the detailed step-by-step guide we have written here: The Website Planning Process Explained - A Comprehensive Blueprint For Non-Technical Business Owners

Essential Website Pages

Professional websites require some essential web pages. Let’s take a look at these.

Description Of Services

It’s essential to include a page that describes your services and any products that you offer. Depending on which area you specialize in, your page could list services like:

• Medical And Surgical – e.g. ear, nose and throat, nephrology hematology, cosmetic surgery, hyperbaric medicine, respiratory, urology, optometry surgical outpatients, etc.
• Dental Services – e.g. preventive dentistry, holistic dentistry, gum disease, teeth whitening, dental braces, emergency dental, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. heart surgery, chronic heart conditions
• Prenatal/Neonatal – e.g. birthing, midwifery, etc.
• Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic – breast screens, lung screening, x-ray, gynaecology, MRI scanning, food allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology – laboratory testing and analysis, routine pathology testing, clinical trials, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling services – mental health, alcohol, tobacco & other drug counselling, couples, diet and nutrition counselling, social work services
• Alternative treatments – Chinese medicine, reflexology, reiki, tai chi, chiropractic services, hypnosis, etc.
• Other medical services – weight management, othopedics, reproductive services, occupational therapy, inherited diseases, prosthetics, mobility, home care, community health, medical transport, 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 should give a description of your business and explain to visitors what your business stands for, its unique approach, causes supported, etc.

It should include any awards, certifications, recognitions, accreditations, publications, associations, etc., that you can use to promote your medical services and position yourself above your competitors.

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

Your Team

If you are looking for quicker and easier ideas to sell more products online, then something you can do, is help visitors get to know you, your team and your business better.

You want people to relate to your business. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your staff. It should include a photo and a mini bio. Since most visitors will not tend to be familiar with medical or health terms your bio descriptions should tell who they are and what their specialties are. It should also explain what those specialized areas do. It should also include social buttons so your prospective clients can follow some of your team members on their social networks.

On this page, make sure to outline your person’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.

(Add a page that introduces your staff to prospective new clients. Image source: southperthchiro.com.au)

To learn more about how to easily add an easy-to-manage simple team members directory to your WordPress site using a free WP plugin, see this tutorial: How To Create A Simple Staff List For Your WordPress Site With No Coding Skills

Job Opportunities Page

This is a listing of career opportunities within your business. It should include type of training provided, employee benefits, professional development, social aspects of working with your business, etc. It should include information about additional career opportunities in the health-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, join your announcements list, follow your social pages, etc.

Testimonials & Case Studies

Case studies and testimonials from past clients are a great way to attract potential clients and showcase your services. By adding a page with case studies and reviews from clients, you are also helping to provide prospective clients with social proof online for your business.

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

We have written extensively about using client case studies and client reviews to improve your business results online. Go here to learn more about this: Learn How To Achieve Better Results Online Using More Effective Client Testimonials

Contact Page

A clean contact page is absolutely vital.

It should provide visitors with the following:

• Company Name
• Address
• Telephone
• Fax
• Contact email
• Google Map
• Web URL
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Social media links
• Online chat feature (optional)

If your business operates from several areas you should make that clear when displaying your address and contact info.

You should also include a few links point to commonly-asked questions page, useful pages, online booking request, support area, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.

Add A Blog Section

A blog is a powerful business marketing tool. Most blogging platforms are built around a content management system that allows you to promote your business using content such as news and announcements, product releases, educational information, discussions on current topics, how-to videos, infographics, etc.

If you already have an established website, then consider adding a WordPress-driven blog to promote your clinic.

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

Something few people know about, is that WordPress can turn your web presence into an automated traffic-generation machine that can begin delivering a stream of targeted traffic to your site, simply by adding new content on a consistent basis to your website.

(WordPress can generate web traffic automatically to your site)

For more details:

• Website Traffic Blueprint – How To Turn Your Website Into A Web Traffic Machine

Legal Information

It’s very important to make sure they have a compliant website. This is not only important for building trust with visitors, but also to ensure that you are not contravening local, regional or federal laws or regulations wherever you practice.

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 sources of threats and legal 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 Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• etc.

We have written a comprehensive article about adding legal pages to your website. Go here to learn more: Adding Legal Pages To Your Site

Tips On How To Improve Your Content

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

You want to provide useful content with great information, tips and advice that will get your visitors to share your web pages and come back for more. Using content is the most effective way to inform and educate site visitors and prospective clients about your services.

For example, if your business provides weight loss services, then some of the areas you can write content about include:

• What is BMI (what it stands for, what it does, how to calculate yours)
• How to get support when embarking on a weight loss program (friends, family, weight loss seekers)
• Recovering after weight loss surgery – useful tips and suggestions
• How to avoid late night snacking (e.g. drink water with lemon)
• And endless other content topics

You can also create a series of informative articles that will help your your readers gain a better understanding of your health or medical-related services, by explaining benefits, procedures, terminology, etc.

Include the keywords and terminology in your content that your readers would search for online.

We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive a comprehensive series of training emails with actionable information and practical tips that will show you how to drive more traffic to your site, 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!

Improving Visitor Engagement And User Experience

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

RSS Feeds – Content Syndication

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve your visitor engagement and UX in a number of different ways.

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

Some of the benefits of syndicating your content to other sites using RSS feeds, include:

• All of your updates are kept in one place
• Content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Your feeds can be shared and picked up by other sites online
• Users can subscribe to your RSS feed
• An RSS feed provides a way for links to point back to your content
• RSS feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
• There are various ways your readers can receive your content (e.g. subscribers can read your content on their mobile device using feed readers)
• It’s built into WordPress

There are also a number of benefits when it comes to providing information on your site from other websites, such as the fact that you don’t have to write, manage or update the content.

To find useful RSS feeds just visit sites of medical-related government departments and key industry bodies.

For example, here are examples of RSS feeds containing useful information that you could consider adding to your website:

• 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 select individual RSS feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Breastfeeding, Healthy aging, 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. Journal of Applied Physiology, BMJ Disease in Childhood – Fetal and Neonatal Edition, European Heart Journal, Occupational Medicine, Cambridge Journals Online, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health - Get various health-related RSS feeds here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• FDA – Get RSS feeds on fda-related news like enforcement reports, MedWatch safety alerts (human medical products), product recalls, drugs, 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 - Find many RSS feeds on health-related topics and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
• Medical News: You can search medical news feeds by going to publications like the NYTimes feeds section (e.g. Fitness and nutrition: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Nutrition.xml)
• MedicineNet.com – Daily Health and Medical News: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/dailyhealth.xml. You can also select individual RSS feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Lung Conditions, Cancer, Cold & Flu, Diabetes, Exercise & Fitness, Thyroid, etc.)
• Medical News Today – MNT Featured 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. Eating Disorders, Acid Reflux/GERD, ADHD/ADD, Conferences, Heart Disease, GastroIntestinal/Gastroenterology, Alzheimer’s/Dementia, etc.)

You can also search online for general RSS feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific topics, e.g. “ALS rss feeds”, “dyslexia rss feeds”, “weight loss rss feeds”, etc.

(Add RSS feeds to improve your site’s user experience.)

Checklists & Forms

Adding checklists and explanatory charts to your site is a great way to increase user engagement and add value to your visitors. Checklists and medical forms can provide users with useful information and resources to complete necessary tasks. Charts and checklists are great educational tools.

Forms, charts and checklists could include subjects such as:

• Checklists/forms for booking appointments
• Checklists for post-surgery recovery
• Health checklists and charts for specific conditions
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, caries prevention program, general dentistry, etc.
• Fitness and exercise program checklists
• General charts & infographics (e.g. acidity level of different foods, the importance of sleep at different ages, etc.)

Adding Other Tools

Providing unique tools and applications on your site can help increase visitor engagement and add value to users. Health-related calculators are useful tools for your website. Other tools could include things like nutritional tools, and even recipes.

In the next section, we look at a number of WordPress plugins and themes you can use in your website that can also help to improve seo, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.

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This is the end of section one of this guide on ways to improve your health or medical-related business web presence.

Click on this link to continue reading:

• Your Health And Medical Center Website – Improving Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With WordPress Plugins And Themes

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