Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

Health services practitioners face many challenges in the web economy, especially when it comes to growing a business online.

Online Challenges For The Health And Medical Profession

Today, more than ever, businesses in the medical sector must work harder than ever to remain competitive. Not only do you have to become more involved in the community you serve, you must also maintain an active presence online. This includes having an effective web presence and learning how to better promote your practice online.

As well as investing money in offline marketing activities, businesses in the medical-related industry are also finding that they need to allocate a greater amount of their marketing budget to developing and managing a website that drives prospects, engages users, outranks the competition in search engines and increases their reach online.

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

Another difficult challenge that medical businesses (and most professions) face with their websites, is that they have around 30 seconds or less to provide users with what 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 Businesses In The Online Economy

As well as facing a number of significant challenges, there are also plenty of online opportunities available to health practices that are willing to adapt to meet digital economy challenges and can think outside the box about marketing their business services better online.

In this comprehensive guide, you will discover new ways to attract more client accounts and establish stronger online credibility for your business.

As well as providing general website improvement tips, we also recommend that you consider using WordPress to power your health or medical website or blog.

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

• Why A Poorly Designed Website Can Lose You Potential Buyers
• Learn How To Grow Your Business With A WordPress Site

Practical Tips For Improving Your Health Site

We’ll start first by going over some basic stuff. In this section, we’ll look at how to improve your medical or health website and get better results. We show you what pages your website needs, what content works best, suggestions for improving your site’s layout and navigation, etc.

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

Improving Your Website Pages

Professional business websites require some basic web pages. Let’s take a look at the pages your  should have and how to set up your health or medical-related website for best results.

Description Of services And Products

You need a page that lists your services and products. Depending on which area of health you specialize in, your page could include services like:

• Medicine & Surgery – e.g. anaesthetics, pulmonology endocrinology, reconstructive surgery, continence management, respiratory, bariatric surgery, eye diseases surgical outpatients, etc.
• Dentistry – e.g. general dentistry, children’s dentistry, oral hygiene, teeth whitening, dental implants, emergency dentistry, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. heart monitoring, chronic heart conditions
• Prenatal & Neonatal – e.g. birthing, midwifery, etc.
• Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic services – breast screens, lung screening, hearing, women’s health, MRI scanning, food allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology services – lab testing and analysis, routine pathology testing, occupational and environmental testing, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling services – mental health, alcohol, tobacco & other drug counselling, trauma counselling, diet and nutrition counselling, social work services
• Alternative treatments – Chinese medicine, homeopathy, colloidal silver therapy, tai chi, chiropractic services, hypnotherapy, etc.
• Other medical services – diet and nutrition, podiatry, fertility services, speech language therapy, neurosciences, prosthetics, assisted living, home and community care, sexual health, medical equipment, etc.

Make sure to list all of the services you provide. Educate your visitors about what your services do and direct them to your contact or appointment booking page.

Who We Are

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

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

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

Team Profile

If you are looking for quicker and simpler ways to sell more products or services online, then something you can do, is make it easier for your prospective clients to get to know you, your team and your business better.

You want potential clients to relate to your business. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your staff. This page should include a photo and a mini biography. Since most visitors won’t be well-versed in medical or health-related terms your descriptions should tell who they are and what they specialize in. You may also want to explain what those specialties mean. This page should include social buttons that will allow your prospective clients to follow individual staff members on their social pages.

In this page, make sure to outline each person’s expertise, how their skills and knowledge add value or contribute to the success of your team, and more importantly, how they can help add value to your clients’ business.

(Make sure to add a page that introduces your staff or team members to prospective new clients. Image sourced from: southperthchiro.com.au)

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial about how to add a simple and easily updatable list directory of staff members to WordPress using free plugins, go here: Adding A Staff Directory: WordPress Plugin Tutorial

Job Opportunities Page

List any job opportunities within your practice. It could include training provided, employee benefits, advancement opportunities, social aspects of working with your business, etc. You can include information about upcoming career opportunities in the medical or health-related industry.

Also include a positions available section in this page. If there are no positions currently available, consider inviting people to return periodically to the page, subscribe to your updates list, follow your social pages, etc.

Case Studies

Reviews from clients and case studies are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase what type of services you offer. By adding a page with testimonials from past clients and case studies, you are also helping to establish social proof online.

(Add a page to your site with client reviews and case studies. Screenshot image source: arrowsmiledental.com)

To learn more about using testimonials, case studies and reviews improve your business online, go here: How To Improve Your Visitor-To-Sales Conversions Using Standout Testimonials

Contact Us Page

Having a contact page is vitally important.

It should include the following information:

• Name Of Your Business
• Location
• Phone number
• Facsimile
• Contact email address
• Map and directions
• Web address
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Links to social media pages
• Live chat (optional)

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

Consider also including links pointing to commonly-asked questions page, useful pages, booking request, helpdesk, newsletter, blog, etc.

Add A Health Or Medical-Related Blog

A blog is a powerful marketing tool for your business. Many blogging platforms typically comprise of a content management system that is simple to use and allows you to promote your business using content such as the latest news, new releases, training information, opinions on current topics, promotional videos, media presentations, etc.

If you already have an established website, then consider adding a WordPress blog to promote your medical organization.

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

You may not be aware of this, but WordPress can turn into an automated traffic-generation machine that will begin driving targeted traffic to your web site, simply by publishing regular content to your site.

(An expertly configured WordPress site can automate your traffic generation)

Go here to learn more:

• Website Traffic Blueprint – How To Turn Your Website Into An Automated Traffic Generation Machine

Legal Information Pages

As a professional business, ensuring that you have a compliant website is vitally important. This is not only important for establishing trust and credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that you are not breaching local, regional or federal laws or regulations wherever you provide services.

Depending on what services and products you provide, adding the following legal pages to your website will help keep you out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Google), and other potential sources of legal threats and inconveniences:

• Contact Us
• Privacy Statement
• 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
• etc.

To learn more about adding legal pages to your website, see this article: The Importance Of Adding Legal Pages To Your Website

Improve Your Web Content

In today’s globally competitive economy, being generous with content that educates and informs readers has become one of the key success differentiators for businesses that sell similar products or provide similar services.

Providing great content with useful advice or tips will get your readers sharing it with others and coming back for more content. This is the most effective way to educate site visitors and prospects about your business and services.

For example, if you provide solutions that help people lose weight, then some of the topics you can publish content about include the following:

• Emotional causes for weight issues (possible causes, identifying yours)
• How small efforts in portion control can help achieve weight loss results
• How to develop an exercise regime you can enjoy and will stick with
• How to incorporate an occasional fast food into a healthy diet plan
• Etc.

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

Use keywords and terminology in your articles that readers will 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 that will teach exactly how to drive more traffic to your web site, save money creating high-quality content for your site visitors and grow your website using content marketing. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also completely FREE!

Tips For Improving Visitor Experience

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

Use RSS Feeds

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve your visitor engagement and user experience in several ways.

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

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

Here are some examples of feeds you could add 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 feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Breast cancer, Fitness and nutrition, Heart health and stroke, Minority women’s 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 Neurophysiology, BMJ Heart, BMJ Medical Humanities, The AAPS Journal (American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists), 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 (www.nih.gov) - Get various RSS feeds on health-related news and topics here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• FDA – Find FDA-related RSS feeds (e.g. criminal investigations, food safety reports, tainted products marked as dietary supplements, 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. NSW – http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/pages/rss.aspx
• Centers For Disease Control And Prevention (www.cdc.gov) - Find various feeds on health-related news and topics and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
• Medical News Feeds: You can search medical news RSS feeds by going to publications like the NYTimes feeds section (e.g. Medical research: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Research.xml)
• MedicineNet – Weekly Health and Medical News Digest: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/weeklyhealth.xml. You can also choose specific feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Allergies, Menopause, Nutrition, Food, & Recipes, Depression, Prevention & Wellness, HIV, etc.)
• MedicalNewsToday.com – Featured Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
• Medical News Today – You can also choose individual RSS feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Hypertension, Arthritis/Rheumatology, Surgery, Swine Flu, Smoking/Quit Smoking, Medical Innovation, Alzheimer’s/Dementia, etc.)

You can also just search online for general RSS feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific topics, e.g. “aging rss feeds”, “deafness rss feeds”, “obesity rss feeds”, etc.

(RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve your health or medical website’s user experience.)

Adding Online Forms & Checklists

Adding checklists and explanatory charts to your site is a fantastic way to increase user engagement, add value to your readers and set yourself apart from the competition. Checklists and charts can provide visitors with useful information and resources to complete necessary steps. Forms and checklists are great client instructional tools.

You can provide online or downloadable forms and checklists (or links to these) covering a range of subjects such as:

• Booking appointments
• Checklists for post-surgery recovery
• Health checklists for specific systems
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, caries prevention program, general dentistry, etc.
• Fitness and nutrition 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 online tools and applications on your website is a great way to increase visitor engagement and add significant value to potential clients. Calculators are great tools you can add to your website. Other applications can include things like diagnostic tools, or even recipes.

In part two of this guide, we will be discussing a number of online tools you can add to your website using WordPress plugins and themes that can also help to improve search engine optimization, improve user engagement and drive more traffic to your business.

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This is the end of part 1 of this comprehensive guide on ways to build your medical or health business web presence.

Click on this link to continue reading:

• Your Health Website – How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using WordPress Plugins & Themes

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