Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

The information economy has not only transformed the way business is done globally, it has also created a growing number of challenges and great opportunities for health or medical businesses.

Challenges Health Professionals Face Online

Today, more than ever, medical and health services practitioners must work hard to stand apart from the crowd and obtain new clients. Not only do you have to become actively involved in the community you serve, you must also maintain a strong presence online. This includes having a website and learning how to better promote your practice online.

As well as investing money advertising offline, you will probably find that in order to remain competitive, you will need to delegate a greater portion of your budget to develop and manage a website that brings new prospects, engages users, outperforms the competition in search engines and social media, and helps you create a wider degree of reach online.

This means that your site not only has to look great, your web pages have to load fast, and your website layout has to be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that your site’s needs will change over time and sections will need to be frequently updated. This requires implementing well-planned website and content management strategy.

One other difficult challenge that medical or health organizations face (as all other professions do for that matter), is that your site has only around 30 seconds or less to help visitors find what they are searching for or they will leave and 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 Medical & Health Businesses In The Web Economy

As well as facing many new business and technology changes, there are also plenty of online opportunities available to medical or health practices that can adapt to meet the challenges of the online economy and who can think progressively about marketing their services better online.

The guide below will help you uncover new ways to generate more clientele and establish stronger online credibility for your medical or health-related business.

As well as providing useful website improvement tips, we also recommend that you consider using the WordPress content management system to power your health or medical website.

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

• Discover Why A Poorly Constructed Web Site Can Cost You Money
• WordPress In Small Business – The Beginner’s Guide To Growing A Successful Small Business Using WordPress

Useful Tips For Improving Your Medical And Health Services Site

Let’s start 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 online. We show you what pages your site needs, what type of content you need, your layout and navigation, etc.

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

Ways To Improve Your Website Pages

Professional business websites require several basic web pages. Let’s review the pages your  need and how to set up your website for best results.

Services Description Page

You need a page that describes your services and any products that you offer. Depending on which area you specialize in, your page can include services such as:

• Medicine & Surgery – e.g. anaesthetics, pulmonology haematology, plastic surgery, gerontology, respiratory, endoscopy, eye diseases elective surgery, etc.
• Dentistry – e.g. preventive dentistry, holistic dentistry, gum disease, veneers, crowns and bridges, dental implants, emergency dental, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. cardiac patient rehabilitation, coronary care
• Prenatal and Postnatal – e.g. birth suites, midwifery, etc.
• Child Health services – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic – breast screening, skin cancer, oral health, pap smears, magnetic resonance imaging, food allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology services – lab testing and analysis, routine pathology testing, fine-needle aspiration cytology, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling – mental health services, alcohol, tobacco & other drug counselling, couples, wellness, social work services
• Alternative treatments – Chinese medicine, aromatherapy, colloidal silver therapy, tai chi, chiropractic, hypnosis, etc.
• Other medical services/therapies – weight management, sports medicine, fertility services, stomal therapy, medical genetics, artificial limbs, hearing aids, home and community care, community health, medical equipment, etc.

Make sure to list all of the services you provide, not just the ones you specialize in. Provide your visitors with information that will educate them about what these services do and why they should book an appointment with you.

About Us

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

This page should also mention any business awards, certifications, recognitions, accreditations, publications, associations, etc., that you can use to promote your practice and to set yourself above your competitors.

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

Meet The Team

Are you looking for quicker, easier and cost-effective ways to sell more products online or get visitors to interact more with your site? Then make it easier for prospective clients to get to know, like and trust your organization better.

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

On this page, make sure to highlight each team member’s experience, why they are an invaluable asset to your team, and more importantly, how they can help add value to your clients’ business.

(Add a staff page. Screenshot image sourced from: southperthchiro.com.au)

For a detailed tutorial on how to easily create and add an easy-to-update simple team directory to your website using a free plugin, go here: How To Create A Simple Employee List For Your WordPress Site With No Coding Skills

Career Opportunities

List any career opportunities available within your practice. This page would include type of training provided, employee benefits, professional development, social aspects of working with your business, etc. It should include stories of graduates who have worked their way up in your organization and information such as the job outlook and new career opportunities in the health-related industry.

Include also 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 newsletter, follow your social pages, etc.

Case Studies

Testimonials from past clients and case studies are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase the services you offer. By adding a page with testimonials from previous clients and case studies, you are also helping to will also be providing social proof online.

(Add a page with reviews from clients and case studies. Screenshot image source: arrowsmiledental.com)

We have written extensively about using testimonials, case studies and reviews get better results online. Go here to learn more: Learn How To Improve Your Sales Conversions Using More Effective Testimonials

Contact Us

Having a clean contact page is crucial.

It should provide:

• Name Of Your Business
• Your physical location
• Telephone
• Facsimile
• Email address
• Google Map and directions
• Website URL
• Contact form
• Contact name
• Links to social media pages
• Online chat (optional)

If you operate from different locations you want to make this clear when showing the address and contact info.

You should also include links to an FAQ section, main pages, booking request, support area, newsletter, blog, etc.

Add A Blog Section

A blog can be a very powerful marketing tool for your business. Most blogging platforms typically comprise of a content management system that is easy to use and allows you to promote your business by publishing content such as news, product releases, educational articles, discussions on current topics, promotional videos, infographics, etc.

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

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

Not many people know this, but WordPress can turn into an automated traffic-generation machine that will begin driving an ongoing stream of targeted traffic to your web site, simply by publishing content on a regular basis to your website.

(An expertly configured WordPress site can generate traffic automatically to your site)

You can learn more here:

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

Legal Information Pages

Having a website that complies will all legal requirements online is crucially important. This is not only important for building trust and credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that you are not breaching any laws and regulations wherever you provide services.

Depending on the services you provide, adding some or all of the legal pages below to your medical site will help keep you out of legal hot water with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers, and other potential legal threats and inconveniences:

• Contact Page
• Privacy Policy
• Terms And Conditions Of Use
• Website Disclaimer
• Affiliate Agreement
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• DMCA Notice
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Links Policy
• Health and Financial Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• etc.

We have written a comprehensive article on adding legal pages to your site. For more details: What You Need To Know About Adding Legal Pages To Your Site

Improving Your Web Content

In today’s globally competitive economy, being generous with information has become one of the key business differentiators.

By committing to providing useful content with great information, advice and tips, you will get your visitors to share your web pages and come back for more. Using content is a great way to inform and teach site visitors and prospective clients about using your services and products.

For example, if you provide weight loss services, then some of the areas you can publish content about include the following:

• Emotional causes for weight issues (possible causes, how to identify yours)
• Advice on ways to develop portion control habits (smaller plate, don’t put food on the table, more vegetables)
• Why using a measuring tape is better than a scale when it comes to weight loss progress
• How to curb the late night urges for a snack (e.g. drink water with lemon)
• And endless other content topics

You can also create a series of educational articles that will help your your prospective clients gain a better understanding of your services, by explaining benefits, procedures, costs (including payment plans, insurance coverage, etc).

Include keywords and terms in your articles that your readers will search for.

We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive a comprehensive series of training emails with easy-to-digest information and practical tips that will show exactly how to drive more traffic to your web site, save money creating high-quality content for your visitors and grow your presence online using content marketing. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also completely FREE!

Improve Visitor Engagement And User Experience

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

RSS Feeds – Content Syndication

RSS feeds provide many benefits for your website.

If you provide valuable content, other sites may 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 kept in one place
• your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Your feeds can be shared
• Users can subscribe to your RSS feed
• A feed provides a way for external links to point back to your site
• Feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregators
• There are several ways readers can receive your content (e.g. subscribers can read your content on their mobile device using different applications)
• It’s built into WordPress

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

To find RSS feeds with useful content for your website, visit sites of health-related government departments and industry bodies.

Below we have listed some examples of RSS feeds containing useful information that you could consider adding to your website:

• 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. Body image, Fitness and nutrition, Illnesses and disabilities, 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. BioMed Central, CDC Emerging Infectious Diseases Journal, Indian Journal of Plastic Surgery, Medscape, BMJ Evidence-Based Mental Health, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health (www.nih.gov) - Get many feeds on health-related topics here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• US Food And Drug Administration (FDA) – Find FDA-related feeds (e.g. consumer health information, food allergy reports, tainted products marked as dietary supplements, 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. NSW – http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/pages/rss.aspx
• Centers For Disease Control And Prevention - Find various feeds on health-related topics and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
• Medical News: You can search medical news RSS feeds by going to publications like the NYTimes RSS feeds section (e.g. Research: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Research.xml)
• MedicineNet – Daily Health and Medical News: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/dailyhealth.xml. You can also choose individual feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Alzheimer’s Disease, Asthma, Cold & Flu, Depression, Prevention & Wellness, Infectious Disease, etc.)
• MedicalNewsToday.com – Featured Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
• Medical News Today – You can also select individual RSS feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Hypertension, Bird Flu/Avian Flu, Health Insurance, Emergency Medicine, Food Intolerance, Biology/Biochemistry, MRI/PET/Ultrasound, etc.)

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

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

Checklists And Charts

Checklists and educational charts are a fantastic way to increase visitor engagement and add value to your readers. Charts and checklists can give them useful step-by-step instructions and resources to complete a necessary task. Charts and checklists are great educational tools.

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

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

Online Tools

Providing useful tools and applications on your website is a great way to increase visitor engagement and add value to your potential clients. Calculators are some of the most popular tools for your website. Others can include things like diagnostic tools, and even recipes.

In part 2 of this detailed guide, we will look at a number of WordPress-based tools you can use in your health website that improve your search engine optimization, improve user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.

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This is the end of section one of this step-by-step guide on ways to build your health-related business presence online.

Click here to read Part 2:

• Tips For Health And Medical Services Providers – WordPress Plugins That Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation

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