Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress
The digital information age has not only revolutionized business worldwide, it has also created an increasing number of challenges and great opportunities for medical businesses.
Challenges Health And Medical Firms Face Online
Now, more than ever, businesses in the medical industry must work harder than ever to remain competitive. Not only do you have to become actively involved in the community your business serves, you must also develop an active web presence. This includes having an effective web presence and learning how to better promote your practice online.
As well as spending money advertising offline, businesses in the medical-related industry are now finding that increasingly larger amounts of their budget will need to be delegated to developing and maintaining a website that attracts new prospects, engages users, outperforms the competition in search engines and creates a wider exposure online.
This means that your website not only has to look professional, load fast, and your site layout has to be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that the needs of your website may change over time and many areas will need to be updated often. This requires having a well-planned website and content management strategy in place.
One other difficult challenge that medical-related businesses face (as do all other professions for that matter), is that they have an average of 30 seconds to give users what they are searching for or they will look 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 And Health Services Providers
As well as facing a number of significant challenges, there are also loads of online opportunities available to medical or health-related practices that are willing to adapt to meet digital challenges and can think outside the box in terms of marketing their services better online.
In this comprehensive guide, you will learn ways and opportunities to attract and engage more visitors and see significant improvements in your online results.
As well as providing practical tips and information on ways to improve your website, we also recommend that you consider using the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) to power your health-related business website or blog.
To learn more about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform, go here:
- Learn Why A Poorly Constructed Web Site Can Lose You Potential Buyers
- Learn How To Grow Your Small Business Using WordPress
Ways To Improve Your Medical Services & Health-Related Site
This section will show you ways to improve your website and get better results. We will look at what pages your website needs, what type of content works best, your navigation structure, etc.
If you need additional information about website planning, check out the article we have written here: A Comprehensive Guide To Web Site Planning For Non-Technical Business Owners
How To Improve Your Web Pages
Professional websites need some basic web pages. Let’s review these.
Services And Products Page
It’s essential to have a page that describes your products or services. Depending on which area you specialize in, your page can include services such as:
- Medicine & Surgery – e.g. acute pain management, neurosurgery endocrinology, oncology, aged care, respiratory, gastroenterology, optometry operating theaters, etc.
- Dental Services – e.g. preventive dentistry, holistic dentistry, oral hygiene, restorations, orthodontics, emergency dentistry services, etc.
- Cardiology – e.g. heart monitoring, chronic heart conditions
- Prenatal & Postnatal – e.g. birthing, maternity services, etc.
- Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
- Diagnostic – breast screens, skin cancer, audiology, gynaecology, MRI scanning, allergy testing, etc.
- Pathology services – lab testing and analysis, emergency pathology testing, fine-needle aspiration biopsy, speech pathology, etc
- Counselling – mental health services, alcohol, tobacco & other drug services, trauma counselling, wellbeing, social work services
- Alternative treatments – Chinese medicine, reflexology, hydrotherapy, massage therapy, chiropractic services, hypnotherapy, etc.
- Other medical services/therapies – diet and nutrition, chiropody, reproductive endocrinology, speech therapy, medical genetics, artificial limbs, mobility, home and community care, clinical information, medical transport, etc.
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 your services do and direct them to your appointment booking page.
About Us
The ‘About Us’ page should give a description of your business and what it stands for, its unique approach, causes supported, etc.
This page should include any professional awards, certifications, accreditations, recognitions, publications, associations, etc., that can be used to promote your medical, dental, chiropractic, surgery services, etc. and position yourself above similar service providers.
(List all of your professional awards accreditations, certifications, recognitions, associations, publications, etc. in your About Us page. Screenshot image source: squaremedical.com.au)
Our Team
If you are looking for ideas to sell more products online and get people to stay longer on your site, then one of the things you can do, is make it easier for prospective clients to get to know your organization better.
Potential clients need to relate to your business. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your team members. This page should include a photo and a mini bio. Since most visitors will not tend to be familiar with health terms it should tell who they are and what their specialties are. You may also want to explain what those specialties mean. This page should include social buttons so your site visitors can follow selected team members on their social pages.
In this page, don’t be afraid to humanize your people with personal stories, hobbies, etc., but make sure to highlight each team member’s expertise, why they are an asset to 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 to prospective new clients. Image source: southperthchiro.com.au)
If you need help how to easily add an updatable simple team members directory to your web site with no coding skills required, refer to this step-by-step tutorial: Tutorial: Adding A Staff Directory
Recruitment Page
This is a listing of career opportunities within your practice. This page would include training offered, benefits, professional development, social activities sponsored or encouraged by your organization, etc. It should include information about upcoming career opportunities in the health or medical-related industry.
Also include a positions available section in your page. If there are no positions currently available, consider inviting people to return periodically to the page, join your newsletter, follow you on social media, etc.
Testimonials And Case Studies
Testimonials and case studies are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase your services. Adding a page with testimonials and case studies also helps to establish social proof.
(Add a page to your site with client reviews and case studies. Image sourced from: arrowsmiledental.com)
If you want to learn more using testimonials and reviews go here: Learn How To Improve Your Visitor-To-Lead Conversions With Awesome Testimonials
Contact Us
Having a clean contact page is absolutely vital.
It should provide visitors with the following:
- Business Name
- Physical address
- Telephone
- Fax
- Contact email address
- Google Map
- Web URL
- Contact form
- Name of person to contact
- Social media URLs
- Online chat feature (optional feature)
If your business operates out of different areas you want to make that clear when displaying your address and contact information.
Consider also including a few links point to the most commonly asked questions page, frequently-visited pages, booking form, support page, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.
Add A Blog
A blog can be a very powerful marketing tool for your business. Most blogging platforms typically include a content management system that is easy to use and allows you to promote your business using content like news and announcements, updates, educational articles and tutorials, opinions and discussions, educational videos, infographics, etc.
If you already have an medical or health website, then consider adding a WordPress-driven blog to create more exposure for your services.
If you don’t have a website yet, or if your existing medical-related website is hard to manage or not giving you the results you want, then WordPress can act as both your business website and blog.
Very few businesses know that an expertly configured WordPress site can become an automated traffic-generation system that will begin to attract web traffic to your business, simply by publishing regular content to your web site.
(An expertly configured WordPress site can automate your traffic generation)
Go here to learn more about this:
Legal Pages
Having a website that complies will all legal requirements online is crucial. This is not only important for building trust with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no laws or regulations are being contravened wherever you provide services.
Adding the legal pages below to your medical or health site will help you stay out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers, and other potential sources of threats and legal inconveniences:
- Contact Page
- Privacy Statement
- Terms Of Use
- Website Disclaimer
- Affiliate Agreement
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- DMCA Notice
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Links Policy
- Health/Financial Disclaimers
- Refund Policy
- Video/Audio Terms
- etc.
We have written a comprehensive article on adding legal pages to your site. To learn more about this go here: How To Add Legal Pages To Your Site
Ways To Improve Your Content
In today’s highly competitive online economy, the sooner you begin to engage in the practice of content marketing, the sooner you will begin to see results and differentiate yourself from other competing businesses.
Providing great content with useful tips, advice and information will get your visitors sharing it with others and coming back for more. Using content is the most effective way to inform and teach your visitors and prospects about using your services.
For example, if you provide weight management services, then some of the areas you could publish content about include the following:
- What to do before you start any weight loss program (e.g. consult with doctor, record measurements, set goals, etc.)
- How to set realistic, but achievable weight loss goals
- How to incorporate exercise into your weight loss program
- What processed foods can sabotage your weight loss goals (and healthier choices)
- Etc.
You can also create a series of educational articles that will help your prospective clients understand your medical or health-related services, by explaining benefits, procedures, terminology, etc.
Use keywords in your articles that your prospective clients 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 show exactly how to drive more traffic to your website, save money creating useful content that will add value to 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!
Improving Visitor Engagement And User Experience
Improving user experience (generally referred to as UX) helps to keep visitors coming back and using your site. This section will show you ways you can improve your visitor engagement and UX.
Adding RSS Feeds
An RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed provides plenty of benefits for your medical or health-related business.
If you provide valuable information, other businesses 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 in one place
- Content distribution doesn’t rely on email
- Feeds can be shared online
- Feeds allow users to subscribe
- An RSS feed provides links back to your site
- Feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
- RSS provides multiple ways for your readers to receive your content (e.g. view the content on their mobile device using a feed reader)
- RSS is built into WordPress
There are also benefits when it comes 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.
To find RSS feeds with loads of useful content just search online for relevant government departments and industry bodies.
Here are some feeds containing useful information that you could add to a health or medical site:
- 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 specific RSS feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Breast cancer, Healthy aging, Illnesses and disabilities, Minority women’s health, Screening tests and vaccines, etc.) here: http://womenshealth.gov/news/rss/rss-feeds.html
- US National Libraries Of Medicine – For a list of feeds from leading medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. Dermatology Times, Epidemiology – Featured Articles, BMJ Injury Prevention, Current Psychiatry, Pediatrics, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
- National Institutes Of Health (www.nih.gov) - Get various feeds on health-related topics here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
- FDA – Find FDA-related RSS feeds (e.g. consumer health information updates, health fraud, pet health, 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. Victoria – http://www.health.vic.gov.au/rss/newsfeed.xml
- Centers For Disease Control And Prevention - Get many feeds on health-related news 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 RSS 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 select specific RSS feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Medications, Asthma, Neurology, Diabetes, Exercise & Fitness, Infectious Disease, etc.)
- Medical News Today – Featured Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
- Medical News Today – You can also choose specific RSS feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Urology/Nephrology, Complementary Medicine/Alternative Medicine, Health Insurance, Emergency Medicine, Primary Care/General Practice, 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 areas, e.g. “migraine rss feeds”, “alcohol addiction rss feeds”, “genetics rss feeds”, etc.
(RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve your health or medical-related site’s user experience.)
Provide Checklists And Forms
Checklists and explanatory charts are a fantastic way to help increase user engagement, add value to your visitors and set yourself apart from the competition. They can provide useful information and resources to complete a necessary task. Checklists and forms are great client instructional tools.
You can provide online or downloadable checklists, charts and forms covering a range of topics such as:
- Booking appointments
- Checklists for pre or post treatment
- Health checklists for specific conditions
- Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, oral maintenance program, cosmetic dentistry, etc.
- Fitness and exercise program checklists and charts
- General charts & infographics (e.g. caloric level of different foods, sleep requirements at different stages of development, etc.)
Provide Other Tools
Providing useful online tools, gadgets and applications on your site 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 tools can include things like nutritional tools, or even recipes.
In part two of this guide, we will look at a number of online tools you can use in your site using WordPress plugins that can also help to improve your search engine optimization, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.
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This is the end of part one of this guide on ways to build your health or medical business web presence.
Click on this link to continue:
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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