Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

The digital economy has not only revolutionised the way business is done around the world, it has also created a growing number of challenges and opportunities for health or medical-related businesses.

Challenges Health And Medical Businesses Face Online

Today, more than ever, health services professionals must work hard to stand apart from their competition and generate new clients. Not only do you have to become actively involved in the community you serve, you must also develop an active presence online. This includes having an effective web presence and learning how to better promote your business online.

As well as spending money in offline marketing activities like advertising on newspapers, ads in industry publications and magazines, radio and tv spots, etc., businesses in the medical or health industry are now finding that increasingly larger amounts of their budget need to be assigned to develop and maintain a website that brings in prospective clients, engages visitors, outperforms the competition in search engines and social media, and helps to increase their presence online.

This means that your website not only has to look great, your pages have to be fast-loading, and 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 a well-planned web and content management strategy.

One other difficult challenge that health-related organizations face (as other professions do for that matter), is that you have only about 30 seconds or less to give users what they need or they will find what they are looking for 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 Health Services Providers

As well as facing many challenges, there are also plenty of online opportunities available to businesses in the health-related sector that are willing to evolve to meet digital demands and think strategically when it comes to marketing their business services better online.

In this detailed guide, you will learn new opportunities to find more potential clients and improve your business results online.

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

To learn more about the benefits and advantages of using WordPress, see these articles:

• Discover How A Poorly Designed Web Site Can Cost You Money And What To Do About It
• Everything You Need To Know To Grow Your Business Online Using WordPress

Useful Tips To Improve Your Website

This section will show you how to improve your medical-related website and get better results online. We show you what web pages you need, what type of content you need, your navigation structure, etc.

If you need website planning assistance, check out the detailed guide we have written here: The Website Planning Process - A Useful Primer For Business Owners

Basic Website Pages

Professional business websites require a number of basic web pages. Let’s discuss the pages your  should have and how to structure your health or medical website for best results.

Description Of Products And Services

It’s essential to include a page that explains your services and any products that you offer. Depending on which area of health you specialize in, this page can include services such as:

• Medicine & Surgery – e.g. anaesthetics, pulmonology hematology, oncology, rehabilitation medicine, rheumatology, gastroenterology, optometry operating theaters, etc.
• Dentistry – e.g. cosmetic dentistry, children’s dentistry, cleaning services, teeth whitening, dentofacial orthopedics, emergency dentistry, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. cardiac monitoring, chronic heart conditions
• Prenatal/Neonatal – e.g. obstetrics, midwifery, etc.
• Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic – breast screens, lung screening, radiology and imaging, women’s health, magnetic resonance imaging, food allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology – laboratory testing and analysis, emergency pathology testing, insurance and corporate testing, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling – mental health, alcohol, tobacco & other drug counselling, domestic abuse, diet and nutrition counselling, social work services
• Alternative treatments – acupuncture, aromatherapy, hydrotherapy, shiatsu, chiropractic services, hypnotherapy, etc.
• Other medical services/therapies – weight management, chiropody, reproductive endocrinology, optical services, inherited diseases, artificial limbs, assisted living, home and community care, community health, medical equipment, 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 the benefits of using these services and direct them to your appointment booking page.

About Us

The ‘About Us’ page needs to describe your business and explain to visitors what your business stands for, its unique approach, community events, etc.

Remember to include any awards, accreditations, recognitions, certifications, publications, associations, etc., that you can use to promote your practice and set yourself above your competitors.

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

Meet Your Staff

Are you looking for inexpensive ways to sell more products online? Then help your prospective clients get to know, like and trust you, your team and your organization better.

Prospective clients need to relate to your business. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your people. It should include a photo and a mini bio. Since most visitors won’t be familiar with medical 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 so your site visitors can follow your staff members on their social pages.

On this page, make sure to outline each employee’s experience, 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 employees to prospective new clients. Screenshot source: southperthchiro.com.au)

If you need help how to create and add a directory of employees in a WordPress site, see this step-by-step tutorial: Plugin Tutorial: How To Add A Staff Directory To WordPress

Work With Us

This is a listing of career opportunities within the company. It would include type of training provided, employee benefits, opportunities for advancement, social aspects of working for your business, etc. You can include information such as the job outlook and career opportunities in the medical industry.

Include also a positions available section in your page. If there are no positions currently available, consider inviting people to return periodically to the page, subscribe to your announcements list, follow your social pages, etc.

Testimonials

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

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

To learn more about using case studies, testimonials and client reviews, see this article: How To Achieve Better Results Online Using Effective Testimonials

Contact Us

Having a clean contact page is absolutely vital.

Your contact page should include:

• Business Name
• Your physical location
• Telephone number
• Fax
• Email address
• Google Map
• Website URL
• Contact form
• Contact name
• Links to social media pages
• Online Chat/Skype (optional)

If you have several locations you will want to make this clear when showing your address and contact info.

You can also include links to an FAQ page, useful pages, booking form, support area, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.

Blog Section

A blog is a powerful marketing tool for your business. Most blogging platforms typically include a content management system that allows you to easily promote your business by publishing content such as events, updates, educational articles, opinions and discussions, how-to videos, infographics, etc.

If you already have an established medical or health site, then consider adding a WordPress-driven blog to create more exposure for your clinic.

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

Something few people know about, is that an expertly configured WordPress site can turn your web presence into an automated traffic-generation system that can drive web traffic to your website, simply by adding regular content to your site.

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

Go here to learn more about this:

• Web Site Traffic Blueprint – A Complete Guide To Attracting More Website Visitors For Your Business Automatically

Legal Pages

As a professional medical practitioner, ensuring that you have a website that complies will all legal requirements online is crucially important. This is not only important for building credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no local, regional or federal laws and regulations are being breached wherever you provide services.

Adding the legal pages below to your website will help keep you out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Facebook), and other potential sources of threats and legal inconveniences:

• Contact Us
• Privacy Policy
• Terms 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
• and others

We have written a comprehensive article about adding legal pages to your site. For more info, see this article: The Importance Of Adding Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

Ways To Improve The Content On Your Website

In today’s globally competitive economy, the sooner you begin to publish great content on your site, the sooner you will begin to differentiate yourself from other competing businesses.

You want to provide useful content with great tips and information that will get your readers sharing your web pages with others and coming back for more content. Publishing content is a great way to inform and educate site visitors and prospective clients about your services.

For example, if your business provides products or services that help people manage their weight, then some of the areas you could publish content about include the following:

• Emotional causes for weight issues (possible causes, how to identify yours)
• What calories really are and how they play a role in weight loss
• Incorporating exercise into your busy schedule
• Vitamins and minerals that aid in weight loss (chromium, calcium, magnesium, etc.)
• And endless other content topics

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

Remember to include keywords and terms in your content that your prospective clients 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 that will teach exactly how to drive more traffic to your website, save money creating high-quality 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 100% FREE!

Ways Of Improving User Experience

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

Syndicating Content With RSS Feeds

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds provide many benefits for your health business.

If you provide useful 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 content updates are kept in one place
• Content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Feeds can be shared
• Allows for subscribing
• It provides links back to your site
• Your feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregators
• RSS provides several ways for your readers to receive your content (e.g. users can view your content on their mobile device using feed readers)
• RSS is built into WordPress

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

You can find RSS feeds with useful content for your website by visiting sites of relevant government departments and well-known industry bodies.

Here are a few feeds you could consider adding to a health or medical-related 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 choose specific RSS feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Emergency preparedness, Environmental health, HIV/AIDS, 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 leading medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. BioMed Central, Journal of Biological Chemistry, European Heart Journal, The AAPS Journal (American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists), Respiratory Research, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health - Find many RSS feeds on health-related news here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• US Food And Drug Administration (FDA) – Get RSS feeds on fda-related news like enforcement reports, food allergies, tainted products marked as dietary supplements, radiological health, 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 (www.cdc.gov) - Get many health-related feeds and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
• Medical News: You can search medical news RSS feeds in major news publications like the NYTimes RSS feeds section (e.g. Medical research: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Research.xml)
• MedicineNet.com – Daily Health and Medical News: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/dailyhealth.xml. You can also choose individual RSS feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Medications, Menopause, Nutrition, Food, & Recipes, Depression, Prevention & Wellness, HIV, etc.)
• Medical News Today – Featured Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
• MedicalNewsToday.com – You can also choose individual RSS feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Cardiovascular/Cardiology, Complementary Medicine/Alternative Medicine, Muscular Dystrophy/ALS, Flu/Cold/SARS, Men’s Health, Nutrition/Diet, Huntingtons Disease, etc.)

You can also search online for general feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific topics, e.g. “infectious diseases rss feeds”, “breast cancer rss feeds”, “ear, nose and throat rss feeds”, etc.

(Use RSS feeds to improve your medical-related site’s user experience.)

Adding Checklists

Checklists and explanatory charts are a great way to increase visitor engagement and add value to your readers. Checklists and medical forms can provide visitors with useful step-by-step instructions and resources to perform a necessary task. Checklists and forms are also great educational tools.

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

• Checklists/forms for 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 and charts
• General charts & infographics (e.g. acidity level of different foods, sleep requirements at different ages, etc.)

Unique Tools

Providing useful tools and applications on your website can help increase visitor engagement and significantly add value to potential clients. Calculators are great tools you can add to your website. Other applications would include things like diagnostic tools, and even recipes.

In part 2 of this detailed guide, we will look at a several online tools you can add to your site using WordPress plugins that can help to improve your search engine optimization, improve user engagement and drive more visitors to your business.

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This is the end of section one.

Click on this link to keep reading:

• A Practical Guide On How To Build And Grow A Health Center Web Presence With WordPress – Part 2

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