Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

The digital age has not only transformed business worldwide, it has also created growing challenges and great opportunities for businesses in the medical-related sector.

Challenges Medical And Health Services Face Online

Now, more than ever, medical providers must work hard to remain competitive and generate new clients. Not only do you have to be fully involved in the community your business serves, you must also develop and maintain a strong digital presence. This includes having a website and learning how to better market your services online.

In addition to investing dollars advertising offline, businesses in the health or medical industry are now also finding that increasingly larger amounts of their marketing budget need to be directed to develop and manage a website that drives new prospective clients, engages users, outperforms the competition in search engines and social media, and helps to increase their reach online.

This means that your site not only has to look professional, your web pages have to load fast, and your site has to be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, your site’s needs will change in time and some areas will need to be updated often. This requires having a sound website and content management strategy in place.

One other difficult challenge that health or medical businesses (and most other businesses) face online, is that they have an average of 30 seconds or less to help users find what they are searching for 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

Online Opportunities For Health And Medical Services

As well as facing significant business and technology changes, there are also loads of online opportunities available to businesses in the medical industry that can evolve to meet online economy challenges and who can think progressively when it comes to improving their online business marketing skills.

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

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

For more information about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress content management system (CMS), see these articles:

• Discover Why A Poorly Designed Web Site Can Lose You Prospective Buyers And What To Do About It
• Using A WordPress Blog To Grow A Successful Small Business

Useful Tips To Improve Your Medical Site

Let’s start by covering the basic stuff. In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve your website and get better results. We will look at what pages you need, what type of content works best for health-related websites, tips for improving your navigation structure, etc.

If you need help with website planning, go here: A Practical Guide To Web Site Planning For Business Owners

Improve Your Web Pages

Professional websites need several basic web pages. Let’s go over these.

Services

It’s essential to include a page that lists your services or products. Depending on which area you specialize in, this page could include services such as:

• Medical And Surgical – e.g. ear, nose & throat, nephrology hematology, cosmetic surgery, incontinence, renal, urology, eye diseases emergency surgery, etc.
• Dentistry – e.g. cosmetic dentistry, children’s dentistry, bad breath treatment, restorations, dentofacial orthopedics, emergency dentistry services, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. heart surgery, chronic heart conditions
• Prenatal and Postnatal – e.g. obstetrics, midwifery, etc.
• Child Health services – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic services – breast screening, lung screening, radiology and imaging, pap smears, magnetic resonance imaging, allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology services – lab testing and analysis, routine pathology testing, insurance and corporate testing, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling – mental health, alcohol, tobacco & other drug counselling, domestic abuse, wellbeing, social work services
• Alternative treatments – Chinese medicine, reflexology, reiki, shiatsu, osteopathy, hypnosis, etc.
• Other medical services – weight management, podiatry, lymphedema therapy, optical services, inherited diseases, artificial limbs, mobility, home care, sexual health, medical supplies, 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 why they should book an appointment.

About Us

This page needs to describe your business and what it stands for, its unique approach, philanthropical donations, etc.

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

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

Team

Are you searching for quicker and easier ways to sell more products online or get prospective clients to engage more on your site? Then make it easier for prospects to get to know, like and trust your organization better.

Prospects need to relate to your business. One great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your people. It should include a photo and a mini biography. Since most visitors will not tend to be very well-versed in medical or health-related terms it should tell who they are and what they specialize in. It should also explain what those specialized areas mean. It can also include social buttons that will allow your visitors to follow selected staff members on their social networks.

On this page, make sure to highlight your employee’s qualifications, 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 ‘meet the team’ page. Image sourced from: southperthchiro.com.au)

If you need help how to create and add a simple and easy-to-update simple team members directory to WordPress without touching code, go here: Plugin Tutorial: Adding An Employee Directory

Recruitment

This is a listing of job or career opportunities within the clinic. It would include training provided, benefits, professional development, etc. You should also include case studies of recruits who have worked their way up in your company and information such as the job outlook and new career opportunities in the medical and health industry.

Maintain 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 updates list, follow your social pages, etc.

Case Studies

Client reviews and case studies are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase what kind of services you offer. By adding a page with client reviews and case studies, you will also help to establish social proof online for your business.

(Add a page with client reviews and case studies. Image source: arrowsmiledental.com)

We have created a detailed article on using testimonials and client reviews to grow your business online. You can learn more here: Create Better Results Online Using Captivating User Testimonials

Contact Us Page

Having a functional contact page is essential.

It should include the following information:

• Name
• Your physical address
• Phone
• Facsimile
• Contact email address
• Google Map
• Website address
• Contact form
• Request for information – contact details
• Social media URLs
• Chat/Skype

If your business operates out of several areas you will want to make this clear when displaying your address and contact information.

You should also include links to an FAQ section, frequently-visited pages, booking form, support page, newsletter, blog, etc.

Add A Medical Or Health Blog Section

A blog is a very powerful marketing tool for your business. Blogs are built around a content management system that is simple to use and allows you to promote your business by publishing content such as the latest news, updates, educational information, informative posts, videos, webinars, etc.

If you already have an existing site, then consider adding a WordPress-driven blog to market your medical services.

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

Very few businesses know that WordPress can become an automated traffic-generation machine that can drive targeted traffic to your web site, simply by adding content on a consistent basis to your website.

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

If you are interested in learning more about this here:

• Web Site Traffic Blueprint – Discover How To Create An Automated Traffic Generation Machine

Legal Information Pages

As a professional business, having a compliant website is really important. This is not only important for establishing credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no local, regional and federal laws or regulations are being contravened in whichever area or location you provide services.

Depending on what services and products you provide, adding some or all of the legal pages below to your health site will help you stay out of legal hot water with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Facebook), and other potential 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
• and others

We have written a comprehensive article on adding legal pages to your website. Learn more about this here: What You Need To Know About Adding Legal Pages To Your Website

Improving The Content On Your Site

In today’s ultra-competitive global economy, the ability to deliver valuable content free of charge has become one of the key success factors for businesses.

Providing great content with tips, information and advice will get your readers sharing your web pages with others online and coming back for more content. Publishing content is the most effective way to educate your visitors and prospective clients about using your services.

For example, if you provide weight management services, then some of the topics you can write content about include:

• Common medical conditions that can cause weight gain
• Tips for developing portion control habits (smaller plate, don’t put food on the table, more vegetables)
• Hypnosis and weight loss
• What salad dressings can ruin your weight loss program (and healthier choices)
• And endless other content topics

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

Use keywords and terminology in your articles that prospective clients would search to find you 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 teach you how to drive more traffic to your site, save money creating high-quality content that will add value to your site visitors and grow your presence online using content. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also completely FREE!

Ways To Improve Visitor Engagement And User Experience

Improving website 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 your visitor engagement and UX.

Using RSS Feeds

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds provide lots of benefits for your medical business.

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

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
• Feeds can be shared and picked up by other sites online
• Users can subscribe to your feed
• A feed provides links back to your site
• Your feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregators
• There are a number of ways your readers can receive your content (e.g. subscribers can read the content on their mobile device using feed readers)
• RSS is 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 relevant government departments and industry bodies.

Below we have listed a few feeds you could consider adding to your website:

• US Department Of Health And Human Services – e.g. Blog posts feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SelectedHhsBlogPosts, etc. You can also select individual RSS feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Breastfeeding, Environmental health, Heart health and stroke, Mental health, Smoking and how to quit, etc.) here: http://womenshealth.gov/news/rss/rss-feeds.html
• US National Libraries Of Medicine – For a directory of feeds from well-known medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. ACS Publications, Bionet RSS, Indian Journal of Plastic Surgery, BMJ Occupational and Environmental Medicine, BMJ Journal of Epidemiology & Community 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
• FDA – Find FDA-related feeds (e.g. FDA drug safety, FDA drug shortages, pet health, drugs, etc.) and podcasts here: http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/ContactFDA/StayInformed/RSSFeeds
• UK Department Of Health (https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-of-health) – 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 (www.cdc.gov) - Find many health-related news feeds and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
• Medical News: You can search medical news feeds in major news publications like the NYTimes feeds section (e.g. Research: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Research.xml)
• MedicineNet.com – MedTerms Medical Word of the Day: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/dailyword.xml. You can also select individual RSS feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Allergies, Menopause, Migraine Headaches, Oral Health, Digestion, Sleep, etc.)
• MedicalNewsToday.com – Medical News Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
• Medical News Today – You can also choose individual feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Eye Health/Blindness, Vascular, Depression, Neurology/Neuroscience, Bones/Orthopedics, Biology/Biochemistry, Obesity/Weight Loss/Fitness, etc.)

You can also just search online for general feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific subjects, e.g. “melanoma rss feeds”, “children’s health rss feeds”, “cancer rss feeds”, etc.

(Adding RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve your site’s UX.)

Checklists & Charts

Adding checklists and educational charts to your site is a great way to help increase visitor engagement and add value to your readers. Checklists and charts can provide users with useful step-by-step instructions and resources to perform necessary tasks. They are also great instructional tools.

Forms, charts and checklists can address subjects such as:

• Booking appointments
• Checklists for pre or post treatment
• Health checklists for specific systems
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, oral maintenance program, cosmetic dentistry, etc.
• Weight loss and exercise program checklists
• General charts & infographics (e.g. acidity level of different foods, sleep requirements at different ages, etc.)

Other Tools

Providing useful online tools, gadgets and applications on your site can help increase visitor engagement and add value to your visitors. Calculators, for example are great tools you can add to your website. Other applications could include things like diagnostic tools, and even recipes.

In the next section, we discuss a several WordPress plugins and themes you can use in your website that can also help to improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and generate more traffic to your business.

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This is the end of part one of this article on ways to grow your health-related business web presence.

Click on this link to view Part Two:

• Grow Your Medical Clinic Website – Improving SEO, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors Using WordPress Plugins

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