Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

Health and medical services practitioners today face a number of challenges.

Online Challenges For Health Professionals

Now, more than ever, medical providers must find smarter ways to remain competitive and generate new clients. Not only do you have to participate in the community you serve, you must also develop an active presence online. This includes having an effective website and figuring out better ways to promote your business online.

As well as investing money advertising offline, businesses in the medical or health-related industry are now also finding that increasingly larger amounts of their marketing budget will need to be allocated towards the development and management of a website that will drive leads, engage visitors, outrank the competition in search engines and social media, and help to give them wider marketing exposure online.

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

One other problem that medical or health-related organizations face online (as other professions do for that matter), is that they have only around 30 seconds to help users find the information they are searching for or they will go elsewhere to get their needs met.

“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-Related Businesses In The Digital Realm

As well as facing significant business and technology changes, there are also many online opportunities available for businesses in the health profession that are willing to adapt to meet the challenges of the online economy and think strategically when it comes to marketing their services better online.

This guide will help you uncover new opportunities to source more potential clients and establish online credibility for your business.

As well as providing useful website improvement tips, we also place special emphasis on the benefits and advantages of using WordPress to power your medical business website.

For more information about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform, see the articles below:

• How A Poorly Built Website Can Cost You Potential Customers
• Everything You Need To Know To Grow A Successful Business Using WordPress

Useful Tips For Improving Your Website

We’ll start first by covering the basic information you need. In this section, we’ll look at how to improve your website and get better results. We will look at what web pages you need, what type of content works best for health websites, your layout and navigation, etc.

If you need website planning assistance, read this article we have written: The Web Site Planning Process: A Cost-Saving Guide For Business Owners

Improve Your Web Pages

All websites require some basic pages. Let’s discuss the pages your  should have and how to structure your health website for best results.

Description Of Services

It’s essential to have a page that describes your services or products. Depending on which area of health or medical services you specialize in, your page can list services such as:

• Medicine & Surgery – e.g. pain management, orthopedics hematology, cancer, aged care, respiratory, colon/rectal surgery, eye diseases operating theaters, etc.
• Dentistry – e.g. general dentistry, holistic dentistry, gum disease, restorations, dentofacial orthopedics, emergency dentistry, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. cardiac patient rehabilitation, coronary care
• Prenatal/Postnatal – e.g. birth suites, maternity services, etc.
• Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic services – breast screening, skin cancer, radiology, pap smears, psychosis, allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology – lab testing and analysis, routine pathology testing, clinical trials, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling – mental health, alcohol, tobacco & other drug counselling, domestic abuse, diet and nutrition counselling, social development services
• Alternative treatments – acupuncture, homeopathy, colloidal silver therapy, meditation, osteopathy, hypnosis, etc.
• Other medical services/therapies – weight management, podiatry, reproductive services, optical services, neurosciences, prosthetics, mobility, home care, community health, medical transport, etc.

List all of the services you provide, not just the ones you specialize in. Educate your visitors about the benefits of using these services and why they should book an appointment with you.

Who We Are

This page should give a description of your business and what it stands for, its unique approach, philanthropy, etc.

Remember to also list any business awards, accreditations, recognitions, certifications, associations, publications, etc., that could be used to promote your business and to set yourself above the competition.

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

Your Staff Page

If you are searching for quicker, simpler and cheaper ways to grow your business online or increase user interaction with your site, then something you can do, is make it easier for visitors to get to know, like and trust you, your team and your business better.

Prospects need to relate to your business. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your employees. It should include a photo and a brief biography. Since most visitors are probably not familiar with medical-related terms it should tell who they are and what they specialize in. You may also want to explain what those specialized areas do. It can include social buttons so your visitors can follow selected staff members on their social networks.

In this page, make sure to highlight your person’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 page that introduces your team members to prospective new clients. Screenshot image sourced from: southperthchiro.com.au)

If you need help how to easily create and add an easy-to-maintain simple staff directory to a WordPress site, see this tutorial: How To Easily Add A Simple Employee Directory On Your WordPress Site

Job Opportunities Page

This is a listing of job opportunities within your practice. It can include training, employee benefits, professional development, social aspects of working with your business, etc. You can include information such as the job outlook and upcoming career opportunities in the health or medical industry.

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

Case Studies

Customer reviews and case studies are a great way to attract potential clients and showcase what kind of services you offer. By adding a page with reviews from clients and case studies, you are also helping to are also providing social proof online.

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

We have created a comprehensive article on using case studies, testimonials and client reviews get better results online. Go here to learn more about this: Learn How To Improve Your Conversions Using Standout Customer Testimonials

Contact Page

Having a contact page is absolutely vital.

It should include some or all of the following information about your clinic:

• Business Name
• Your address
• Telephone number
• Facsimile
• Contact email address
• Map
• Web URL
• Contact form
• Request for information – contact details
• Social media links
• Live Chat/Skype (optional feature)

If you operate from different locations you want to make that clear when showing your address and contact information.

Consider also including links to an FAQ page, frequently-visited pages, online booking request, support area, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.

Add A Medical Blog

A blog is a powerful business marketing tool. Many blogging platforms typically comprise of a content management system that allows you to promote your business using content like news, updates, training articles and tutorials, informative posts, videos, media presentations, etc.

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

If you don’t have a website yet, or if your existing site is hard to manage or not delivering you the results you want, then WordPress can serve both as your website and blog.

Not many businesses know this, but an expertly configured WordPress site can turn your web presence into an automated traffic machine that will begin driving targeted traffic to your web site, simply by adding regular content to your site.

(WordPress can drive web traffic automatically to your website)

For more info, see this article:

• Web Traffic Blueprint – Learn How To Turn Your WordPress Site Into An Automated Traffic Generation Machine

Legal Information Pages

Having a website that complies will all legal requirements online is crucial. This is not only important for building trust with visitors, but also to ensure that you are not breaching any local, regional and federal laws or regulations wherever your business is located.

Adding some or all of the following legal pages to your health or medical website will help you stay out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers, and other potential sources of 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 Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• and others

We have written a comprehensive article on adding legal pages to your website. For more details: The Importance Of Adding Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

Improving The Content On Your Site

In today’s ultra-competitive online economy, the sooner you begin to engage in the practice of content marketing, the quicker you will begin to differentiate yourself from your competitors.

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

For example, if you provide weight loss services, then some of the areas you could write about include the following:

• How does fiber help you lose weight?
• Is weight loss surgery right for you? (who should get it, risks, rates of success)
• Hypnosis and weight loss
• How to incorporate an occasional fast food into a healthier diet plan
• Etc.

You can also create a series of educational articles that will help your prospective clients understand your health or medical-related services, by explaining benefits, procedures, terminology, etc.

Use the same keywords and terms in your articles that your readers will be searching to find you online.

We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive regular 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 for your site visitors and grow your business online using content marketing. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also 100% FREE!

Ways Of Improving Visitor Engagement And User Experience

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

Content Syndication – RSS Feeds

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

If you provide useful information, other sites will want to syndicate your content.

Some of the benefits of syndicating your content to other websites using RSS feeds, include:

• All of your updates are kept in one place
• Doesn’t rely on email
• Feeds can be shared
• Users can subscribe to your RSS feed
• A feed provides a way for external links to point back to your content
• Feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
• RSS provides several ways for your readers to receive your content (e.g. view the content on their mobile device using feed readers)
• It’s built into WordPress

There are also benefits 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.

To find RSS feeds with useful content for your website, search online for medical-related government departments or industry bodies.

For example, here are a few useful RSS 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 choose individual RSS feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Emergency preparedness, Healthy aging, Heart health and stroke, Minority women’s health, Violence against women, 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. Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation, Journal of Biological Chemistry, The Journal of Immunology, Toxicological Sciences, Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health - Get many health-related news feeds here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• FDA – Get FDA-related feeds (e.g. consumer health information updates, food allergies, pet health, foods, 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 - Find various health-related RSS feeds and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
• Medical News: You can search medical news RSS feeds in places like the NYTimes feeds section (e.g. Fitness & nutrition: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Nutrition.xml)
• MedicineNet – Weekly Health and Medical News Digest: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/weeklyhealth.xml. You can also choose individual feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Medications, Asthma, Chronic Pain, Diabetes, Senior Health, Travel Health, etc.)
• MedicalNewsToday.com – Medical News Featured Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
• MedicalNewsToday.com – You can also choose specific feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Eye Health/Blindness, Fertility, Pregnancy/Obstetrics, Sleep/Sleep Disorders/Insomnia, Water – Air Quality/Agriculture, Tropical Diseases, Ear, Nose and Throat, etc.)

You can also just search online for general RSS feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific areas, e.g. “bipolar rss feeds”, “breast cancer rss feeds”, “dementia rss feeds”, etc.

(Using RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve your site’s user experience.)

Checklists & Forms

Adding checklists and medical forms to your site is a great way to help increase visitor engagement and add value to your readers. Charts and checklists can give them useful step-by-step information and resources to complete steps. They are also great client educational tools.

Checklists, charts and medical forms could cover areas such as:

• Checklists/forms for booking appointments
• Checklists for post-surgery recovery
• Health checklists for specific conditions
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, caries prevention program, cosmetic dentistry, etc.
• Fitness and exercise program checklists and charts
• General charts & infographics (e.g. acidity level of different foods, sleep requirements at different stages of development, etc.)

Add Online Tools

Providing useful online tools and applications on your site is a great way to increase visitor engagement and significantly add value to your potential clients. Calculators, for example are popular tools for your website. Other applications could include things like nutritional tools, and even recipes.

In part 2 of this guide, we will be discussing a several online tools you can add to your site using WordPress plugins and themes that improve your search engine optimization, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your business.

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This is the end of part 1.

To view the rest of this article, click this link:

• Grow Your Medical Center Website – WordPress Plugins That Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Site

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