Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

Health and medical professionals today are facing a growing number of challenges created by the digital economy.

Challenges Medical Practitioners Face Online

Today, more than ever, medical and health services professionals must work harder to remain competitive and find 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 web presence and figuring out better ways to market your medical services online.

In addition to spending dollars in offline marketing activities, businesses in the health industry are also finding that they will need to allocate a more significant portion of their marketing budget to develop and manage a website that brings new clients, engages visitors, outranks the competition in search engines and social media, and helps to give their business a wider marketing exposure online.

This means that your website not only has to look great, your web pages have to be fast-loading, and your website layout has to be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that the needs of the website will change over time and sections may need to be frequently updated. This requires having a well-developed web and content management strategy in place.

One other problem that medical organizations face online (as other businesses do for that matter), is that your site has only about 30 seconds or less to provide visitors with what they are looking for or they will go away.

“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 many new challenges, there are also plenty of online opportunities available to businesses in the health industry that are willing to adapt to meet the demands of the digital economy and can think strategically about improving their online marketing skills.

This comprehensive guide will help you uncover new opportunities to generate new client accounts and notice significant improvements in your business online.

As well as providing practical tips and information on ways to improve your medical-related website, we also focus on the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress Content Management System to power your medical-related business website.

For more information about the benefits and advantages of using WordPress, see these articles:

• Discover How A Poorly Built Website Can Cost You Customers And What To Do About It
• Using A WordPress Blog To Grow Your Business

Useful Tips For Improving Your Medical & Health Clinic Site

This section will show you how to improve your website and get better results online. We will look at what pages a health website needs, what type of content works best for medical websites, navigation structure, etc.

If you need assistance or help planning your health-related website, go here: Planning Your Small Business Website - A Basic Blueprint For Business Owners

Ways To Improve Your Website Pages

Professional business websites need several basic web pages. Let’s go over the pages your  need to have and how to structure your website for best results.

Products And Services Page

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

• Medical And Surgical – e.g. ear, nose and throat, nephrology blood disorders, cosmetic surgery, gerontology, renal, infection control, eye diseases surgical outpatients, etc.
• Dental Services – e.g. preventive dentistry, children’s dentistry, bad breath treatment, restorations, orthodontics, emergency dentistry, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. heart surgery, chronic heart conditions
• Prenatal & Postnatal – e.g. birthing, midwifery, etc.
• Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic – breast screens, skin cancer, radiology, women’s health, magnetic resonance imaging, allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology services – lab testing and analysis, emergency pathology testing, food and water testing, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling services – mental health, alcohol, tobacco & other drug counselling, trauma counselling, diet and nutrition counselling, social development services
• Alternative treatments – acupuncture, aromatherapy, colloidal silver therapy, meditation, chiropractic services, hypnotherapy, etc.
• Other medical services/therapies – diet and nutrition, sports medicine, reproductive endocrinology, speech language therapy, inherited diseases, prosthetics, sleep therapy, home and community care, community health, medical transport, etc.

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

Who We Are

The ‘About Us’ page needs to describe your business and what it stands for, its unique approach, causes that you support, etc.

It’s important to also mention any awards, recognitions, accreditations, certifications, publications, associations, etc., that can be used to promote your business and set yourself above your competitors.

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

Our Team

Are you searching for inexpensive ways to grow your business online or increase user interaction with your site? Then one of the things you can do, is make it easier for your prospective clients to get to know you and your business better.

You want prospects 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 brief biography. Since most visitors will not tend to be well-versed in medical terms your descriptions should tell who they are and what they specialize in. You may also want to explain what those specialized areas do. This page can include social buttons that will allow your site visitors to follow some of your team members on their social pages.

On this page, make sure to outline your staff member’s expertise and qualifications, why they are an invaluable asset to your team, and more importantly, how they will help add value to your clients’ business.

(Make sure to add a page that introduces your team members to prospective new clients. Screenshot source: southperthchiro.com.au)

If you need help how to add an easy-to-maintain simple employee directory in a WordPress site without touching code, go here: Tutorial: Adding An Employee Directory

Career Opportunities Page

This is a listing of career opportunities within the organization. It should include training, benefits, professional development, etc. You can also include case studies of recruits who have established a solid career path thanks to your company and information such as the job outlook and additional career opportunities in the health or medical-related industry.

Maintain 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 announcements list, follow your social pages, etc.

Testimonials & Case Studies

Reviews from clients and case studies are a great way to attract potential clients and showcase what type of services you offer. Adding a page with case studies and reviews from clients also helps to establish social proof online.

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

We have written extensively on using case studies, testimonials and client reviews improve your business online here: Achieve Better Results Online Using Meaningful User Testimonials

Contact Us Page

Having a functional contact page is crucial.

Your contact page should provide visitors with some or all of the following information:

• Company Name
• Your physical address
• Phone
• Facsimile
• Email
• Map
• Website address
• Contact form
• Contact name
• Links to social media networks
• Interactive chat feature (optional)

If you operate in multiple locations you will want to make that clear when displaying your address and contact information.

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

Add A Medical-Related Blog

A blog is a very powerful marketing tool for your business. Blogs typically include a content management system that is easy to use and allows you to promote your business using content such as announcements, updates, useful articles and tutorials, opinions and discussions, educational videos, infographics, etc.

If you already have an established medical or health-related website, 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 site is hard to manage or not giving you the results you want, then WordPress can become both your website and your blog.

Something not many people know about, is that WordPress can turn into an automated traffic machine that can instantly begin driving a stream of web traffic to your website, simply by publishing content to your website on a consistent basis.

(WordPress can automate your traffic generation)

To learn more about this go here:

• Web Traffic Blueprint – A Complete Guide To Growing Your Traffic Automatically Using WordPress

Legal Information

It’s important to ensure they have a website that complies will all legal requirements online. This is not only important for building trust with visitors, but also to ensure that you are not breaching any local, regional or federal laws or regulations wherever you provide services.

Depending on what products and services you provide, adding some or all of the following legal pages to your website will help keep you out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Google), and other potential legal threats and inconveniences:

• Contact Us
• Privacy Statement
• Terms And Conditions
• 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 detailed article about adding legal pages to your website. Go here to learn more about this: Adding Legal Pages To Your Website

How To Improve The Content On Your Website

In today’s ultra-competitive online economy, being generous with information has become one of the key differentiators for businesses.

Provide great content with information, advice or tips that will get your visitors sharing it with others and coming back for more content. This is the most effective way to educate site visitors and prospective clients about your services.

For example, if your business provides products that help people lose weight, then some of the areas you can write content about include:

• How does fiber help you lose weight?
• How to get support when embarking on a weight loss program (friends, family, weight loss seekers)
• How you eat your food is just as important as what you eat (eat at table, chew slowly)
• How to avoid late night snacking (e.g. drink water with lemon)
• And many other content topics

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

Include keywords and terms in your content that readers will be searching for.

We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive regular training emails with actionable information and practical tips that will teach you how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, save money creating high-quality content that will add value to your 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!

Improve Visitor Engagement And User Experience

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

Syndicating Content Using RSS Feeds

RSS feeds can help to improve your visitor engagement and UX in a number of different ways.

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

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

• All of your updates are kept in one place
• Content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• RSS feeds can be shared
• Feeds allow users to subscribe
• An RSS feed provides links back to your site
• Your feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregators
• There are multiple ways your readers can receive your content (e.g. users can read the content on their mobile device using a feed reader)
• It’s 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.

To find useful RSS feeds for your website, search online for relevant government departments and industry bodies.

For example, here are some examples of feeds you could add to a health-related site:

• US Department Of Health And Human Services – e.g. Blog feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SelectedHhsBlogPosts, etc. You can search by departments and select individual feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Body image, Health care for women, 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 leading medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. BioMed Central, ADA DiabetesCare , Stem Cells, Current Psychiatry, American Institute of Biological Sciences, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health (www.nih.gov) - Get various RSS feeds on health-related news and topics here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• FDA – Find FDA-related news feeds (e.g. criminal investigations, food allergies, tainted products, cosmetics, 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. Western Australia – http://www.public.health.wa.gov.au/feed/?types=news
• Centers For Disease Control And Prevention (www.cdc.gov) - Find many health-related RSS feeds 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 feeds section (e.g. Medical research: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Research.xml)
• MedicineNet – Weekly Health and Medical News Digest: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/weeklyhealth.xml. You can also select individual feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Allergies, Cancer, Nutrition, Food, & Recipes, Oral Health, Sexual Health, Travel Health, etc.)
• MedicalNewsToday.com – Featured Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
• MedicalNewsToday.com – You can also choose specific RSS feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Colorectal Cancer, Lupus, Muscular Dystrophy/ALS, Conferences, Back Pain, Pediatrics/Children’s Health, Crohn’s/IBD, etc.)

You can also search online for general feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific topics, e.g. “seniors rss feeds”, “HIV rss feeds”, “psychology rss feeds”, etc.

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

Checklists And Charts

Checklists and educational charts are a fantastic way to help increase user engagement, add value to your readers and set yourself apart from the competition. Checklists and charts can provide users with step-by-step information and resources to complete steps. They are also great instructional tools.

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

• Booking appointments
• Checklists for pre or post surgery
• Health checklists and charts for specific conditions
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, oral hygiene program, cosmetic dentistry, etc.
• Weight loss and nutrition program checklists and charts
• General charts & infographics (e.g. acidity level of different foods, sleep requirements at different stages of development, etc.)

Adding Other Tools

Providing useful online tools, gadgets and applications on your website is a great way to increase visitor engagement and add significant value to your visitors. Health-related calculators are useful tools to add to your website. Other tools could include things like nutritional tools, and even recipes.

In part two of this guide, we look at a several WordPress-based tools you can use in your medical or health-related website that can also help improve search engine optimization, improve user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.

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This is the end of part one.

To continue, click this link:

• A Step-By-Step Guide To Successfully Growing A Medical-Related Website – Part Two

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