Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

The digital information age has not only transformed businesses worldwide, it has also created a growing number of challenges and opportunities for health providers.

Challenges Professional Medical And Health Services Practitioners Face Online

Now, more than ever, businesses in the health sector must work harder than ever to remain competitive. Not only do you have to maintain a strong presence in the community your business serves, you must also maintain a strong web presence. This includes having a website and learning how to better market your business online.

In addition to spending dollars in offline marketing activities such as advertising on local newspapers, ads in industry publications and magazines, radio and television spots, etc., businesses in the health-related industry are also finding that they need to assign a bigger share of their budget towards the development and maintenance of a website that can drive prospective clients, engage users, outperform the competition in search engines and social media, and increase their marketing reach online.

This means that your site not only has to look professional, your pages have to be fast-loading, and your website layout has to be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, the needs of the website will change in time and many areas will need to be frequently updated. This requires implementing well-planned web and content management strategy.

Another problem that health or medical-related organizations face online, as all other businesses do for that matter, is that your site has an average of 30 seconds to give visitors 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

Online Opportunities For Health Providers

As well as facing many new business and technology changes, there are also plenty of online opportunities available to medical or health businesses that can adapt to meet digital demands and can think outside the box in terms of improving their online marketing skills.

In this guide, you will learn about opportunities to attract new visitors and improve your online results.

As well as providing useful 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.

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

• Learn How A Poorly Built Web Site Can Cost You Customers And What To Do About It
• Everything You Need To Know To Grow A Successful Business With WordPress

Practical Tips To Improve Your Health And Medical Clinic Site

Let’s start by covering the basic information you need. In this section, we’ll look at how to improve your website and get better results online. We show you what pages a health-related website needs, what content works best for health or medical websites, your navigation structure, etc.

If you need website planning assistance, visit this page: A Cost-Saving Guide To Web Site Planning For Business Owners

Ways To Improve Your Web Pages

All business websites require several basic web pages. Let’s take a look at these.

Services And Products Page

You need a page that explains your products or services. Depending on which area of health or medical services you specialize in, your page could list services like:

• Medicine & Surgery – e.g. anaesthetics, neurosurgery blood disorders, reconstructive surgery, geriatric medicine, renal, endoscopy, eye diseases day surgery, etc.
• Dentistry – e.g. cosmetic dentistry, children’s dentistry, cleaning services, restorations, dental braces, emergency dental, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. cardiac monitoring, chronic heart conditions
• Prenatal/Postnatal – e.g. obstetrics, maternity services, etc.
• Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic – mammography, lung screening, radiology and imaging, pap smears, magnetic resonance imaging, food allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology services – lab testing and analysis, routine pathology testing, occupational and environmental testing, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling – mental health, alcohol, tobacco & other drug counselling, marriage counselling, wellness coaching, social development services
• Alternative treatments – acupuncture, reflexology, hydrotherapy, tai chi, osteopathy, hypnotherapy, etc.
• Other medical services/therapies – weight management, othopedics, reproductive services, speech language therapy, medical genetics, prosthetics, hearing aids, home care, clinical information, medical supplies, etc.

Make sure to list all of the services you provide. Provide your visitors with information that will educate them about what your services do and why they should choose you.

Who We Are

The ‘About Us’ page should give a description of your business and what it stands for, its unique approach, philanthropical donations, etc.

Remember to include any awards, certifications, recognitions, accreditations, associations, publications, etc., that you can use to promote your practice and to position yourself above similar service providers.

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

Staff Page

If you are looking for ways to sell more products online or get people to stay longer on your site, then one of the things you can do, is help your visitors 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. This page should include a photo and a mini bio. Since most visitors will not tend to be very well-versed in medical or health-related terms your descriptions should tell who they are and what they specialize in. You may also want to explain what those specialties mean. It should include social buttons so your site visitors can follow individual staff members on their social pages.

On this page, make sure to highlight your employee’s experience, how they add value to your team, and more importantly, how they can help add value to your clients’ business.

(Add an employee description page. Screenshot image sourced from: southperthchiro.com.au)

We have written a detailed tutorial on how to create and add a simple staff directory to your website using a free WP plugin here: How To Add A Simple Employee List To Your WordPress Site

We’re Hiring

This is a listing of job or career opportunities within the organization. This page can include training provided, benefits, opportunities for advancement, etc. It should include information such as the job outlook and career opportunities in the 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, join your updates list, follow your social pages, etc.

Case Studies & Testimonials

Testimonials and case studies are a great way to attract potential clients and showcase your services. Adding a web page with case studies and testimonials also establishes social proof online.

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

We have created a comprehensive article about using client testimonials and user reviews get better results online. You can learn more here: How To Improve Your Visitor-To-Sales Conversions With Knockout Customer Testimonials

Contact Us

A contact page is absolutely necessary.

Your contact page should include some or all of the following:

• Name
• Your physical location
• Phone
• Facsimile number
• Email address
• Map and directions
• Web URL
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Social media URLs
• Online chat (optional feature)

If your business operates in different areas you will want to make that clear when displaying your address and contact info.

Consider also including links to an FAQ section, main pages, booking request, support area, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.

Add A Health Or Medical Blog Section

A blog is a very powerful marketing tool for your business. Blogs typically comprise of a content management system that allows you to easily promote your business by publishing timely content like news and events, updates, useful information, opinions on current topics, videos, infographics, etc.

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

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

Something few businesses know about, is that WordPress can become an automated traffic machine that can instantly begin to attract targeted visitors to your site, simply by adding regular content to your site.

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

If you are interested in learning more here:

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

Legal Information

As a professional business, having a website that complies will all legal requirements online is essential. This is not only important for building trust and credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no laws and regulations are being contravened in whatever location you do business.

Adding some or all of the following legal pages to your health or medical-related website will help keep you out of legal hot water 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 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
• etc.

We have written a detailed article on adding legal pages to your website. Go here to learn more: Adding Legal Pages To Your Site

Tips On How To Improve Your Content

In today’s highly competitive online economy, the sooner you start to publish content on your site, the faster you will begin to differentiate yourself from the competition.

You want to provide great content with information, advice or tips that will get your visitors to share your web pages with others online and come back for more content. Publishing content is the most effective way to inform and educate your visitors and prospective clients about using your services and products.

For example, if your business provides services that help people manage their weight, then some of the topics you could write content about include:

• What to do before you start any weight loss program (e.g. consult with doctor, record measurements, set goals, etc.)
• How to identify the bad habits you need to correct to ensure lifetime weight loss
• Is using a measuring tape better than a scale when it comes to weight loss progress?
• How to make smarter choices choices when eating at restaurants
• Etc.

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

Include keywords in your content that readers will be searching 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 show exactly how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, save money creating useful content for your site visitors and grow your website using content. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also 100% 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 UX.

Adding RSS Feeds

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

If you provide information that adds value to others, 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 content updates are kept in one place
• Doesn’t rely on email
• Your feeds can be shared and picked up by other sites online
• RSS feeds allow users to subscribe
• A feed provides a way for external links to point back to your site
• RSS feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
• There are a number of ways your readers can receive your content (e.g. users can read your content on their mobile device using different applications)
• RSS is built into WordPress

There are also benefits 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 useful content just visit sites of relevant government departments and industry bodies.

For example, here are some feeds you could consider adding 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 choose individual RSS feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Emergency preparedness, Environmental health, Heart health and stroke, Menopause, Violence against women, etc.) here: http://womenshealth.gov/news/rss/rss-feeds.html
• US National Libraries Of Medicine – For a list of RSS feeds from well-known medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. BMJ Evidence-Based Nursing, Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC), The Journal of Immunology, BMJ Tobacco Control, Infectious Agents and Cancer, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health (www.nih.gov) - Get various health-related feeds here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• US Food And Drug Administration (FDA) – Find FDA-related feeds (e.g. criminal investigations, MedWatch safety alerts (human medical products), tainted products marked as dietary supplements, 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 (www.cdc.gov) - Find many feeds on health-related news and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
• Medical News: You can search medical news feeds by going to publications like the NYTimes 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 select specific RSS feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Lung Conditions, Men’s health, Chronic Pain, Pregnancy, Eyesight, Hearing, etc.)
• Medical News Today – Featured Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
• Medical News Today – You can also select individual feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Abortion, Vascular, Medical Insurance, Emergency Medicine, Primary Care/General Practice, Biology/Biochemistry, Psychology/Psychiatry, etc.)

You can also search online for general feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific subjects, e.g. “alternative medicine rss feeds”, “general practice rss feeds”, “ultrasound rss feeds”, etc.

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

Checklists And Charts

Checklists and medical forms are a great way to increase user engagement and add value to your audience. They can give them useful step-by-step instructions and resources to get necessary tasks done. Checklists and charts can also be great client educational tools.

Forms, charts and checklists can address topics such as:

• Booking appointments
• Checklists for post-surgery recovery
• Health checklists and charts for specific conditions
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, oral maintenance program, general dentistry, etc.
• Fitness and exercise program checklists and charts
• General charts & infographics (e.g. sugar content in different foods, sleep requirements at different ages, etc.)

Adding Online Tools

Providing unique online tools, gadgets and applications on your site can help increase visitor engagement and significantly add value to potential clients. Health-related calculators are some of the most popular tools for your website. Other tools could include things like nutritional tools, or even recipes.

In the next section, we look at a several online tools you can add to your site using WordPress plugins and themes 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 continue:

• Grow Your Health Clinic Website – WordPress Plugins That Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Web Traffic

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