Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

The information economy has not only transformed the way business is done around the world, it has also created a number of difficult challenges and great opportunities for medical and health services professionals.

Challenges Health Services Providers Face Online

Now, more than ever, businesses in the health and medical industry must work harder than ever to remain competitive. Not only do you have to be fully involved in the community your business serves, you must also maintain a strong presence online. This includes having an effective website and learning how to better market your health or medical services services online.

As well as investing dollars in offline marketing activities, you will probably find (if you haven’t already) that in order to compete with other web-marketing savvy health or medical businesses, increasingly larger amounts of their budget will need to be delegated towards the development and maintenance of a website that drives new clients, engages visitors, outranks the competition in search engines and gives your business a wider amount of marketing reach online.

This means that your site not only has to look great, your pages have to load fast, and your site has to be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, your site’s needs may change over time and sections will need to be updated often. This requires a well-planned website and content management strategy.

One other problem that medical-related organizations face, as other businesses do for that matter, is that your site has around thirty seconds to help visitors find the information 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 Providers In The Digital Economy

As well as facing significant challenges, there are also plenty of online opportunities available for health-related practices that can evolve to meet digital demands and can think outside the box when it comes to marketing their business better online.

This comprehensive guide will help you uncover opportunities to drive more traffic and create noticeable improvements in your health or medical business presence online.

As well as providing tips and information on ways to improve your website, we also recommend that you consider using WordPress to power your medical or health-related website or blog.

To learn more about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress Content Management System (CMS), see the articles below:

• Discover How A Poorly Constructed Web Site Can Cost You Customers
• Mastering WordPress – A Business Owner’s Guide

Useful Tips For Improving Your Medical Services And Health-Related Site

This section looks at ways to improve your website and get better results online. We show you what web pages you need, what content you need, your layout and navigation, etc.

If you need website planning assistance, read this detailed step-by-step guide: How To Plan Your Web Site - A Basic Guide For Non-Technical Business Owners

Ways To Improve Your Website Pages

Professional business websites need some essential pages. Let’s take a look at these.

Products And Services

It’s essential to include a page that explains your services and products. Depending on which area you specialize in, this page could include services like:

• Medical And Surgical – e.g. pain management, neurosurgery blood disorders, oncology, neurology, renal, urology, optometry palliative care, etc.
• Dentistry – e.g. preventive dentistry, holistic dentistry, bad breath treatment, restorations, implants, emergency dental, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. heart surgery, coronary care
• Prenatal/Neonatal – e.g. birth suites, maternity services, etc.
• Child Health services – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic – breast screening, skin cancer, oral health, women’s health, psychosis, 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, trauma counselling, diet and nutrition counselling, social work services
• Alternative treatments – acupuncture, reflexology, functional medicine, tai chi, chiropractic services, hypnosis, etc.
• Other medical services – diet and nutrition, sports medicine, reproductive endocrinology, speech language therapy, inherited diseases, prosthetics, mobility, home care, clinical information, medical transport, etc.

Make sure to list all of the services you provide, not just the ones you specialize in. Educate your visitors about what your services do and direct them to your contact or appointment booking page.

Who We Are

This page needs to describe your business and what your business stands for, its unique approach, sponsored community programs, etc.

It should list any awards, certifications, accreditations, recognitions, publications, associations, etc., that could be used to promote your medical, dental, chiropractic, surgery services, etc. and to position yourself above other competitors.

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

Your Team

Are you searching for cost-effective ideas to sell more products online? Then something you can do, is make it easier for your visitors to get to know you and your organization better.

People need to relate to your business. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your staff or team members. This page should include a photo and a mini biography. Since most visitors won’t be familiar with medical terms your descriptions should tell who they are and what their specialties are. It should also explain what those specialized areas do. It should also include social buttons so your visitors can follow selected staff members on their social pages.

In this page, make sure to highlight each employee’s qualifications, why they are an asset to your team, and more importantly, how they can help add value to your clients’ business.

(Add a ‘meet the team’ page. Screenshot image source: southperthchiro.com.au)

If you need help how to easily create and add a simple and easy-to-update directory of employees or team members in your site with no coding skills required, go here: How To Easily Add A Simple Staff List On Your WordPress Site Without Editing Code

Recruitment Page

List any job opportunities within your company. It can include type of training provided, employee benefits, opportunities for advancement, etc. You can include case studies of trainees who have risen within your company and information about career opportunities in the medical and health industry.

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

Testimonials

Case studies and reviews from clients are a great way to attract potential clients and showcase your services. Adding a page with case studies and testimonials from previous clients also helps your health business to provide social proof online.

(Add a page with testimonials and case studies. Image sourced from: arrowsmiledental.com)

We have written extensively about using testimonials, case studies and user reviews get better results online. Go here to learn more about this: Learn How To Achieve Better Results Online Using More Effective Customer Testimonials

Contact Page

Having a contact page is crucial.

It should provide some or all of the following information:

• Name
• Your physical address
• Telephone
• Fax
• Email address
• Map
• Web URL
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Social media links
• Chat feature

If your business operates from several areas you want to make this clear when displaying the address and contact info.

Consider also including a few links point to commonly-asked questions page, main pages, online booking request, helpdesk, newsletter, blog, etc.

Add A Medical-Related Blog

A blog can be a powerful business marketing tool. Many blogging platforms typically include a content management system that allows you to promote your business using content such as announcements, product releases, useful articles, discussions on current topics, promotional videos, infographics, etc.

If you already have an existing medical or health-related website, then consider adding a WordPress-driven blog to create more exposure for your services.

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

Not many businesses know this, but WordPress can become an automated traffic system that will begin driving a stream of targeted visitors to your site, simply by publishing content on a consistent basis to your website.

(WordPress can generate new traffic automatically to your site)

Go here to learn more:

• Website Traffic Blueprint – Learn How To Create An Automated Web Traffic Generation Machine With WordPress

Legal Information Pages

It’s crucial to ensure they have a compliant website. This is not only important for establishing trust and credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that you are not breaking local, regional and federal laws or regulations wherever you practice.

Adding some or all of the legal pages below to your medical or health website will help keep you out of legal hot water with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Google), and other potential sources of legal threats and inconveniences:

• Contact Page
• Privacy Statement
• Terms And Conditions Of Use
• Website Disclaimer
• Affiliate Agreement
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• DMCA Notice
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Health and Financial Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• and others

If you want to learn more about adding legal pages to your website, refer to this article: The Importance Of Adding Legal Pages To Your Site

Improving The Content On Your Website

In today’s fiercely competitive global economy, the sooner you begin engaging in the practice of content marketing, the quicker you will begin to differentiate yourself from other competitors.

Providing great content with tips or information will get your visitors to share your information online with others and come back for more content. Using content is a great way to inform and teach site visitors and prospective clients about using your services and products.

For example, if you provide solutions that help people lose weight, then some of the areas you can publish content about include the following:

• Potential health issues caused by being overweight
• What are calories and how they play a role in weight loss
• How you eat your food - just as important as what you eat (eat at table, chew slowly)
• How to modify recipes for healthier results (e.g. replacing sugars, fats, etc.)
• And many other content topics

You can also create a series of educational articles that will help your prospective clients gain a better understanding of your health or medical-related services, by explaining benefits, procedures, costs (including payment plans, insurance coverage, etc).

Remember to use the same keywords in your articles that prospective clients will search 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 you how to drive more traffic to your site, save money creating high-quality content for your site visitors and grow your presence online using content marketing. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also completely FREE!

Improving User Experience

Improving user experience (known as UX) will help to keep visitors coming back and engaging with your site. This section will show you ways you can improve your visitor engagement and user experience.

Adding RSS Feeds

Adding RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve your visitor engagement and user experience in a number of different ways.

If you provide valuable content, other businesses will 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
• your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• RSS feeds can be shared online
• Allows for subscribing
• A feed provides links back to your content
• Your feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
• RSS provides multiple ways for your readers to receive your content (e.g. subscribers can view your content on their mobile device using feed readers)
• It’s built into WordPress

There are also benefits to adding syndicated content to your site from other websites, such as the fact that you don’t have to write, manage or update the content.

To find RSS feeds with loads of useful content just visit sites of health-related government departments and respected industry bodies.

Here are a few useful RSS feeds you could consider adding to your website:

• US Department Of Health And Human Services – e.g. Blog feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SelectedHhsBlogPosts, etc. You can search by departments and choose individual RSS feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Emergency preparedness, Environmental health, HIV/AIDS, Menopause, Smoking and how to quit, etc.) here: http://womenshealth.gov/news/rss/rss-feeds.html
• US National Libraries Of Medicine – For a list of feeds from various medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. BMJ Disease in Childhood – Education and Practice, Nutrition Journal, BMJ Sexually Transmitted Infections, BMJ Archives of Disease, The New England Journal of Medicine, 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 news feeds (e.g. FDA drug safety, FDA drug shortages, pet health, cosmetics, 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 - Get various RSS feeds on health-related news and topics and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
• Medical News Feeds: 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 choose specific feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Lung Conditions, Mental Health, Neurology, Diabetes, Sexual Health, Sleep, etc.)
• MedicalNewsToday.com – Featured Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
• Medical News Today – You can also select specific feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Cystic Fibrosis, Headache/Migraine, Health Insurance, Emergency Medicine, Rehabilitation/Physical Therapy, Respiratory/Asthma, 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. “aging rss feeds”, “neurology rss feeds”, “weight loss rss feeds”, etc.

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

Provide Downloadable Checklists

Adding checklists and explanatory charts to your site is a great way to increase user engagement, add value to your audience and set yourself apart from the competition. They can provide visitors with useful information and resources to complete a necessary task. Checklists and forms are great instructional tools.

Forms, charts and checklists can address areas such as:

• Checklists/forms for booking appointments
• Checklists for pre or post treatment
• Health checklists and charts for specific systems
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, maintenance program, cosmetic dentistry, etc.
• Fitness and exercise program checklists and charts
• General charts & infographics (e.g. sugar content in different foods, the importance of sleep at different ages, etc.)

Add Online Tools

Providing useful tools and applications on your website is a great way to increase visitor engagement and add value to potential clients. Health-related calculators are great tools to add to your website. Others could include things like diagnostic tools, and even recipes.

In the next section of this detailed article, we look at a number of online tools you can use in your site using WordPress plugins that can improve search engine optimization, improve user engagement and drive more traffic to your business.

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This is the end of section one.

Click on this link to continue:

• Your Health Clinic Website – Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Visitors With Plugins & Themes

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