Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

Medical professionals today face significant challenges.

Online Challenges For Medical Practitioners

Today, more than ever, medical and health services providers must find smarter ways to stand out from their competition and find new clientele. Not only do you have to participate in the community you serve, you must also develop an active digital presence. This includes having an effective web presence and searching for better ways to market your business online.

As well as investing dollars marketing offline, businesses in the health-related industry are also finding that increasingly larger amounts of their marketing budget need to be allocated to develop and manage a website that can attract prospects, engage users, outperform the competition in search engines and social media, and help to create a wider amount of marketing reach online.

This means that your website not only has to look professional, load fast, and be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that the needs of your website will change in time and sections will need to be updated often. This requires having a sound web and content management strategy.

One other challenge that medical professionals face with their websites, as do most other professions for that matter, is that your site has only around 30 seconds or less to help users find what they are searching for or they will go 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

Opportunities For Medical Services Professionals In The Online Economy

As well as facing a number of challenges, there are also plenty of online opportunities available for medical practices that are willing to evolve to meet the challenges of the online economy and can think progressively when it comes to marketing their business services better online.

In this detailed guide, you will discover new ways and opportunities to attract new visitors and build more online credibility for your medical or health business.

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

To learn more about the benefits and advantages of using WordPress, go here:

• Learn How A Poorly Built Website Can Lose You Business
• A Beginner’s Guide To Building Your Successful Small Business With A WordPress Site

Useful Tips For Improving Your Website

In this section we’ll show you ways to improve your health or medical-related website and get better results. We show you what web pages you need, what type of content works best for health-related websites, useful tips for improving your site’s layout and navigation, etc.

If you need help with website planning, visit this page: Planning Your Business Web Site - A Money-Saving Blueprint For Non-Technical Business Owners

Improve Your Website Pages

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

Services And Products

You need to include a page that lists your services and any products that you offer. Depending on which area of health or medical services you specialize in, your page can include services like:

• Medical And Surgical – e.g. anaesthetics, nephrology endocrinology, cosmetic surgery, aged care, respiratory, urology, optometry palliative care, etc.
• Dentistry – e.g. preventive dentistry, holistic dentistry, cleaning services, teeth whitening, braces, emergency dentistry, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. cardiac patient rehabilitation, coronary care
• Prenatal and Neonatal – e.g. birthing, maternity services, etc.
• Child Health services – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic services – breast screens, skin cancer, hearing, pap smears, psychosis, allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology – lab testing and analysis, emergency pathology testing, clinical trials, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling services – mental health services, alcohol, tobacco & other drug counselling, domestic abuse, diet and nutrition counselling, social development services
• Alternative therapies – Chinese medicine, homeopathy, reiki, shiatsu, chiropractic services, hypnosis, etc.
• Other medical services – weight management, sports medicine, fertility services, occupational therapy, medical genetics, artificial limbs, assisted living, home and community care, sexual health, medical equipment, etc.

List all of the services you provide. Provide your visitors with information that will educate them about the benefits of using these services and why they should choose you.

About Us Page

The ‘About Us’ page should give a description of your business and explain to visitors what it stands for, its unique approach, community involvement, etc.

This page should include any business awards, certifications, recognitions, accreditations, associations, publications, etc., that you can use to promote your business and position yourself above your competitors.

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

Team Profile

If you are searching for quicker, simpler and cheaper ideas to sell more products online or get people to stay longer on your site, then make it easier for prospective clients to get to know, like and trust your organization better.

Prospective clients need to relate to your business. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your people. This page should include a photo and a mini biography. Since most visitors will not tend to be that well-versed in health or medical terms it should tell who they are and what their specialties are. It should also explain what those specialized areas mean. It can include social buttons that will allow your prospective clients to follow individual team members on their social networks.

In this page, make sure to outline your person’s experience, why they are an asset to your team, and more importantly, how they can help add value to your clients’ business.

(Add a page that introduces your team to prospective new clients. Image sourced from: southperthchiro.com.au)

To learn more about how to create and add a list directory of staff members to your site using a free WordPress plugin, go here: How To Create A Simple Employee Directory In Your WordPress Site

Career Opportunities

This is a listing of career opportunities within your clinic. This page should include type of training provided, employee benefits, professional development, etc. You should also include information such as the job outlook and upcoming career opportunities in the medical industry.

Also include 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 updates list, follow your social pages, etc.

Testimonials & Case Studies

Testimonials from previous clients and case studies are a great way to attract potential clients and showcase your services. By adding a page with case studies and testimonials from previous clients, you are also helping to are also providing prospective clients with social proof online for your business.

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

We have written a detailed article about using case studies, testimonials and user reviews to improve your business results online. Go here to learn more about this: Learn How To Improve Your Visitor-To-Lead Conversions With Effective Client Testimonials

Contact Us Page

A contact page is absolutely vital.

It should provide some or all of the following information about your consulting practice:

• Name Of Your Business
• Your address
• Phone number
• Fax
• Email
• Google Map and directions
• Website URL
• Contact form
• Request for information – contact details
• Social media URLs
• Live Chat/Skype (optional feature)

If you operate in several locations you want to make that clear when displaying your address and contact info.

You could also include links pointing to the most commonly asked questions page, useful pages, online booking form, support page, newsletter, blog, etc.

Add A Medical Or Health Blog

A blog can be a powerful marketing tool for your business. Blogs are built around a content management system that allows you to easily promote your business by publishing timely content like news and events, updates, useful information, discussions on current topics, educational videos, media presentations, etc.

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

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

Very few people know that WordPress can turn your web presence into an automated traffic-generation system that can help begin driving an ongoing stream of targeted visitors to your business, simply by publishing regular content to your web site.

(WordPress can automate your traffic generation)

Learn more about this here:

• Web Traffic Blueprint – How To Increase Your Traffic For Your Business Using WordPress

Legal Information

It’s crucial to ensure they have a website that complies will all legal requirements online. This is not only important for building trust with prospective clients, but also to ensure that you are not contravening laws or regulations wherever you do business.

Depending on what services and products you provide, adding the legal pages below to your health site will help keep you 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
• 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
• and others

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

How To Improve Your Content

In today’s highly competitive global business economy, the sooner you start to publish great content on your site, the faster you will begin to differentiate yourself from other competitors.

By providing great content with useful tips or information, you will get your readers sharing it with others and coming back for more. This is a great way to inform and teach site visitors and prospects about using your services and products.

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
• How to identify the bad habits that need to be corrected to ensure lifetime weight loss
• Diet sodas (common ones, side effects, long term results, do they work?)
• How to modify recipes for achieving healthier results (e.g. replacing sugars, fats, etc.)
• Etc.

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

Remember to use specific keywords and terminology in your content that your readers will 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 that will show exactly 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. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also 100% FREE!

Ways Of Improving Visitor Experience

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

Adding RSS Feeds

RSS feeds can help to improve your visitor engagement and UX in many ways.

If you provide useful 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 in one place
• Content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• RSS feeds can be shared and picked up by other sites online
• Feeds allow users to subscribe
• It provides a way for external links to point back to your site
• Your feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
• RSS provides various ways for readers to receive your content (e.g. subscribers can read the content on their mobile device using different applications)
• RSS is built into WordPress

There are also benefits when it comes 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 for your website, visit sites of medical or health-related government departments and respected industry bodies.

Below we have listed a few RSS feeds containing useful information that you could add to a health site:

• US Department Of Health And Human Services – e.g. Latest news feed: http://www.hhs.gov/rss/news/hhsnews.xml, etc. You can also select individual feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Breastfeeding, Environmental health, Illnesses and disabilities, Mental health, Pregnancy, etc.) here: http://womenshealth.gov/news/rss/rss-feeds.html
• US National Libraries Of Medicine – For a directory of feeds from various medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. The Journal of Experimental Medicine (JEM), Neuroanatomy, BMJ Medical Humanities, BMJ Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Pediatrics, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health (www.nih.gov) - Find many RSS feeds on health-related news and topics here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• FDA – Get RSS feeds on fda-related news and topics like criminal investigations, MedWatch safety alerts (human medical products), product recalls, drugs, etc. and podcasts here: http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/ContactFDA/StayInformed/RSSFeeds
• Department of Health UK (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 news 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 and 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 RSS feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Medications, Men’s health, Cold & Flu, Diabetes, Eyesight, Women’s Health, etc.)
• Medical News Today – MNT Medical News Featured Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
• Medical News Today – You can also choose specific feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Colorectal Cancer, Immune System/Vaccines, Depression, Menopause, Endocrinology, Litigation/Medical Malpractice, Personal Monitoring/Wearable Technology, etc.)

You can also just search online for general feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific subjects, e.g. “pulmonary system rss feeds”, “preventive medicine rss feeds”, “oncology rss feeds”, etc.

(Adding RSS feeds can help to improve your health or medical website’s user experience.)

Add Checklists & Forms

Adding checklists and educational charts to your site is a fantastic way to help increase visitor engagement and add value to your readers. Charts and checklists can give them step-by-step instructions and resources to get necessary steps completed. Checklists and charts are great client instructional tools.

You can provide online or downloadable checklists, charts and forms (or links to these) covering a range of subjects such as:

• Booking appointments
• Checklists for pre or post treatment
• Health checklists for specific medical conditions
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, caries prevention program, general dentistry, etc.
• Weight loss and exercise program checklists and charts
• General charts & infographics (e.g. sugar content in different foods, sleep requirements at different ages, etc.)

Add Online Tools

Providing useful online tools and applications on your website can help increase visitor engagement and add value to users. Calculators are useful tools you can add to your website. Others could include things like diagnostic tools, and even recipes.

In part 2 of this detailed guide, we look at a several online tools you can add to your health-related website using WordPress plugins that can also help to improve your seo, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.

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This is the end of part 1.

To continue reading, click here:

• Tips For Medical Services Providers – WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Better User Engagement And Driving More Visitors

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