Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

Health services providers today face an increasing number challenges thanks to the online economy.

Online Challenges For Health Services Practitioners

Now, more than ever, medical and health services providers must find smarter ways to stand out from their competition and source new clients. Not only do you have to become more involved in the community you serve, you must also develop a strong web presence. This includes having an effective website and figuring out better ways to market your services online.

As well as spending dollars in offline marketing, businesses in the medical or health-related industry are also finding that increasingly larger amounts of their budget will need to be assigned to develop and manage a website that drives leads, engages visitors, outperforms the competition in search engines and social media, and helps give them wider marketing reach online.

This means that your site not only has to look great, your pages have to load fast, and be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that the needs of your website will change over time and sections may need to be updated frequently. This requires the implementation of a sound website and content management strategy.

Another problem that medical or health-related businesses (and all other businesses) face with their websites, is that they have an average of thirty seconds or less to help users find the information they are looking for or they will look 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 And Health Businesses In The Digital Economy

As well as facing many challenges, there are also plenty of online opportunities available to health or medical businesses that can adapt to meet the challenges of the online economy and who can think strategically when it comes to improving their online business marketing skills.

In this detailed guide, you will learn about ways to attract and engage more visitors and establish stronger online credibility for your health business.

As well as providing practical tips and information on ways to improve your medical or health business online, we also focus on the benefits and advantages of using WordPress to power your medical or health website.

To learn more about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress Content Management System, see these articles:

• Why A Poorly Built Website Can Lose You Potential Buyers
• The Business Owner’s Guide To Understanding WordPress

Practical Tips For Improving Your Medical Services And Health Practice Website

This section covers ways to improve your medical website and get better results online. We will look at what web pages you need, what content works best for medical or health-related websites, layout and navigation, etc.

If you need assistance or help planning your website, go here: The Website Planning Process: A Cost-Saving Blueprint For Non-Technical Business Owners

Improve Your Website Pages

Professional websites require several essential pages. Let’s take a look at the pages your  should have and how to structure your health website for best results.

Your Services And Products

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

• Medicine & Surgery – e.g. ear, nose and throat, orthopedics haematology, plastic surgery, continence management, rheumatology, urology, ophtalmology palliative care, etc.
• Dental Services – e.g. general dentistry, holistic dentistry, bad breath treatment, veneers, crowns and bridges, dental braces, emergency dentistry services, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. cardiac surgery, coronary care
• Prenatal/Neonatal – e.g. birth suites, midwifery, etc.
• Child Health services – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic – breast screening, lung screening, radiology and imaging, women’s health, psychosis, allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology services – lab testing and analysis, emergency pathology testing, fine-needle aspiration, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling – mental health services, alcohol, tobacco & other drug services, couples, wellbeing, social development services
• Alternative therapies – acupuncture, homeopathy, holistic medicine, yoga, chiropractic services, hypnosis, etc.
• Other medical services – weight management, sports medicine, lymphedema therapy, physiotherapy, neurosciences, prosthetics, sleep therapy, home and community care, sexual health, medical transport, etc.

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

About Us Page

This page needs to describe your business and explain to visitors what it stands for, its unique approach, supported community activities, etc.

It’s important to also list any professional awards, recognitions, accreditations, certifications, associations, publications, etc., that you can use to promote your business and to position yourself above your competitors.

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

Staff

Are you searching for inexpensive ways to grow your business online and get prospects to stay longer on your site? Then help your visitors get to know your organization better.

You want prospects to relate to your business. One great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your staff. This page should include a photo and a brief biography. Since most visitors are probably not well-versed in health or medical terms it should tell who they are and what their specialties are. You may also want to explain what those specialized areas do. It should also include social buttons so your prospective clients can follow some of your staff members on their social networks.

In this page, don’t be afraid to humanize your team members with personal stories, hobbies, etc., but make sure to outline your employee’s expertise and 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 staff page. Image source: southperthchiro.com.au)

We have created a detailed tutorial about how to easily add an easy-to-update simple employee directory to your web site without coding skills here: How To Easily Add A Simple Staff List To Your WordPress Site Without Editing Code

Work For Us

List any career opportunities within your organization. It should include training, employee benefits, opportunities for advancement, etc. It should include information about new 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 this page, join your contact list, follow you on social media, etc.

Testimonials

Reviews from clients and case studies are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase what kind of services you offer. Adding a page with case studies and testimonials from previous clients also helps your health or medical-related website to provide visitors social proof online.

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

We have written extensively on using testimonials, case studies and reviews get better results online. If you would like to learn more here: Turn More Visitors Into Prospects With More Effective Testimonials

Contact Page

A clean contact page is crucial.

Your contact page should provide visitors with the following information about your business:

• Company Name
• Street address of clinic
• Phone
• Facsimile number
• Contact email
• Map
• Website URL
• Contact form
• Request for information – contact details
• Social media links
• Chat feature (optional feature)

If your business operates in several areas you will want to make this clear when showing the address and contact information.

You should also include links pointing to commonly-asked questions page, main pages, online booking form, support area, newsletter, blog, etc.

Add A Health Or Medical Blog

A blog can be a very powerful business marketing tool. Many blogging platforms typically comprise of a content management system that is simple to use and allows you to promote your business by publishing timely content like news, updates, useful articles, informative posts, videos, webinars, etc.

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

If you don’t have a website yet, or if your existing health or medical-related website is hard to keep updated with new content or not delivering you the results you want, then WordPress can be used both as your business website and your blog.

Something few people know about, is that WordPress can turn your web presence into an automated traffic-generation system that will help begin to attract targeted visitors to your web site, simply by adding new content to your website on a consistent basis.

(WordPress can automate your traffic generation)

Learn more about this here:

• WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Learn How To Automatically Drive More Website Traffic For Your Business

Legal Pages

It’s extremely important to have a compliant website. This is not only important for building credibility with visitors, but also to ensure that you are not contravening laws and regulations wherever you practice.

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, and other potential legal threats and inconveniences:

• Contact Us
• Privacy Policy
• 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.

If you want to learn more about adding legal pages to your site, refer to this article: What You Need To Know About Adding Legal Pages To Your Website

Improve Your Content

In today’s highly competitive online economy, content marketing has become one of the key success factors for businesses.

Provide great content with useful information, advice and tips that will get your readers to share your information and come back for more. Content marketing is the most effective way to inform and teach your visitors and prospective clients about using your products and services.

For example, if your business provides solutions that help people manage their weight, then some of the topics you could cover as content on your site:

• What to do before starting any weight loss program (e.g. consult with doctor, record measurements, set goals, etc.)
• How small efforts in portion control can help achieve weight loss results
• How you eat your food - just as important as what you eat (eat at table, chew slowly)
• 7 tips that will help you avoid late night snacking (e.g. drink water with lemon)
• And many other content topics

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

Remember to include keywords and terminology in your content that prospective clients will be searching for.

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

Improving User Experience

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

Syndicate Content With RSS Feeds

RSS feeds provide many benefits for your site.

If you provide information that adds value to others, other businesses may want to syndicate your content to their visitors.

Some of the benefits of having other businesses syndicate your content, include:

• All of your updates are kept in one place
• Content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Can be shared
• Users can subscribe to your feed
• A feed provides links to your content
• RSS feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregators
• RSS provides several ways for your readers to receive your content (e.g. subscribers can read your content on their mobile device using a feed reader)
• It’s built into WordPress

There are also benefits when it comes to providing information on your site from other websites, such as the fact that you don’t have to write, manage or update the content.

You can find many useful RSS feeds for your website by searching online for relevant government departments or well-known industry bodies.

For example, here are a few RSS feeds containing useful information that you could add to a medical-related site:

• US Department Of Health And Human Services – e.g. Blog posts RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SelectedHhsBlogPosts, etc. You can search by departments and select specific feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Body image, Healthy aging, Illnesses and disabilities, Mental health, Smoking and how to quit, 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 Quality and Safety in Health Care, ADA ClinicalDiabetes, BMJ Injury Prevention, Toxicological Sciences, BMJ Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health - Get many health-related feeds here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• US Food And Drug Administration (FDA) – Find RSS feeds on fda-related news and topics like consumer health information updates, food allergy reports, tainted products marked as dietary supplements, drugs, 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 health-related news feeds 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 RSS feeds section (e.g. Fitness and nutrition: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Nutrition.xml)
• MedicineNet.com – Daily Health and Medical News: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/dailyhealth.xml. You can also choose specific RSS feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Medications, Mental Health, Neurology, Pediatrics / Healthy Kids, Eyesight, Infectious Disease, etc.)
• MedicalNewsToday.com – Featured Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
• MedicalNewsToday.com – You can also select specific feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Eye Health/Blindness, Lupus, Depression, Veterinary, Water – Air Quality/Agriculture, Breast Cancer, Genetics, etc.)

You can also search online for general RSS feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific topics, e.g. “cardiovascular rss feeds”, “aid rss feeds”, “personal monitoring rss feeds”, etc.

(Add RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds to improve your medical-related site’s user experience.)

Adding Online Forms

Checklists and educational charts are a fantastic way to increase user engagement and add value to your visitors. Forms and checklists can give them useful step-by-step information and resources to complete steps. Forms and checklists are also great client educational tools.

You can provide a range of checklists and forms (or links to these) covering topics such as:

• Booking appointments
• Checklists for pre or post surgery
• Health checklists and charts for specific conditions
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, oral maintenance program, general dentistry, etc.
• Weight loss and nutrition program checklists
• General charts & infographics (e.g. caloric level of different foods, the importance of sleep at different ages, etc.)

Other Tools

Providing useful tools and applications on your website can help increase visitor engagement and significantly add value to your visitors. Health-related calculators, for example, are useful tools you can add to your website. Other tools would include things like diagnostic tools, or even recipes.

In the next section of this detailed guide, we look at a several online tools you can use in your medical or health site using WordPress plugins that improve your seo, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your business.

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This is the end of section one.

To view Part Two, click here:

• How To Build And Grow Your Medical Services & Health Practice Business Online With WordPress – Part Two

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