Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

Medical and Health professionals today face many new challenges brought about by the digital economy.

Challenges Health Services Practitioners Face Online

Now, more than ever, health and medical services providers must work hard to remain competitive and source new clientele. Not only do you have to actively participate in the community your business serves, you must also maintain a strong presence online. This includes having an effective web presence and learning better ways to grow your medical services online.

As well as investing dollars advertising offline on local newspapers, ads in industry publications and magazines, radio and television, etc., you will probably find (if you haven’t already) that in order to compete with other medical businesses, you will need to invest a greater part of your budget towards the development and management of a website that drives new clients, engages users, outperforms the competition in search engines and increases your marketing exposure online.

This means that your site not only has to look great, your pages have to load fast, and your website has to be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, your site’s needs will change in time and sections may need to be updated frequently. This requires implementing sound web and content management strategy.

Another difficult challenge that health or medical-related organizations face online (as all other businesses do for that matter), is that they have only around 30 seconds to help users find what they are searching 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 Health Services Providers In The Web Economy

As well as facing a number of business and technology changes, there are also plenty of online opportunities available for businesses in the medical or health sector that can adapt to meet online challenges and think strategically about improving their online business marketing skills.

This comprehensive guide will help you uncover new ways to attract and engage new visitors and build more online credibility for your medical-related business.

As well as providing general website improvement tips, we also recommend that you consider using WordPress to power your medical or health-related website or blog.

For more information about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress content management system (CMS), see these articles:

• Learn How A Poorly Constructed Web Site Can Cost You Business
• Everything You Need To Know To Grow A Successful Small Business With A WordPress Site

Tips To Improve Your Medical Services & Health-Related Website

In this section we’ll start with the basics and show you ways to improve your website and get better results. We will look at what pages you need, what type of content you need, navigation structure, etc.

If you need assistance or help planning your medical website, read this guide: How To Plan Your Small Business Web Site: A Useful Guide For Non-Technical Business Owners

Your Website Pages

Professional business websites need a number of basic web pages. Let’s go over the pages your  need to have and how to structure your health-related website for best results.

Services Description Page

It’s essential to have a page that lists your services or products. Depending on which area of health or medical services you specialize in, this page could include services like:

• Medical And Surgical – e.g. pain management, nephrology haematology, oncology, neurology, renal, colon/rectal surgery, eye diseases surgical outpatients, etc.
• Dental Services – e.g. preventive dentistry, children’s dentistry, bad breath treatment, veneers, crowns and bridges, dentofacial orthopedics, emergency dentistry, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. cardiac surgery, coronary care
• Prenatal/Neonatal – e.g. birth suites, maternity services, etc.
• Child Health services – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic services – breast screening, lung screening, audiology, pap smears, psychosis, allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology services – laboratory testing and analysis, routine pathology testing, clinical trials, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling services – mental health, alcohol, tobacco & other drug services, domestic abuse, wellness, social work services
• Alternative treatments – Chinese medicine, reflexology, functional medicine, meditation, osteopathy, hypnosis, etc.
• Other medical services – weight management, othopedics, reproductive endocrinology, physiotherapy, medical genetics, prosthetics, assisted living, 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

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

It’s important to list any health or medical-related awards, certifications, accreditations, recognitions, associations, publications, etc., that could be used to promote your practice and set yourself above similar service providers.

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

Your Staff Page

Are you looking for ideas to sell more products or services online or get people to stay longer on your site? Then something you can do, is make it easier for visitors to get to know, like and trust 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 people. This page should include a photo and a brief biography. Since most visitors won’t be familiar with medical terms your bio descriptions should tell who they are and what their specialties are. It should also explain what those specialties mean. It should include social buttons that will allow your site visitors to follow your team members on their social networks.

On this page, don’t be afraid to humanize your team members with personal stories, hobbies, etc., but make sure to outline your team member’s expertise and qualifications, why they are an invaluable asset to your team, and more importantly, how they can help add value to your clients’ business.

(Make sure to add a page that introduces your staff members to prospective new clients. Screenshot image sourced from: southperthchiro.com.au)

To learn more about how to easily add an easy-to-manage simple staff directory in your web site without coding skills, see this tutorial: How To Easily Add A Simple Staff Directory On Your WordPress Site

We’re Hiring

This is a listing of career opportunities within your business. It would include training provided, benefits, opportunities for advancement, social aspects of working with your business, etc. You can also include information about career opportunities in the health or medical-related 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 newsletter, follow your social pages, etc.

Testimonials And Case Studies

Testimonials from previous clients and case studies are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase the services you offer. Adding a page with case studies and reviews from clients also helps your medical website to establish social proof.

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

If you want to learn more using testimonials and client reviews to grow your business online, go here: Discover How To Convert More Visitors Into Qualified Leads With Meaningful Testimonials

Contact Us

A contact page is vitally important.

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

• Company Name
• Address
• Phone
• Fax
• Email address
• Map and directions
• Web address
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Links to social media pages
• Interactive chat feature

If your business operates from several areas you should make this clear when displaying your address and contact information.

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

Blog Section

A blog is a powerful business marketing tool. Many blogging platforms typically comprise of a content management system that allows you to promote your business by publishing timely content such as news and events, product releases, useful information, opinions and discussions, educational videos, webinars, etc.

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

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

Not many businesses know this, but an expertly configured WordPress site can become an automated traffic system that will begin attracting targeted traffic to your site, simply by publishing regular content to your web site.

(An expertly configured WordPress site can drive new visitors automatically to your site)

You can learn more here:

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

Legal Pages

It’s crucially important for medical services practitioners organizations to make sure they have a compliant website. This is not only important for establishing credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no laws and regulations are being broken wherever you provide services.

Depending on what services you provide, adding the following legal pages to your health site will help you stay out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers, and other potential sources of legal threats and inconveniences:

• Contact Us
• Privacy Policy
• 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
• etc.

Go here if you want to learn more adding legal pages to your site: Adding Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

How To Improve Your Web Content

In today’s highly competitive online economy, being generous with information has become one of the key differentiators for businesses selling similar products or services.

By committing to providing great content with useful information, advice or tips, you will get your readers sharing your information with others and coming back for more. Using content is a great way to educate site visitors and prospective clients about your business and services.

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

• What to do before you start any weight loss program (e.g. consult with doctor, record measurements, set goals, etc.)
• How to calculate how many calories you burn each day
• Incorporating exercise into your busy schedule
• A guide to making the right choices when eating at restaurants
• Etc.

You can also create a series of educational articles that will help your readers understand your services, by explaining benefits, procedures, costs (including payment plans, insurance coverage, etc).

Remember to use keywords and terms in your articles that your readers will search for online.

We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive regular training emails with easy-to-digest information and practical tips that will teach exactly how to drive more traffic to your web site, save money creating high-quality content for your visitors and grow your business online using content marketing. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also completely FREE!

Improve User Experience

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

Syndicate Content With RSS Feeds

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

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 in one place
• your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Your feeds can be shared and picked up by other sites online
• Allows for subscribing
• An RSS feed provides a way for external links to point 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. users can view your content on their mobile device using different applications)
• RSS is built into WordPress

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

You can find RSS feeds with useful content by searching online for medical-related government departments or key industry bodies.

Below we have listed examples of feeds containing useful information that you could consider adding to your website:

• US Department Of Health And Human Services – e.g. Blog posts feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SelectedHhsBlogPosts, etc. You can also select individual feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Body image, Fitness and nutrition, 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 directory of feeds from various medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. BMJ Quality and Safety in Health Care, Human Molecular Genetics, Neurology India, Radiology, Transplantation – Most Popular Articles, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health - Find various feeds on health-related topics here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• US Food And Drug Administration (FDA) – Get FDA-related feeds (e.g. FDA drug safety, FDA drug shortages, tainted products, vaccines, blood and biologics, 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 - Get various RSS 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 RSS feeds section (e.g. Research: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Research.xml)
• MedicineNet – MedTerms Medical Word of the Day: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/dailyword.xml. You can also choose individual RSS feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Lung Conditions, Asthma, Cholesterol, Diabetes, Senior Health, High Blood Pressure, etc.)
• Medical News Today – MNT Featured Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
• MedicalNewsToday.com – You can also select individual RSS feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Eye Health/Blindness, Complementary Medicine/Alternative Medicine, Medical Insurance, Conferences, Endocrinology, Nutrition/Diet, Cancer/Oncology, etc.)

You can also search online for general RSS feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific topics, e.g. “pulmonary system rss feeds”, “rehabilitation rss feeds”, “cancer rss feeds”, etc.

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

Adding Downloadable Charts And Checklists

Adding checklists and charts to your site is a fantastic way to increase visitor engagement and add value to your readers. They can provide visitors with useful information and resources to perform tasks. Checklists and forms can also be great client educational tools.

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

• Checklists and forms for booking appointments
• Checklists for post-surgery recovery
• Health checklists for specific conditions
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, caries prevention program, general dentistry, etc.
• Fitness and nutrition program checklists and charts
• General charts & infographics (e.g. caloric level of different foods, the importance of sleep at different ages, etc.)

Add Online Tools

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

In part two of this guide, we look at a several WordPress-based tools you can use in your site that can also help to improve search engine optimization, improve user engagement and generate more visitors to your business.

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This is the end of section 1 of this guide on ways to improve your medical business web presence.

To view Part Two, click here:

• Your Health Website – How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Visitors To Your Site Generation Using WordPress Plugins

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