Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

The digital economy has not only revolutionized businesses globally, it has also created significant challenges and great opportunities for medical services practitioners and financial service providers.

Online Challenges For The Medical Profession

Now, more than ever, health and medical services practitioners must work harder to stand apart from the crowd and source new clients. Not only do you have to participate in the community your business serves, you must also develop and maintain a strong digital presence. This includes having an effective website and learning how to better market your business online.

As well as investing money marketing offline, businesses in the medical industry are also finding that they need to assign a more significant part of their marketing budget to develop and manage a website that can attract new clients, engage users, outrank the competition in search engines and social media, and help to increase their marketing reach online.

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

Another problem that medical providers face, as other businesses do for that matter, is that you have an average of thirty seconds to give users 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 Health And Medical Businesses In The Online Economy

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

This comprehensive guide will help you uncover opportunities to generate new bookings and build more online credibility for your business.

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

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

• Discover Why A Poorly Designed Web Site Can Lose You Potential Buyers
• Using A WordPress Site To Grow Your Business

Practical Tips For Improving Your Website

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

If you need website planning assistance, see this article we have written: The Web Site Planning Process Explained - A Useful Guide For Non-Technical Business Owners

Basic Web Pages

Professional business websites need a number of essential pages. Let’s take a look at the pages your  should have and how to structure your health or medical website for best results.

Services And Products Page

You need to include a page that describes your services and any products that you offer. 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 & throat, nephrology endocrinology, plastic surgery, stroke, respiratory, bariatric surgery, optometry palliative care, etc.
• Dental Services – e.g. general dentistry, holistic dentistry, oral health, veneers, crowns and bridges, implants, emergency dental services, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. cardiac surgery, coronary care
• Prenatal and Postnatal – e.g. obstetrics, midwifery, etc.
• Child Health services – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic services – breast screening, lung screening, audiology, gynaecology, psychosis, allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology – laboratory testing and analysis, routine pathology testing, clinical trials, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling services – mental health, alcohol, tobacco & other drug counselling, couples, diet and nutrition counselling, social work services
• Alternative treatments – acupuncture, reflexology, natural therapy, yoga, chiropractic services, hypnosis, etc.
• Other medical services/therapies – weight management, podiatry, reproductive services, occupational therapy, neurosciences, prosthetics, mobility, home care, clinical information, medical transport, etc.

List all of the services you provide. Provide your visitors with information that will educate them about what these services do and direct them to your contact or appointment booking page.

About Us Page

The ‘About Us’ page needs to describe your business and explain to visitors what your business stands for, its unique approach, community contributions, etc.

This page should list any business awards, accreditations, recognitions, certifications, associations, publications, etc., that can be used to promote your business and to set yourself above similar service providers.

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

Core Team

Are you looking for quicker, easier and cheaper ideas to sell more products online? Then make it easier for your prospects to get to know your business better.

You want your business to be relatable. One great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your team members. It should include a photo and a mini biography. Since most visitors will not tend to be familiar with medical or health terms your descriptions should tell who they are and what they specialize in. It should also explain what those specialized areas do. It can also include social buttons that will allow your prospective clients to follow selected team members on their social networks.

In this page, make sure to outline your team member’s 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 page that introduces your team to prospective new clients. Image sourced from: southperthchiro.com.au)

If you need help how to create and add an easy-to-update simple team directory to your web site, refer to this step-by-step tutorial: Step-By-Step Tutorial: How To Add A Staff Directory

Recruitment

List any job or career opportunities within your organization. This page could include type of training provided, benefits, professional development, social aspects of working with your organization, etc. You can include stories of recruits who have worked their way up in your organization and information such as the job outlook and upcoming career opportunities in the health industry.

Maintain 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 contact list, follow you on social media, etc.

Case Studies

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

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

For a detailed article about using testimonials, case studies and user reviews to grow your business online, go here: Convert More Visitors Into Prospects Using Compelling Testimonials

Contact Page

Having a functional contact page is essential.

It should include the following information:

• Name
• Physical address
• Phone
• Fax
• Email
• Google Map
• Web address
• Contact form
• Request for information – who to contact
• Social media URLs
• Online chat feature

If your business operates from different locations you should make this clear when showing the address and contact info.

You can also include links to an FAQ page, useful pages, booking form, support page, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.

Blog

A blog can be a powerful marketing tool. Blogs typically include a content management system that is easy to use and allows you to promote your business by publishing timely content such as announcements, updates, educational articles, discussions on current topics, how-to videos, webinars, etc.

If you already have an medical or health site, then consider adding a WordPress blog to promote your medical business.

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

Something few businesses know about, is that an expertly configured WordPress site can become an automated traffic system that will begin attracting targeted traffic to your website, simply by publishing regular content to your website.

(WordPress can drive traffic automatically to your website)

For more info, see this article:

• WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint – How To Create A Traffic Generation Machine

Legal Information

It’s essential to make sure they have a website that complies will all legal requirements online. This is not only important for building trust and credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that you are not breaking any local, regional and federal laws and regulations in whichever area or location you do business.

Adding some or all of the legal pages below to your site will help you stay out of legal hot water with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers, and other potential sources of legal threats and inconveniences:

• Contact Page
• Privacy Policy
• Terms And Conditions Of Use
• Website Disclaimer
• Affiliate Agreement
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• DMCA Notice
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Links Policy
• Health Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• etc.

We have written a detailed article on adding legal pages to your site. For more details: Adding Legal Pages To Your Site

Improve Your Web Content

In today’s fiercely competitive global economy, being generous with information has become one of the key differentiators for businesses that sell similar products or provide similar services.

You want to provide useful content with information, advice or tips that will get your visitors sharing it with others and coming back for more. This is the most effective way to inform and teach site visitors and prospective clients about using your services and products.

For example, if you provide services that help people manage their weight, then some of the areas you can cover as content on your site:

• Emotional causes for weight issues (possible causes, how to identify yours)
• How to develop portion control habits (smaller plate, don’t put food on the table, more vegetables)
• How you eat your food is just as important as what you eat (eat at table, chew slowly)
• A guide to making the smarter choices choices when eating in restaurants
• And many other content topics

You can also create a series of informative articles that will help your readers gain a better understanding of your services, by explaining benefits, procedures, terminology, etc.

Include keywords and terminology in your articles that readers will search for.

We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive a comprehensive series of training emails with actionable information that will teach you how to drive more traffic to your web site, save money creating useful content that will add value to 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!

Improving User Experience

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

Using RSS Feeds

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds provide many benefits for your business.

If you provide valuable information, other sites 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 in one place
• Content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Your feed can be shared
• Users can subscribe to your RSS feed
• An RSS feed provides a way for links to point back to your content
• Feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
• There are a number of ways readers can receive your content (e.g. subscribers can view your content on their mobile device using a feed reader)
• It’s built into WordPress

There are also a number of benefits to adding syndicated content to your website 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, search online for health or medical-related government departments and respected industry bodies.

Below we have listed examples of useful RSS feeds you could add to a 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 also select individual RSS feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Breast cancer, Health care for women, Heart health and stroke, Mental health, Screening tests and vaccines, etc.) here: http://womenshealth.gov/news/rss/rss-feeds.html
• US National Libraries Of Medicine – For a directory of RSS feeds from leading medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. Journal of Applied Physiology, Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC), American Cancer Society, American Chemical Society, Respiratory Research, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health - Find various RSS feeds on health-related news and topics here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• US Food And Drug Administration (FDA) – Get RSS feeds on fda-related news like criminal investigations press releases, FDA drug shortages, tainted products marked as dietary supplements, tobacco news, etc. and podcasts here: http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/ContactFDA/StayInformed/RSSFeeds
• Department of Health UK (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. NSW – http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/pages/rss.aspx
• Centers For Disease Control And Prevention (www.cdc.gov) - Get various health-related RSS feeds and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
• Medical News: You can search medical news RSS feeds by going to publications like the NYTimes feeds section (e.g. Fitness & nutrition: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Nutrition.xml)
• MedicineNet – Daily Health and Medical News: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/dailyhealth.xml. You can also choose individual feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Lung Conditions, Mental Health, Chronic Pain, Diet & Weight Management, Prevention & Wellness, Hearing, etc.)
• Medical News Today – Medical News Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
• MedicalNewsToday.com – You can also select specific feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Anxiety/Stress, Bird Flu/Avian Flu, Pregnancy/Obstetrics, Body Aches, Endocrinology, Litigation/Medical Malpractice, Erectile Dysfunction/Premature Ejaculation, etc.)

You can also search online for general RSS feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific topics, e.g. “lymphology rss feeds”, “parkinson’s disease rss feeds”, “fitness rss feeds”, etc.

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

Checklists & Charts

Checklists and medical forms are a fantastic way to help increase user engagement and add value to your readers. Forms and checklists can provide visitors with step-by-step information and resources to complete a necessary task. Checklists and charts are also great instructional tools.

You can provide online or downloadable checklists, charts and forms covering a range of topics such as:

• Booking appointments
• Checklists for pre or post surgery
• Health checklists and charts for specific systems
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, oral maintenance program, cosmetic dentistry, etc.
• Fitness and nutrition program checklists
• General charts & infographics (e.g. acidity level of different foods, sleep requirements at different ages, etc.)

Adding Unique Tools

Providing unique online tools, gadgets and applications on your site is a great way to increase visitor engagement and add value to your visitors. Calculators, for example are great tools to add to your website. Others would include things like nutritional tools, or even recipes.

In part 2, we look at a several online tools you can add to your site using WordPress plugins that can also help to improve search engine optimization, improve user engagement and drive more visitors to your business.

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This is the end of part 1.

Click on this link to continue:

• The Step-By-Step Guide On How To Build And Grow Your Health Center Business Online With WordPress – Part Two

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