Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

The online economy has not only transformed businesses globally, it has also created a growing number of challenges and opportunities for businesses offering health or medical-related services.

Online Challenges For Health Services Practitioners

Today, more than ever, businesses in the medical and health sector must work harder than ever to remain competitive. Not only do you have to maintain a strong presence in the community you serve, you must also maintain an active presence online. This includes having a website and learning how to better market your health or medical services services online.

As well as spending money marketing offline, you will probably find that in order to remain competitive, increasingly larger amounts of their budget will need to be directed to develop and maintain a website that can attract new prospective clients, engage users, outrank the competition in search engines and social media, and help to increase your reach online.

This means that your website not only has to look great, your pages have to be fast-loading, and your site has to be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that your site’s needs will change in time and some areas may need to be frequently updated. This requires implementing well-developed web and content management strategy.

One other difficult challenge that health or medical-related businesses (and most professions) face online, is that your site has an average of 30 seconds to provide users 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 Businesses In The Online Economy

As well as facing a number of business and technology changes, there are also loads of online opportunities available to businesses in the medical-related profession that are willing to evolve to meet the challenges of the digital economy and think strategically in terms of marketing their business services better online.

In this comprehensive guide, you will discover ways and opportunities to drive more web traffic and build more online credibility for your business.

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

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

• Discover How A Poorly Built Web Site Can Cost You Business
• Everything You Need To Know About Growing Your Small Business With WordPress

Useful Tips For Improving Your Website

This section covers ways to improve your website and get better results online. We will look at what pages your website needs, what type of content works best, your layout and navigation structure, etc.

If you need specific help with website planning, check out the detailed guide we have written here: The Website Planning Process Explained: A Cost-Saving Primer For Business Owners

Your Website Pages

Professional business websites require some basic web pages. Let’s review these.

Description Of services And Products

It’s essential to have a page that describes your services and any products that you offer. Depending on which area of health you specialize in, your page can list services such as:

• Medicine & Surgery – e.g. anaesthetics, orthopedics diabetes, plastic surgery, hyperbaric medicine, respiratory, bariatric surgery, optometry elective surgery, etc.
• Dentistry – e.g. cosmetic dentistry, holistic dentistry, cleaning services, veneers, crowns and bridges, dental braces, emergency dental, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. cardiac monitoring, coronary care
• Prenatal/Postnatal – e.g. obstetrics, midwifery, etc.
• Child Health services – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic – breast screening, skin cancer, hearing, women’s health, magnetic resonance imaging, allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology – laboratory testing and analysis, routine pathology testing, occupational and environmental testing, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling services – mental health, alcohol, tobacco & other drug counselling, marriage counselling, diet and nutrition counselling, social development services
• Alternative treatments – Chinese medicine, aromatherapy, hydrotherapy, meditation, osteopathy, hypnotherapy, etc.
• Other medical services – diet and nutrition, chiropody, reproductive services, physiotherapy, medical genetics, artificial limbs, hearing aids, home and community care, community health, medical equipment, etc.

List all of the services you provide. Educate your visitors about the benefits of using your 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 your business stands for, its unique approach, philanthropy, etc.

It’s important to also include any medical-related awards, accreditations, certifications, recognitions, associations, publications, etc., that could be used to promote your medical services and set yourself above the competition.

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

Meet Our Team

If you are searching for cost-effective ways to sell more products online, then one of the things you can do, is make it easier for your prospective clients to get to know, like and trust your business better.

You want people to relate to your business. One great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your team. This page should include a photo and a mini bio. Since most visitors won’t be well-versed in health or medical-related terms it should tell who they are and what their specialties are. It should also explain what those specialized areas do. This page should include social buttons so your site visitors can follow some of your team members on their social networks.

In this page, don’t be afraid to humanize your people with personal stories, hobbies, etc., but make sure to highlight your staff member’s expertise and qualifications, how their skills and knowledge add value or contribute to the success of your team, and more importantly, how they will help add value to your clients’ business.

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

We have written a detailed tutorial about how to create and add an easy-to-update simple team directory in WordPress without coding skills here: How To Easily Add A Staff List Directory To Your Site

Career Opportunities

List any career opportunities available within the company. It could include training provided, benefits, professional development, etc. It should include stories of recruits who have risen within your business and information such as the job outlook and new career opportunities in the medical-related 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, join your announcements list, follow you on social media, etc.

Testimonials

Customer reviews and case studies are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase your services. By adding a page with testimonials and case studies, you are also helping to establish social proof online.

(Add a page to your site with testimonials from past clients and case studies. Screenshot source: arrowsmiledental.com)

We have written extensively on using case studies, testimonials and reviews get better results online here: Improve Your Sales With Compelling Testimonials

Contact Us

A contact page is absolutely vital.

It should provide visitors with the following information:

• Name Of Your Business
• Address
• Phone number
• Fax
• Contact email
• Map and directions
• Web URL
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Social media URLs
• Interactive chat

If you operate out of several locations you want to make this clear when showing your address and contact info.

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

Blog Section

A blog can be a very powerful business marketing tool. Blogs are built around a content management system that is simple to use and allows you to promote your business by publishing timely content like announcements, updates, training articles, informative posts, how-to videos, infographics, etc.

If you already have an existing website, 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 very hard to keep updated with new content or not giving you the results you want, then WordPress can become both your website and business blog.

Very few businesses know that WordPress can turn your web presence into an automated traffic-generation machine that can help begin to deliver web traffic to your web site, simply by adding new content on a consistent basis to your website.

(WordPress can generate new traffic automatically to your site)

To learn more about this go here:

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

Legal Information

Having a compliant website is essential. This is not only important for building trust and credibility with visitors, but also to ensure that you are not breaking any local, regional and federal laws and regulations wherever you provide services.

Adding some or all of the following legal pages to your site will help keep you 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 Statement
• Terms Of Use
• Website Disclaimer
• Affiliate Agreement
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• DMCA Notice
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Health/Financial Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• etc.

We have written a comprehensive article on adding legal pages to your site. For more info, see this article: How To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

Improve The Content On Your Site

In today’s globally competitive economy, having a content marketing strategy has become one of the key differentiators for businesses selling similar products or services.

Provide useful content with great advice, information or tips that will get your readers sharing it with others and coming back for more content. Content marketing is a great way to inform and teach your visitors and prospective clients about using your services.

For example, if your business provides weight management services, then some of the areas you could cover in your content include:

• Emotional causes for weight issues (possible causes, how to identify yours)
• How to set realistic, but achievable weight loss goals
• Is hypnosis and effective weight loss treatment?
• Vitamins and minerals that aid in weight loss (chromium, calcium, magnesium, etc.)
• Etc.

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

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

We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive regular training emails with actionable information that will show you how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, save money creating high-quality content for your site visitors and grow your website using content marketing strategies. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also completely FREE!

Ways To Improve Visitor Engagement And User Experience

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

Use RSS Feeds

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve visitor engagement and user experience in several ways.

If you provide content that adds value to others, 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 kept in one place
• your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• RSS feeds can be shared online
• RSS feeds allow for subscribing
• It provides a way for links to point back to your content
• Your feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregators
• There are several ways readers can receive your content (e.g. users can read the content on their mobile device using a feed reader)
• RSS is built into WordPress

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

To find useful RSS feeds just visit sites of health or medical-related government departments and key industry bodies.

Below we have listed examples of useful RSS feeds you could add to a medical-related site:

• US Department Of Health And Human Services – e.g. Blog posts feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SelectedHhsBlogPosts, etc. You can also select specific 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 directory of RSS feeds from various medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. PhysiologicalReviews, Epidemiology – Featured Articles, Indian Journal of Plastic Surgery, jobs.ac.uk health and medical jobs, BMJ Evidence-Based Mental Health, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health (www.nih.gov) - Find many health-related news feeds here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• US Food And Drug Administration (FDA) – Find FDA-related news feeds (e.g. enforcement reports, MedWatch safety alerts (human medical products), pet health, animal and veterinary news, 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 - Find various health-related feeds and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
• Medical News Feeds: You can search medical news feeds by going to publications like the NYTimes RSS feeds section (e.g. Fitness & 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 select specific RSS feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Alzheimer’s Disease, Cancer, Nutrition, Food, & Recipes, Diabetes, Prevention & Wellness, Skin, etc.)
• MedicalNewsToday.com – MNT Featured Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
• MedicalNewsToday.com – You can also choose individual RSS feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Cardiovascular/Cardiology, Complementary Medicine/Alternative Medicine, Lymphology/Lymphedema, Sleep/Sleep Disorders/Insomnia, Water – Air Quality/Agriculture, Nutrition/Diet, MRI/PET/Ultrasound, 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. “pharmacy rss feeds”, “swine flu rss feeds”, “erectile dysfunction rss feeds”, etc.

(Adding RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve your medical-related website’s UX.)

Provide Checklists And Charts

Checklists and educational charts are a great way to help increase user engagement, add value to your audience and provide something unique. Checklists and medical forms can provide users with useful instructions and resources to complete tasks. Forms and checklists are great client educational tools.

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

• Booking appointments
• Checklists for pre or post treatment
• Health checklists for specific conditions
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, caries prevention program, cosmetic dentistry, etc.
• Weight loss and nutrition program checklists
• General charts & infographics (e.g. acidity level of different foods, sleep requirements at different ages, etc.)

Other Tools

Providing useful tools, gadgets and applications on your site can help increase visitor engagement and add significant value to potential clients. Calculators, for example are useful tools to add to your website. Other applications could include things like diagnostic tools, or even recipes.

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

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This is the end of part 1.

Click on this link to view the rest of this article:

• A Practical Guide On How To Build And Grow A Health-Related Web Presence Successfully With WordPress – Part 2

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