Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

Medical services practitioners face many new challenges in today’s online economy, especially in terms of growing a successful presence online.

Challenges Health Professionals Face Online

Now, more than ever, businesses in the medical and health industry must work harder than ever to remain competitive. Not only do you have to maintain an active presence in the community you serve, you must also develop a strong presence online. This includes having an effective website and learning how to better promote your practice online.

In addition to spending dollars advertising offline, you will probably find that in order to compete, increasingly larger amounts of their marketing budget will need to be directed to develop and manage a website that attracts new leads, engages users, outperforms the competition in search engines and social media, and gives you a wider amount of marketing exposure online.

This means that your website not only has to look great, your web 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 the needs of the website may change in time and sections may need to be updated frequently. This requires a well-planned web and content management strategy.

Another difficult challenge that medical-related businesses face (as all other businesses do for that matter), is that your site has around 30 seconds to give users the information they need or they will find what they are looking for 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 Digital Economy

As well as facing a number of challenges, there are also plenty of online opportunities available to businesses in the medical industry that are willing to evolve to meet the demands of the online economy and think strategically about improving their online business marketing skills.

In this article, you will learn ways to generate web traffic and notice significant improvements in your online results.

As well as providing useful website improvement tips, we also focus on the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress platform to power your medical or health website.

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

• Learn How A Poorly Built Web Site Can Lose You Prospective Clients
• Everything You Need To Know About Growing A Successful Small Business Online Using WordPress

How To Improve Your Website

This section covers how to improve your health website and get better results. We will look at what pages you need, what type of content you need, your layout and navigation, etc.

If you need website planning assistance, go here: A Cost-Saving Guide To Web Site Planning For Business Owners

Your Website Pages

All business websites require a number of essential pages. Let’s discuss these.

Description Of Products And Services

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

• Medicine & Surgery – e.g. pain management, nephrology hematology, plastic surgery, hyperbaric medicine, rheumatology, endoscopy, optometry palliative care, etc.
• Dentistry – e.g. cosmetic dentistry, children’s dentistry, gum disease, teeth whitening, dental implants, emergency dental services, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. cardiac patient rehabilitation, chronic heart conditions
• Prenatal/Postnatal – e.g. birth suites, midwifery, etc.
• Child Health services – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic services – breast screening, skin cancer, radiology, gynaecology, MRI scanning, allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology – laboratory testing and analysis, routine pathology testing, insurance and corporate testing, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling – mental health, alcohol, tobacco & other drug services, domestic abuse, wellbeing, social development services
• Alternative therapies – acupuncture, aromatherapy, natural therapy, meditation, chiropractic, hypnosis, etc.
• Other medical services – weight management, othopedics, reproductive endocrinology, occupational therapy, neurosciences, artificial limbs, sleep therapy, home care, clinical information, medical supplies, etc.

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

Who We Are

The ‘About Us’ page should give a description of your business and what your business stands for, its unique approach, causes supported, etc.

This page should include any professional awards, accreditations, recognitions, certifications, publications, associations, etc., that can be used to promote your practice and set yourself above other competitors.

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

Meet Your Staff

Are you looking for quicker and easier ways to sell more products online or get people to interact more on your site? Then something you can do, is help visitors get to know your organization better.

Prospects need to relate to your business. One great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your employees. This page should include a photo and a mini bio. Since most visitors will not tend to be very well-versed in medical terms your bio descriptions should tell who they are and what they specialize in. You may also want to explain what those specialties mean. This page should also include social buttons that will allow your visitors to follow your team members on their social pages.

On this page, make sure to outline your team member’s expertise, why they are an invaluable asset to your team, and more importantly, how they can help add value to your clients’ business.

(Add a staff description page. Image source: southperthchiro.com.au)

To learn more about how to easily add an easy-to-update directory of employees to WordPress with no coding skills required, go here: How To Create A Simple Employee Directory For Your WordPress Site With No Coding Skills Required

Job Opportunities Page

This is a listing of job or career opportunities available within your company. This page should include training, employee benefits, advancement opportunities, social aspects of working for your business, etc. It should include case studies of graduates who have worked their way up in your organization and information such as the job outlook and new career opportunities in the medical or health-related industry.

Maintain a positions available section in this page. If there are no positions currently available, consider inviting people to return periodically to this page, subscribe to your updates list, follow you on social media, etc.

Case Studies & Testimonials

Case studies and reviews from clients are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase your services. By adding a page with reviews from clients and case studies, you will also help to will also be providing social proof.

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

We have written extensively about using testimonials and client reviews to improve your business results online. Go here to learn more about this: How To Improve Your Sales Conversions With More Effective Testimonials

Contact Us

A clean contact page is absolutely vital.

Your contact page should provide:

• Company Name
• Your physical address
• Telephone
• Facsimile
• Contact email
• Google Map
• Website URL
• Contact form
• Request for more information – contact details
• Links to social media profiles
• Chat/Skype (optional feature)

If you operate out of different areas you should make that clear when displaying your address and contact information.

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

Add A Blog Section

A blog can be a powerful marketing tool for your business. Blogs typically include a content management system that is easy to use and allows you to easily promote your business using content such as the latest announcements, updates, educational articles, opinions on current topics, videos, infographics, etc.

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

If you don’t have a website yet, or if your existing website is hard to manage or not delivering you the results you want, then WordPress can become both your business website and blog.

Very few people know that an expertly configured WordPress site can become an automated traffic-generation machine that can help drive new targeted traffic to your web site, simply by adding regular content to your site.

(An expertly configured WordPress site can drive web traffic automatically to your website)

Go here to learn more:

• WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint – Discover How To Automatically Increase Your Traffic For Your Business

Legal Information

As a professional business, having a website that complies will all legal requirements online is very important. This is not only important for building trust and credibility with visitors, but also to ensure that no laws or regulations are being breached wherever you provide services.

Depending on the services you provide, adding 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 threats and legal 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 Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• and others

We have written a comprehensive article on adding legal pages to your website. Go here to learn more: Adding Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

Improving The Content On Your Site

In today’s globally competitive economy, the sooner you start to publish great content on your site, the quicker you will begin to see results and differentiate yourself from your competitors.

Providing great content with useful tips and information will get your readers sharing your information with others and coming back for more. This is the most effective way to educate your visitors and prospective clients about using your services and products.

For example, if you provide weight management services, then some of the topics you can write about include the following:

• Potential health issues caused by being overweight
• How to figure out how many calories you burn each day
• Characteristics of different diets, e.g. HCG diet, Mediterranean diet, Volumetrics diet (what these are, how they work, are they effective)
• Useful tips that will help you avoid late night snacking (e.g. sleep earlier)
• And many other content topics

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

Include keywords and terminology in your articles that your prospective clients would search for.

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

Improving Visitor Engagement And User Experience

Improving user experience (generally referred to 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.

Add RSS Feeds

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

If you provide valuable information, other sites will want to syndicate your content.

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
• Feeds can be shared
• RSS feeds allow users to subscribe
• A feed provides a way for links to point back to your site
• RSS feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregators
• There are multiple ways your readers can receive your content (e.g. subscribers can view your content on their mobile device using a feed reader)
• RSS is 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.

You can find many useful RSS feeds for your website by searching online for medical-related government departments and key industry bodies.

For example, here are some feeds containing useful information that you could add to a health website:

• US Department Of Health And Human Services – e.g. Blog 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. Emergency preparedness, Health care for women, Heart health and stroke, Minority women’s health, Violence against women, 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, Bionet RSS, Journal of Cell Biology, BMJ Journal of Clinical Pathology, BMJ Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health (www.nih.gov) - Get many feeds on health-related topics here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• US Food And Drug Administration (FDA) – Get RSS feeds on fda-related news like criminal investigations, health fraud, pet health, radiological health, 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) - Find various RSS feeds on health-related topics 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 RSS feeds section (e.g. Health news: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Health.xml)
• MedicineNet.com – Weekly Health and Medical News Digest: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/weeklyhealth.xml. You can also select specific RSS feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Lung Conditions, Asthma, Neurology, Oral Health, Exercise & Fitness, Travel Health, etc.)
• Medical News Today – MNT 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. Cardiovascular/Cardiology, Complementary Medicine/Alternative Medicine, Surgery, Pancreatic Cancer, Food Intolerance, Litigation/Medical Malpractice, 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. “gout rss feeds”, “women’s health rss feeds”, “medical practice management rss feeds”, etc.

(Add RSS feeds to provide your visitors with a better UX.)

Provide Charts & Checklists

Adding checklists and educational charts to your site is a great way to help increase user engagement and add value to your readers. Checklists and medical forms can provide users with useful step-by-step instructions and resources to perform tasks. They are 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 post-surgery recovery
• Health checklists for specific medical conditions
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, active maintenance program, general dentistry, etc.
• Weight loss and exercise program checklists and charts
• General charts & infographics (e.g. caloric level of different foods, the importance of sleep at different stages of development, etc.)

Online Tools

Providing useful online tools, gadgets and applications on your website is a great way to increase visitor engagement and add significant value to your visitors. Calculators are some of the most popular tools for your website. Other applications could include things like nutritional tools, or even recipes.

In part 2, we will be discussing a several online tools you can add to your medical-related site using WordPress plugins and themes that can improve seo, improve user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.

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This is the end of section 1 of this article on ways to improve your health-related business presence online.

To view Part 2, click this link:

• Your Medical Center Website – Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using Plugins

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