Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

The information economy has not only transformed businesses globally, it has also created an increasing number of challenges and opportunities for medical providers.

Challenges Health Services Face Online

Today, more than ever, medical and health services professionals must work harder and find smarter ways to stand out from the crowd and obtain new clientele. Not only do you have to participate in the community your business serves, you must also maintain a strong digital presence. This includes having a website and searching for better ways to grow your practice online.

In addition to spending dollars advertising offline, businesses in the health or medical-related industry are also finding that increasingly larger amounts of their budget will need to be delegated towards the development and maintenance of a website that will drive prospective clients, engage users, outperform the competition in search engines and social media, and help to create a wider amount of exposure online.

This means that your site not only has to look great, load fast, and be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, the needs of the website will change in time and sections will need to be updated frequently. This requires having a well-planned website and content management strategy.

Another challenge that medical organizations face, and most professions for that matter, is that you have an average of 30 seconds to give users what 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 Services Professionals In The Web 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 sector that are willing to evolve to meet the demands of the digital economy and who can think outside the box in terms of marketing themselves better online.

This detailed guide will help you uncover ways and opportunities to generate traffic and see noticeable improvements in your medical business presence online.

As well as providing tips and information on cost-effective ways to improve your health website, we also focus on the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) to power your medical website or blog.

For more information about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress Content Management System, see the articles below:

• How A Poorly Built Web Site Can Lose You Customers And What To Do About It
• WordPress In Business – The Complete Guide To Building Your Successful Small Business With WordPress

Useful Tips For Improving Your Health Clinic Services Site

In this section we will start with the basics and show you ways to improve your website and get better results. We show you what pages a health or medical website needs, what type of content works best for health websites, your layout and navigation structure, etc.

If you need assistance or help planning your website, read this article: The Website Planning Process Explained - A Comprehensive Primer For Non-Technical Business Owners

Essential Website Pages

All business websites require several essential web pages. Let’s review these.

Services And Products Page

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

• Medical And Surgical – e.g. pain management, nephrology diabetes, maxillofacial surgery, aged care, rheumatology, urology, eye diseases palliative care, etc.
• Dental Services – e.g. general dentistry, holistic dentistry, oral hygiene, teeth whitening, braces, emergency dentistry, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. heart monitoring, chronic heart conditions
• Prenatal/Postnatal – e.g. birthing, midwifery, etc.
• Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic services – mammography, skin cancer, radiology, women’s health, psychosis, allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology services – lab testing and analysis, routine pathology testing, food and water testing, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling – mental health services, alcohol, tobacco & other drug counselling, couples, wellness, social development services
• Alternative treatments – acupuncture, aromatherapy, functional medicine, meditation, chiropractic, hypnotherapy, etc.
• Other medical services/therapies – weight management, othopedics, lymphedema therapy, rehabilitation, inherited diseases, artificial limbs, hearing aids, home and community care, community health, medical transport, etc.

Make sure to list all of the services you provide, not just the ones you specialize in. Provide your visitors with information that will educate them about what these services do and why they should book an appointment.

About Us

This page should give a description of your business and what your business stands for, its unique approach, philanthropic donations, etc.

It’s important to mention any awards, accreditations, certifications, recognitions, associations, publications, etc., that could be used to promote your practice and position yourself above the competition.

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

Team Profile

If you are looking for quicker, simpler and cost-effective ways to grow your business online and increase user interaction on your site, then something you can do, is help your visitors get to know your business better.

Prospects need to relate to your business. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your staff. This page should include a photo and a mini biography. Since most visitors won’t be well-versed in health or medical terms your bio 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 so your site visitors can follow selected staff members on their social pages.

In this page, make sure to outline each employee’s experience, why they are an invaluable asset to your team, and more importantly, how they will help add value to your clients’ business.

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

If you need help how to easily add a directory of staff or team members to your WordPress site with no coding skills required, see this step-by-step tutorial: How To Add An Employee Directory: Plugin Tutorial

Career Opportunities Page

List any career opportunities within the organization. It would include training, benefits, professional development, etc. You can include information such as the job outlook and upcoming career opportunities in the health or medical industry.

Include also a positions available section in your page. If there are no positions currently available, consider inviting people to return periodically to this page, subscribe to your updates list, follow your social pages, etc.

Case Studies

Case studies and reviews from clients are a great way to attract potential clients and showcase the services you offer. By adding a page with reviews from clients and case studies, you are also helping to establish social proof for your business.

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

If you want to learn more about using client testimonials and user reviews, refer to this article: Discover How To Turn More Visitors Into Qualified Leads With Highly Effective Testimonials

Contact Us

A contact page is vitally important.

It should include some or all of the following information:

• Company Name
• Address
• Telephone number
• Facsimile number
• Email
• Map
• Website address
• Contact form
• Request for more information – who to contact
• Social media links
• Online Chat/Skype (optional feature)

If you have several locations you want to make that clear when showing your address and contact information.

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

Add A Medical Or Health Blog Section

A blog can be a very powerful marketing tool for your business. Blogs are built around a content management system that allows you to promote your business using timely content like news and events, updates, educational articles, opinions and discussions, videos, webinars, etc.

If you already have an existing site, then consider adding a WordPress blog to market your medical business.

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

You are probably not aware of this, but WordPress can become an automated traffic-generation machine that will help begin delivering a stream of targeted traffic to your website, simply by adding regular content to your web site.

(An expertly configured WordPress site can automate your traffic generation)

Go here to learn more:

• Web Site Traffic Blueprint – A Complete Guide To Increasing Your Website Visitors Automatically Using WordPress

Legal Info Pages

As a professional business, having a compliant website is vitally important. This is not only important for building trust and credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that you are not breaching any local, regional and federal laws and regulations wherever you practice.

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

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

Go here if you want to learn more adding legal pages to your site: What You Need To Know About Adding Legal Pages To Your Site

Improving Your Content

In today’s fiercely competitive global business economy, the ability to deliver valuable content to visitors free of charge has become one of the key business differentiators.

By providing great content with tips and information, you will get your readers sharing it with others and coming back for more content. Publishing content is a great way to inform and teach site visitors and prospective clients about your business and services.

For example, if you provide weight loss services, then some of the areas you could cover as content on your site:

• Common medical conditions that can cause weight gain
• How to set realistic, but challenging weight loss goals
• Is using a measuring tape better than a scale when it comes to weight loss progress?
• How to incorporate an occasional fast food into a healthy diet plan
• Etc.

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

Include keywords and terms in your articles that prospective clients 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 and practical tips that will show you how to drive more traffic to your site, save money creating high-quality content for your visitors and grow your presence online using content marketing. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also 100% FREE!

Ways Of Improving Visitor Engagement And User Experience

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

Use RSS Feeds

RSS feeds can help to improve visitor engagement and user experience in many ways.

If you provide useful content, 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 updates are in one place
• Doesn’t rely on email
• Your feed can be shared online
• Users can subscribe to your RSS feed
• An RSS feed provides links back to your content
• Feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
• RSS provides various ways for your readers to 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 when it comes to providing information on your site from other sites, 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 visiting sites of relevant government departments and well-known industry bodies.

For example, here are examples of feeds you could consider adding to your 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 individual RSS feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Breastfeeding, Environmental health, HIV/AIDS, 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 feeds from well-known medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. Journal of Neurophysiology, ADA (American Diabetes Association), JCI – The Journal of Clinical Investigation, American Chemical Society, Pediatrics, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health - Get various feeds on health-related topics here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• FDA – Get RSS feeds on fda-related news like consumer health information updates, health fraud, tainted products, foods, 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. Western Australia – http://www.public.health.wa.gov.au/feed/?types=news
• Centers For Disease Control And Prevention (www.cdc.gov) - Get various feeds on health-related topics and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
• Medical News: You can search medical news RSS feeds in places like the NYTimes RSS feeds section (e.g. Fitness & nutrition: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Nutrition.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, Men’s health, Migraine Headaches, Pregnancy, Digestion, Hearing, etc.)
• Medical News Today – Featured Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
• Medical News Today – You can also choose specific RSS feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Schizophrenia, Pharmacy/Pharmacist, Fibromyalgia, Pancreatic Cancer, CJD/vCJD/Mad Cow Disease, Litigation/Medical Malpractice, Personal Monitoring/Wearable Technology, etc.)

You can also search online for general RSS feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific areas, e.g. “melanoma rss feeds”, “epilepsy rss feeds”, “weight loss rss feeds”, etc.

(RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve your health or medical-related website’s user experience.)

Checklists And Forms

Checklists and educational charts are a fantastic way to increase visitor engagement and add value to your visitors. They can provide useful instructions and resources to perform a task. They can also be great client educational tools.

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

• Checklists and forms for booking appointments
• Checklists for post-surgery recovery
• Health checklists for specific medical conditions
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, oral maintenance program, cosmetic dentistry, etc.
• Weight loss and nutrition program checklists and charts
• General charts & infographics (e.g. acidity level of different foods, sleep requirements at different stages of development, etc.)

Provide Unique Tools

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

In the next section, we will be discussing a several online tools you can use in your medical-related website using WordPress plugins and themes that can also help to improve your seo, improve user engagement and generate more web traffic to your business.

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This is the end of part one of this article on ways to build your medical or health web presence.

Click on this link to continue:

• How To Build And Grow A Health Center Website Successfully – Part Two

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