Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress
Medical professionals today face an ever increasing number challenges brought about by the web economy.
Challenges Health And Medical Services Professionals Face Online
Now, more than ever, health services practitioners must find smarter ways to remain competitive and generate new clientele. Not only do you have to maintain an active presence in the community you serve, you must also maintain an active presence online. This includes having an effective website and learning how to better market your services online.
As well as investing money advertising offline on local newspapers, ads in industry publications and magazines, radio and television, etc., you will probably find that in order to compete, increasingly larger amounts of their budget need to be allocated to develop and maintain a website that will drive new leads, engage users, outrank the competition in search engines and help you create a wider amount of marketing reach online.
This means that your website not only has to look great, load fast, and your website layout has to be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that the needs of your website will change over time and many areas will need to be updated often. This requires the implementation of a well-planned website and content management strategy.
Another problem that medical services practitioners face online (as do all other businesses for that matter), is that your site has only around thirty seconds or less to provide visitors with what they are searching for 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 Medical Businesses In The Digital Economy
As well as facing a number of significant business and technology changes, there are also plenty of online opportunities available for businesses in the medical or health industry that are willing to evolve to meet digital demands and who can think outside the box about improving their online business marketing skills.
In this article, you will learn ways to attract more visitors and establish stronger online credibility for your health business.
As well as providing tips and information on ways to improve your business online, we also focus on the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress content management system (CMS) to power your medical or health-related website.
To learn more about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress content management system (CMS), see these articles:
- Learn How A Poorly Built Website Can Cost You Money And What To Do About It
- How To Grow Your Business With A WordPress Blog
Useful Tips For Improving Your Health Services Site
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 your site needs, what type of content you need, your layout and navigation, etc.
If you need any help with website planning, visit this page: The Website Planning Process - A Basic Primer For Non-Technical Business Owners
Improve Your Website Pages
Professional websites need some essential web pages. Let’s review these.
Products And Services
You need a page that lists your services and any products that you offer. Depending on which area you specialize in, this page can list services such as:
- Medicine & Surgery – e.g. ear, nose and throat, neurosurgery endocrinology, maxillofacial surgery, stroke, rheumatology, urology, optometry emergency surgery, etc.
- Dental Services – e.g. cosmetic dentistry, children’s dentistry, oral hygiene, veneers, crowns and bridges, dentofacial orthopedics, emergency dental, etc.
- Cardiology – e.g. cardiac patient rehabilitation, chronic heart conditions
- Prenatal and Postnatal – e.g. birthing, midwifery, etc.
- Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
- Diagnostic – breast screens, skin cancer, hearing, pap smears, MRI scanning, food allergy testing, etc.
- Pathology services – laboratory testing and analysis, emergency pathology testing, clinical trials, speech pathology, etc
- Counselling services – mental health services, alcohol, tobacco & other drug counselling, couples, wellness coaching, social work services
- Alternative therapies – Chinese medicine, reflexology, functional medicine, shiatsu, chiropractic, hypnotherapy, etc.
- Other medical services/therapies – weight management, othopedics, reproductive endocrinology, occupational therapy, inherited diseases, prosthetics, assisted living, home care, community health, medical supplies, etc.
List all of the services you provide, not just the ones you specialize in. Educate your visitors about what these services do and why they should book an appointment with you.
About Us Page
The ‘About Us’ page needs to describe your business and explain to visitors what it stands for, its unique approach, causes supported, etc.
This page should also list any health or medical-related awards, accreditations, certifications, recognitions, publications, associations, etc., that could be used to promote your business and set yourself above your competitors.
(List all of your professional awards recognitions, accreditations, certifications, associations, publications, etc. in the About page. Screenshot image sourced from: squaremedical.com.au)
Meet Your Staff
Are you looking for cost-effective ideas to sell more products or services online? Then one of the things you can do, is help your visitors get to know, like and trust you, your team and 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 employees or team members. It should include a photo and a brief bio. Since most visitors won’t be that well-versed in medical terms your descriptions should tell who they are and what their specialties are. You may also want to explain what those specialized areas mean. This page can also include social buttons that will allow your site visitors to follow some of your staff members on their social networks.
In this page, make sure to highlight your staff member’s qualifications, how their skills and knowledge 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 employees or team members to prospective new clients. Image sourced from: southperthchiro.com.au)
We have created a detailed tutorial on how to add an easy-to-maintain list of staff or team members to your WordPress site without editing code here: Tutorial: How To Easily Add A Staff List Directory
Job Opportunities Page
List any career opportunities within your organization. This page could include training offered, employee benefits, opportunities for advancement, etc. You should also include stories of trainees who have risen within your organization and information about upcoming career opportunities in the health or medical-related industry.
Include also a positions available section in your page. If there are no positions currently available, consider inviting people to return periodically to the page, join your announcements list, follow your social pages, etc.
Case Studies & Testimonials
Testimonials and case studies are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase the services you offer. Adding a page with case studies and client reviews also establishes social proof online.
(Add a web page with case studies and reviews from clients. Screenshot source: arrowsmiledental.com)
We have written extensively about using testimonials and client reviews improve your business online here: Achieve Better Results Online Using Effective Testimonials
Contact Us Page
Having a functional contact page is absolutely necessary.
Your contact page should include the following:
- Name Of Your Business
- Your address
- Phone
- Fax
- Contact email address
- Google Map
- Website address
- Contact form
- Contact name
- Links to social media pages
- Online chat feature
If your business operates from different locations you should make that clear when showing your address and contact info.
Consider also including links to an FAQ page, main pages, booking request, support area, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.
Add A Health Or Medical-Related-Related Blog
A blog is a powerful marketing tool for your business. Most blogging platforms typically include a content management system that allows you to promote your business using timely content such as the latest news, updates, useful articles, opinions and discussions, how-to videos, media presentations, etc.
If you already have an established site, then consider adding a WordPress-driven blog to create more exposure for your medical practice.
If you don’t have a website yet, or if your existing site is hard to keep updated or not delivering you the results you want, then WordPress can serve as both your business website and blog.
You may not have been told about this, but an expertly configured WordPress site can become an automated traffic system that can instantly begin delivering an ongoing stream of targeted traffic to your site, simply by adding content to your website on a regular basis.
(WordPress can automate your traffic generation)
For more info, see this article:
Legal Info Pages
It’s essential for medical professionals companies to have a compliant website. This is not only important for establishing trust and credibility with visitors, but also to ensure that you are not breaking any local, regional and federal laws or regulations wherever you provide services.
Adding the following legal pages to your site will help keep you out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Google), and other potential sources of threats and legal inconveniences:
- Contact Page
- Privacy Statement
- Terms And Conditions
- Website Disclaimer
- Affiliate Agreement
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- DMCA Notice
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Links Policy
- Health/Financial Disclaimers
- Refund Policy
- Video/Audio Terms
- and others
We have written a comprehensive article about adding legal pages to your website. For more details: Why You Need To Add Legal Pages To Your Website
Improving Your Web Content
In today’s globally competitive economy, the sooner you begin to engage in the practice of content marketing, the quicker you will begin to see results and differentiate yourself from other competitors.
Providing great content with tips and information will get your visitors to share your web pages online with others and come back for more content. Content marketing is a great way to inform and teach your visitors and prospects about using your products and services.
For example, if you provide weight loss services, then some of the areas you can cover in your web content include:
- Common medical conditions that can cause weight gain
- How to identify the bad habits that need to be corrected to ensure permanent weight loss
- Weight loss pills (common ones, side effects, long term results, do they work?)
- How to modify recipes for achieving healthier results (e.g. substituting sugars, fats, etc.)
- And many other content topics
You can also create a series of educational articles that will help your prospective clients understand your services, by explaining benefits, procedures, costs (including payment plans, insurance coverage, etc).
Include the keywords and terms in your content that readers would search for online.
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 teach exactly how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, save money creating useful content for your site visitors and grow your website using content marketing. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also 100% FREE!
Tips For Improving Visitor Experience
Improving website user experience (known as UX) will help to keep visitors coming back and using your site. This section will show you ways you can improve visitor engagement and user experience.
RSS Feeds
RSS feeds provide lots of benefits for your business.
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 having other businesses syndicate your content, include:
- All of your updates are kept in one place
- Doesn’t rely on email
- Can be shared
- Users can subscribe to your feed
- An RSS feed provides links back to your site
- Your feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
- There are a number of ways your readers can receive your content (e.g. users can read the content on their mobile device using different applications)
- It’s built into WordPress
There are also benefits to providing valuable information on your site from other sites, such as the fact that you don’t have to write, manage or update the content.
To find RSS feeds with useful content for your website, search online for relevant government departments and well-known industry bodies.
Below we have listed some examples of RSS feeds containing useful information that you could consider adding to a health or 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 RSS feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Breastfeeding, Healthy aging, 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 feeds from leading medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. Haematologica, ADA ClinicalDiabetes, BMJ Injury Prevention, BMJ Occupational and Environmental Medicine, BMJ Evidence-Based Mental Health, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
- National Institutes Of Health - Get 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. criminal investigations press releases, FDA drug shortages, recalls, 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. Victoria – http://www.health.vic.gov.au/rss/newsfeed.xml
- Centers For Disease Control And Prevention (www.cdc.gov) - Get various health-related feeds and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
- Medical News: You can search medical news RSS feeds in major news 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 RSS feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Lung Conditions, Arthritis, Cold & Flu, Pregnancy, Prevention & Wellness, Women’s Health, etc.)
- Medical News Today – MNT Medical News 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. Urology/Nephrology, Arthritis/Rheumatology, Pregnancy/Obstetrics, Menopause, Smoking/Quit Smoking, Women’s Health/Gynecology, Genetics, etc.)
You can also search online for general RSS feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific areas, e.g. “medicaid rss feeds”, “sleep disorders rss feeds”, “medical practice management rss feeds”, etc.
(Use RSS feeds to provide your visitors with a better UX.)
Checklists And Charts
Adding checklists and explanatory charts to your site is a great way to help increase visitor engagement and add value to your readers. Checklists and medical forms can provide useful step-by-step information and resources to perform necessary steps. Forms and checklists are great instructional tools.
You can provide checklists, charts and forms covering a range of areas such as:
- Booking appointments
- Checklists for post-surgery recovery
- Health checklists for specific conditions
- Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, maintenance program, cosmetic dentistry, etc.
- Weight loss and exercise program checklists and charts
- General charts & infographics (e.g. caloric level of different foods, sleep requirements at different stages of development, etc.)
Add Online Tools
Providing useful online tools, gadgets and applications on your site is a great way to increase visitor engagement and significantly add value to potential clients. Health-related calculators, for example, are useful tools for your website. Others would include things like diagnostic tools, or even recipes.
In part 2 of this detailed guide, we take a look at a several WordPress-based tools you can use in your website that can also help improve your search engine optimization, improve user engagement and generate more visitors to your business.
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