Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

The digital economy has not only revolutionized businesses globally, it has also created an increasing number of challenges and great opportunities for the medical industry.

Online Challenges For Medical Businesses

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

In addition to investing money in offline marketing activities like advertising on newspapers, ads in industry publications and magazines, radio and television spots, etc., businesses in the medical-related industry are also finding that increasingly larger amounts of their marketing budget will need to be allocated to develop and manage a website that will drive new leads, engage users, outperform 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, your web pages have to be fast-loading, and your website has to be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that the needs of your website may change over time and sections may need to be frequently updated. This requires the implementation of a sound website and content management strategy.

One other problem that health services professionals (and most professions) face online, is that you have around thirty seconds to provide visitors with 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 The Medical Profession In The Web Economy

As well as facing many new challenges, there are also many online opportunities available for health or medical-related businesses that are willing to adapt to meet the demands of the online economy and can think strategically about marketing their business better online.

This article will help you uncover new ways to attract and engage new visitors and create significant improvements in your online results.

As well as providing useful website improvement tips, we also recommend that you consider using the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) to power your health business website.

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

• Discover How A Poorly Constructed Web Site Can Cost You Money
• How To Grow Your Small Business Using WordPress

Tips To Improve Your Health & Medical Clinic Services Site

This section looks at how to improve your website and get better results online. We will look at what pages you need, what type of content you need, suggestions for improving navigation structure, etc.

If you need website planning assistance, go here: The Website Planning Process Explained: A Cost-Saving Primer For Business Owners

Essential Website Pages

Professional business websites require several essential pages. Let’s discuss the pages your  should have and how to set up your website for best results.

Your Products And Services

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

• Medicine & Surgery – e.g. acute pain management, nephrology diabetes, oral surgery, incontinence, respiratory, infection control, eye diseases palliative care, etc.
• Dental Services – e.g. preventive dentistry, children’s dentistry, oral hygiene, restorations, dental braces, emergency dental services, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. cardiac monitoring, chronic heart conditions
• Prenatal & Neonatal – e.g. birthing, midwifery, etc.
• Child Health services – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic – mammography, lung screening, medical imaging, women’s health, psychosis, food allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology – laboratory testing and analysis, emergency pathology testing, insurance and corporate testing, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling – mental health, alcohol, tobacco & other drug services, domestic abuse, diet and nutrition counselling, social work services
• Alternative treatments – Chinese medicine, aromatherapy, natural therapy, tai chi, osteopathy, hypnotherapy, etc.
• Other medical services/therapies – weight management, chiropody, reproductive endocrinology, optical services, inherited diseases, artificial limbs, mobility, home care, community health, medical supplies, etc.

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 direct them to your contact or appointment booking page.

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, causes that you support, etc.

It should list any business awards, accreditations, certifications, recognitions, associations, publications, etc., that could be used to promote your practice and set yourself above your competitors.

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

Staff

Are you looking for quicker and easier ideas to sell more products or services online? Then one of the things you can do, is help your prospects get to know your organization better.

Prospects need to relate to your business. A 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 are probably not familiar with health or medical-related terms it should tell who they are and what they specialize in. You may also want to explain what those specialized areas do. It should also include social buttons so your prospective clients can follow your staff members on their social pages.

In this page, make sure to highlight 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.

(Add a page that introduces your team to prospective new clients. Screenshot image sourced from: southperthchiro.com.au)

To learn more about how to easily create and add an easy-to-update simple team members directory in your site without touching code, refer to this step-by-step tutorial: How To Create A Simple Staff Directory In Your WordPress Site With No Coding Skills Required

Job Opportunities

This is a listing of career opportunities within the company. This page can include training offered, employee benefits, professional development, etc. You can also include case studies of graduates who have worked their way up in your business and information such as the job outlook and new career opportunities in the health or 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, subscribe to your newsletter, follow your social pages, etc.

Testimonials

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

(Add a page with client reviews and case studies. Screenshot image sourced from: arrowsmiledental.com)

If you want to learn more about using client testimonials and user reviews, refer to this article: All You Need To Know To Achieve Better Results Online Using Compelling Testimonials

Contact Us Page

A contact page is absolutely vital.

It should provide the following information:

• Name
• Physical location
• Telephone
• Fax
• Email
• Google Map and directions
• Website address
• Contact form
• Request for information – contact details
• Social media URLs
• Live chat

If you operate out of different locations you will want to make this clear when displaying your address and contact information.

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

Add A Health-Related Blog

A blog is a powerful marketing tool for your business. Blogs are built around a content management system that is easy to use and allows you to easily promote your business by publishing timely content like news and events, new releases, educational articles, opinions and discussions, educational videos, media presentations, etc.

If you already have an health or medical-related site, then consider adding a WordPress-powered blog to create more exposure for your clinic.

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

Very few businesses know that WordPress can turn your web presence into an automated traffic-generation machine that will help attract targeted traffic to your business, simply by publishing content on a regular basis to your website.

(An expertly configured WordPress site can drive new visitors automatically to your site)

For more details:

• WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Discover How To Create An Automated Web Traffic-Getting Machine With WordPress

Legal Pages

It’s extremely important for health and medical services practitioners businesses to make sure they have a compliant website. This is not only important for building trust and credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no local, regional and federal laws or regulations are being breached 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 legal threats and inconveniences:

• Contact Us
• Privacy Statement
• 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.

Go here for a detailed article about adding legal pages to your site: What You Need To Know About Adding Legal Pages To Your Website

Ways To Improve The Content On Your Website

In today’s globally competitive economy, the sooner you begin to publish content on your site, the faster you will begin to differentiate yourself from the competition.

Providing great content with useful advice, information and tips will get your readers to share your web pages with others and come back for more content. Content marketing is a great way to inform and teach your visitors and prospective clients about your services.

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

• Overweight vs. Obese – what are the differences?
• What calories really are and how understanding them aids in weight loss
• Weight loss pills (common ones, side effects, long term results, do they work?)
• What processed foods can sabotage your diet (and healthier choices)
• And many other content topics

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

Use keywords in your articles that readers will 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 that will show exactly how to drive more traffic to your site, save money creating high-quality content that will add value to your visitors and grow your presence online using content marketing strategies. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also 100% FREE!

Tips For Improving Visitor Engagement And User Experience

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

Adding RSS Feeds

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

If you provide content that adds value to others, other sites will want to syndicate your content.

Some of the benefits of syndicating your content to other websites using RSS feeds, include:

• All of your updates are kept in one place
• your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• RSS feeds can be shared online
• Allows for subscribing
• A feed provides a way for external links to point back to your content
• Your feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregators
• RSS provides various ways for your readers to receive your content (e.g. users can view the content on their mobile device using different applications)
• It’s built into WordPress

There are also a number of benefits to adding syndicated content to your website 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 health-related government departments or respected industry bodies.

For example, here are some examples of feeds you could add to your website:

• 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 specific RSS feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Breast cancer, Health care for women, Illnesses and disabilities, Mental health, Smoking and how to quit, etc.) here: http://womenshealth.gov/news/rss/rss-feeds.html
• US National Libraries Of Medicine – For a list of feeds from various medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. BMJ Disease in Childhood – Education and Practice, CDC Emerging Infectious Diseases Journal, BMJ Medical Humanities, BMJ Tobacco Control, Neuropsychopharmacology, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health (www.nih.gov) - Find various health-related RSS feeds here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• US Food And Drug Administration (FDA) – Get RSS feeds on fda-related news and topics like enforcement reports, food safety, product recalls, animal and veterinary news, etc. and podcasts here: http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/ContactFDA/StayInformed/RSSFeeds
• UK Department Of Health (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 many health-related news 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. Research: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Research.xml)
• MedicineNet – Weekly Health and Medical News Digest: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/weeklyhealth.xml. You can also select individual feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Alzheimer’s Disease, Asthma, Chronic Pain, Pregnancy, Prevention & Wellness, Sleep, etc.)
• Medical News Today – MNT Featured Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
• Medical News Today – You can also select specific feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Colorectal Cancer, Immune System/Vaccines, Melanoma/Skin Cancer, Hearing/Deafness, Food Intolerance, GastroIntestinal/Gastroenterology, Ear, Nose and Throat, 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. “bacteria rss feeds”, “fitness rss feeds”, “wearable technology rss feeds”, etc.

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

Checklists And Forms

Adding checklists and charts to your site is a fantastic way to help increase user engagement and add value to your audience. They can provide users with useful step-by-step instructions and resources to get necessary steps completed. They are also great client educational tools.

Checklists, charts and medical forms could address subjects such as:

• Booking appointments
• Checklists for post-surgery recovery
• Health checklists and charts for specific systems
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, 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 ages, etc.)

Adding Unique Tools

Providing unique online tools, gadgets and applications on your site is a great way to increase visitor engagement and significantly add value to potential clients. Calculators, for example are some of the most popular tools for your website. Other tools can include things like diagnostic tools, and even recipes.

In part two of this guide, we look at a several WordPress plugins you can add to your website that can also help improve your search engine optimization, improve user engagement and drive more traffic to your business.

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This is the end of part 1.

Click here to view Part Two:

• Grow Your Health & Medical Center Services Website – Improving Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation Using WordPress Plugins

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