Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

Health and medical professionals face a number of challenges in today’s digital economy, especially in terms of growing a successful presence online.

Challenges Medical Professionals Face Online

Today, more than ever, businesses in the health sector must work harder than ever to remain competitive. Not only do you have to actively participate in the community your business serves, you must also develop and maintain an active presence online. This includes having an effective website and learning how to better market your services online.

In addition to spending dollars in offline marketing, businesses in the medical industry are now finding that increasingly larger amounts of their marketing budget will need to be assigned towards developing and maintaining a website that drives new prospective clients, engages users, outranks the competition in search engines and gives their business wider marketing reach online.

This means that your website not only has to look great, load fast, and 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 updated frequently. This requires having a well-planned website and content management strategy.

One other challenge that health-related organizations face (and all other businesses for that matter), is that your site has an average of thirty seconds or less to provide users with what they are searching for or they will leave the site.

“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 Web Economy

As well as facing many business and technology changes, there are also many online opportunities available for medical businesses that can evolve to meet digital economy demands and who can think progressively in terms of improving their online marketing skills.

This guide will help you uncover a number of ways to generate more business and see significant improvements in your online results.

As well as providing practical tips and information on cost-effective ways to improve your health business online, we also place special emphasis on the benefits and advantages of using WordPress to power your medical business website.

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

• Why A Poorly Designed Website Can Cost You Business And What To Do About It
• Everything You Need To Know About Growing Your Small Business Online Using A WordPress Site

How To Improve Your Medical Center Site

Let’s start by covering the basic stuff. In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve your health website and get better results. We show you what pages a medical website needs, what type of content works best for medical or health websites, ways to improve layout and navigation, etc.

If you need assistance or help planning your medical-related website, check out the article we have written here: Planning Your Business Website: A Money-Saving Guide For Business Owners

Improve Your Web Pages

All business websites need some essential web pages. Let’s go over the pages your  should have and how to set up your website for best results.

Services

You need to include a page that describes your products or services. Depending on which area you specialize in, your page can list services such as:

• Medicine & Surgery – e.g. ear, nose & throat, orthopedics blood disorders, reconstructive surgery, aged care, respiratory, bariatric surgery, optometry operating theaters, etc.
• Dental Services – e.g. general dentistry, holistic dentistry, oral hygiene, teeth whitening, dental implants, emergency dental, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. cardiac monitoring, coronary care
• Prenatal & Postnatal – e.g. obstetrics, maternity services, etc.
• Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic services – breast screens, lung screening, x-ray, gynaecology, MRI scanning, food allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology – laboratory testing and analysis, routine pathology testing, occupational and environmental testing, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling – mental health, alcohol, tobacco & other drug services, trauma counselling, diet and nutrition counselling, social work services
• Alternative treatments – acupuncture, aromatherapy, hydrotherapy, massage therapy, chiropractic services, hypnotherapy, etc.
• Other medical services/therapies – weight management, othopedics, lymphedema therapy, stomal therapy, inherited diseases, artificial limbs, mobility, home care, clinical information, medical supplies, etc.

Make sure to 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 what your business stands for, its unique approach, philanthropy, etc.

Remember to also list any health or medical-related awards, recognitions, accreditations, certifications, associations, publications, etc., that can be used to promote your services and set yourself above the competition.

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

Team

If you are looking for quicker and simpler ideas to sell more products online, then make it easier for prospects to get to know you, your team and your organization better.

People 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 brief bio. Since most visitors are probably not well-versed in health or medical terms it should tell who they are and what their specialties are. You may also want to explain what those specialized areas do. It should also include social buttons that will allow your visitors to follow individual team members on their social pages.

In this page, make sure to highlight each person’s experience, how they add value or contribute to the success of your team, and more importantly, how they can help add value to your clients’ business.

(Make sure to add a page that introduces your staff or team members to prospective new clients. Image sourced from: southperthchiro.com.au)

We have written a detailed tutorial about how to easily create and add a simple and easy-to-maintain list directory of employees or team members to WordPress with no coding skills required here: How To Easily Add A Staff Directory: Tutorial

Career Opportunities

List any career opportunities within your clinic. This page should include type of training provided, benefits, professional development, etc. You can include information about new career opportunities in the medical-related industry.

Include also a positions available section in this page. If there are no positions currently available, consider inviting people to return periodically to this page, join your newsletter, follow you on social media, etc.

Testimonials

Testimonials from previous clients and case studies are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase your services. By adding a page with case studies and testimonials from previous clients, you will also help to establish social proof.

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

To learn more about using case studies, testimonials and user reviews, refer to this article: Convert More Visitors Into Qualified Prospects With Highly Effective User Testimonials

Contact Us

A functional contact page is essential.

Your contact page should include the following information:

• Name
• Your address
• Phone
• Fax number
• Contact email address
• Google Map and directions
• Web address
• Contact form
• Request for more information – contact details
• Links to social media pages
• Chat/Skype (optional feature)

If you operate from different areas you want to make that clear when displaying the address and contact information.

Consider also including links pointing to commonly-asked questions page, useful pages, online booking form, support page, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.

Add A Medical Or Health-Related Blog Section

A blog is a powerful business marketing tool. Blogs typically include a content management system that allows you to easily promote your business by publishing content like news and announcements, updates, training articles, opinions and discussions, videos, infographics, etc.

If you already have an established medical or health website, then consider adding a WordPress blog to market your medical clinic.

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

Something not many businesses know about, is that an expertly configured WordPress site can turn your web presence into an automated traffic-generation machine that can help begin delivering targeted visitors to your website, simply by publishing new content on a consistent basis to your website.

(WordPress can automate your traffic generation)

Go here to learn more about this:

• Website Traffic Blueprint – Learn How To Automatically Drive More Website Traffic For Your Business Using WordPress

Legal Info Pages

Having a compliant website is essential. This is not only important for establishing trust and credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no laws or regulations are being contravened in whatever area or location you do business.

Adding some or all of the legal pages below to your site will help keep you out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Google), 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/Financial Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• and others

We have written a detailed article on adding legal pages to your site here: What You Need To Know About Adding Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

Tips On How To Improve The Content On Your Website

In today’s fiercely competitive digital economy, the sooner you start to engage in the practice of content marketing, the quicker you will begin to see results and differentiate yourself from competing businesses.

Providing great content with useful tips, advice and information will get your visitors sharing it with others and coming back for more content. Publishing content is the most effective way to educate your visitors and prospects about your business and services.

For example, if your business provides weight loss services, then some of the areas you could write content about include:

• What is fiber and how can it help you with weight loss?
• Tips for developing portion control habits (smaller plate, don’t put food on the table, more vegetables)
• Is hypnosis and effective weight loss treatment?
• How to incorporate an occasional fast food into a healthy diet plan
• Etc.

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

Remember to use the same keywords in your articles that your 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 teach exactly how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, save money creating useful content that will add value to your visitors and grow your business online using content. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also completely FREE!

Ways Of Improving User Experience

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

Syndicating Content - RSS Feeds

An RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed provides plenty of benefits for your business.

If you provide useful information, other businesses may want to syndicate your content to their visitors.

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

• All of your updates are kept in one place
• Content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Feeds can be shared
• Allows for subscribing
• An RSS feed provides a way for external links to point back to your content
• RSS feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
• There are multiple ways your readers can receive your content (e.g. view your content on their mobile device using different applications)
• 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.

To find RSS feeds with loads of useful content for your website, search online for health or medical-related government departments or respected industry bodies.

Below we have listed examples of useful RSS feeds you could consider adding to a health-related 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 specific feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Body image, Fitness and nutrition, Heart health and stroke, Mental health, Screening tests and vaccines, etc.) here: http://womenshealth.gov/news/rss/rss-feeds.html
• US National Libraries Of Medicine – For a list of feeds from well-known medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. BMJ Quality and Safety in Health Care, Neuroanatomy, Journal of Cell Biology, BMJ Archives of Disease, Transplantation – Most Popular Articles, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health (www.nih.gov) - Find various RSS feeds on health-related topics here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• FDA – Find FDA-related RSS feeds (e.g. consumer health information updates, food safety reports, pet health, vaccines, blood and biologics, 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. NSW – http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/pages/rss.aspx
• Centers For Disease Control And Prevention - Get many RSS feeds on health-related news and 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. Research: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Research.xml)
• MedicineNet – MedTerms Medical Word of the Day: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/dailyword.xml. You can also select individual feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Alzheimer’s Disease, Asthma, Cholesterol, Oral Health, Eyesight, Heart, etc.)
• Medical News Today – Medical News 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. Abortion, Stroke, Lymphology/Lymphedema, Regulatory Affairs/Drug Approvals, Food Intolerance, Dyslexia, Clinical Trials/Drug Trials, 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. “multiple sclerosis rss feeds”, “dyslexia rss feeds”, “erectile dysfunction rss feeds”, etc.

(RSS feeds can help to improve your website’s user experience.)

Checklists And Charts

Adding checklists and medical forms to your site is a great way to help increase user engagement and add value to your readers. They can give them useful instructions and resources to perform necessary tasks. Checklists and forms can also be great educational tools.

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

• Checklists and forms for booking appointments
• Checklists for post-surgery recovery
• Health checklists and charts for specific medical 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, the importance of sleep at different ages, etc.)

Adding Online Tools

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

In the next section of this guide, we will look at a number of online tools you can use in your site using WordPress plugins that can also help improve your seo, increase user engagement and generate more web traffic to your business.

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This is the end of section one.

Click here to continue:

• Your Medical Services & Health-Related Website – WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Better User Engagement And Generating More Traffic

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