Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress
Health professionals today are facing an ever increasing number of new challenges created by the digital economy.
Online Challenges For Medical Services Practitioners
Now, more than ever, medical services professionals must work harder and find smarter ways to remain competitive and generate new clientele. Not only do you have to participate in the community you serve, you must also maintain a strong presence online. This includes having an effective web presence and figuring out smarter ways to grow your practice online.
In addition to spending money in offline marketing, you will probably find that in order to compete, increasingly larger amounts of their marketing budget will need to be assigned towards developing and maintaining a website that brings in prospective clients, engages users, outranks the competition in search engines and helps you gain wider reach online.
This means that your site not only has to look great, your web pages have to load fast, and your website layout has to be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, your site’s needs will change over time and sections may need to be updated often. This requires implementing well-developed website and content management strategy.
One other problem that health or medical-related businesses (and other businesses) face, is that your site has around thirty seconds or less to provide visitors what they need or they will go away.
“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 Health Profession In The Digital Economy
As well as facing many new business and technology changes, there are also plenty of online opportunities available for health or medical businesses that are willing to adapt to meet online challenges and who can think strategically when it comes to marketing their business services better online.
This comprehensive guide will help you uncover new opportunities to generate traffic and build more online credibility for your medical or health business.
As well as providing general website improvement tips, we also recommend that you consider using the WordPress Content Management System to power your health or medical-related website.
For more information about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress Content Management System, see these articles:
- How A Poorly Designed Website Can Lose You Prospective Customers And What To Do About It
- Everything You Need To Know To Grow Your Small Business With A WordPress Site
How To Improve Your Medical Services Website
In this section we will start with the basics and show you how to improve your medical or health website and get better results. We show you what pages your website needs, what type of content works best for health or medical websites, layout and navigation structure, etc.
If you need website planning assistance, check out the detailed guide we have written here: Planning Your Website - A Money-Saving Primer For Non-Technical Business Owners
Basic Website Pages
All business websites need some basic web pages. Let’s go over these.
Your Services
It’s essential to include a page that lists your products or services. Depending on which area you specialize in, this page could list services like:
- Medical And Surgical – e.g. anaesthetics, neurosurgery haematology, oncology, rehabilitation medicine, rheumatology, infection control, optometry day surgery, etc.
- Dental Services – e.g. cosmetic dentistry, holistic dentistry, cleaning services, teeth whitening, orthodontics, emergency dentistry services, etc.
- Cardiology – e.g. heart monitoring, coronary care
- Prenatal and Postnatal – e.g. birth suites, midwifery, etc.
- Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
- Diagnostic services – mammography, skin cancer, medical imaging, gynaecology, magnetic resonance imaging, allergy testing, etc.
- Pathology – laboratory testing and analysis, emergency pathology testing, food and water testing, speech pathology, etc
- Counselling services – mental health services, alcohol, tobacco & other drug services, domestic abuse, wellness coaching, social development services
- Alternative treatments – Chinese medicine, aromatherapy, natural therapy, yoga, osteopathy, hypnosis, etc.
- Other medical services/therapies – weight management, chiropody, reproductive endocrinology, speech language therapy, inherited diseases, prosthetics, assisted living, home care, clinical information, medical supplies, etc.
Make sure to list all of the services you provide. Provide your visitors with information that will educate them about what your services do and why they should book an appointment.
About Us Page
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 also mention any awards, certifications, recognitions, accreditations, publications, associations, etc., that can be used to promote your medical services and to position yourself above your competitors.
(List all of your awards accreditations, recognitions, certifications, associations, publications, etc. in your About page. Screenshot image source: squaremedical.com.au)
Your Staff Page
Are you looking for inexpensive ideas to sell more products online and increase user interaction on your site? Then something you can do, is make it easier for your prospective clients to get to know you, your team and your business better.
You want prospective clients to relate to your business. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your staff or team members. This page should include a photo and a brief biography. Since most visitors won’t be familiar with medical or health terms your bio descriptions should tell who they are and what they specialize in. You may also want to explain what those specialized areas do. It can include social buttons that will allow your visitors to follow individual staff members on their social networks.
In this page, make sure to highlight each employee’s experience, why they are an asset to 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 members to prospective new clients. Screenshot image sourced from: southperthchiro.com.au)
We have written a detailed tutorial on how to create and add an easy-to-manage list directory of staff or team members in WordPress with no coding skills required here: How To Easily Create A Simple Staff List In Your WordPress Site With No Coding Skills Required
We’re Hiring
This is a listing of career opportunities available within the business. This page could include training provided, benefits, advancement opportunities, etc. You should also include stories of recruits who have risen within your organization and information about career opportunities in the health industry.
Maintain 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 newsletter, follow your social pages, etc.
Testimonials And Case Studies
Client reviews and case studies are a great way to attract potential clients and showcase your services. Adding a page with case studies and reviews from clients also helps your health website to provide social proof online.
(Add a page to your site with case studies and client reviews. Screenshot source: arrowsmiledental.com)
We have created a comprehensive article about using testimonials, case studies and client reviews improve your business online. Go here to learn more about this: Discover How To Turn More Visitors Into Qualified Prospects With Captivating Testimonials
Contact Us Page
A functional contact page is absolutely vital.
It should provide visitors with some or all of the following information:
- Name
- Location of premises
- Telephone
- Fax
- Map
- Web URL
- Contact form
- Request for information – who to contact
- Links to social media networks
- Live chat (optional feature)
If your business services several locations you will want to make this clear when showing the address and contact info.
Consider also including links to an FAQ page, main pages, booking request, helpdesk, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.
Add A Blog Section
A blog can be a powerful business marketing tool. Blogs typically include a content management system that allows you to promote your business using content such as news and events, new releases, educational information, informative posts, promotional videos, infographics, etc.
If you already have an established site, then consider adding a WordPress blog to create more exposure for your medical clinic.
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 become both your business website and blog.
You may not have been told about this, but an expertly configured WordPress site can turn into an automated traffic machine that will help attract targeted traffic to your site, simply by adding regular content to your website.
(WordPress can generate new visitors automatically to your website)
Go here to learn more about this:
Legal Info Pages
It’s essential to make sure they have a website that complies will all legal requirements online. This is not only important for building trust and credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no local, regional and federal laws and regulations are being broken wherever you practice.
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 legal threats or inconveniences:
- Contact Us
- Privacy Policy
- Terms And Conditions Of Use
- Website Disclaimer
- Affiliate Agreement
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- DMCA Notice
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Linking Policy
- Health and Financial Disclaimers
- Refund Policy
- Video/Audio Terms
- and others
We have written a detailed article about adding legal pages to your site. If you would like to learn more here: What You Need To Know About Adding Legal Pages To Your Site
Tips On How To Improve Your Content
In today’s highly competitive online economy, the sooner you start publishing good content on your site, the faster you will begin to see results and differentiate yourself from other competitors.
Provide great content with information, tips or advice that will get your readers sharing your information with others and coming back for more content. Publishing content is the most effective way to inform and teach your visitors and prospective clients about your services.
For example, if you provide weight loss services, then some of the topics you could write content about include:
- Being overweight vs. being obese – what are the differences?
- How to set realistic, but challenging weight loss goals
- How you eat your food - just as important as what you eat (eat at table, chew slowly)
- How to make smarter choices choices when eating out at any restaurant
- And endless 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.
Use keywords and terms in your content that your prospective clients would search for online.
We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive a comprehensive series of training emails with easy-to-digest information and practical tips that will teach you how to drive more traffic to your site, save money creating useful content for your site 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 To Improve Visitor Engagement And User Experience
Improving website user experience (generally referred to as UX) helps to keep visitors coming back and using your site. This section will show you different ways to improve visitor engagement and UX.
Syndicating Content With RSS Feeds
RSS feeds can help to improve your visitor engagement and user experience in a number of different ways.
If you provide information that adds value to others, other businesses may want to syndicate your content.
Some of the benefits of having other businesses syndicate your content, include:
- All of your content updates are kept in one place
- your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
- Feeds can be shared online
- Users can subscribe to your RSS feed
- An RSS feed provides a way for links to point back to your content
- Your feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
- There are various ways your readers can receive your content (e.g. subscribers can view the 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 site from other sites, such as the fact that you don’t have to write, manage or update the content.
You can find RSS feeds with loads of useful content by searching online for health-related government departments or key industry bodies.
Below we have listed examples of feeds you could add to a health-related site:
- US Department Of Health And Human Services – e.g. Latest news feed: http://www.hhs.gov/rss/news/hhsnews.xml, etc. You can also choose specific RSS feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Body image, Environmental health, Illnesses and disabilities, Mental health, Pregnancy, etc.) here: http://womenshealth.gov/news/rss/rss-feeds.html
- US National Libraries Of Medicine – For a list of RSS feeds from leading medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. BMJ Journal of Medical Ethics, BMJ Heart, American Cancer Society, Radiology, The New England Journal of Medicine, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
- National Institutes Of Health - Find various RSS feeds on health-related news here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
- FDA – Get feeds on fda-related topics like enforcement reports, food safety reports, product recalls, cosmetics, etc. and podcasts here: http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/ContactFDA/StayInformed/RSSFeeds
- Department of Health UK (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. NSW – http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/pages/rss.aspx
- Centers For Disease Control And Prevention - Find various feeds on health-related topics and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
- Medical News Feeds: You can search medical news feeds by going to publications like the NYTimes feeds section (e.g. Fitness and 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 specific RSS feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Lung Conditions, Arthritis, Cold & Flu, Diet & Weight Management, Prevention & Wellness, Travel Health, etc.)
- Medical News Today – Medical News Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
- MedicalNewsToday.com – You can also choose individual feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. MRSA/Drug Resistance, Headache/Migraine, Fibromyalgia, Dermatology, Endocrinology, Women’s Health/Gynecology, Psychology/Psychiatry, etc.)
You can also search online for general feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific subjects, e.g. “lung cancer rss feeds”, “body aches rss feeds”, “oncology rss feeds”, etc.
(Use RSS feeds to improve your site’s UX.)
Add Checklists
Checklists and charts are a fantastic way to help increase visitor engagement and add value to your audience. Charts and checklists can give them step-by-step instructions and resources to complete steps. They are great instructional tools.
You can provide online or downloadable forms, charts and checklists covering a range of areas such as:
- Checklists and forms for booking appointments
- Checklists for pre or post treatment
- Health checklists and charts for specific medical conditions
- Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, oral hygiene program, cosmetic dentistry, etc.
- Weight loss and exercise program checklists
- General charts & infographics (e.g. acidity level of different foods, sleep requirements at different ages, etc.)
Online Tools
Providing unique tools and applications on your website can help increase visitor engagement and add significant value to your visitors. Calculators, for example are useful tools to add to your website. Other tools could include things like nutritional tools, or even recipes.
In the next section of this detailed guide, we look at a several WordPress-based tools you can add to your site that can also help to improve your search engine optimization, increase user engagement and generate more web traffic to your business.
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