Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

The digital age has not only transformed business worldwide, it has also created difficult challenges and great opportunities for businesses offering health or medical-related services.

Online Challenges For Health Practitioners

Now, more than ever, businesses in the medical and health industry must work harder than ever to remain competitive. Not only do you have to participate in the community your business serves, you must also develop and maintain a strong digital presence. This includes having an effective website and learning better ways to promote your practice online.

In addition to spending money in offline marketing activities, businesses in the medical industry are now also finding that increasingly larger amounts of their marketing budget will need to be delegated towards developing and maintaining a website that will drive new prospective clients, engage users, outperform the competition in search engines and help give their business wider marketing exposure online.

This means that your site not only has to look professional, your pages have to be fast-loading, and your website layout has to be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, your site’s needs will change over time and sections will need to be frequently updated. This requires a well-planned website and content management strategy.

Another problem that medical or health organizations face online, as most businesses do for that matter, is that they have an average of 30 seconds or less to help users find what they are searching for 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 Health And Medical Services Providers In The Online Economy

As well as facing many challenges, there are also many online opportunities available to medical or health-related businesses that can evolve to meet digital demands and who can think outside the box when it comes to marketing themselves better online.

The guide below will help you uncover new ways to generate more traffic and create noticeable improvements in your online results.

As well as providing tips and information on cost-effective 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 business website or blog.

To learn more about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress content management system (CMS), see the articles below:

• Learn How A Poorly Designed Website Can Lose You Business
• Everything You Need To Know About Growing A Successful Business With WordPress

Ways To Improve Your Website

In this section we’ll start with the basics and show you ways to improve your website and get better results online. We show you what pages a health-related website needs, what content you need, tips for improving your layout and navigation structure, etc.

If you need any help with website planning, see this article we have written: Planning Your Small Business Web Site - A Comprehensive Primer For Non-Technical Business Owners

Your Web Pages

Professional business websites need several basic web pages. Let’s take a look at these.

Your Products And Services

You need a page that explains your products and services. Depending on which area of health or medical services you specialize in, this page can list services such as:

• Medical And Surgical – e.g. pain management, pulmonology haematology, reconstructive surgery, continence management, respiratory, colon/rectal surgery, optometry operating theaters, etc.
• Dental Services – e.g. general dentistry, children’s dentistry, oral hygiene, restorations, dental implants, emergency dental, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. cardiac patient education, coronary care
• Prenatal/Neonatal – e.g. birth suites, maternity services, etc.
• Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic services – breast screens, skin cancer, oral health, gynaecology, psychosis, allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology services – 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, diet and nutrition counselling, social development services
• Alternative therapies – acupuncture, aromatherapy, functional medicine, yoga, chiropractic, hypnosis, etc.
• Other medical services – weight management, sports medicine, lymphedema therapy, optical services, neurosciences, prosthetics, mobility, home care, sexual health, medical transport, etc.

List all of the services you provide. Educate your visitors about what these services do and direct them to your contact or appointment booking page.

Who We Are

This page should give a description of your business and explain to visitors what it stands for, its unique approach, causes that you support, etc.

Remember to also mention any awards, certifications, accreditations, recognitions, publications, associations, etc., that could be used to promote your services and set yourself above your competitors.

(List all of your awards certifications, recognitions, accreditations, associations, publications, etc. in your About Us page. Image source: squaremedical.com.au)

Meet The Team

Are you looking for inexpensive ways to sell more products or services online or get prospective clients to engage more on your site? Then something you can do, is make it easier for prospective clients to get to know you and your organization better.

You want your business to be relatable. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your team members. It should include a photo and a brief bio. Since most visitors won’t be that well-versed in health-related terms your descriptions should tell who they are and what they specialize in. It should also explain what those specialized areas do. It should include social buttons that will allow your site visitors to follow some of your team members on their social networks.

On this page, make sure to outline your staff member’s experience, how they add value to your team, and more importantly, how they will help add value to your clients’ business.

(Add an employee page. Screenshot image sourced from: southperthchiro.com.au)

To learn more about how to easily add an easy-to-maintain directory of employees in your website using free plugins, see this tutorial: How To Add A Simple Employee Directory To Your WordPress Site With No Coding Skills

Work For Us

This is a listing of career opportunities available within the business. This page would include training, benefits, professional development, social activities sponsored or encouraged by your organization, etc. You should also include case studies of graduates who have risen within your business and information about new career opportunities in the 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 the page, subscribe to your announcements list, follow your social pages, etc.

Testimonials & Case Studies

Testimonials from past clients and case studies are a great way to attract potential clients and showcase the services you offer. Adding a page with reviews from clients and case studies also establishes social proof online.

(Add a web page with case studies and reviews from clients. Image source: arrowsmiledental.com)

We have written extensively on using case studies, testimonials and client reviews to grow your business online. Go here to learn more: Improve Your Visitor-To-Lead Conversions Using Captivating Customer Testimonials

Contact Us Page

A contact page is vitally important.

Your contact page should include some or all of the following information about your clinic:

• Name
• Address
• Telephone
• Fax
• Email
• Google Map
• Web URL
• Contact form
• Contact name
• Links to social media networks
• Online chat feature (optional feature)

If your business operates in different areas you want to make that clear when displaying your address and contact information.

Consider also including links to an FAQ section, main pages, booking form, support page, newsletter, blog, etc.

Add A Health Blog Section

A blog is a powerful marketing tool for your business. Most blogging platforms are built around a content management system that is easy to use and allows you to easily promote your business by publishing timely content such as the latest announcements, updates, educational information, opinions and discussions, educational videos, webinars, etc.

If you already have an established health or medical site, then consider adding a WordPress blog to create more exposure for your medical company.

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 serve both as your website and your blog.

You are probably not aware of this, but WordPress can turn your web presence into an automated traffic system that will begin attracting an ongoing stream of targeted traffic to your site, simply by adding regular content to your site.

(WordPress can automate your traffic generation)

Go here to learn more about this:

• Web Traffic Blueprint – A Complete Guide To Growing Your Traffic Automatically Using WordPress

Legal Information

It’s very important for health professionals businesses to ensure they have a compliant website. This is not only important for establishing credibility with visitors, but also to ensure that no laws and regulations are being broken wherever your business is located.

Adding the following legal pages to your medical or health-related site will help you stay out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Google), and other potential sources of legal threats and inconveniences:

• Contact Page
• Privacy Policy
• 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

Go here for a detailed article about adding legal pages to your website: How To Add Legal Pages To Your Website

How To Improve Your Content

In today’s globally competitive economy, the sooner you begin engaging in the practice of content marketing, the quicker you will begin to differentiate yourself from other competing businesses.

Provide great content with useful information, advice and tips that will get your readers to share your web pages and come back for more content. Using content is a great way to inform and teach site visitors and prospective clients about using your products and services.

For example, if you provide services that help people manage their weight, then some of the topics you could cover in your content include:

• Potential health issues caused by being overweight
• How to ask for support for your weight loss efforts (friends, family, weight loss seekers)
• How to incorporate exercise into your busy schedule
• Smartphone apps for tracking calories and exercise
• Etc.

You can also create a series of educational articles that will help your your prospective clients gain a better understanding of your health or medical-related services, by explaining benefits, procedures, costs (including payment plans, insurance coverage, etc).

Remember to use specific keywords and terms in your articles that your prospective clients would search for.

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 website, save money creating high-quality content for your visitors and grow your website using content marketing strategies. 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 website’s user experience (generally referred to as UX) helps to keep visitors coming back and using your site. This section will show you ways you can improve your visitor engagement and user experience.

Use RSS Feeds

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds provide many benefits for your website.

If you provide information that adds value to others, other sites 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 content updates are in one place
• Doesn’t rely on email
• RSS feeds can be shared
• Users can subscribe to your feed
• An RSS feed provides links back to your content
• RSS 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 a feed reader)
• It’s 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.

You can find RSS feeds with useful content by visiting sites of relevant government departments or respected industry bodies.

Below we have listed some examples of RSS feeds you could consider adding to your website:

• US Department Of Health And Human Services – e.g. Blog RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SelectedHhsBlogPosts, etc. You can search by departments and choose specific feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Breast cancer, Health care for women, Illnesses and disabilities, Minority women’s health, Violence against women, 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. AHA Journals (American Heart Association Journals), Epidemiology – Featured Articles, The Journal of Immunology, Occupational Medicine, Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health - Get various health-related news feeds here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• FDA – Find FDA-related RSS feeds (e.g. enforcement reports, food safety, pet health, 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 - Get many feeds on health-related news and topics and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
• Medical News Feeds: You can search medical news feeds in major news publications like the NYTimes feeds section (e.g. Medical research: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Research.xml)
• MedicineNet.com – Weekly Health and Medical News Digest: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/weeklyhealth.xml. You can also choose individual feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Alzheimer’s Disease, Asthma, Cold & Flu, Pregnancy, Exercise & Fitness, 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, Seniors/Aging, Blood/Hematology, Neurology/Neuroscience, Rehabilitation/Physical Therapy, Cosmetic Medicine/Plastic Surgery, Ear, Nose and Throat, etc.)

You can also just search online for general feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific topics, e.g. “complementary medicine rss feeds”, “fitness rss feeds”, “fitness rss feeds”, etc.

(RSS feeds can help to improve your health or medical-related site’s UX.)

Checklists And Charts

Adding checklists and educational charts to your site is a great way to increase visitor engagement and add value to your readers. Charts and checklists can give them useful instructions and resources to get necessary tasks completed. They are also great client instructional tools.

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

• Checklists/forms for booking appointments
• Checklists for pre or post surgery
• Health checklists and charts for specific systems
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, caries prevention program, cosmetic dentistry, etc.
• Weight loss and exercise program checklists
• General charts & infographics (e.g. sugar content in different foods, sleep requirements at different stages of development, etc.)

Adding Unique Tools

Providing useful online tools and applications on your site is a great way to increase visitor engagement and significantly add value to your visitors. Health-related calculators, for example, are useful tools to add to your website. Others can include things like diagnostic tools, and even recipes.

In part two, we discuss a number of WordPress-based tools you can add to your medical or health-related website that can improve search engine optimization, improve user engagement and generate more visitors to your business.

***

This is the end of section 1 of this step-by-step guide on ways to improve your health or medical business web presence.

To continue reading, click here:

• The Ultimate Guide On How To Grow Your Medical And Health Practice Web Presence – Part 2

***

***