Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress
The digital business age has not only transformed business around the world, it has also created a number of challenges and opportunities for businesses in the medical or health-related sector.
Challenges Health Services Professionals Face Online
Today, more than ever, businesses in the medical industry must work harder than ever to remain competitive. Not only do you have to become more involved in the community your business serves, you must also develop an active digital presence. This includes having a website and learning how to better market your services online.
In addition to investing money advertising offline on local newspapers, ads in industry publications and magazines, radio and tv, etc., you will probably find that in order to compete, you will need to allocate a larger portion of your budget towards the development and management of a website that attracts new clients, engages users, outperforms the competition in search engines and helps to give your business wider marketing reach online.
This means that your site not only has to look professional, your pages have to be fast-loading, and your site has to be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that your site’s needs may change over time and sections will need to be frequently updated. This requires a well-planned website and content management strategy.
One other challenge that health-related businesses face with their websites, and other professions for that matter, is that they have only about thirty seconds or less to give 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 Medical Services Professionals In The Digital Economy
As well as facing a number of business and technology changes, there are also many online opportunities available for businesses in the health-related industry that are willing to evolve to meet digital demands and can think strategically when it comes to improving their online marketing skills.
In this detailed guide, you will learn new opportunities to attract new visitors and establish stronger online credibility for your business.
As well as providing useful website improvement tips, we also recommend that you consider using WordPress to power your health website or blog.
To learn more about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform, see these articles:
- Why A Poorly Designed Web Site Can Lose You Business
- WordPress For Business Owners – A Beginner’s Guide To Growing Your Successful Business With WordPress
Useful Tips To Improve Your Medical & Health Clinic Site
Let’s start by reviewing the basic information you need. In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve your website and get better results. We will look at what web pages you need, what type of content you need, your navigation structure, etc.
If you need specific help with website planning, read this article: A Money-Saving Guide To Web Site Planning For Business Owners
Improving Your Website Pages
All websites require some basic web pages. Let’s discuss the pages your need to have and how to set up your website for best results.
Services Description Page
You need to include a page that describes your services and any products that you offer. Depending on which area of health you specialize in, this page can list services such as:
- Medical And Surgical – e.g. ear, nose & throat, orthopedics hematology, cancer, stroke, respiratory, bariatric surgery, optometry palliative care, etc.
- Dentistry – e.g. general dentistry, holistic dentistry, oral hygiene, teeth whitening, orthodontics, emergency dentistry, etc.
- Cardiology – e.g. cardiac surgery, chronic heart conditions
- Prenatal and Postnatal – e.g. birthing, midwifery, etc.
- Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
- Diagnostic services – mammography, lung screening, hearing, gynaecology, MRI scanning, allergy testing, etc.
- Pathology – laboratory testing and analysis, emergency pathology testing, fine-needle aspiration biopsy, speech pathology, etc
- Counselling services – mental health, alcohol, tobacco & other drug counselling, domestic abuse, wellness coaching, social work services
- Alternative therapies – Chinese medicine, aromatherapy, colloidal silver therapy, massage therapy, osteopathy, hypnosis, etc.
- Other medical services – weight management, chiropody, reproductive endocrinology, speech language therapy, neurosciences, artificial limbs, mobility, home care, community health, medical transport, etc.
List all of the services you provide. Provide your visitors with information that will educate them about the benefits of using your services and why they should choose you.
About Us Page
This page should give a description of your business and what your business stands for, its unique approach, philanthropical donations, etc.
Remember to mention any health-related awards, recognitions, certifications, accreditations, associations, publications, etc., that can be used to promote your medical services and to position yourself above other competitors.
(List all of your awards accreditations, certifications, recognitions, associations, publications, etc. in your About Us page. Image source: squaremedical.com.au)
Meet Your Staff
If you are searching for quicker, easier and cost-effective ways to sell more products or services online and get people to stay longer on your site, then make it easier for 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 team members. It should include a photo and a brief bio. Since most visitors are probably not well-versed in medical-related terms it should tell who they are and what they specialize in. It should also explain what those specialties mean. This page should also include social buttons so your prospective clients can follow your staff members on their social networks.
On this page, don’t be afraid to humanize your people with personal stories, hobbies, etc., but make sure to highlight your person’s expertise, why they are an asset to your team, and more importantly, how they will help add value to your clients’ business.
(Add an employee page. Screenshot image source: southperthchiro.com.au)
If you need help how to easily add a simple team members directory to your site without using code, go here: Adding An Employee List Directory: Plugin Tutorial
Job Opportunities
List any career opportunities available within your clinic. This page should include training provided, employee benefits, advancement opportunities, social activities promoted or sponsored by your business, etc. You can include information about new career opportunities in the medical-related industry.
Also include a positions available section in your page. If there are no positions currently available, consider inviting people to return periodically to this page, subscribe to your newsletter, follow you on social media, etc.
Testimonials
Reviews from clients and case studies are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase the services you offer. Adding a web page with case studies and client reviews also helps your health or medical business to establish social proof.
(Add a page to your site with case studies and testimonials from previous clients. Image source: arrowsmiledental.com)
We have written extensively on using case studies, testimonials and reviews get better results online. Go here to learn more about this: How To Improve Your Visitor-To-Sales Conversions With Sales Boosting Customer Testimonials
Contact Us Page
Having a contact page is essential.
It should provide some or all of the following information:
- Name
- Address
- Phone
- Facsimile
- Contact email address
- Google Map
- Website address
- Contact form
- Request for more information – who to contact
- Links to social media networks
- Interactive chat feature (optional feature)
If your business operates from different areas you will want to make that clear when displaying the address and contact info.
You should also include links to an FAQ section, frequently-visited pages, online booking request, support page, newsletter, blog, etc.
Add A Blog
A blog is a powerful marketing tool. Most blogging platforms typically comprise of a content management system that is simple to use and allows you to easily promote your business using timely content such as events, updates, training articles and tutorials, informative posts, educational videos, infographics, etc.
If you already have an existing health or medical-related website, then consider adding a WordPress-powered blog to promote your business.
If you don’t have a website yet, or if your existing site is very hard to keep updated or not giving you the results you want, then WordPress can act as both your website and blog.
Not many people know this, but an expertly configured WordPress site can turn your web presence into an automated traffic-generation system that will help begin to drive web traffic to your site, simply by publishing new content on a consistent basis to your website.
(An expertly configured WordPress site can automate your traffic generation)
Go here to learn more:
Legal Information
Having a website that complies will all legal requirements online is important. This is not only important for building trust with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no laws and regulations are being contravened wherever you practice.
Depending on what services you provide, adding the following legal pages to your site will help you stay out of legal hot water with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers, and other potential sources of threats and legal 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 and Financial Disclaimers
- Refund Policy
- Video/Audio Terms
- etc.
We have written a detailed article on adding legal pages to your site here: The Importance Of Adding Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site
Improving The Content On Your Website
In today’s fiercely competitive digital economy, the sooner you start publishing content on your site, the quicker you will begin to see results and differentiate yourself from other competitors.
You will want to provide great content with useful tips, information and advice that will get your readers sharing it with others and coming back for more content. Content marketing is a great way to inform and teach site visitors and prospective clients about using your services.
For example, if your business provides solutions that help people lose weight, then some of the areas you can write about include the following:
- Common medical conditions that can cause weight gain
- How to get support for your weight loss efforts (friends, family, weight loss seekers)
- Tips for developing an exercise plan you can enjoy and will stick with
- How to incorporate an occasional fast food into a healthier diet plan
- Etc.
You can also create a series of educational articles that will help your prospective clients gain a better understanding of your services, by explaining benefits, procedures, costs (including payment plans, insurance coverage, etc).
Use the same keywords and terms in your content 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 that will teach you how to drive more traffic to your site, save money creating useful content that will add value to 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!
Improve User Experience
Improving user experience (generally referred to as UX) will help you keep visitors coming back and using your site. This section will show you ways you can improve your visitor engagement and user experience.
RSS Feeds
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds provide lots of benefits for your business.
If you provide valuable information, other businesses may want to syndicate your content to their visitors.
Some of the benefits of having other businesses syndicate your content, include:
- All of your content updates are in one place
- your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
- Your feed can be shared and picked up by other sites online
- Users can subscribe to your RSS feed
- It provides links to your site
- Your feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
- There are various ways your readers can receive your content (e.g. view the content on their mobile device using different applications)
- RSS is built into WordPress
There are also benefits when it comes 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.
You can find many useful RSS feeds for your website by searching online for health-related government departments or industry bodies.
Below we have listed some examples of useful RSS feeds you could consider adding to a health or medical-related 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 choose individual feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Body image, 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 list of feeds from well-known medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. ACS Publications, Epidemiology – Featured Articles, American Cancer Society, Indian Journal of Psychiatry, Neuropsychopharmacology, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
- National Institutes Of Health (www.nih.gov) - Find many health-related feeds here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
- US Food And Drug Administration (FDA) – Get feeds on fda-related news like consumer health information updates, FDA drug shortages, tainted products, 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. Victoria – http://www.health.vic.gov.au/rss/newsfeed.xml
- Centers For Disease Control And Prevention (www.cdc.gov) - Find many health-related feeds and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
- Medical News: You can search medical news RSS feeds in places like the NYTimes feeds section (e.g. Fitness & nutrition: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Nutrition.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. Allergies, Mental Health, Cold & Flu, Diet & Weight Management, Senior Health, Heart, etc.)
- Medical News Today – Medical News 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. Abortion, Immune System/Vaccines, Depression, Neurology/Neuroscience, Back Pain, Respiratory/Asthma, Tuberculosis, etc.)
You can also search online for general feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific topics, e.g. “cardiovascular rss feeds”, “gastroenterology rss feeds”, “erectile dysfunction rss feeds”, etc.
(RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve your website’s user experience.)
Add Checklists & Forms
Checklists and explanatory charts are a fantastic way to increase user engagement and add value to your readers. They can provide users with useful step-by-step information and resources to get necessary steps done. They are great client instructional tools.
You can provide a range of online or downloadable forms, charts and checklists covering areas such as:
- Checklists/forms for booking appointments
- Checklists for pre or post surgery
- Health checklists and charts for specific conditions
- Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, maintenance program, general 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.)
Online Tools
Providing useful tools and applications on your website is a great way to increase visitor engagement and significantly add value to potential clients. Calculators, for example are useful tools for your website. Other applications can include things like diagnostic tools, and even recipes.
In the next section of this guide, we take a look at a several WordPress-based tools you can add to your medical or health website that can help improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and generate more traffic to your business.
***
This is the end of part one of this step-by-step article on ways to build your health or medical-related business presence online.
To view Part Two, click here:
***
***
"I love the way your email series "Infinite Web Content Creation Training Series" is documented and presented. It is very absorbing and captivating. The links and tutorials are interesting and educational. This has motivated me to rewrite my content following the concepts I am learning from the email series." - Mani Raju, www.fortuneinewaste.com