Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress
Medical & Health professionals face many challenges in today’s web economy, especially when it comes to growing a successful presence online.
Challenges Medical Professionals Face Online
Today, more than ever, medical professionals must find smarter ways to remain competitive and source new clientele. Not only do you have to actively participate in the community you serve, you must also develop and maintain a strong presence online. This includes having a dynamic website and learning how to better promote your medical services online.
In addition to investing dollars in offline marketing activities, businesses in the health or medical industry are now also finding that increasingly larger amounts of their budget will need to be directed towards developing and maintaining a website that brings in clients, engages users, outperforms the competition in search engines and helps increase their marketing reach online.
This means that your website not only has to look professional, your pages have to be fast-loading, and your website has to be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, the needs of your website may change over time and some aspects will need to be updated frequently. This requires implementing well-developed web and content management strategy.
One other difficult challenge that medical providers face with their websites, and other businesses for that matter, is that they have only around 30 seconds to help users find the information they are looking for or they will go elsewhere to get their needs met.
“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
Online Opportunities For Medical And Health Services Practitioners
As well as facing a number of significant business and technology changes, there are also loads of online opportunities available to businesses in the medical or health-related industry that can evolve to meet the demands of the digital economy and who can think strategically about improving their online business marketing skills.
In this comprehensive guide, you will learn new opportunities to generate more clients and establish online credibility for your business.
As well as providing practical tips and information on ways to improve your health-related website, we also recommend that you consider using the WordPress platform to power your medical website.
To learn more about the benefits and advantages of using WordPress, see these articles:
Tips To Improve Your Website
This section looks at ways to improve your website and get better results. We will look at what web pages you need, what content works best for medical or health-related websites, tips for improving layout and navigation, etc.
If you need website planning assistance, go here: Planning A Website - A Money-Saving Guide For Business Owners
Essential Website Pages
All business websites need some essential web pages. Let’s review these.
Services
It’s essential to have a page that explains your services or products. Depending on which area of health you specialize in, this page can include services like:
- Medicine & Surgery – e.g. ear, nose and throat, pulmonology endocrinology, oncology, neurology, rheumatology, colon/rectal surgery, eye diseases surgical outpatients, etc.
- Dentistry – e.g. preventive dentistry, holistic dentistry, oral hygiene, veneers, crowns and bridges, dental braces, emergency dentistry, etc.
- Cardiology – e.g. cardiac monitoring, chronic heart conditions
- Prenatal/Postnatal – e.g. obstetrics, midwifery, etc.
- Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
- Diagnostic services – breast screens, skin cancer, hearing, pap smears, magnetic resonance imaging, food allergy testing, etc.
- Pathology services – laboratory testing and analysis, routine pathology testing, food and water testing, speech pathology, etc
- Counselling – mental health, alcohol, tobacco & other drug services, trauma counselling, diet and nutrition counselling, social development services
- Alternative treatments – acupuncture, reflexology, colloidal silver therapy, meditation, osteopathy, hypnotherapy, etc.
- Other medical services – diet and nutrition, podiatry, reproductive services, optical services, medical genetics, prosthetics, sleep therapy, home and community care, clinical information, medical equipment, etc.
List all of the services you provide. Provide your visitors with information that will educate them about what your services do and direct them to your appointment booking page.
About Us
This page needs to describe your business and explain to visitors what it stands for, its unique approach, philanthropy, etc.
This page should also include any medical or health-related awards, certifications, recognitions, accreditations, publications, associations, etc., that you can use to promote your practice and to position yourself above your competitors.
(List all of your awards certifications, accreditations, recognitions, publications, associations, etc. in the About page. Image source: squaremedical.com.au)
Staff Page
Are you looking for cost-effective ideas to sell more products online? Then something you can do, is help prospective clients get to know, like and trust you, your team and your business better.
Potential clients need to relate to your business. One great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your team members. This page should include a photo and a mini bio. Since most visitors are probably not well-versed in health terms it should tell who they are and what their specialties are. You may also want to explain what those specialized areas do. This page can also include social buttons that will allow your prospective clients to follow your team members on their social networks.
In this page, don’t be afraid to humanize your people with personal stories, hobbies, etc., but make sure to outline each employee’s expertise, how their skills add value to your team, and more importantly, how they can help add value to your clients’ business.
(Add a page that introduces your staff or team members to prospective new clients. Screenshot source: southperthchiro.com.au)
If you need help how to create and add an easy-to-update list of staff members to your site using free WordPress plugins, go here: Plugin Tutorial: How To Easily Add An Employee Directory To WordPress
Work For Us
List any job or career opportunities within the company. It should include training, benefits, opportunities for advancement, etc. You can also include information such as the job outlook and additional career opportunities in the health-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, join your newsletter, follow you on social media, etc.
Case Studies And Testimonials
Case studies and reviews from clients are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase the services you offer. By adding a page with testimonials from previous clients and case studies, you will also help to establish social proof online.
(Add a page to your site with case studies and client reviews. Screenshot image sourced from: arrowsmiledental.com)
If you would like to learn more about using testimonials and user reviews improve your business online, go here: Learn How To Achieve Better Results Online Using Compelling Testimonials
Contact Us
Having a contact page is crucial.
Your contact page should provide:
- Name Of Your Business
- Physical address
- Phone number
- Fax number
- Contact email address
- Google Map and directions
- Web address
- Contact form
- Request for more information – contact details
- Social media links
- Interactive chat
If your business operates from multiple areas you will want to make that clear when displaying the address and contact info.
Consider also including links to an FAQ page, useful pages, booking request, support page, newsletter, blog, etc.
Add A Health Blog Section
A blog can be a very powerful marketing tool. Blogs typically include a content management system that is easy to use and allows you to easily promote your business using content like events, product releases, training articles and tutorials, opinions and discussions, promotional videos, infographics, etc.
If you already have an existing website, then consider adding a WordPress-powered blog to market your medical organization.
If you don’t have a website yet, or if your existing site is very hard to add new content to or not giving you the results you want, then WordPress can become both your website and business blog.
Very few people know that WordPress can turn your web presence into an automated traffic-generation machine that can begin driving new visitors to your site, simply by adding regular content to your website.
(WordPress can generate web traffic automatically to your site)
Go here to learn more about this:
Legal Pages
Having a website that complies will all legal requirements online is crucially important. This is not only important for building trust and credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that you are not contravening any laws or regulations wherever you provide services.
Adding the legal pages below to your health-related website will help keep you out of legal hot water with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers, and other potential sources of legal threats and inconveniences:
- Contact Page
- Privacy Policy
- Terms Of Use
- Website Disclaimer
- Affiliate Agreement
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- DMCA Notice
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Linking Policy
- Health Disclaimers
- Refund Policy
- Video/Audio Terms
- and others
If you want to learn more about adding legal pages to your website, see this article: The Importance Of Adding Legal Pages To Your Site
Tips For Improving Your Content
In today’s highly competitive digital economy, being generous with information has become one of the key success factors for businesses.
Providing great content with useful information, tips or advice will get your readers sharing your web pages with others and coming back for more. Using content is the most effective way to inform and teach site 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:
- What’s the difference between being overweight and obese?
- What are calories and how they play a role in weight loss
- Is using a measuring tape better than a scale when it comes to weight loss progress?
- How to avoid late night snacking (e.g. sleep earlier)
- And endless other content topics
You can also create a series of informative articles that will help your your readers gain a better understanding of your medical or health services, by explaining benefits, procedures, terminology, etc.
Use keywords in your content that your readers will search to find you online.
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 you how to drive more traffic to your website, save money creating useful content for 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!
Improving Visitor Engagement And User Experience
Improving your website’s user experience (known as UX) will help to keep visitors coming back and using your site. This section will show you different ways to improve your visitor engagement and user experience.
Content Syndication – RSS Feeds
An RSS feed provides lots of benefits for your health or medical business.
If you provide content that adds value to others, other sites will want to syndicate your content.
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
- Feeds can be shared and picked up by other sites online
- Users can subscribe to your feed
- It provides links back to your content
- Your feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
- There are various ways your readers can receive your content (e.g. subscribers can read your content on their mobile device using feed readers)
- It’s built into WordPress
There are also a number of benefits when it comes to providing great information on 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 useful content for your website, search online for relevant government departments or respected industry bodies.
For example, here are some examples of feeds you could consider adding to a health or medical 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 select individual RSS feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Body image, Healthy aging, Illnesses and disabilities, Menopause, Violence against women, etc.) here: http://womenshealth.gov/news/rss/rss-feeds.html
- US National Libraries Of Medicine – For a directory of RSS feeds from well-known medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. Dermatology Times, Neuroanatomy, Neurology India, Current Psychiatry, BMJ Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
- National Institutes Of Health (www.nih.gov) - Get many RSS feeds on health-related news and topics here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
- FDA – Find FDA-related news feeds (e.g. consumer health information updates, health fraud, tainted products, cosmetics, 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. NSW – http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/pages/rss.aspx
- Centers For Disease Control And Prevention (www.cdc.gov) - Find many health-related RSS feeds and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
- Medical News Feeds: You can search medical news RSS feeds by going to publications like the NYTimes RSS feeds section (e.g. Medical research: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Research.xml)
- MedicineNet.com – Daily Health and Medical News: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/dailyhealth.xml. You can also choose specific feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Alzheimer’s Disease, Menopause, Migraine Headaches, Pregnancy, Eyesight, Women’s Health, etc.)
- Medical News Today – Featured Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
- MedicalNewsToday.com – You can also select individual RSS feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Colorectal Cancer, Seniors/Aging, Blood/Hematology, Regulatory Affairs/Drug Approvals, CJD/vCJD/Mad Cow Disease, Dyslexia, Obesity/Weight Loss/Fitness, etc.)
You can also just search online for general RSS feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific topics, e.g. “depression rss feeds”, “drug approvals rss feeds”, “genetics rss feeds”, etc.
(Add RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds to improve your medical-related website’s UX.)
Adding Online Checklists & Charts
Adding checklists and educational charts to your site is a fantastic way to help increase visitor engagement, add value to your readers and set yourself apart from the competition. They can provide visitors with useful step-by-step information and resources to perform a necessary task. They are great client instructional tools.
Checklists, charts and medical forms can include areas such as:
- Checklists and forms for booking appointments
- Checklists for post-surgery recovery
- Health checklists for specific medical conditions
- Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, oral maintenance program, general dentistry, etc.
- Fitness and exercise program checklists
- General charts & infographics (e.g. caloric level of different foods, the importance of sleep at different ages, etc.)
Adding Other Tools
Providing unique online tools and applications on your website can help increase visitor engagement and add significant value to potential clients. Calculators are great tools to add to your website. Other applications could include things like nutritional tools, and even recipes.
In the next section of this guide, we discuss a number of online tools you can add to your website using WordPress plugins and themes that improve seo, increase user engagement and generate more web traffic to your business.
***
This is the end of part one.
To view the rest of this guide, click this link:
***
***
"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