Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

Medical or Health professionals today face many challenges brought about by the digital economy.

Online Challenges For Health & Medical Businesses

Now, more than ever, medical and health services practitioners must work harder to remain competitive and find new clientele. Not only do you have to participate in the community you serve, you must also develop and maintain an active presence online. This includes having an effective website and learning how to better market your practice online.

In addition to spending money advertising offline on local newspapers, ads in industry publications and magazines, radio and television, etc., you will probably find that in order to compete with other health or medical businesses, increasingly larger amounts of their budget will need to be directed towards the development and management of a website that will attract new prospective clients, engage visitors, outrank the competition in search engines and social media, and help to increase your presence online.

This means that your site not only has to look great, load fast, and be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that your site’s needs will change over time and sections will need to be updated frequently. This requires the implementation of a well-developed website and content management strategy.

One other difficult challenge that medical or health businesses (and other professions) face with their websites, is that your site has around thirty seconds or less to give visitors the information 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 Medical Businesses In The Web Economy

As well as facing a number of significant business and technology changes, there are also loads of online opportunities available for businesses in the health industry that are willing to evolve to meet the demands of the online economy and think outside the box in terms of marketing their business better online.

In this detailed guide, you will learn ways to attract new visitors and see noticeable improvements in your online results.

As well as providing useful website improvement tips, we also emphasize the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress content management system to power your medical or health website or blog.

For more information about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform, see the articles below:

• Discover How A Poorly Built Web Site Can Lose You Business
• Mastering WordPress – A Business Owner’s Guide

Useful Tips For Improving Your Website

Let’s start by reviewing some basic stuff. In this section, we’ll look at how to improve your health or medical website and get better results online. We will look at what web pages you need, what content works best, layout and navigation structure, etc.

If you need website planning assistance, go here: A Practical Guide To Web Site Planning For Business Owners

Essential Pages

All business websites need a number of basic pages. Let’s take a look at these.

Products And Services

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

• Medicine & Surgery – e.g. ear, nose & throat, nephrology endocrinology, cancer, geriatric medicine, rheumatology, weight loss surgery, ophtalmology emergency surgery, etc.
• Dental Services – e.g. preventive dentistry, holistic dentistry, oral hygiene, restorations, implants, emergency dental, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. cardiac patient education, coronary care
• Prenatal/Postnatal – e.g. birth suites, midwifery, etc.
• Child Health services – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic services – mammography, lung screening, hearing, gynaecology, MRI scanning, food allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology – laboratory testing and analysis, emergency pathology testing, insurance and corporate testing, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling services – mental health, alcohol, tobacco & other drug services, marriage counselling, wellbeing, social development services
• Alternative treatments – Chinese medicine, aromatherapy, reiki, tai chi, chiropractic services, hypnotherapy, etc.
• Other medical services – weight management, chiropody, reproductive services, speech therapy, inherited diseases, prosthetics, mobility, home and community care, community health, medical equipment, 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 book an appointment.

About Us Page

This page needs to describe your business and what it stands for, its unique approach, community activities, etc.

It’s important to also include any awards, certifications, accreditations, recognitions, publications, associations, etc., that you can use to promote your services and to set yourself above your competitors.

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

Meet Our Team

Are you searching for quicker, easier and cheaper ideas to sell more products or services online? Then help prospective clients get to know you and your business better.

You want prospects to relate to your business. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your employees or team members. This page should include a photo and a brief bio. Since most visitors won’t be very well-versed in health or medical-related terms your descriptions should tell who they are and what their specialties are. You may also want to explain what those specialized areas do. It should include social buttons so your visitors can follow individual staff members on their social pages.

On this page, don’t be afraid to humanize your team members with personal stories, hobbies, etc., but make sure to outline each person’s qualifications, why they are an asset to your team, and more importantly, how they can help add value to your clients’ business.

(Add a page that introduces your team to prospective new clients. Screenshot image source: southperthchiro.com.au)

We have written a detailed tutorial on how to easily add a simple and easy-to-update list of staff members to your website here: How To Easily Add A Simple Employee Directory On Your WordPress Site Without Editing Code

Career Opportunities

This is a listing of job opportunities within the practice. It would include training offered, employee benefits, advancement opportunities, etc. You should also include information such as the job outlook and career opportunities in the health industry.

Include also 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 & Testimonials

Case studies and reviews from clients are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase your services. Adding a web page with testimonials from past clients and case studies also helps your medical business to provide social proof online.

(Add a page to your site with case studies and testimonials from past clients. Screenshot image source: arrowsmiledental.com)

We have written extensively about using testimonials, case studies and reviews to improve your business results online. To learn more about this go here: How To Achieve Better Results Online With Profit-Boosting Testimonials

Contact Page

Having a clean contact page is vitally important.

Your contact page should include the following:

• Name
• Location
• Telephone number
• Facsimile number
• Email address
• Map and directions
• Website address
• Contact form
• Request for more information – who to contact
• Links to social media profiles
• Chat (optional)

If your business services several locations you will want to make that clear when displaying the address and contact info.

You should also include links pointing to the most commonly asked questions page, frequently-visited pages, booking request, support area, newsletter, blog, etc.

Add A Blog Section

A blog is a very powerful marketing tool. Many blogging platforms typically include a content management system that allows you to promote your business by publishing timely content such as news, updates, training information, opinions on current topics, videos, webinars, etc.

If you already have an existing website, then consider adding a WordPress-powered blog to promote your medical company.

If you don’t have a website yet, or if your existing site is hard to manage or not giving you the results you want, then WordPress can become both your business website and business blog.

Not many businesses know this, but an expertly configured WordPress site can turn into an automated traffic machine that will deliver targeted traffic to your website, simply by adding content on a regular basis to your website.

(WordPress can automate your traffic generation)

If you would like to know more here:

• Web Site Traffic Blueprint – How To Create A Traffic Generation Machine

Legal Pages

Having a compliant website is crucial. This is not only important for building trust and credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no local, regional and federal laws or regulations are being breached wherever you practice.

Depending on what services you provide, adding the following legal pages to your site will help you stay out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers, and other potential sources of threats and legal inconveniences:

• Contact Us
• Privacy Statement
• Terms 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

If you want to learn more about adding legal pages to your site, see this article: Adding Legal Pages To Your Site

Improving Your Web Content

In today’s globally competitive economy, having a sound content marketing strategy has become one of the key differentiators for businesses that sell similar products or provide similar services.

Provide great content with information, tips or advice that will get your visitors sharing it with others and coming back for more content. Content marketing is the most effective way to inform and educate your visitors and prospects about using your services.

For example, if your business provides products or services that help people manage their weight, then some of the areas you can write about include the following:

• Potential health issues caused by being overweight
• Weight loss surgery – benefits vs risks (who should get it, risks, success rates)
• Why using a measuring tape is better than a scale when it comes to weight loss progress
• A guide to making the right choices when eating in restaurants
• Etc.

You can also create a series of educational articles that will help your your readers understand your health or medical-related services, by explaining benefits, procedures, terminology, etc.

Use the same keywords and terms in your content that readers will be searching for online.

We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive regular training emails with easy-to-digest information and practical tips that will show you how to drive more traffic to your web site, save money creating high-quality content for your site visitors and grow your website using content marketing. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also 100% FREE!

Improve Visitor Engagement And User Experience

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

Syndicate Content With RSS Feeds

Adding RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve visitor engagement and user experience in several ways.

If you provide useful information, other sites will want to syndicate your content.

Some of the benefits of having other businesses syndicate your content, include:

• All of your updates are kept in one place
• your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• RSS feeds can be shared online
• Feeds allow users to subscribe
• It provides links back to your site
• Your feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
• There are a number of ways your readers can receive your content (e.g. view 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 sites, 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 health or medical-related government departments or key industry bodies.

For example, here are some examples of feeds you could add to a health or medical website:

• US Department Of Health And Human Services – e.g. Blog posts feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SelectedHhsBlogPosts, etc. You can also select specific RSS feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Breastfeeding, Fitness and nutrition, HIV/AIDS, Minority women’s health, 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 leading medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. BioMed Central, ADA ClinicalDiabetes, Journal of Cell Biology, Medscape, Infectious Agents and Cancer, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health - Get various RSS feeds on health-related news here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• US Food And Drug Administration (FDA) – Get FDA-related feeds (e.g. consumer health information, FDA drug shortages, product recalls, radiological health, 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 (www.cdc.gov) - Find various health-related feeds and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
• Medical News: 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.com – MedTerms Medical Word of the Day: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/dailyword.xml. You can also select specific RSS feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Medications, Cancer, Migraine Headaches, Diabetes, Eyesight, Thyroid, etc.)
• Medical News Today – MNT Featured Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
• MedicalNewsToday.com – You can also select specific RSS feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Gout, Ebola, Depression, Pancreatic Cancer, Back Pain, Pediatrics/Children’s Health, MRI/PET/Ultrasound, 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. “avian flu rss feeds”, “sleep disorders rss feeds”, “drug trials rss feeds”, etc.

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

Checklists & Charts

Checklists and medical forms are a great way to help increase visitor engagement, add value to your audience and set yourself apart from the competition. They can provide users with useful step-by-step information and resources to complete a task. They are great instructional tools.

You can provide forms, charts and checklists covering a range of areas such as:

• Checklists/forms for booking appointments
• Checklists for post-surgery recovery
• Health checklists and charts for specific medical conditions
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, oral maintenance program, general dentistry, etc.
• Fitness and nutrition program checklists and charts
• General charts & infographics (e.g. acidity level of different foods, the importance of sleep at different stages of development, etc.)

Unique Tools

Providing unique tools, gadgets and applications on your site can help increase visitor engagement and add value to your potential clients. Calculators are useful tools for your website. Other tools would include things like diagnostic tools, and even recipes.

In the next section, we will look at a number of online tools you can use in your site using WordPress plugins and themes that can improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.

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This is the end of section one.

Click on this link to keep reading:

• Your Medical Center Services Website – WordPress Plugins And Themes That Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Site

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