Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

Medical professionals face many new challenges in the online economy, especially in terms of growing a presence online.

Online Challenges For The Health And Medical Profession

Today, more than ever, health or medical-related businesses must find smarter ways to remain competitive and find new clientele. Not only do you have to become actively involved in the community your business serves, you must also maintain a strong digital presence. This includes having an effective web presence and learning how to better market your business online.

In addition to investing money in offline marketing, businesses in the medical or health industry are now also finding that they need to assign a greater share of their marketing budget to develop and manage a website that can attract prospective clients, engage users, outperform the competition in search engines and social media, and help to give their business a wider amount of exposure online.

This means that your site not only has to look professional, your web pages have to be fast-loading, and your website layout has to be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that your site’s needs will change in time and sections may need to be updated often. This requires a sound web and content management strategy in place.

One other problem that health or medical-related organizations face with their websites, as all other professions do for that matter, is that your site has only around 30 seconds to give visitors the information they are searching for or they will leave your site and go elsewhere.

“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

As well as facing significant challenges, there are also many online opportunities available to businesses in the medical or health profession that are willing to evolve to meet digital economy demands and who can think progressively when it comes to improving their online business marketing skills.

In this article, you will learn about a number of ways to generate web traffic and improve your online results.

As well as providing practical tips and information on cost-effective ways to improve your web presence, we also place special emphasis on the benefits and advantages of using WordPress to power your medical website or blog.

To learn more about the benefits and advantages of using WordPress, see the articles below:

• How A Poorly Built Web Site Can Lose You Customers And What To Do About It
• Everything You Need To Know About Growing A Successful Business Online With A WordPress Site

Useful Tips For Improving Your Medical Services & Health-Related Site

In this section we’ll start with the basics and show you ways to improve your medical-related website and get better results. We will look at what web pages you need, what type of content works best for health-related websites, useful tips for improving layout and navigation, etc.

If you need help with website planning, read this article: A Money-Saving Guide To Web Site Planning For Business Owners

Essential Website Pages

Professional business websites require several essential pages. Let’s take a look at these.

Services

It’s essential to have a page that describes your services and products. Depending on which area of health or medical services you specialize in, this page can include services like:

• Medical And Surgical – e.g. pain management, nephrology hematology, maxillofacial surgery, stroke, renal, bariatric surgery, optometry day surgery, etc.
• Dental Services – e.g. general dentistry, children’s dentistry, gum disease, restorations, implants, emergency dentistry services, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. cardiac patient education, chronic heart conditions
• Prenatal & Postnatal – e.g. birth suites, midwifery, etc.
• Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic services – breast screening, lung screening, oral health, women’s health, magnetic resonance imaging, food allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology – laboratory testing and analysis, routine pathology testing, occupational and environmental testing, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling services – mental health services, alcohol, tobacco & other drug counselling, couples, wellness, social work services
• Alternative treatments – Chinese medicine, homeopathy, holistic medicine, shiatsu, chiropractic, hypnotherapy, etc.
• Other medical services – weight management, sports medicine, lymphedema therapy, stomal therapy, medical genetics, artificial limbs, assisted living, home care, community health, medical supplies, etc.

List all of the services you provide, not just the ones you specialize in. Provide your visitors with information that will educate them about the benefits of using these services and why they should book an appointment with you.

Who We Are

This page should give a description of your business and explain to visitors what it stands for, its unique approach, supported community activities, etc.

Remember to also mention any awards, accreditations, certifications, recognitions, publications, associations, etc., that could be used to promote your medical services and to position yourself above similar service providers.

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

Your Staff

If you are looking for quicker and easier ways to sell more products or services online, then help your prospective clients get to know, like and trust your business better.

Your business needs to be relatable. One 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 mini biography. Since most visitors won’t be familiar with health terms your descriptions should tell who they are and what they specialize in. You may also want to explain what those specialized areas do. It should include social buttons so your visitors can follow selected staff members on their social pages.

In this page, make sure to outline each employee’s qualifications, how they add value 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 team members to prospective new clients. Screenshot image sourced from: southperthchiro.com.au)

To learn more about how to easily create and add an easy-to-update simple staff directory in your WordPress site without touching code, refer to this tutorial: WordPress Plugin Tutorial: How To Add An Employee List Directory To Your Site

Job Opportunities Page

This is a listing of job opportunities within your company. This page can include training, benefits, professional development, social activities sponsored by your organization, etc. You can also include information such as the job outlook and career opportunities in the health and medical industry.

Maintain 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 your social pages, etc.

Testimonials

Case studies and reviews from clients are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase the services you offer. Adding a page with reviews from clients and case studies also helps to provide visitors social proof online.

(Add a page with case studies and testimonials. Image sourced from: arrowsmiledental.com)

If you would like to learn more about using testimonials and client reviews get better results online, go here: How To Convert More Visitors Into Prospects With Profit-Boosting Testimonials

Contact Page

A functional contact page is absolutely necessary.

Your contact page should provide:

• Name
• Address
• Telephone number
• Facsimile number
• Email
• Google Map and directions
• Web address
• Contact form
• Request for information – contact details
• Links to social media profiles
• Live chat (optional)

If your business operates from multiple areas you want to make that clear when showing the address and contact information.

You can also include links to an FAQ section, frequently-visited pages, online booking form, support page, newsletter, blog, etc.

Add A Health Or Medical Blog

A blog can be a powerful marketing tool for your business. Most blogging platforms typically include a content management system that allows you to promote your business using timely content such as announcements, new releases, training articles and tutorials, informative posts, videos, webinars, etc.

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

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 serve both as your website and your blog.

You probably don’t know this, but an expertly configured WordPress site can become an automated traffic-generation machine that will deliver new targeted traffic to your web site, simply by publishing regular content to your web site.

(An expertly configured WordPress site can generate new traffic automatically to your site)

Go here to learn more about this:

• Web Traffic Blueprint – How To Turn Your WordPress Web Site Into An Automated Web Traffic Machine

Legal Info Pages

Having a website that complies will all legal requirements online is extremely important. This is not only important for establishing credibility with visitors, but also to ensure that you are not breaking local, regional or federal laws or regulations wherever you practice.

Adding some or all of the legal pages below to your health or medical-related site will help you stay out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Google), and other potential legal threats or 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 and Financial Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• and others

We have written a comprehensive article on adding legal pages to your website. Go here to learn more about this: How To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

Ways To Improve The Content On Your Website

In today’s ultra-competitive online economy, the sooner you start to publish content on your site, the faster you will begin to see results and differentiate yourself from the competition.

Provide great content with tips or information that will get your readers to share your information and come back for more content. Publishing content is a great way to inform and educate your visitors and prospective clients about your services.

For example, if you provide services that help people manage their weight, then some of the areas you could write content about include:

• What’s the difference between being overweight and obese?
• What are calories and how understanding them helps in weight loss
• How to recover physically and emotionally after weight loss surgery – useful tips and suggestions
• Vitamins and minerals that help with weight loss (chromium, calcium, magnesium, etc.)
• Etc.

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

Use keywords and terminology in your articles that 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 easy-to-digest information and practical tips that will show exactly how to drive more traffic to your web site, save money creating useful content that will add value to your site visitors and grow your website using content. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also 100% FREE!

Improving User Experience

Improving user experience (known 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.

Content Syndication – RSS Feeds

RSS feeds provide lots of benefits for your site.

If you provide content 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 websites using RSS feeds, include:

• All of your updates are kept in one place
• your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Your feeds can be shared online
• Allows for subscribing
• A feed provides links back to your content
• Feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
• RSS provides various ways for readers to receive your content (e.g. read the content on their mobile device using a feed reader)
• RSS is 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 loads of useful content for your website, search online for medical or health-related government departments and respected industry bodies.

Here are a few useful RSS feeds you could consider adding to a medical or health site:

• US Department Of Health And Human Services – e.g. Blog feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SelectedHhsBlogPosts, etc. You can also choose specific feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Breastfeeding, Fitness and nutrition, Heart health and stroke, Mental health, Pregnancy, etc.) here: http://womenshealth.gov/news/rss/rss-feeds.html
• US National Libraries Of Medicine – For a list of feeds from various medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. Journal of Neurophysiology, The Psychiatrist, Stem Cells, Journal of Cell Science, Infectious Agents and Cancer, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health - Find many feeds on health-related news and topics here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• US Food And Drug Administration (FDA) – Get FDA-related news feeds (e.g. consumer health information updates, food safety, product recalls, vaccines, blood and biologics, etc.) and podcasts here: http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/ContactFDA/StayInformed/RSSFeeds
• UK Department Of Health (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) - Get various health-related news feeds and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
• Medical News: You can search medical news feeds in major news publications like the NYTimes RSS feeds section (e.g. Fitness and 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 select specific RSS feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Lung Conditions, Cancer, Cholesterol, Pregnancy, Eyesight, Infectious Disease, etc.)
• Medical News Today – Featured Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
• MedicalNewsToday.com – You can also select specific feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Gout, Fertility, Compliance, Neurology/Neuroscience, Primary Care/General Practice, Breast Cancer, Clinical Trials/Drug Trials, etc.)

You can also search online for general feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific topics, e.g. “health insurance rss feeds”, “dyslexia rss feeds”, “obesity rss feeds”, etc.

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

Checklists And Forms

Checklists and medical forms are a fantastic way to help increase visitor engagement, add value to your readers and provide something unique. Charts and checklists can provide users with useful step-by-step information and resources to perform a necessary task. They can also be great client instructional tools.

You can provide a range of online or downloadable checklists and forms covering topics such as:

• Checklists and forms for booking appointments
• Checklists for pre or post surgery
• Health checklists and charts for specific conditions
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, oral hygiene program, general dentistry, etc.
• Fitness and exercise program checklists and charts
• General charts & infographics (e.g. sugar content in different foods, sleep requirements at different stages of development, etc.)

Adding Other Tools

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

In part 2 of this guide, we take a look at a number of online tools you can use in your medical or health website using WordPress plugins that can also help to improve your search engine optimization, increase user engagement and generate more traffic to your business.

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This is the end of part one of this comprehensive article on ways to build your medical-related web presence.

Click here to access Part 2:

• The Step-By-Step Guide To Growing Your Medical Services And Health-Related Presence Online With WordPress – Part 2

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