Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

The web economy has not only revolutionized businesses around the world, it has also created a growing number of challenges and opportunities for the health or medical profession.

Online Challenges For The Medical And Health Profession

Now, more than ever, businesses in the medical industry must work harder than ever to remain competitive. Not only do you have to be fully involved in the community your business serves, you must also develop and maintain an active web presence. This includes having a dynamic website and searching for better ways to market your services online.

As well as investing dollars advertising offline on newspapers, ads in industry publications and magazines, radio and tv spots, etc., businesses in the medical-related industry are also finding that increasingly larger amounts of their marketing budget need to be assigned towards developing and managing a website that attracts new prospective clients, engages users, outranks the competition in search engines and social media, and increases their marketing exposure online.

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

One other difficult challenge that medical or health-related organizations face with their websites (as do other professions for that matter), is that they have only around thirty seconds to help users find what they need 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 Medical Businesses In The Online Economy

As well as facing significant business and technology changes, there are also plenty of online opportunities available for medical or health businesses that can evolve to meet the demands of the digital economy and who can think progressively when it comes to marketing their business better online.

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

As well as providing practical tips and information on ways to improve your business online, we also emphasize the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform to power your medical or health-related business website.

To learn more about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress Content Management System, see these articles:

• How A Poorly Built Website Can Lose You Business
• Everything You Need To Know About Growing A Successful Small Business Online With A WordPress Blog

Practical Tips For Improving Your Medical And Health Clinic Services Website

This section looks at how to improve your health website and get better results online. We show you what pages you need, what content works best for medical or health-related websites, ways of improving navigation structure, etc.

If you need additional information about website planning, visit this page: A Comprehensive Guide To Web Site Planning For Non-Technical Business Owners

Your Web Pages

All websites require a number of essential web pages. Let’s review these.

Services

You need to include a page that lists your products and services. Depending on which area you specialize in, this page could list services like:

• Medical And Surgical – e.g. ear, nose and throat, neurosurgery endocrinology, cosmetic surgery, stroke, renal, bariatric surgery, ophtalmology elective surgery, etc.
• Dentistry – e.g. preventive dentistry, children’s dentistry, oral hygiene, teeth whitening, braces, emergency dental services, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. cardiac surgery, chronic heart conditions
• Prenatal and Postnatal – e.g. obstetrics, maternity services, etc.
• Child Health services – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic services – breast screens, lung screening, radiology, pap smears, magnetic resonance imaging, food allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology – lab testing and analysis, emergency pathology testing, fine-needle aspiration, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling – mental health, alcohol, tobacco & other drug counselling, marriage counselling, wellbeing, social development services
• Alternative treatments – acupuncture, homeopathy, reiki, meditation, chiropractic, hypnosis, etc.
• Other medical services – weight management, podiatry, reproductive services, speech language therapy, inherited diseases, 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 why they should choose you.

About Us

This page needs to describe your business and what your business stands for, its unique approach, philanthropical programs, etc.

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

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

Your Staff

If you are looking for cost-effective ideas to grow your business online or get people to stay longer on your site, then one of the things you can do, is make it easier for prospective clients to get to know you, your team and your business better.

Potential clients need to relate to your business. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your staff or team members. It should include a photo and a brief bio. Since most visitors will not tend to be familiar with health or medical-related terms your descriptions should tell who they are and what they specialize in. You may also want to explain what those specialized areas mean. It should also include social buttons that will allow your site visitors to follow your staff members on their social networks.

In this page, make sure to highlight your employee’s qualifications, how their skills add value or contribute to the success of your team, and more importantly, how they can help add value to your clients’ business.

(Make sure to add a ‘meet the team’ page. Image source: southperthchiro.com.au)

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial about how to create and add an updatable simple team directory in your website using free plugins, go here: How To Create A Simple Employee List In Your WordPress Site With No Coding Skills

Job Opportunities Page

This is a listing of career opportunities within the organization. This page should include type of training provided, benefits, opportunities for advancement, social activities promoted by your business, etc. You should also include information such as the job outlook and upcoming career opportunities in the medical-related 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 updates list, follow your social pages, etc.

Case Studies & Testimonials

Case studies and testimonials from previous clients are a great way to attract potential clients and showcase your services. By adding a page with testimonials from previous clients and case studies, you will also help to establish social proof online.

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

We have written a detailed article on using testimonials, case studies and reviews to grow your business online. Go here to learn more about this: How To Improve Your Sales Conversions Using Sales Boosting Testimonials

Contact Page

Having a functional contact page is absolutely vital.

Your contact page should provide visitors with the following information about your clinic:

• Business Name
• Location of consulting practice
• Telephone
• Facsimile
• Contact email address
• Map and directions
• Website address
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Links to social media pages
• Online chat (optional)

If your business services multiple locations you should make this clear when displaying your address and contact information.

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

Add A Blog Section

A blog is a powerful business 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 content like events, updates, useful articles and tutorials, informative posts, videos, infographics, etc.

If you already have an existing site, then consider adding a WordPress-powered blog to create more exposure for your medical organization.

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

Something few people know about, is that an expertly configured WordPress site can turn into an automated traffic-generation system that can instantly begin attracting web traffic to your web site, simply by publishing regular content to your website.

(WordPress can generate traffic automatically to your site)

For more details:

• Web Traffic Blueprint – How To Grow Your Web Traffic For Your Business

Legal Information

As a professional medical or health services practitioner, ensuring that you have a compliant website is crucial. This is not only important for establishing credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no local, regional or federal laws or regulations are being broken wherever you practice.

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

• Contact Page
• Privacy Policy
• Terms And Conditions 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
• etc.

We have written a detailed article on adding legal pages to your site. To learn more, go here: The Importance Of Adding Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

Tips For Improving The Content On Your Site

In today’s highly competitive online business economy, the sooner you begin engaging in the practice of content marketing, the quicker you will begin to see results and differentiate yourself from other competitors.

By committing to providing great content with tips, advice or information, you will get your visitors sharing it with others and coming back for more content. This is the most effective way to inform and teach site visitors and prospects about using your services.

For example, if you provide weight management services, then some of the areas you can write about include the following:

• How does fiber help you with weight loss?
• How to calculate how many calories you burn each day
• Recovering after weight loss surgery – useful tips and recommendations
• How to avoid late night snacking (e.g. drink water with lemon)
• Etc.

You can also create a series of informative articles that will help your your prospective clients gain a better understanding of your services, by explaining benefits, procedures, terminology, etc.

Include keywords and terminology in your content that prospective clients will search for online.

We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive regular training emails with actionable information and practical tips that will show you how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, save money creating useful content that will add value to 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 completely FREE!

Ways To Improve User Experience

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

Syndicating Content With RSS Feeds

RSS feeds provide plenty of benefits for your business.

If you provide content that adds value to others, other businesses may want to syndicate your content.

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

• All of your updates are in one place
• Content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Feeds can be shared online
• Users can subscribe to your feed
• An RSS feed provides links back to your site
• Feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
• RSS provides a number of ways for readers to receive your content (e.g. subscribers can view your content on their mobile device using a feed reader)
• RSS is built into WordPress

There are also 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.

To find useful RSS feeds just search online for health or medical-related government departments and industry bodies.

For example, here are some examples of useful RSS feeds you could consider adding to your website:

• US Department Of Health And Human Services – e.g. Blog posts RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SelectedHhsBlogPosts, etc. You can search by departments and select specific feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Body image, Environmental health, HIV/AIDS, 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. BMJ Quality and Safety in Health Care, American Association of Neurological Surgeons, BMJ Injury Prevention, Radiology, BMJ Evidence-Based Mental Health, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health - Get many RSS feeds on health-related topics here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• US Food And Drug Administration (FDA) – Get RSS feeds on fda-related news like consumer health information, food safety reports, tainted products marked as dietary supplements, drugs, 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. NSW – http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/pages/rss.aspx
• Centers For Disease Control And Prevention (www.cdc.gov) - Get many feeds on health-related topics 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. Fitness and nutrition: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Nutrition.xml)
• MedicineNet – MedTerms Medical Word of the Day: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/dailyword.xml. You can also select individual RSS feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Lung Conditions, Menopause, Nutrition, Food, & Recipes, Oral Health, Digestion, Hearing, etc.)
• MedicalNewsToday.com – MNT Featured 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. Urology/Nephrology, Medicare/Medicaid/SCHIP, Compliance, Cholesterol, Nursing/Midwifery, Nutrition/Diet, Tuberculosis, etc.)

You can also search online for general feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific topics, e.g. “arthritis rss feeds”, “food intolerance rss feeds”, “cancer rss feeds”, etc.

(Add RSS feeds to improve your site’s UX.)

Provide Checklists And Forms

Checklists and explanatory charts are a great way to increase visitor engagement and add value to your readers. Checklists and charts can provide users with useful step-by-step instructions and resources to get necessary tasks completed. Forms and checklists are also great instructional tools.

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

• Booking appointments
• Checklists for pre or post surgery
• Health checklists and charts for specific conditions
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, oral hygiene program, cosmetic dentistry, etc.
• Weight loss and nutrition program checklists
• General charts & infographics (e.g. sugar content in different foods, sleep requirements at different ages, etc.)

Adding Unique Tools

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

In part two of this detailed guide, we discuss a several WordPress plugins and themes you can use in your website that can also help improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and generate more visitors to your business.

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This is the end of part 1 of this guide on ways to build your health or medical-related web presence.

To continue, click this link:

• Tips For Health Providers – WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Better User Engagement And Traffic Generation

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