Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress

Medical services professionals face a number of challenges in today’s online economy, especially in terms of growing a business presence online.

Challenges Health Providers Face Online

Today, more than ever, medical services professionals must work hard to stand out from the crowd and find new clients. Not only do you have to become more involved in the community you serve, you must also develop an active digital presence. This includes having a dynamic website and learning how to better promote your health or medical services services online.

As well as spending money in offline marketing activities, you will probably find (if you haven’t already) that in order to compete, increasingly larger amounts of their marketing budget need to be allocated to developing and maintaining a website that will drive leads, engage visitors, outperform the competition in search engines and give your business wider marketing reach online.

This means that your website not only has to look professional, your pages have to be fast-loading, and be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that the needs of the website will change over time and some areas will need to be frequently updated. This requires implementing sound web and content management strategy.

Another difficult challenge that medical organizations face online, as other professions do for that matter, is that they have only about thirty seconds to provide users what they need or they will look 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 The Medical Profession In The Online Economy

As well as facing many business and technology changes, there are also plenty of online opportunities available for medical or health practices that can adapt to meet the demands of the online economy and who can think outside the box in terms of marketing their business better online.

In this article, you will learn ways to increase traffic and build more online credibility for your medical or health business.

As well as providing useful website improvement tips, we also focus on the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform to power your health-related business website.

For more information about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress content management system, go here:

• Discover Why A Poorly Built Website Can Lose You Potential Buyers
• How To Grow Your Small Business With WordPress

How To Improve Your Website

Let’s start by going over the basics. In this section, we’ll look at how to improve your website and get better results. We show you what pages you need, what type of content you need, your layout and navigation, etc.

If you need specific help with website planning, read this article: The Web Site Planning Process Explained: A Useful Guide For Non-Technical Business Owners

How To Improve Your Website Pages

Professional business websites need several essential pages. Let’s review these.

Your Services

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

• Medical And Surgical – e.g. anaesthetics, orthopedics blood disorders, oral surgery, stroke, renal, bariatric surgery, ophtalmology emergency surgery, etc.
• Dentistry – e.g. general dentistry, children’s dentistry, gum disease, restorations, braces, emergency dentistry, etc.
• Cardiology – e.g. heart monitoring, chronic heart conditions
• Prenatal & Neonatal – e.g. birth suites, maternity services, etc.
• Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
• Diagnostic services – mammography, lung screening, audiology, pap smears, psychosis, food allergy testing, etc.
• Pathology services – lab testing and analysis, routine pathology testing, food and water testing, speech pathology, etc
• Counselling services – mental health, alcohol, tobacco & other drug services, domestic abuse, wellness coaching, social work services
• Alternative therapies – Chinese medicine, homeopathy, holistic medicine, tai chi, osteopathy, hypnosis, etc.
• Other medical services – weight management, sports medicine, lymphedema therapy, occupational therapy, medical genetics, prosthetics, mobility, home care, clinical information, medical transport, etc.

List all of the services you provide. Provide your visitors with information that will educate them about what these services do and direct them to your contact or appointment booking page.

About Us

The ‘About Us’ page needs to describe your business and explain to visitors what it stands for, its unique approach, supported community activities, etc.

This page should include any awards, accreditations, recognitions, certifications, associations, publications, etc., that you can use to promote your services and to set yourself above the competition.

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

Your Staff

Are you looking for quicker, easier and cost-effective ideas to sell more products or services online and get people to stay longer on your site? Then help your prospects get to know your organization 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 well-versed in health terms it should tell who they are and what they specialize in. You may also want to explain what those specialized areas do. This page can also include social buttons that will allow your visitors to follow individual staff members on their social pages.

On this page, make sure to outline each person’s experience, why they are an invaluable asset to your team, and more importantly, how they will help add value to your clients’ business.

(Add a staff page. Image source: southperthchiro.com.au)

To learn more about how to easily create and add an easy-to-manage simple employee directory to WordPress using free WP plugins, refer to this tutorial: How To Add An Employee Directory To Your Site: Tutorial

Career Opportunities

This is a listing of job opportunities within your company. It would include training, employee benefits, opportunities for advancement, social aspects of working with your organization, etc. It should include case studies of trainees who have established a solid career path thanks to your organization and information about additional career opportunities in the medical or 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, subscribe to your newsletter, follow your social pages, etc.

Testimonials

Case studies and testimonials from previous clients are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase what type of services you offer. By adding a page with testimonials from previous clients and case studies, you are also helping to provide potential clients with social proof online for your business.

(Add a page to your site with case studies and testimonials. Image source: arrowsmiledental.com)

We have created a comprehensive article on using client testimonials and client reviews to grow your business online. Go here to learn more about this: How To Create Better Results Online With Powerful User Testimonials

Contact Us Page

A contact page is crucial.

Your contact page should include some or all of the following information about your consulting practice:

• Company Name
• Street address of business
• Telephone
• Fax
• Contact email
• Google Map
• Web URL
• Contact form
• Contact name
• Social media web addresses
• Online chat feature

If your business operates in several areas you want to make that clear when showing the address and contact info.

Consider also including links to an FAQ page, main pages, booking form, helpdesk, newsletter, blog, etc.

Add A Medical Blog Section

A blog is a very powerful marketing tool for your business. Blogs typically include a content management system that is simple to use and allows you to promote your business using content such as events, updates, educational articles and tutorials, informative posts, educational videos, media presentations, etc.

If you already have an established health-related website, then consider adding a WordPress-powered blog to promote your medical practice.

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

Not many businesses know this, but WordPress can turn into an automated traffic machine that will help begin attracting an ongoing stream of targeted traffic to your business, simply by adding regular content to your site.

(WordPress can automate your traffic generation)

Go here to learn more about this:

• Web Traffic Blueprint – Learn How To Automatically Grow Your Website Visitors For Your Business

Legal Info Pages

It’s vital to make sure they have a website that complies will all legal requirements online. This is not only important for building credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that you are not breaking any local, regional and federal laws or regulations in whichever area you provide services.

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

• Contact Page
• Privacy Policy
• Terms And Conditions
• Website Disclaimer
• Affiliate Agreement
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• DMCA Notice
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Health Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• etc.

If you want to learn more about adding legal pages to your website, refer to this article: How To Add Legal Pages To Your Site

Tips On How To Improve The Content On Your Site

In today’s globally competitive economy, the ability to deliver valuable content to visitors free of charge has become one of the key business differentiators.

By providing great content with advice, information or tips, you will get your readers sharing it with others and coming back for more. This is a great way to inform and teach site visitors and prospective clients about using your products and services.

For example, if your business provides services that help people manage their weight, then some of the areas you could cover as content on your site:

• What is BMI (what it stands for, what it does, how to calculate yours)
• Tips for developing portion control habits (smaller plate, don’t put food on the table, more vegetables)
• Is hypnosis and effective weight loss treatment?
• 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 services, by explaining benefits, procedures, costs (including payment plans, insurance coverage, etc).

Use the same 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 regular training emails with easy-to-digest information and practical tips that will teach you how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, save money creating useful content for 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 completely FREE!

Improving User Experience

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

Syndicate Content Using RSS Feeds

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve visitor engagement and UX in many ways.

If you provide useful information, other sites 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 kept in one place
• Doesn’t rely on email
• Can be shared and picked up by other sites online
• Allows users to subscribe
• It provides links to your site
• Your feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
• RSS provides several ways for readers to receive your content (e.g. subscribers can view the content on their mobile device using feed readers)
• RSS is built into WordPress

There are also a number of benefits to adding syndicated content to your site 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 visiting sites of health-related government departments or key industry bodies.

Below we have listed a few useful RSS feeds you could consider adding to your 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 select specific RSS feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Emergency preparedness, Health care for women, Heart health and stroke, Minority women’s health, Pregnancy, etc.) here: http://womenshealth.gov/news/rss/rss-feeds.html
• US National Libraries Of Medicine – For a directory of RSS feeds from various medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. BMJ Evidence-Based Nursing, BMJ Disease in Childhood – Fetal and Neonatal Edition, The Journal of Immunology, jobs.ac.uk health and medical jobs, Respiratory Research, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
• National Institutes Of Health - Find various health-related RSS feeds here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
• US Food And Drug Administration (FDA) – Get FDA-related RSS feeds (e.g. enforcement reports, food safety reports, product recalls, animal and veterinary news, 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) - Get various health-related news feeds and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
• Medical News Feeds: You can search medical news feeds in places like the NYTimes 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 choose specific RSS feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Lung Conditions, Men’s health, Cold & Flu, Diet & Weight Management, Digestion, Travel Health, etc.)
• Medical News Today – Medical News Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
• MedicalNewsToday.com – You can also choose individual feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Urology/Nephrology, Headache/Migraine, Surgery, Lymphoma/Leukemia/Myeloma, Water – Air Quality/Agriculture, Pediatrics/Children’s Health, Alzheimer’s/Dementia, etc.)

You can also search online for general RSS feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific areas, e.g. “dentistry rss feeds”, “physical therapy rss feeds”, “oncology rss feeds”, etc.

(RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve your health website’s user experience.)

Provide Online Checklists And Charts

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

Forms, charts and checklists could include topics such as:

• Booking appointments
• Checklists for post-surgery recovery
• Health checklists for specific conditions
• Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, caries prevention program, cosmetic dentistry, etc.
• Fitness and exercise program checklists
• General charts & infographics (e.g. caloric level of different foods, sleep requirements at different ages, etc.)

Other Tools

Providing unique online tools, gadgets and applications on your site can help increase visitor engagement and add value to your potential clients. Health-related calculators are popular tools for your website. Other applications would include things like nutritional tools, or even recipes.

In part two, we will be discussing a several WordPress plugins you can use in your website that can also help improve your search engine optimization, improve user engagement and drive more traffic to your business.

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This is the end of section 1.

Click here to continue:

• The Complete Step-By-Step Guide To Growing A Medical Services And Health-Related Website – Part 2

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