Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress
The online economy has not only revolutionized businesses worldwide, it has also created a number of difficult challenges and great opportunities for businesses in the health or medical-related industry.
Challenges Medical Practitioners Face Online
Now, more than ever, businesses in the medical sector must work harder than ever to remain competitive. Not only do you have to become actively involved in the community you serve, you must also develop and maintain an active web presence. This includes having a dynamic website and learning how to better promote your business online.
In addition to spending money advertising offline, businesses in the medical or health-related industry are now also finding that increasingly larger amounts of their marketing budget will need to be assigned towards developing and managing a website that drives clients, engages users, outperforms the competition in search engines and social media, and helps to increase their reach online.
This means that your website not only has to look great, load fast, and be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that the needs of your website will change over time and sections may need to be frequently updated. This requires a sound web and content management strategy in place.
One other challenge that health providers (and other professions) face online, is that your site has only about 30 seconds or less to give visitors the information they are searching for or they will find what they are looking for 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 Providers
As well as facing a number of significant business and technology changes, there are also plenty of online opportunities available for businesses in the health or medical profession that can adapt to meet online economy challenges and who can think strategically in terms of improving their online business marketing skills.
In this guide, you will learn new opportunities to increase web traffic and establish online credibility for your business.
As well as providing general website improvement tips, we also focus on the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) to power your medical or health-related website or blog.
For more information about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress platform, go here:
- Learn How A Poorly Designed Website Can Lose You Money And What To Do About It
- The Business Owner’s Guide To Using WordPress
Useful Tips To Improve Your Website
In this section we’ll show you ways to improve your website and get better results online. We show you what pages your website needs, what type of content you need, ways to improve your site’s layout and navigation, etc.
If you need assistance or help planning your website, see this article: The Web Site Planning Process Explained - A Comprehensive Blueprint For Business Owners
How To Improve Your Website Pages
Professional business websites require some basic web pages. Let’s discuss the pages your need and how to structure your health-related website for best results.
Products And Services
You need a page that describes your services and products. Depending on which area you specialize in, your page can list services like:
- Medical And Surgical – e.g. anaesthetics, pulmonology diabetes, cosmetic surgery, aged care, respiratory, colon/rectal surgery, ophtalmology palliative care, etc.
- Dental Services – e.g. general dentistry, holistic dentistry, oral health, restorations, orthodontics, emergency dentistry, etc.
- Cardiology – e.g. cardiac patient rehabilitation, coronary care
- Prenatal and Postnatal – e.g. obstetrics, midwifery, etc.
- Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
- Diagnostic – breast screening, skin cancer, radiology, women’s health, MRI scanning, food allergy testing, etc.
- Pathology – lab testing and analysis, routine pathology testing, insurance and corporate testing, speech pathology, etc
- Counselling services – mental health services, alcohol, tobacco & other drug services, trauma counselling, diet and nutrition counselling, social work services
- Alternative therapies – Chinese medicine, aromatherapy, reiki, tai chi, osteopathy, hypnotherapy, etc.
- Other medical services/therapies – diet and nutrition, podiatry, lymphedema therapy, speech therapy, inherited diseases, artificial limbs, assisted living, home care, sexual health, medical transport, etc.
List all of the services you provide. Educate your visitors about the benefits of using your services and direct them to your appointment booking page.
Who We Are
This page needs to describe your business and what it stands for, its unique approach, causes supported, etc.
Remember to list any medical-related awards, recognitions, certifications, accreditations, associations, publications, etc., that you can use to promote your medical, dental, chiropractic, surgery services, etc. and set yourself above similar service providers.
(List all of your awards certifications, recognitions, accreditations, associations, publications, etc. in your About page. Image sourced from: squaremedical.com.au)
Our Team
If you are searching for ideas to sell more products online, then something you can do, is make it easier for your prospective clients to get to know, like and trust you, your team and your organization better.
Prospects need to relate to your business. One great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your staff or team members. It should include a photo and a mini biography. Since most visitors are probably not that well-versed in medical terms your descriptions should tell who they are and what their specialties are. It should also explain what those specialized areas do. It should include social buttons so your prospective clients can follow your team members on their social networks.
On this page, make sure to highlight each team member’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 description page. Screenshot image sourced from: southperthchiro.com.au)
If you need help how to create and add an easy-to-maintain list of staff members to your website without coding skills, see this tutorial: How To Easily Add A Simple Staff List To Your WordPress Site With No Coding Skills Required
Job Opportunities Page
List any job opportunities within the company. It would include type of training provided, employee benefits, opportunities for advancement, social activities promoted or encouraged by your organization, etc. You should also include stories of trainees who have established a solid career path thanks to your business and information such as the job outlook and upcoming career opportunities in the medical or health industry.
Maintain a positions available section in this page. If there are no positions currently available, consider inviting people to return periodically to the page, join your newsletter, follow your social pages, etc.
Case Studies And Testimonials
Case studies and testimonials are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase what type of services you offer. By adding a page with reviews from clients and case studies, you are also helping to provide potential clients with social proof online.
(Add a page with case studies and testimonials from past clients. Screenshot source: arrowsmiledental.com)
We have created a comprehensive article about using case studies, testimonials and reviews to improve your business results online. If you would like to learn more here: Convert More Visitors Into Qualified Leads With Highly Effective Client Testimonials
Contact Us
A functional contact page is vitally important.
It should include the following:
- Company Name
- Physical location
- Phone number
- Fax
- Email address
- Google Map and directions
- Website URL
- Contact form
- Request for more information – contact details
- Links to social media networks
- Interactive chat
If your business services different locations you want to make this clear when displaying your address and contact information.
You should also include links to an FAQ section, frequently-visited pages, booking form, helpdesk, newsletter, blog, etc.
Add A Health-Related Blog
A blog can be a very powerful marketing tool for your business. Blogs typically comprise of a content management system that is simple to use and allows you to promote your business by publishing timely content such as news and announcements, new releases, useful articles and tutorials, opinions and discussions, promotional videos, infographics, etc.
If you already have an existing site, then consider adding a WordPress-driven blog to market your medical clinic.
If you don’t have a website yet, or if your existing website is hard to add new content to or not delivering you the results you want, then WordPress can act as both your business website and your blog.
Something few businesses know about, is that WordPress can turn into an automated traffic-generation system that can help drive web traffic to your website, simply by publishing new content to your website on a consistent basis.
(WordPress can automate your traffic generation)
To learn more about this go here:
Legal Information
As a professional business, having a compliant website is vitally important. This is not only important for establishing trust and credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that you are not breaking any local, regional and federal laws or regulations wherever you provide services.
Depending on what services you provide, adding some or all of the legal pages below to your health or medical website will help keep you out of legal hot water with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Google), and other potential legal threats and inconveniences:
- Contact Us
- Privacy Policy
- Terms And Conditions 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
We have written a comprehensive article on adding legal pages to your website. Go here to learn more about this: What You Need To Know About Adding Legal Pages To Your Site
Improve Your Web Content
In today’s fiercely competitive digital economy, the ability to deliver valuable content free of charge has become one of the key differentiators for businesses selling similar products or services.
Providing useful content with tips, information and advice will get your visitors to share your information and come back for more content. This is a great way to educate site visitors and prospective clients about your services.
For example, if your business provides weight loss services, then some of the areas you can write about include the following:
- What is BMI (what it stands for, what it does, how to calculate yours)
- How small efforts in portion control can help your weight loss efforts
- How you eat your food is just as important as what you eat (eat at table, chew slowly)
- How to curb the late night urges for a snack (e.g. drink water with lemon)
- 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).
Remember to include keywords in your content that readers will search for.
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 exactly how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, save money creating high-quality content that will add value to your 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 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 different ways to improve your visitor engagement and user experience.
RSS Feeds
RSS feeds provide lots of benefits for your business.
If you provide information that adds value to others, 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 in one place
- Doesn’t rely on email
- Feeds can be shared
- Users can subscribe to your RSS feed
- It provides links back to your site
- RSS feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
- There are various ways readers can receive your content (e.g. subscribers can view your content on their mobile device using different applications)
- It’s built into WordPress
There are also benefits when it comes to providing great content 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 loads of useful content for your website, search online for relevant government departments and respected industry bodies.
Here are some useful RSS feeds you could add to a medical 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 feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Breastfeeding, Healthy aging, HIV/AIDS, Menopause, Pregnancy, 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. AHA Journals (American Heart Association Journals), American Association of Neurological Surgeons, American Cancer Society, Current Psychiatry, The New England Journal of Medicine, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
- National Institutes Of Health (www.nih.gov) - Get various feeds on health-related topics here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
- US Food And Drug Administration (FDA) – Get FDA-related feeds (e.g. enforcement reports, food allergy reports, tainted products marked as dietary supplements, 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 feeds on health-related news 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. Medical research: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Research.xml)
- MedicineNet.com – Weekly Health and Medical News Digest: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/weeklyhealth.xml. You can also select specific feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Medications, Asthma, Migraine Headaches, Diabetes, Senior Health, Thyroid, etc.)
- MedicalNewsToday.com – Featured Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
- Medical News Today – You can also choose specific RSS feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. MRSA/Drug Resistance, Complementary Medicine/Alternative Medicine, Medical Insurance, Lymphoma/Leukemia/Myeloma, CJD/vCJD/Mad Cow Disease, Tropical Diseases, Huntingtons Disease, etc.)
You can also search online for general RSS feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific topics, e.g. “bipolar rss feeds”, “medical innovation rss feeds”, “statins rss feeds”, etc.
(RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve your medical-related website’s UX.)
Checklists And Charts
Adding checklists and explanatory charts to your site is a fantastic way to increase user engagement, add value to your audience and provide something unique. They can provide visitors with useful instructions and resources to perform tasks. They are also great instructional tools.
Forms, charts and checklists can address topics such as:
- Booking appointments
- Checklists for post-surgery recovery
- Health checklists and charts for specific systems
- Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, caries prevention program, general dentistry, etc.
- Fitness and exercise program checklists and charts
- General charts & infographics (e.g. acidity level of different foods, the importance of sleep at different ages, etc.)
Other Tools
Providing useful tools and applications on your website can help increase visitor engagement and add significant value to potential clients. Health-related calculators, for example, are some of the most popular tools for your website. Others can include things like diagnostic tools, and even recipes.
In part 2 of this detailed article, we take a look at a several WordPress plugins and themes you can add to your website that improve your search engine optimization, improve user engagement and generate more web traffic to your business.
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This is the end of section one.
To view the rest of this guide, click here:
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum