In Part 1 of this step-by-step article on ways to build your medical-related business presence online, we provided in-depth information on the following topics:
- Online Challenges For Medical Businesses
- Opportunities For Health Providers
- Basic Web Pages
- How To Improve Your Web Content
In Parts Two and Three, we discuss more ways to grow your health or medical-related business online.
Areas covered in this (and the following section) include:
- Ways To Improve Traffic
- Generate Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Tools
- WordPress Plugins That Can Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Web Traffic
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
- Using WordPress Plugins To Extend Your Web Site’s Features And Functionality
- WordPress For Newbies – An Introduction To Themes
Note: Health and medical plugins are listed in this section. Health and medical themes are listed in Part 3.
Your Health Clinic Website – Improve Your Business Online Using WordPress
Web traffic is a vital part of your business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimizing Your Website For Search Engines
There are so many ways that WordPress helps improve SEO:
- SEO-Friendly – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Tags – WordPress lets you choose the keywords that you want your article pages (posts) to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Categories – Create categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Post Excerpts – Set an excerpt that will show to search engine users.
- Images – title your images with keywords for improved search engine results.
- Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily link internal content
- Post Notification – WordPress can be set up to automatically notify other search directories as soon as a new post is published on your site.
Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are quite a number of WordPress plugins that will improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your website.
For example, you can install the plugins below to improve your website’s SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (lists all of your pages and posts for indexing by search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your site’s SEO)
Other WordPress tools you can add to improve your website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing features. Here are some more fantastic plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – Run a social network on your site, with member profiles, messaging, activity streams, user groups, and more.
- bbPress – This free plugin allows you to run a forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – This plugin lets you send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP site.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and increases user engagement on your site.
- Social Media Feather – Easily add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your website or blog.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Ways To Generate New Leads & Enquiries
Let’s take a look now at how to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries for your medical or health-related business.
Add A Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is a great way to build a subscriber list. It] provides many benefits, like:
- Sends targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for increasing engaging with your users
- Provides you with additional ways for your content to be shared around with others
An effective strategy for attracting new subscribers to your email newsletter is to provide high value content and give users a free gift in exchange for their personal details. This can be a special report, tips for improving fitness and nutrition, access to fitness tools, discount coupons, access to videos, contests, etc.
Add A Contact Form
A contact form makes it easy and simple for prospective clients to get in touch. Readers can send feedback, contact specific departments, ask for a quote, send suggestions for new services or products and more.
A contact form provides several benefits, like:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- Convenience for users
A popular contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you create multiple contact forms on your posts and pages, customize your forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Another feature to consider if you are setting up a website for a medical center is to add sections to your contact form so prospective clients can choose the practitioner they want to contact. This will help make sure that visitors get their comment to the right recipient.
Provide A Map
A map helps your visitors and customers find you.
A map is a useful tool for several reasons:
- They help to increase local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Displays location of events
(Adding maps to your website helps your visitors and clients find you)
Popular map plugins for WordPress include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
Improving SEO, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Visitors With WordPress Plugins & Themes
WordPress Plugins
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your site that will immediately add a range of practical tools for users. Here are some of these:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar – WordPress Plugin)
The Booking Calendar plugin allows you to add appointment bookings to your site. It is well supported and provides visitors with an intuitive interface. It is suitable for a range of businesses, such as dental practices, physicians, health spas, booking yoga classes, etc.
(Booking Calendar – Overview)
This plugin works out of the box. Your website visitors can check availability of services you offer and book appointments online easily. Administrators and visitors receive notifications. The plugin is also widget-ready, and supports multiple languages. A premium version of this plugin with many extra features and functionalities is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management & Registration System
(Manage Your Events Online With Event Espresso WP Plugin)
If you run health events like seminars or workshops, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration software allows you to easily create an event and start processing online bookings literally in a few minutes
(Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed software that gives you full control of the event registration management process.
We have written a comprehensive article on the benefits and features of using Event Espresso. To learn more, go here:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators – WordPress Plugin)
Calculator Pro is a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed these into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. The plugin also supports internationalization
Most of them aren’t specifically designed for medical-related usage, but there are quite a few you can add to your site, including the following:
- Body Statistics – e.g. BAI (Body Adiposity Index) Calculator, Fat Calculator, Goal Weight Calculator, Metric Body Fat Calculator, US Navy Body Fat Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Daily Calorie Calculator, kJ to Calorie Calculator, Calories Burned Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Coopers 12 Minute Run Test Calculator, Balke Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. One Rep Max Weight Lifting Calculator, Blood Sugar Converter Calculator, Pregnancy Calculator, Sobriety Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Carbohydrate Calculator, Protein Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. Ideal Weight Calculator (kg), Weight Loss Percentage Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form Plugin)
Calculated Fields Form lets you create forms with dynamically calculated fields to display the calculated values, including:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculator
- And many more
A premium version with extra features and functionalities is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin)
Weight Loss Tracker is a simple plugin for WordPress that lets users record their weight periodically. The data is then shown in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker – User Graph)
The plugin allows users to enter target weights and provides support for various weight formats: Metric (Kg), Imperial – Stones & Pounds, Imperial – Pounds only.
For more details, go here}:
Simple BMI Calculator Widget
(Simple Body Mass Index Calculator Plugin For WordPress)
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator installs a widget on your sidebar that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
In addition to Simple Body Mass Index Calculator, there are a number of plugins you can look at that perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A responsive BMI and BMR calculator that saves calculation data for logged-in users and gives an overview to the site administrator.
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator that displays a visitor’s BMI
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors calculate their basal metabolic rate, by inputting their age, sex and weight.
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data Plugin)
Drug Interaction Data Plugin for WordPress retrieves and displays drug information, including what the drugs are used for and what other medications the drugs are known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data – WordPress Plugin – Information Screen)
Information about drugs can be displayed inside your posts and pages, or as a widget on your sidebar. The plugin loads the drug and pharmaceutical data from the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the U.S. National Institutes of Health and converts common names of drugs to their standardized RxNorm name.
For more details, go here}:
PubMed Posts
(PubMed Posts – WordPress Plugin)
PubMed Posts adds a dashboard widget that lets you crate posts from PubMed articles, as well as a search feature that locates posts with specific data. A simple content editor is also included with the plugin.
PubMed includes over 25 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, online books and life science journals.
For more details, go here}:
MJM Clinic
(MJM Clinic WordPress Plugin)
This versatile plugin was designed to add functionality to clinic and health care related websites, such as adding service pages with booking forms, organising your services into hierarchical categories, clinic locations, feedback entries and more.
For more details, go here}:
Treato WordPress Plugin
(Treato Plugin)
Treato lets you embed the Treato healthcare search engine into your WordPress sidebar so you and your site visitors can search drugs and see what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato collects and analyzes experiences sourced directly from patients written in forums and blog posts, then aggregates the content to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users receive insight about the side effects of over 26,500 medications, drug comparisons across over 14,700 medical conditions, which drugs people feel work, and more, from over 2.2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap
(HealthTap Plugin For WordPress)
HealthTap Concierge allows visitors to consult with doctors, clinical psychologists, etc. via text chat or HD video from any mobile device, personal computer, or smartwatch.
With HealthTap Concierge installed on your website or blog, your visitors can type in a health question and based upon their location and type of question, they will receive a list of doctors in their geographic area who specialize in that health topic. They can then select a doctor, chat over text or video, or send questions.
For more details, go here}:
TrendMD
(TrendMD Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin will add the TrendMD recommendations widget to your WP site. The TrendMD recommendations widget is used by scholarly publishers to increase their readership and revenue by allowing people to discover, read or cite interesting scholarly content from your journals or websites through personalized recommendations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Nutrition Facts
(WP Nutrition Facts WordPress Plugin)
WP Nutrition Facts lets you add a nutrition facts table into your pages, posts and custom post types, allowing your visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food in a standardized format and make informed food choices towards healthy eating goals.
(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin – Creating Nutritional Facts Labels)
This plugin uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labelling regulations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Ultimate Recipe
(WP Ultimate Recipe – WordPress Plugin)
If you own a health-related business that provides nutrition or healthy eating suggestions, a great source of content that will engage your readers is to add recipes.
Plugins like WP Ultimate Recipe let you publish healthy and delicious recipes on your site.
Other WordPress recipe plugins include:
- Recipe Card – Create and publish search optimized recipes that site visitors can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – EasyRecipe makes publishing recipes on your site easy with features like cut & paste, plain text recipe auto conversion, Google Recipe View formatting, automatic ratings and conversion from other recipe plugins.
- ZipList Recipes – Easily format recipe text and add images. Additional features like Google Recipe View formatting and SEO are included.
- And many more.
For more details, go here}:
Awesome Fitness Testimonials
(Awesome Fitness Testimonials Plugin)
The Awesome Fitness Testimonials plugin allows you to showcase fitness & wellness testimonials, reviews and case studies, before and after photos, etc. on your website.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images by Everkinetic
(Exercise Images)
Exercise Images lets you add exercise illustrations to your website.
(Exercise Images Plugin – Image Catalog)
For more details, go here}:
In the next section, we look at WordPress themes that are suitable for medical and health businesses.
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This is the end of part two.
To view the rest of this guide, click this link:
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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