In Part 1 of this article on ways to improve your health-related business presence online, we provided practical tips and suggestions on the following areas:
- Online Challenges For Medical And Health Services Providers
- Opportunities For Medical And Health Services Providers
- Your Web Pages
- Improving The Content On Your Website
In Parts 2 and 3, we discuss more ways to grow your health-related services online.
Areas covered in this (and the following section) include:
- Improve Web Traffic
- Ways To Generate Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins And Themes For Improving SEO, Creating Better User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
- Using WP Plugins To Enhance Your Site’s Features And Functionality
- WP For Beginners – An Introduction To Themes
Note: WordPress health and medical plugins are listed in this section. Health and medical themes are covered in Part Three.
Ways Of Improving Website Traffic
Your web traffic is vital to your business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimize Your Site For SEO
There are lots of ways that WordPress helps optimize your website for search engines:
- URLs – Set the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the web address of your pages.
- Tags – WordPress lets you specify the keywords that you want your article pages (posts) to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Categories – Add SEO-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose an excerpt that will display to search engine users.
- Images – title images used in your content with keywords for improved search engine results.
- Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that allows you to easily link your content to other posts and pages on your site
- Post Notification – WordPress can be configured to automatically notify other sites and directories as soon as a new post is published on your website.
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Better User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress developer community makes available a number of plugins that improve your website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your website.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your website’s search engine optimization:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (for search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your website’s search engine optimization)
Other WordPress tools you can use to improve your website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing. Here are some WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – This free WordPress plugin helps you set up and manage your own social community on your website.
- bbPress – This free WordPress plugin lets you run your own community forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – This plugin lets you send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard, without requiring third-party subscriptions.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your site.
- Social Media Feather – This plugin lets you add powerful social sharing features on your website or blog.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website using free or inexpensive plugins)
Generating More Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
Let’s discuss now how to improve your sales and generate more leads and enquiries online.
Add An Email Newsletter
Adding a newsletter is a great way to build a subscriber list. It provides several benefits and advantages, like:
- Drives targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for improving interaction
- Provides you with additional ways for readers to share your content
One of the best ways to get visitors to become subscribers is to provide users with valuable content and give them free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their details. This can be a handy guide, tips for improving general health and diet, access to health tools, free trials, membership access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Add Contact Forms
Contact forms make it easy and simple for prospective customers to get in touch. A contact form also lets visitors raise concerns, ask questions to specific departments, ask for a quote, and more.
A contact form provides many benefits and advantages including:
- Reduces spam
- Set up automated responses
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- They can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- Convenience for site visitors
A popular contact form plugin for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that is easy to install and set up and lets you add multiple contact forms to your site, customize your form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is also supported.
Another feature you may want to consider if you plan to set up a website for a medical center is adding sections to your contact form so visitors can choose the practitioner they want to contact. This ensures that visitors’ enquiries reach the right destination.
Map
Adding maps helps your visitors and clients find you.
Integrating maps (e.g. Google Maps), with your site also provides visitors with a number of benefits, such as:
- A map improves local SEO
- Allows clients to better plan their visits or appointments
- Show location of events
(A map helps your visitors and customers find you)
Some of the more popular map plugins for WordPress include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins & Themes For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Generating More Traffic
Health Services – WordPress Plugins
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your website that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for your site visitors. Here are just some of these plugins:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar Plugin For WordPress)
Booking Calendar allows you to add appointment bookings to your site. It provides visitors with an intuitive and user-friendly interface. It is suitable for a wide range medical, health, fitness & sports businesses, such as dental practitioners, specialists, massage therapists, booking sessions with personal trainers, etc.
(Booking Calendar – WordPress Plugin – Overview)
This bookings plugin works out of the box. Your website visitors can check availability of services and book appointments quickly and easily. Administrators and visitors receive notifications. The plugin also lets you add a calendar or booking form to your website’s sidebar, and offers multi-language support. A premium plugin version with a ton of extra features is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticket Manager System
(Manage Event Registrations Via The Web Using Event Espresso Plugin For WP)
If your business involves running health events like seminars or workshops, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin enables you to easily set up multiple events and begin processing online bookings in just a few minutes
(Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Management)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich application that gives you complete control of your event registration management process.
To learn more about Event Espresso, see this article:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators – WordPress Plugin)
Calculator Pro is a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed them into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. It also supports internationalization
Most of the calculators aren’t specifically designed for health or medical-related applications, but there are quite a number you can add to your website, including the following:
- Body Statistics – e.g. BMI Calculator, Frame Size Calculator, Goal Weight Calculator, Max Heart Rate Calculator, Protein Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Calorie to kJ Calculator, Daily Energy Expenditure Calculator, Calories Burned Swimming Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Push-Up Test Calculator, Balke Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Beats and Breaths Calculator, Cigarette Savings Calculator, Due Date Calculator, Target Heart Rate Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Calcium Calculator, Creatine Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. Ideal Weight Calculator (kg), Weight Loss Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form Plugin)
The Calculated Fields Form plugin lets you create forms that perform single and complex calculations, including:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculators
- And lots more
A premium version with many extra features is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker WP Plugin)
This free plugin lets logged-in users record their weight periodically. This data is then shown in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin – Graph)
The plugin allows users to enter target weights and provides support for the following weight formats: Metric (Kg), Imperial – Stones & Pounds, Imperial – Pounds only.
For more details, go here}:
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator
(Simple BMI Calculator – WordPress Plugin)
Simple BMI Calculator installs a widget on your website that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
In addition to Simple BMI Calculator, there are a number of other plugins you can check out that perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A BMI and Basal Metabolic Rate calculator that saves calculation data for logged-in users and gives an overview to the administrator.
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator that displays BMI
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors figure out their basal metabolic rate, by entering their age, sex and weight.
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin can be used to display drug information, including what the drugs are used for and what other medications the drugs are known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data Plugin – Results)
Information about drugs can be displayed as a widget or inside your web content. The data is provided by the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the U.S. National Institutes of Health and drug names are converted to their standardized RxNorm name.
For more details, go here}:
PubMed Posts
(PubMed Posts)
PubMed Posts adds a dashboard widget that lets you add posts from PubMed articles, and a search function that finds posts with specific data. It also includes an editor that changes the layout of data in the post content.
PubMed comprises more than 25 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, online books and life science journals.
For more details, go here}:
MJM Clinic
(MJM Clinic WP Plugin)
The MJM Clinic Plugin was designed to add functionality to medical and health care related websites that provide information about health conditions and symptoms.
For more details, go here}:
Treato
(Treato WordPress Plugin)
Treato WordPress plugin lets you embed the Treato healthcare search engine into your WordPress sidebar so you and your site visitors can search drugs and read what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato gathers and analyzes patient experiences written in medical forums and blog posts, then aggregates the posts to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users can access valuable insight about side effects, drug comparisons, which drugs people feel work, and more from over 2.2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap
(HealthTap Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows users to locate and book a virtual consult with real doctors, clinical psychologists, etc. via HD video or text chat from any mobile device, personal computer, even smartwatch.
With HealthTap Concierge installed on your WordPress 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 particular topic. They can then choose a doctor, chat over video or text, or send the doctor their question and get answers with the HealthTap service, which has a database of over 70,000 doctors.
For more details, go here}:
Trend MD
(TrendMD WordPress Plugin)
The TrendMD plugin lets you add the TrendMD recommendations widget to your website. 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)
This simple plugin lets you add a nutrition facts table into your posts, pages and custom post types, allowing your visitors to make informed food choices.
(WP Nutrition Facts – Create Custom Post Type Labels)
This plugin uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labeling regulations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Ultimate Recipe
(WP Ultimate Recipe Plugin For WordPress)
If you own a health or fitness-related business that provides nutrition or healthy eating information, a great way to add content that will engage your readers is to publish healthy recipes.
A plugin like WP Ultimate Recipe lets you easily add healthy and delicious recipes on your site.
Other recipe plugins for WordPress include:
- Recipe Card – Create recipes that your site users can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – Lets you easily publish recipes on your site with features like cut and paste, auto conversion of your plain text recipe posts, Google Recipe View formatting, automatic ratings and conversion from other recipe plugins.
- ZipList Recipes – Easily format recipe text and add images. The plugin also provides a number of additional features, including SEO and Google Recipe View formatting.
- And many more.
For more details, go here}:
Awesome Fitness Testimonials
(Awesome Fitness Testimonials Plugin For WordPress)
The Awesome Fitness Testimonials plugin allows you to display fitness and wellness testimonials, reviews and case studies on your fitness websites.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images
(Exercise Images)
The Exercise Images plugin lets you display exercise illustrations on your health & fitness site.
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic Plugin – Image Database)
For more details, go here}:
In part three, we will look at themes that are suitable for medical clinics and health-related businesses.
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This is the end of part two of this article on ways to grow your health-related business online.
To view Part Three, click here:
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