Category: Management Plugins

In Part 1 of this guide on ways to build your medical-related business online, we provided practical tips and suggestions on the following areas:

• Challenges Professional Medical Providers Face Online
• Opportunities For The Health And Medical Profession In The Web Economy
• How To Improve Your Website Pages
• Improving The Content On Your Website

In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your health-related business online.

Topics covered include:

• Ways Of Improving Traffic Using WordPress
• Generate More Leads & Enquiries
• Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Traffic With WordPress Plugins

To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:

• Using WordPress Plugins To Extend Your Blog’s Features And Functionality
• WordPress For Beginners – An Overview Of Themes

Note: Plugins are covered in this section. Medical and health-related themes are covered in Part 3.

Improve Website Traffic Using WordPress

Web traffic is an important part of your business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.

Optimize Your Site For SEO With WordPress

There are loads of ways that WordPress helps optimize your website for search engines:

• SEO-Friendly – Set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your article pages (called posts).
• Post Tags – Choose 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 – Create descriptions for your posts that will display in search results.
• Images – title your images with keywords for better search results.
• Internal Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that allows you to easily link your content to other posts and pages
• Post Notification – Set up your site to automatically notify other search directories as soon as a new post is published on your website.

How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Traffic With WordPress Plugins

As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress developer community makes available also 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:

• Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
• Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (lists all of your posts and pages for search engines)
• WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin

(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your site’s SEO)

Other WordPress plugins you can add to improve your website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social features. Here are a few WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below are also free):

• BuddyPress – This free WordPress plugin helps you run a social network on your site, with member profiles, user groups, messaging, activity streams, and more.
• bbPress – This free plugin helps you set up a forum on your website.
• E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard.
• Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and increases user engagement on your website or blog.
• Social Media Feather – Add social sharing features and buttons on your website.

(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website using WordPress plugins)

Tips For Generating Leads & Enquiries With WordPress

This section will show you how to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries for your business.

Providing An Email Newsletter

Adding an email newsletter is a great way to grow and retain your readership. Adding newsletters] provides a number of benefits, like:

• Drives targeted traffic
• Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
• Keeps readers updated
• Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
• Allows you to provide special products or services to a select audience
• Increases user interaction
• Provides other ways for your content to be shared with others

A proven way to get visitors to become subscribers is to provide them with high value content and give them free gifts in exchange for their details. This can be a time-saving guide, checklists for improving health and nutrition, access to fitness tools, vouchers, access to videos, contests, etc.

Adding A Contact Form

A contact form makes it easy and simple for readers to get in touch. A contact form also allows users to report issues, ask questions to specific departments, request quotes, and more.

A contact form provides several benefits including:

• Reducing spam
• Automated response
• Giving you control over what gets sent to you
• You can keep your email address private
• Can be added to any page or post
• Improves the professional look of your site
• More convenient for users

One of the most popular contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.

Contact Form 7

(Contact Form 7 – WordPress Plugin)

This free plugin is easy to install and configure and allows you to add multiple contact forms on your posts and pages, customize your form and the email contents, add fields, and more.

Contact Form 7 also supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.

Something else to consider if you are setting up a website for a health center or medical clinic is to segment your contact form so prospective clients can select the section of the practice they are contacting you about. This ensures that visitors’ enquiries reach the correct recipient.

Map Integration

A map helps your visitors and customers find you.

Maps are a great tool for several reasons:

• A map improves local SEO
• Helps visitors find your office easily
• Displays location of events

(Adding maps to your site helps your visitors and customers find you)

Here are some popular plugins that let you embed, customize and display Google maps on your WordPress site:

• Google Maps
• Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
• WP Google Maps
• Comprehensive Google Map Plugin

WordPress Plugins And Themes That Can Help To Improve Your Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Visitors

Health Or Medical – WordPress Plugins

WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your website that will immediately add a range of functional tools for visitors. Here are just some of the plugins you can choose from:

Booking Calendar

(Booking Calendar – WordPress Plugin)

The Booking Calendar plugin lets you add appointment booking services to your site. This plugin is well supported, has an intuitive and user-friendly interface and flexible functionality. It is highly suitable for a wide range health and medical consulting businesses, such as medical practices, specialists, massage therapists, booking patient appointments, etc.

(Booking Calendar – WordPress Plugin – Overview)

This booking reservations plugin works right out of the box. Website visitors can check availability of services and book appointments easily. Administrators and visitors receive booking confirmations. The plugin is also widget-ready, and offers multi-language support. A premium plugin version with many more features is also available.

For more details, go here}:

• Booking Calendar

Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticketing Manager Plugin

(Manage Bookings & Registrations Online Using Event Espresso Plugin For WordPress)

If you plan to run health events, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.

The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WordPress lets you easily set up multiple events and start receiving bookings in a few minutes

(Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Management)

Event Espresso is a feature-packed software that gives you full control of your event registration management process.

We have written an in-depth article on Event Espresso here:

• Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager And Registration Plugin

Calculator Pro Calculators

(Calculator Pro Calculators)

Calculator Pro provides a free collection of over 400 calculators that you can display on your website and embed into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. It also supports internationalization

Most of the calculators aren’t designed for health uses, but there are quite a few you can use, including:

• Body Statistics – e.g. ANC Calculator, Durnin/Womersley Skinfold Body Fat Calculator, Goal Weight Calculator, Max Heart Rate Calculator, WHtR Calculator, etc.
• Calorie – e.g. Calorie to kJ Calculator, kJ to Calorie Calculator, Calories Burned By Heart Rate Calculator, etc.
• Fitness Tests – e.g. BAI (Body Adiposity Index) Calculator, Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
• Miscellaneous – e.g. One Rep Max Weight Lifting Calculator, Cigarette Savings Calculator, Pregnancy Calculator, Running Pace Calculator, etc.
• Nutrition – e.g. Calcium Calculator, Water Intake Calculator, etc.
• Weight – e.g. Ideal Weight Calculator, Weight Loss Calculator, etc.

For more details, go here}:

• Calculators Pro Plugin For WordPress

Calculated Fields Form

(Calculated Fields Form WP Plugin)

The Calculated Fields Form plugin lets you create forms that perform single and complex calculations, such as:

• Health & Fitness Calculators
• Ideal Weight Calculator
• Pregnancy Calculator
• Calorie Calculators
• And many more

A premium version of this plugin is also available with additional features.

For more details, go here}:

• Calculated Fields Form WordPress Plugin

Weight Loss Tracker

(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin)

Weight Loss Tracker lets logged-in users record their weight on given dates. The results are then shown in a graph and table.

(Weight Loss Tracker WP Plugin – 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}:

• Weight Loss Tracker WP Plugin

Simple BMI Calculator Widget

(Simple Body Mass Index Calculator Widget Plugin)

Simple BMI Calculator is a simple WordPress plugin that installs a widget on your website that can be configured and customized to match your theme.

As well as Simple BMI Calculator, there are a number of WordPress plugins you can check out that perform similar functions:

• BMI BMR Calculator – A Body Mass Index 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 Body Mass Index
• Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors figure out their basal metabolic rate, based on age, sex and weight.
• And more

For more details, go here}:

• Simple BMI Calculator Widget – WordPress Plugin

Drug Interaction Data Plugin

(Drug Interaction Data Plugin)

Drug Interaction Data Plugin can be used to display drug information, including what the drug is used to treat and what other medications the drug is known to interact with.

(Drug Interaction Data – Results)

Information about drugs can be displayed as a widget or inside your posts and pages. The data is provided by 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}:

• Drug Interaction Data Plugin For WordPress

PubMed Posts

(PubMed Posts Plugin)

PubMed Posts adds a dashboard widget that creates posts from PubMed articles, and a search feature that lets users find posts with specific data. A 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}:

• PubMed Posts

MJM Clinic

(MJM Clinic Plugin)

This versatile plugin can be used for medical and health care related websites. It lets you add service pages with booking forms, clinic locations, provide information about symptoms and health conditions, add case studies, link  indication tags to services, etc.

For more details, go here}:

• MJM Clinic WP Plugin

Treato

(Treato)

This plugin lets you embed the Treato healthcare search engine into your WordPress sidebar so you and your users can search a vast drug database and read what patients are saying about different drugs.

Treato gathers and analyzes patient experiences written in online 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 26,000 medications, drug comparisons across 14,000+ medical conditions, which drugs people feel are working, and more, from over 2.2 billion collected posts.

For more details, go here}:

• Treato Plugin

HealthTap Concierge

(HealthTap – WordPress Plugin)

HealthTap Concierge allows visitors to consult with real doctors, clinical psychologists, etc. via HD video or text chat from any mobile device, computer, even smartwatch.

With With the HealthTap Concierge plugin installed, your site 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 a question.

For more details, go here}:

• HealthTap Concierge WP Plugin

TrendMD

(TrendMD)

This plugin lets you add the TrendMD recommendations widget to your website. The TrendMD recommendations widget is used by scholarly publishers to grow their readership and revenue by allowing people to discover, cite or read interesting scholarly content from your journals or websites through personalized recommendations.

For more details, go here}:

• TrendMD – WordPress Plugin

WP Nutrition Facts

(WP Nutrition Facts WordPress Plugin)

This simple plugin lets you add a nutrition facts table into your posts and pages, allowing your visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food in a standardized format.

(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin – Creating Custom Post Type Labels)

This plugin uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labeling regulations.

For more details, go here}:

• WP Nutrition Facts WordPress Plugin

WP Ultimate Recipe

(WP Ultimate Recipe – WordPress Plugin)

If you run a health or fitness-related website that provides nutritional or healthy eating suggestions, a great source of engaging content to your site is to publish recipes.

Plugins like WP Ultimate Recipe let you easily add recipes on your site.

Other WordPress recipe plugins include:

• Recipe Card – Create and publish recipes that your site users can print, save and review.
• EasyRecipe – EasyRecipe makes publishing recipes on your site easy with features like cut and paste, auto conversion of your plain text recipe posts, live custom formatting, Google Recipe View formatting and preview button, automatic ratings and conversion from other recipe plugins.
• ZipList Recipes – Easily format recipe text and add images. Additional features like SEO and Google Recipe View formatting are included.
• And many more.

For more details, go here}:

• WP Ultimate Recipe Plugin For WordPress

Awesome Fitness Testimonials

(Awesome Fitness Testimonials WP Plugin)

Awesome Fitness Testimonials lets you add fitness & wellness testimonials, case studies and reviews, before and after pics, videos, etc. to your site.

For more details, go here}:

• Awesome Fitness Testimonials

Exercise Images

(Exercise Images – WordPress Plugin)

Exercise Images by Everkinetic lets you display exercise illustrations inside your posts and pages.

(Exercise Images – Image Database)

For more details, go here}:

• Exercise Images – WordPress Plugin

In part three of this guide, we discuss themes for medical and health businesses.

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This is the end of part 2.

Click on this link to continue:

• The Complete Guide To Successfully Growing Your Medical Services & Health-Related Web Presence – Part 3

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