In Part 1 of this article on ways to improve your health-related business online, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Online Challenges For Health Services Providers
- Opportunities For Health Services Practitioners In The Online Economy
- Improving Your Web Pages
- Tips For Improving The Content On Your Website
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your medical-related business online.
Areas covered in this (and the next section) include:
- Tips For Improving Web Traffic Using WordPress
- Generate New Leads & Enquiries
- Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With Plugins And Themes
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
Note: Medical and health plugins are covered in this section. Health and medical themes are listed in Part 3.
Improve Website Traffic With WordPress
Your web traffic is an integral part of your online business growth. In this section, you will learn how to improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and increase web traffic to your health-related website generation using WordPress plugins & themes.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines
There are loads of ways WordPress can help to optimize your health or medical-related website for search engines:
- SEO-Friendly – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Tags – WordPress lets you select the keywords that you want your articles to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Categories – Add categories for your posts and products.
- Post Excerpts – Create the description for your posts that will show to search engine users.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for improved search engine results.
- Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links for faster indexing of pages
- Post Notification – WordPress can be set up to automatically notify other sites and directories whenever a new post is published on your site.
Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation With Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress development community makes available also a number of plugins that will improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your site.
Here are some plugins you can use to improve your website’s SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (for search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your website’s search engine optimization)
Other things you can do to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social features. Here are some more fantastic plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – Run an online social network on your WordPress site.
- bbPress – Set up your own online discussion forum on your WordPress website.
- E-Newsletter – Send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress site.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and helps to increase engagement on your website or blog.
- Floating Social – Add powerful social sharing features and buttons to your pages and posts.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their site with free or inexpensive plugins)
Tips For Generating More Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Applications
Let’s now take a look at how to improve your sales and generate new leads and enquiries.
Providing A Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is a great way to grow and retain your readership. It provides several benefits and advantages including:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides useful information and advice
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special products or services to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for user engagement
- Provides you with additional opportunities for readers to share your content
One of the things you can do to get visitors to become subscribers is to provide high value information and offer users additional bonuses for free in exchange for their details. This could be a time-saving guide, tips for improving health, fitness and nutrition, access to medical apps, coupons, membership access to courses, contests, etc.
Add Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for prospective clients to get in touch. Readers can send feedback, ask questions to specific departments, request quotes, and more.
A contact form provides several benefits and advantages, like:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- 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
- Improves the professional look of your site
- Convenience for users
A popular contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin lets you insert and manage multiple contact forms into any page or post, customize the forms and the email contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Something else to consider if you want to set up a website for a medical practice is to add sections to your contact form so prospective clients can choose which practitioner they want to contact. This ensures that contact form enquiries reach the correct area.
Maps
A map helps your visitors and clients find you.
Maps are a great tool for several reasons:
- A map increases local SEO
- Helps visitors find your office easily
- Displays location of events
(Adding maps to your site helps your visitors and clients find you)
Below are just some plugins that let you embed, customize and display Google maps on your site:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins & Themes That Can Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
WordPress Medical And Health Plugins
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your site that will immediately add a range of practical tools for your site visitors. Here are some of these:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar – WordPress Plugin)
Booking Calendar lets you add online booking services to your site. This plugin is well supported, has an intuitive and user-friendly interface with flexible functionality. It is suitable for a range of medical, health & beauty businesses, such as medical practices, physicians, chiropractors, booking patient appointments, etc.
(Booking Calendar – WordPress Plugin – Overview)
The plugin works right 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 is also widget-ready, and supports multiple languages. A premium plugin version with a ton of extra features and functionalities is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management & Registration Software
(Manage Event Registrations Via The Web Using Event Espresso For WordPress)
If your business involves running medical seminars, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin lets you easily schedule your event and start processing registrations in just minutes
(Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticket Management Software)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed application that gives you full control of the event registration management process.
We have written a detailed article on Event Espresso. Go here to learn more:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin For WordPress)
Calculator Pro Calculators provides a free collection of over 400 calculators that you can provide to users on your website and embed into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t specifically designed for health or medical-related use, but there are many you can use, including:
- Body Statistics – e.g. Body Composition Calculator, FENa Calculator, Lean Body Mass Calculator, Ponderal Index Calculator, Skinfold Body Fat Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, Daily Energy Expenditure Calculator, Calories Burned Running Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. BAI (Body Adiposity Index) Calculator, Bruce Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Beats and Breaths Calculator, Blood Donation Calculator, Due Date Calculator, Running Pace Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Calcium Calculator, Macronutrient 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 For WordPress)
With Calculated Fields Form you can create forms that perform single and complex calculations, such as:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculators
- And lots more
The plugin is also available in a premium version with extra features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin)
Weight Loss Tracker is a simple WordPress plugin that lets users record their weight on given dates. The results are then shown in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin – User Graph)
The plugin allows users to insert target weights and provides support for various weight formats: Metric (Kg), Imperial – Stones & Pounds, Imperial – Pounds only.
For more details, go here}:
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator
(Simple Body Mass Index Calculator Widget)
Simple BMI Calculator is a free WordPress plugin that installs a widget on your website that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
In addition to Simple Body Mass Index Calculator, there are a number of other WordPress plugins you can check out to perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A responsive Body Mass Index and Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) calculator that saves calculation data for logged-in users and gives an overview to the trainer (admin).
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator that shows users their BMI
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors calculate their basal metabolic rate, based on their age, sex and weight.
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data WordPress Plugin)
Drug Interaction Data Plugin for WordPress will retrieve and display information about drugs, including what the drugs are used for and what other medications the drugs are known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data Plugin For WordPress – Information Screen)
Information about drugs can be displayed on your site. 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 the standardized RxNorm name.
For more details, go here}:
PubMed Posts
(PubMed Posts Plugin For WordPress)
PubMed Posts adds a dashboard widget that lets you crate posts from PubMed articles, plus a search function that finds posts with specific data. The plugin also includes an editor that lets you change the layout of your post content.
PubMed contains over 25 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, online books and life science journals.
For more details, go here}:
MJM Clinic
(MJM Clinic Plugin)
This plugin was designed to add functionality to clinic and health care related websites, such as service pages with booking forms, related health conditions, multiple service locations, patient feedback entries and more.
For more details, go here}:
Treato WordPress Plugin
(Treato – WordPress Plugin)
Treato lets you add a sidebar widget that allows your site visitors to search drugs and see what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato gathers and analyzes patient experiences from online forums and blog posts, then aggregates the posts to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users receive insight about side effects, drug comparisons, which drugs people feel work, and more from over 2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap
(HealthTap WordPress Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows users to consult with real doctors who specialize in a given health topic via text chat or HD video from any mobile device, computer, or smartwatch.
With With the HealthTap Concierge plugin installed, users can type in a health question and receive a list of doctors in their geographic area who specialize in that health topic. They can then select a doctor, chat over video or text, or send the doctor a question.
For more details, go here}:
Trend MD
(Trend MD Plugin For WordPress)
TrendMD adds 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, cite or read interesting scholarly content from your journals or websites through personalized recommendations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Nutrition Facts
(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin For WordPress)
WP Nutrition Facts lets you insert a nutrition facts table into your pages, posts and custom post types, allowing your site visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food.
(WP Nutrition Facts WordPress Plugin – Creating Custom Post Type 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 or fitness-related business that provides diet and nutrition or healthy eating suggestions, a great source of engaging content to your site is to add healthy recipes.
A plugin like WP Ultimate Recipe lets you publish recipes on your site.
Other WordPress recipe plugins include:
- Recipe Card – Create and publish search engine optimized recipes that your site visitors can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – EasyRecipe makes entering recipes on your site easy with features like cut & paste, plain text recipe auto conversion, Google Recipe View formatting and preview button, live custom formatting, 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}:
Awesome Fitness Testimonials
(Awesome Fitness Testimonials)
The Awesome Fitness Testimonials plugin lets you add fitness and wellness testimonials, case studies and reviews, before and after photos, videos, etc. to your site.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic WP Plugin)
The Exercise Images plugin lets you add exercise illustrations to your site.
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic Plugin – Catalog)
For more details, go here}:
In part three of this detailed article, we discuss WordPress themes for medical businesses.
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This is the end of part two of this article on ways to build your health or medical-related business presence online.
Click on this link to read the rest of this guide:
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