In Part 1 of this comprehensive article on ways to build your health business web presence, we covered the following topics:
- Challenges Health Providers Face Online
- Opportunities For The Health Profession In The Online Economy
- Essential Web Pages
- Improving Your Web Content
In this section, we continue looking at more ways to grow your medical-related business online.
Topics covered in this (and the following section) include:
- Tips For Improving Traffic Using WordPress
- Ways To Generate Leads & Enquiries
- How To Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Traffic Using Plugins & Themes
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
- WordPress Plugins – Extend Your Blog’s Features And Functionality
- A Basic Guide To Understanding WP Themes
Note: WordPress medical and health plugins are listed in this section. WordPress themes for medical businesses are covered in Part Three.
Grow Your Health Center Website – Improving Your Business Online Using WordPress
Your web traffic is a vital part of your online business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic.
Optimize Your Site For SEO With WordPress
There are so many ways WordPress can help to improve SEO:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – Set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your posts.
- Tags – WordPress lets you select the keywords that you want your article pages to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Categories – Create search engine-friendly categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Post Excerpts – Set an excerpt that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – title images used in your content with keywords for better search engine results.
- Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily link your content to other posts and pages
- Pinging – WordPress can be configured to automatically notify other sites and directories as soon as a new post is published on your site.
Improving SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress development community makes available a number of plugins that will improve your website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your website.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO)
Other things you can do to improve your site’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing features. Here are some plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below are also free):
- BuddyPress – Use the BuddyPress plugin to set up a social network on your site.
- bbPress – This plugin can be used to run your own community forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – This plugin lets you send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP site.
- Disqus – Power discussions and increases engagement on your website.
- Floating Social – This WordPress plugin lets you add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your posts and pages.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site using free or inexpensive plugins)
Generating Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Tools
This section looks at how to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries for your health or medical-related business.
Providing A Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is a great way to retain and grow your readership. Adding a newsletter provides a number of benefits and advantages including:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides useful updates
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for user interaction
- Provides another way for readers to share your content
A proven strategy for attracting newsletter subscribers is to provide high value information and offer users free gifts in exchange for their personal details. This could be a handy guide, tips for improving health and diet, access to health tools, free trials, access to videos, podcasts, etc.
Provide A Contact Form
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch with you. A contact form also lets visitors send feedback, contact specific departments, request quotes, and more.
A contact form provides several benefits including:
- Reducing spam
- Set up automated responses
- Gives you control over what is sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- Convenience for visitors
A very popular contact form plugin for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin For WordPress)
This free plugin is easy to install and set up and allows you to insert multiple contact forms to your pages and posts, customize the forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
The plugin supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Another option you may want to consider if you plan to set up a website for a medical practice is to add sections to your contact form so prospective clients can select which section of the practice they want to reach. This will make sure that visitors get their comment to the correct area.
Provide A Map
Adding a map helps your visitors and customers find you.
Adding maps (e.g. Google Maps) to your site also provides a number of benefits, such as:
- A map increases local SEO
- Clients can better plan their visits or appointments
- Show location of events
(Maps help your visitors and customers find you)
Popular Google Maps plugins 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 Driving More Visitors To Your Medical Clinic Services Website
WordPress Plugins
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your website that will immediately add a range of functional tools for your site visitors. Here are some of these:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar – WordPress Plugin)
The Booking Calendar plugin allows you to add online booking services to your site. It has an intuitive and user-friendly interface with flexible functionality. It is suitable for a range medical, fitness & sports businesses, e.g. dental practitioners, surgical centers, alternative therapists, booking yoga classes, etc.
(Booking Calendar – Overview)
Booking Calendar works right out of the box. Website visitors can check availability of services you offer and book appointments easily. Site administrators and visitors receive booking confirmations. The plugin is also widget-ready, and offers multi-language support. The plugin developers also offer a premium version with a ton of additional features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Manager
(Manage Your Events Automatically Using Event Espresso WP Plugin)
If you run health or medical events like seminars or workshops, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WordPress allows you to easily schedule your event and begin receiving online bookings in a few minutes
(Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed software that gives you full control of the event registration management process.
We have written a comprehensive article on Event Espresso here:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin)
This is a free collection of 400+ calculators that you can display on your website. It also supports internationalization
Most of them aren’t designed for health or medical-related use, but there are many you can use, including the following:
- Body Statistics – e.g. Body Composition Calculator, Fat Calculator, GFR (Glomerular Filtration Rate) Calculator, Metric BMR Calculator, Stride Length Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, Daily Energy Expenditure Calculator, Calories Burned Walking Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. BAI (Body Adiposity Index) Calculator, Rockport Walk Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. One Rep Max Weight Lifting Calculator, Cigarette Savings Calculator, Ovulation Calculator, Sobriety Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. BMR Calorie Calculator, Macronutrient Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. Ideal Weight Calculator, Weight Loss Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form Plugin)
With Calculated Fields Form you can create forms that perform single and complex calculations, including:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculators
- And more
The plugin is also available in a premium version with many additional features.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin)
This simple plugin lets logged-in users record their weight periodically. The results are then shown in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin For WordPress – User Graph)
The plugin allows users to input target weights and provides support for the following weight formats: Metric (Kg), Imperial – Stones & Pounds, Imperial – Pounds only.
For more details, go here}:
Simple BMI Calculator Widget
(Simple BMI Calculator Widget – WordPress Plugin)
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator lets you add a widget to your sidebar that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
As well as Simple BMI Calculator, there are a number of plugins you can look at to perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A BMI and Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) calculator that saves calculation data for logged-in users and gives an overview to the trainer.
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator that displays a visitor’s BMI
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors figure out their basal metabolic rate, by entering their age, sex and weight.
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data WordPress Plugin)
Drug Interaction Data 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 – WordPress Plugin – Database Results)
Information about drugs can be displayed inside your posts and pages, or as a widget on your sidebar menu. 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}:
PubMed Posts
(PubMed Posts Plugin)
PubMed Posts adds a dashboard widget that lets you publish content to your site from PubMed articles, as well as a search feature that helps visitors find posts with specific data. A basic editor that lets you change the layout of data in your post content is also included with the plugin.
PubMed comprises more than 25 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books.
For more details, go here}:
MJM Clinic
(MJM Clinic Plugin For WordPress)
The MJM Clinic Plugin was designed for medical and health care related websites. You can add service pages with booking forms, provide related health conditions, create case studies, link indication tags to services, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Treato
(Treato)
Treato lets you display information about drugs on your site and see what see what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato collects and analyzes experiences sourced directly from patients from medical forums and blog posts, then aggregates the content to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users can access valuable insight about over 14,000 medical conditions from over 2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap
(HealthTap – WordPress Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows users to locate and book a virtual consult with doctors, clinical psychologists, etc. via text chat or HD video from any mobile device, personal computer, or smartwatch.
With With the HealthTap Concierge plugin installed, your visitors 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 choose a doctor, connect in real time using video or text chat, or send the doctor a question and get answers via the service.
For more details, go here}:
Trend MD
(Trend MD Plugin For WordPress)
TrendMD will add the TrendMD recommendations widget to your WordPress site. 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 WordPress Plugin)
WP Nutrition Facts is a free WordPress plugin that lets you add a nutrition facts table into your pages and posts, allowing your visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food in a standardized format.
(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin For WordPress – Custom Post Type Label Creation)
This plugin uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labeling regulations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Ultimate Recipe
(WP Ultimate Recipe – WordPress Plugin)
If you run a health-related website that provides nutrition or healthy eating recommendations, a great way to add engaging content to your site is to add recipes.
Plugins like WP Ultimate Recipe let you easily publish recipes on your site.
Other recipe plugins for WordPress include:
- Recipe Card – Publish recipes with nutrition facts that your readers can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – EasyRecipe lets you easily add recipes to your site with features like cut and paste, plain text recipe auto conversion, Google Recipe View formatting, live custom formatting, automatic ratings and conversion from other recipe plugins.
- ZipList Recipes – You can 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)
Awesome Fitness Testimonials lets you display fitness and wellness testimonials, case studies and reviews, before and after photos, videos, etc. on your website.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic Plugin For WordPress)
Exercise Images by Everkinetic lets you add a database of exercise images to your website.
(Exercise Images Plugin – Image Database)
For more details, go here}:
In part three, we take a look at themes for health and medical businesses.
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This is the end of section 2.
Click on this link to continue reading:
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)