In Part 1 of this article on ways to build your health-related business web presence, we covered the following topics:
- Online Challenges For The Health & Medical Profession
- Opportunities For Health And Medical Services Professionals In The Online Economy
- Improve Your Website Pages
- Tips For Improving Your Content
In Parts Two and Three, we continue looking at more ways to grow your health services online.
Areas covered include:
- Ways To Improve Web Traffic With WordPress
- Ways To Generate More Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins That Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Visitors To Your Business Generation
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
Note: Medical and health plugins are described in this section. Health and medical themes are covered in Part Three.
Grow Your Medical Services & Health-Related Website – How To Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With WordPress Plugins
Web traffic is vital to your business growth. In this section, we explore ways to improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and drive more traffic using plugins.
Optimizing Your Website For Search Engines
There are many ways WordPress can help to improve your health-related website’s SEO:
- SEO-Friendly – Set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Tags – WordPress lets you choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages (posts) for.
- Post Categories – Add search engine-friendly categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Post Excerpts – Create descriptions for your posts that will display to search engine users.
- Images – title images with keywords for improved search engine results.
- Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily create internal links
- Post Notification – Set up your site to automatically notify other search directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your site.
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Increasing User Engagement And Generating More Web Traffic
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are various plugins that will improve your medical-related website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your website.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO)
Other WordPress tools you can add to improve your health or medical-related site’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing. Here are some WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – Use the BuddyPress WordPress plugin to run your own online social community on WordPress, with member profiles, activity streams, messaging, user groups, and more.
- bbPress – This plugin allows you to run a discussion forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – Use E-Newsletter to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard, without requiring third-party subscriptions.
- Disqus – This plugin lets you power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your website.
- Social Media Feather – Add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your website.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website with WordPress plugins)
Tips For Generating Leads & Enquiries
In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries.
Adding A Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is an excellent way to retain and grow your readership. It] provides several benefits and advantages including:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Increases interaction
- Provides you with an additional way for subscribers to share your content
An effective way to attract newsletter subscribers is to provide them with information of high value and give them a free gift in exchange for their personal details. This can be a handy guide, tips for improving diet and well-being, access to fitness tools, vouchers, membership access to videos, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch. Contact forms also allow readers to report issues, ask questions to specific departments, ask for quotes, send suggestions and more.
Contact forms provide many benefits and advantages, like:
- Reduces spam
- Set up automated responses
- Giving you control over what gets sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- Convenient for visitors
A popular contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin For WordPress)
Contact Form 7 is easy to install and set up and allows you to create multiple contact forms to your website, customize your forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering is supported.
Something to consider if you plan to set up a website for a health center or medical clinic is adding sections to your contact form so visitors can choose the practitioner they want to contact. This helps get their comment to the correct department.
Provide Maps
A map helps your visitors and customers find you.
Maps are a very useful tool for several reasons:
- A map increases local SEO
- Helps visitors find you easily
- Show location of events
(Adding a map helps your visitors and customers find you)
Below are just 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 & Themes That Can Help To Improve Your Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors
WordPress Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your health website that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for site visitors. Here are some of the plugins you can choose from:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar)
Booking Calendar lets you add appointment booking services to your site. It provides users with an intuitive interface. It is suitable for a range medical and health consulting businesses, such as medical practices, physicians, chiropractors, booking patient appointments, etc.
(Booking Calendar – Overview)
The plugin works out of the box. Website visitors can check availability of services and book appointments online easily. Site administrators and visitors receive notifications. The plugin also lets you add a calendar or booking form to your website’s sidebar, and supports multiple languages. A premium version with many additional features and functionalities is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso
(Manage Your Events Via The Web With Event Espresso WP Plugin)
If you plan to run health or medical events, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WordPress lets you easily create multiple events and start processing bookings in minutes
(Event Espresso – Event Management & Ticket Registration Plugin For WordPress)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed software that gives you complete control over your 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 Plugin)
Calculator Pro is a free collection of 400+ calculators that you can display on your website. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of them aren’t designed for medical or health-related uses, but there are many you can add to your website, including the following:
- Body Statistics – e.g. Blood Volume Calculator, Child Height Calculator, Katch-Mcardle BMR Calculator, Metric BMR Calculator, US Navy Body Fat 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, Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. One Rep Max Weight Lifting Calculator, Blood Sugar Converter Calculator, Pregnancy Calculator, Running Pace Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, Creatine Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. BAI (Body Adiposity Index) Calculator, Weight Loss Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form Plugin For WordPress)
Calculated Fields Form is useful for creating dynamically calculated field forms, including:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculator
- And more
A premium plugin version is also available and includes many extra features.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker – WordPress Plugin)
This free plugin lets logged-in users record their weight on given dates. The data is then displayed in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin For WordPress – 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 Widget
(Simple BMI Calculator Widget Plugin For WordPress)
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator is a free WordPress plugin that lets you add a widget to your website that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
In addition to Simple BMI Calculator, there are additional plugins you can check out to 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 their age, sex and weight.
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data WordPress Plugin)
This plugin can be used to display information about drugs, including what the drug is used for and what other medications the drug is known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data WordPress Plugin – Data Results)
Information about drugs can be displayed inside your posts and pages, or as a widget on your sidebar menu. The plugin loads the drug and pharmaceutical data from the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
For more details, go here}:
PubMed Posts
(PubMed Posts Plugin For WordPress)
PubMed Posts adds a dashboard widget that lets you add posts from PubMed articles, as well as a search widget that lets site visitors search for posts with specific data. A simple editor that lets you change the layout of data in the post content is also included.
PubMed includes over 25 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books.
For more details, go here}:
MJM Clinic
(MJM Clinic Plugin)
This plugin can be used for clinic and health care related websites. It lets you add service pages with booking forms, provide related health conditions, create case studies, link indication tags to services and conditions, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Treato
(Treato Plugin)
Treato WordPress plugin lets you embed the Treato healthcare search engine into your WordPress sidebar so your site visitors can search drugs and read what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato collects and analyzes patient experiences written in medical forums and blog posts, then aggregates the content to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users receive insight about over 14,500 medical conditions from over 2.2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap Concierge
(HealthTap – WordPress Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows users to consult with doctors, clinical psychologists, etc. via HD video or text chat from any mobile device, computer, or smartwatch.
With HealthTap Concierge installed on your WordPress site, 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, chat using video or text, or send the doctor their question and get answers via the HealthTap service.
For more details, go here}:
TrendMD
(Trend MD WP Plugin)
The TrendMD plugin adds the TrendMD recommendations widget to your site. The TrendMD recommendations widget is used by scholarly publishers to grow 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 is a free plugin that lets you insert a nutrition facts table into your pages, posts and custom post types, allowing your site visitors to make informed food choices towards healthy eating goals.
(WP Nutrition Facts WordPress Plugin – Label Creation)
This plugin uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labeling regulations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Ultimate Recipe
(WP Ultimate Recipe)
If you run a health or fitness-related business that provides diet or healthy eating information, a great way to add engaging content to your site is to add recipes.
Plugins like WP Ultimate Recipe let you easily add delicious and healthy on your site.
Other recipe plugins for WordPress include:
- Recipe Card – Create and publish search engine optimized recipes that site users can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – Makes entering recipes on your site easy with features like cut & 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. Includes additional Google Recipe View formatting and SEO features.
- And many more.
For more details, go here}:
Awesome Fitness Testimonials
(Awesome Fitness Testimonials – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you display fitness and wellness testimonials, case studies and reviews, before and after photos, videos, etc. on your fitness sites.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images by Everkinetic
(Exercise Images – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you add exercise illustrations to your website.
(Exercise Images – WordPress Plugin – Catalog)
For more details, go here}:
In the next section of this guide, we look at WordPress themes that are suitable for medical businesses.
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This is the end of part two of this article on ways to build your medical or health business web presence.
Click on this link to continue:
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