In Part 1 of this comprehensive guide on ways to build your health or medical business online, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Challenges Professional Medical Services Practitioners Face Online
- Opportunities For Health Businesses In The Digital Economy
- Your Web Pages
- Improve The Content On Your Website
In this section, we continue looking at more ways to grow your medical business online.
Topics covered include:
- Ways Of Improving Traffic
- Tips For Generating Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
- How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Web Traffic With Plugins
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
- WP Plugins – Improve Your Web Site’s Capability
- WordPress For Beginners – An Introduction To WordPress Themes
Note: Plugins are covered in this section. WordPress themes for medical businesses are covered in Part Three.
Your Health Center Website – Improving Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Visitors With WordPress Plugins
Web traffic is vital to your online business growth. This section discusses how to improve search engine optimization, improve user engagement and increase visitors to your health or medical site generation with plugins & themes.
Optimizing Your Website For Search Engines (SEO)
There are so many ways that WordPress helps optimize your medical website for search engines:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – 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.
- Post Categories – Add categories for your posts and products.
- Post Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose an excerpt that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for better search results.
- Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links
- Post Notification – Configure your site to automatically notify other sites and directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your site.
How To Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Visitors Using Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are various WordPress plugins that improve your website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your site.
Here are some plugins you can use to improve your site’s search engine optimization:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your site’s search engine optimization)
Other ways to improve your medical site’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social features. Here are a few more fantastic WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – Use the BuddyPress plugin to set up and run your own social network on your site, with member profiles, user groups, messaging, activity streams, and more.
- bbPress – Run a discussion forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter lets you send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard.
- Disqus – Power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your website or blog.
- Floating Social – Easily add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your posts and pages.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site using WordPress plugins)
Ways To Generate New Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Applications
Let’s discuss now ways to improve your sales and generate new leads and enquiries.
Add An Email Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is an excellent way to build a list of subscribers. It provides a number of benefits including:
- Drives targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides useful information and advice
- Provides a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Increases engaging with users
- Provides you with additional opportunities for your content to be shared with others
An effective strategy for attracting subscribers to your newsletter is to provide them with content of high value and offer them free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their details. This could be a handy guide, tips for improving general health and fitness, access to fitness tools, free trials, membership access to courses, contests, etc.
Add Contact Forms
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch. A contact form also allows users to report concerns, ask questions to specific departments, request a quote, and more.
A contact form provides a number of benefits, like:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Different forms can be added to any page or post
- Improves the professional look of your website
- More convenient for visitors
One of the most popular WordPress contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WP Plugin)
This free contact form plugin allows you to create and manage multiple contact forms into any page or post, customize your forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
Contact Form 7 also supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Something to consider if you plan to set up a website for a medical center is adding sections to your contact form so prospects can choose which section of the center they want to reach. This will help make sure that visitors get their message to the right department.
Adding Maps
Maps help your visitors and clients find you.
A map is a very useful tool for several reasons:
- A map increases local SEO
- Helps visitors find you easily
- Displays location of events
(A map helps your visitors and clients find you)
Some of the most popular Google Maps plugins include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
Improving Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Visitors With Plugins And Themes
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 users. Here are just some of these:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar WP Plugin)
This free bookings reservations plugin allows you to add appointment booking services to your site. It is well supported and provides users with an intuitive and user-friendly interface. It is highly suitable for a wide range medical, health, fitness & sports businesses, e.g. dental practices, surgical centers, health spas, booking sessions with personal trainers, etc.
(Booking Calendar – Overview)
The plugin works out of the box. Website visitors can check availability of services you offer and make a booking quickly and easily. Administrators and visitors receive email notifications. The plugin also lets you add a calendar or booking form to your site’s sidebar, and offers multi-language support. A premium version of this plugin with many additional features is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – Event Management & Ticketing Registration Software For WordPress
(Manage Event Bookings Online Using Event Espresso For WordPress)
If your business involves running medical events like seminars or workshops, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin allows you to easily set up your event and begin accepting online registrations in minutes
(Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management & Ticketing Registration Plugin)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich software that gives you complete control of your event registration management process.
We have written a detailed article on the benefits and features of using Event Espresso. To learn more, go here:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators – WordPress Plugin)
Calculator Pro Calculators is a free collection of 400+ calculators that you can provide to users on your website and embed into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of the calculators aren’t specifically designed for medical-related usage, but there are a number you can include in your site, including the following:
- Body Statistics – e.g. Blood Volume Calculator, Child Height Calculator, GFR (Glomerular Filtration Rate) Calculator, Ponderal Index Calculator, Stride Length Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Calorie to kJ Calculator, kJ to Calorie Calculator, Calories Burned Walking Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Push-Up Test Calculator, Rockport Walk Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. One Rep Max Weight Lifting Calculator, Cigarette Savings Calculator, Due Date Calculator, Sobriety Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, Water Intake Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. Ideal Weight Calculator, Weight Loss Percentage Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form Plugin For WordPress)
Calculated Fields Form is great for creating forms with dynamically calculated fields to display the calculated values, including:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculators
- And lots more
A premium plugin version with additional features and functionalities is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker WP Plugin)
Weight Loss Tracker lets logged-in users record their weight periodically. The data is then displayed in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin – Graph)
The plugin allows users to enter target weights and supports the following 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 Plugin)
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator 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 additional plugins you can check out that perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A responsive BMI and BMR calculator that saves calculation data for logged-in users and gives an overview to the site administrator.
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator that displays BMI
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors figure out their basal metabolic rate, by inputting their age, sex and weight.
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data Plugin)
Drug Interaction Data will retrieve and display drug information, including what the drug is used for and what other medications the drug is known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data WP Plugin – Results)
Information about drugs can be displayed inside your web content, 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 the standardized RxNorm name.
For more details, go here}:
PubMed Posts
(PubMed Posts)
PubMed Posts adds a dashboard widget that lets you crate posts from PubMed articles, as well as a search feature that helps visitors find posts with specific data. An 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 For WordPress)
MJM Clinic can be used for clinic and health care related websites. You can add service pages with booking forms, locations, provide related health conditions, add case studies, link indication tags to services and conditions, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Treato WordPress Plugin
(Treato Plugin)
Treato WordPress plugin lets you add a sidebar widget that allows your site visitors to search drugs and see what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato collects and analyzes patient experiences written in related forums and blog posts, then aggregates the posts to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users receive valuable insight about 14,000+ conditions and over 26,600 medications from over 2.2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap
(HealthTap Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows consumers to locate and book a virtual consult with real doctors via text chat or HD video from any mobile device, computer, or smartwatch.
With the plugin installed, users 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 health topic. They can then select a doctor, chat over video or text, or send the doctor a question and get answers with the service, which has a database of over 73,000 doctors.
For more details, go here}:
TrendMD
(TrendMD Plugin For WordPress)
This 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, cite or read 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 is a free WordPress plugin that lets you insert a nutrition facts table into your pages and posts, allowing your site visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food in a standardized format and make better decisions about the food they consume.
(WP Nutrition Facts – Label Creation)
WP Nutrition Facts uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labelling regulations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Ultimate Recipe
(WP Ultimate Recipe – WordPress Plugin)
If you run a health or fitness-related business that provides diet or healthy eating advice, a great source of engaging content to your site is to add great recipes.
A plugin like WP Ultimate Recipe lets you easily publish healthy recipes on your site.
Other WordPress recipe plugins include:
- Recipe Card – Publish recipes with nutrition facts that your 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, live custom 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)
Awesome Fitness Testimonials allows you to display fitness and wellness testimonials, reviews and case studies on your site.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images by Everkinetic
(Exercise Images – WordPress Plugin)
Exercise Images by Everkinetic lets you add exercise drawings to your fitness site.
(Exercise Images Plugin For WordPress – Database)
For more details, go here}:
In part 3, we look at WordPress themes for health and medical businesses.
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This is the end of section 2 of this guide on ways to grow your health-related web presence.
Click on this link to continue reading:
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