In Part One of this guide on ways to improve your health business online, we provided practical tips and suggestions on the following areas:
- Challenges Professional Medical Providers Face Online
- Opportunities For Medical & Health Services
- Your Website Pages
- How To Improve Your Content
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your medical-related business online.
Topics covered in this (and the next section) include:
- Ways Of Improving Traffic With WordPress
- Generate More Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins That Can Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Visitors
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
Note: Plugins are covered in this section. Medical and health-related themes are covered in Part 3.
Ways Of Improving Traffic Using WordPress
Web traffic is vital to your online business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines
There are many ways that WordPress helps optimize your website for search engines:
- URLs – Set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized web addresses for your articles and posts.
- Tags – WordPress lets you specify the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages (posts) for.
- Categories – Create SEO-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Post Excerpts – Set an excerpt that will show to search engine users.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for improved search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links
- Pinging – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify (ping) other search directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your site.
Improving SEO, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Web Traffic With WordPress Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are various plugins for WordPress that will improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.
Here are some plugins you can use to improve your website’s search engine optimization:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (for search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO)
Other WordPress plugins you can add to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social features. Here are a few fantastic WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – Set up your own online social network on your WordPress website.
- bbPress – This plugin allows you to run your own community forum on your WordPress website.
- E-Newsletter – Use this plugin to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress site.
- Disqus – use this plugin to power discussions and helps to increase engagement on your site.
- Social Media Feather – Use this WordPress plugin to add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your website or blog.
(You can add social features to your website easily using free or inexpensive plugins)
Generating More Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
This section looks at how to improve your sales and generate new leads and enquiries online.
Providing An Email Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is an excellent way to build a list of subscribers. It] provides a number of benefits including:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates that can save businesses time and money
- Provides a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Increases interaction
- Provides you with additional opportunities for readers to share your content
An effective strategy for attracting newsletter subscribers is to provide users with high value information and give them free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their personal details. This can be an exclusive report, checklists for improving health and fitness, access to fitness applications, free trials, access to courses, podcasts, etc.
Adding A Contact Form
A contact form makes it easy and simple for prospective clients to contact you. Contact forms also allow visitors to raise problems, ask questions to specific departments, ask for quotes, and more.
Contact forms provide many benefits and advantages including:
- Reducing spam
- Set up automated responses
- Giving you control over what is sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Different forms can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- Convenient for users
A popular WordPress contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that lets you insert and manage multiple contact forms to your posts and pages, customize your form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is supported.
Something else to consider if you want to set up a website for a health center or medical clinic is to add sections to your contact form so users can select which practitioner they want to contact. This ensures that visitors’ enquiries reach the right area.
Adding A Map
Maps help your visitors and clients find you.
A map is a great tool for several reasons:
- They help to improve local SEO
- Helps visitors find your office easily
- Shows location of events
(Maps help your visitors and clients find you)
Below are just some of the more popular plugins that let you embed, customize and display Google maps on your website:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins And Themes For Improving SEO, Better User Engagement And Traffic Generation
Medical & Health Services Plugins For WordPress
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your site that will immediately add a range of practical tools for your site visitors. Here are just some of these plugins:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar)
This free bookings reservations plugin lets you add online bookings to your site. It provides an intuitive and user-friendly interface and flexible functionality. It is highly suitable for a range of medical, health & beauty businesses, such as dental practices, physicians, health spas, booking patient appointments, etc.
(Booking Calendar Plugin For WordPress – Overview)
This booking reservations plugin works right out of the box. Website visitors can check availability of services you offer and book appointments online easily. Site administrators and visitors receive notifications. Booking Calendar also lets you add a calendar or booking form to your website’s sidebar, and offers multi-language support. A premium plugin version with a ton of extra features and functionalities is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso
(Manage Bookings & Registrations Online With Event Espresso For WP)
If you plan to run health or medical seminars, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration WP software enables you to easily create an event and start processing bookings in just a few minutes
(Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Management)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed application that gives you complete control of your event registration management process.
To learn more about the benefits and features of using Event Espresso, see this article:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
Calculator Pro Calculators is a free collection of over 400 calculators that you can provide to users on your website. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of them aren’t designed for health or medical-related applications, but there are several you can add to your site, including the following:
- Body Statistics – e.g. Body Fat Calculator, Child Height Calculator, Goal Weight Calculator, Modification of Diet in Renal Disease (MDRD) GFR Calculator, Stride Length Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Calorie to kJ Calculator, Daily Energy Expenditure Calculator, Calories Burned Running Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Astrand Test Calculator, Bruce Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Bike Size Calculator, Blood Donation Calculator, Due Date Calculator, Smoking Cost Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. BMR Calorie Calculator, Water Intake Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. BAI (Body Adiposity Index) Calculator, Weight Loss Percentage Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form)
This free plugin is useful for creating forms that perform single and complex calculations, including:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculator
- And lots more
The developers of this plugin also offer a premium version with many more features.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin For WordPress)
Weight Loss Tracker is a free WordPress plugin that lets users record their weight on given dates. This data is then displayed in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker – User Graph)
The plugin allows users to enter target weights and provides support for the following weight formats: Metric (Kg), Imperial – Stones & Pounds, Imperial – Pounds only.
For more details, go here}:
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator Widget
(Simple Body Mass Index 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.
In addition to Simple Body Mass Index Calculator, there are other plugins you can use to perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A mobile-friendly Body Mass Index and Basal Metabolic Rate calculator that saves calculation data for logged-in users and gives an overview to the trainer (admin).
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator that displays a user’s Body Mass Index
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors calculate their basal metabolic rate, by entering their age, sex and weight.
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
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 Plugin – Information Screen)
Information about drugs can be displayed as a widget or inside your posts and pages. 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)
This plugin adds a dashboard widget that lets you crate posts from PubMed articles, and a search widget 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, life science journals, and online books.
For more details, go here}:
MJM Clinic
(MJM Clinic Plugin For WordPress)
The MJM Clinic Plugin can be used to add functionality to medical and health care related websites that provide information on health conditions and symptoms.
For more details, go here}:
Treato WordPress Plugin
(Treato)
Treato 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 online forums and blog posts, then aggregates the content to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users receive valuable insight about side effects, drug comparisons, which drugs people feel are working, and more from over 2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap Concierge
(HealthTap Concierge Plugin For WordPress)
HealthTap Concierge allows consumers to locate and book a virtual consult with real doctors via text chat or HD video from any mobile device, personal computer, even 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 particular topic. They can then select a doctor, chat over video or text, or send the doctor their question and get answers via the service.
For more details, go here}:
TrendMD
(TrendMD WordPress Plugin)
This plugin adds the TrendMD recommendations widget to your WordPress 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)
WP Nutrition Facts lets you add a nutrition facts table into your pages, posts and custom post types, allowing your visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food in a standardized format.
(WP Nutrition Facts – WordPress Plugin – 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 own a health-related business that provides nutrition or healthy eating suggestions, a great way to add engaging content to your site is to add recipes.
Plugins like WP Ultimate Recipe let you easily add healthy recipes on your site.
Other recipe plugins for WordPress include:
- Recipe Card – Create search engine optimized recipes that your site visitors can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – EasyRecipe lets you easily publish recipes on your site 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. Includes additional Google Recipe View formatting and SEO features.
- And many more.
For more details, go here}:
Awesome Fitness Testimonials
(Awesome Fitness Testimonials Plugin For WordPress)
Awesome Fitness Testimonials lets you add fitness and wellness testimonials, reviews and case studies, before and after photos, etc. to your health & fitness website.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images
(Exercise Images Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin lets you display exercise images in your pages and posts.
(Exercise Images – WordPress Plugin – Image Database)
For more details, go here}:
In the next section, we take a look at themes that are suitable for medical and health businesses.
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This is the end of section 2.
Click here to continue reading:
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now