In Part One of this article on ways to improve your health or medical business presence online, we covered the following areas:
- Challenges Medical And Health Services Practitioners Face Online
- Opportunities For Medical Services Practitioners
- Basic Pages
- Tips On How To Improve Your Web Content
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your health-related business online.
Areas covered include:
- Ways To Improve Traffic
- Ways To Generate New Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
- Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Traffic With Plugins
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
- Adding New Functionality To Your Website With Plugins
- WordPress For Business – An Overview Of Themes
Note: Plugins are covered in this section. Health and medical themes are listed in Part 3.
Online Business Tips For Medical And Health Services Professionals – How To Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Website Using Plugins & Themes
Your web traffic is an integral part of your business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic.
Optimize Your Website For SEO With WordPress
There are loads of ways WordPress can help to optimize your medical or health website for search engines:
- SEO-Friendly – Set the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the web address of your pages.
- Post Tags – WordPress lets you select the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages (posts) for.
- Categories – Create SEO-friendly categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Excerpts – Set descriptions for your posts that will appear in search results.
- Images – title images used in your content with keywords for better search results.
- Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that allows you to easily create internal links for faster indexing of pages
- Post Notification – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify other sites and directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your site.
Improving Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Improve User Engagement And Generate More Visitors Using WordPress Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are quite a number of WordPress plugins that improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your site.
For example, you can install the plugins below to improve your site’s SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (for search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO)
Other things you can do to improve your health-related site’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing. Here are a few more WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – Run your own online social networking community on your WordPress site.
- bbPress – Use the bbPress WordPress plugin to set up an online community forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard.
- Disqus – This WordPress plugin lets you power discussions and increases user engagement on your website or blog.
- Monarch – Add powerful social sharing features and buttons to your site.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site with free or inexpensive plugins)
Generate More Leads & Enquiries
This section will show you how to improve your sales and generate new leads and enquiries.
Provide A Newsletter
Adding a newsletter is an excellent way to build a subscriber list. It] provides several benefits including:
- Sends targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides updates that could save businesses time and money
- Provides a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for improving user interaction
- Provides other ways for subscribers to share your content
An effective way to attract subscribers is to provide users with valuable information and offer them free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their personal details. This can be a time-saving guide, checklists for improving fitness and nutrition, access to health applications, discount coupons, access to courses, podcasts, etc.
Add Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for prospective clients to get in touch with you. A contact form also lets visitors raise problems, ask questions to specific departments, ask for a quote, and more.
Contact forms provide a number of benefits, 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 post or page
- Improves the professional look of your website
- Convenience for users
One of the most popular contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7)
This plugin allows you to create multiple contact forms into any page or post, customize the form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering is also supported.
Another option you may want to consider if you want to set up a website for a medical practice is to segment your contact form so prospective clients can choose the section of the clinic they are contacting you about. This ensures that contact form enquiries reach the correct destination.
Add Maps
Maps help your visitors and clients find you.
A map is a great tool for several reasons:
- They improve local SEO
- Helps visitors find your office easily
- Shows location of events
(Maps help your visitors and clients find you)
Popular Google Maps plugins include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins That Improve Your SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
Medical Services WordPress Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your site that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for users. Here are some of these:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar Plugin)
This free bookings reservations plugin lets you add appointment booking services to your site. This plugin is well supported, provides an intuitive interface and flexible functionality. It is suitable for a range of businesses, e.g. dental practitioners, surgical centers, alternative therapists, booking sessions with personal trainers, etc.
(Booking Calendar WP Plugin – Overview)
The plugin works right out of the box. Your website visitors can check the availability of services you offer and book appointments 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. The plugin is also available in a premium version with many extra features.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticketing Management System
(Manage Event Registrations Online Using Event Espresso For WP)
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 for WordPress lets you easily schedule multiple events and start receiving registrations literally in a few minutes
(Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticketing Management System)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich application that gives you full control over your event registration management process.
Go here for a detailed article about managing events with Event Espresso:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators – WordPress Plugin)
Calculator Pro Calculators is a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed them into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. It also supports internationalization
Most of them aren’t specifically designed for medical uses, but there are several you can add to your site, including:
- Body Statistics – e.g. Body Surface Area Calculator, Carbohydrate Calculator, Goal Weight Calculator, Metric BMR Calculator, US Navy Body Fat Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, kJ to Calorie Calculator, Calories Burned By Heart Rate Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Astrand Test Calculator, Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Beats and Breaths Calculator, Blood Sugar Converter Calculator, Ovulation Calculator, Sobriety Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Carbohydrate 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 – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you create forms that perform single and complex calculations, including:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculator
- And many more
The developers of this plugin also offer a premium version with many additional features.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker – WordPress Plugin)
Weight Loss Tracker lets logged-in users record their weight periodically. The results are then shown in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker – WordPress Plugin – 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 Body Mass Index Calculator
(Simple Body Mass Index Calculator WordPress Plugin)
This simple plugin for WordPress installs a widget on your website that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
As well as Simple Body Mass Index Calculator, there are a number of other plugins you can use 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 calculate their basal metabolic rate, based on age, sex and weight.
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data – WordPress Plugin)
Drug Interaction Data Plugin for WordPress retrieves and displays drug information, including what the drugs are used for and what other medications the drugs are known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data – Results)
Information about drugs can be displayed inside your pages and posts, 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 content from PubMed articles, plus a search function that lets site visitors find posts with specific data. The plugin also includes a simple editor that changes the layout of your post content.
PubMed includes over 25 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, online books and life science journals.
For more details, go here}:
MJM Clinic
(MJM Clinic WP Plugin)
This versatile plugin can be used to add functionality to clinic and health care related websites that provide information to site visitors 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 a vast drug database and read what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato gathers and analyzes experiences sourced directly from patients from forums and blog posts, then aggregates the posts to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users gain valuable insight about 14,000+ medical conditions from over 2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap Concierge
(HealthTap Concierge WP Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows users to consult with real doctors via HD video or text chat from any mobile device, computer, even smartwatch.
With the widget installed, users can type in a health question and receive a list of doctors in their geographic area who specialize in that particular 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}:
TrendMD
(TrendMD WP Plugin)
The TrendMD plugin lets you add 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, read or cite scholarly content from your journals or websites through personalized recommendations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Nutrition Facts
(WP Nutrition Facts)
WP Nutrition Facts is a free plugin for WordPress that lets you add a nutrition facts table into your posts, pages and custom post types, allowing your visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food in a standardized format.
(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin – Create Nutritional Facts Labels)
WP Nutrition Facts uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labelling regulations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Ultimate Recipe
(WP Ultimate Recipe)
If you run a health or fitness website that provides diet or healthy eating information, a great way to add engaging content to your site is to add healthy recipes.
Plugins like WP Ultimate Recipe let you easily publish recipes on your site.
Other recipe plugins for WordPress include:
- Recipe Card – Create and publish recipes that site visitors can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – EasyRecipe lets you easily publish recipes on your site with features like cut and 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 – You can 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)
Awesome Fitness Testimonials lets you display fitness & wellness testimonials, case studies and reviews on your site.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images
(Exercise Images)
Exercise Images lets you add a database of exercise images to your website.
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic – Catalog)
For more details, go here}:
In part three, we discuss medical and health themes for WordPress.
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This is the end of part two of this guide on ways to build your medical-related business presence online.
To continue, click here:
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