Tag: Medical Business

In Part One of this guide on ways to improve your health-related business web presence, we covered the following topics:

• Online Challenges For The Medical Profession
• Opportunities For The Health & Medical Profession In The Online Economy
• Essential Website Pages
• Tips On How To Improve Your Content

In Parts Two & Three, we will continue looking at more ways to grow your health or medical-related business online.

Topics covered in this (and the following section) include:

• Ways To Improve Traffic Using WordPress
• How To Generate Leads & Enquiries
• WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Generating More Web Traffic

To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:

• Using WordPress Plugins – The Easy Way To Extend Your Web Site’s Features
• A Basic Guide To WP Themes

Note: Plugins are listed in this section. Medical and health-related themes are listed in Part Three.

Your Medical Center Website – Improving SEO, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Visitors To Your Site Using Plugins

Web traffic is vital to your business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic.

Optimizing Your Site For Search Engines (SEO)

There are lots of ways WordPress can help to improve your medical website’s SEO:

• SEO-Friendly – configure the permalinks to create search engine-optimized web addresses for your posts.
• Tags – Choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your posts for.
• Categories – Add search engine-friendly categories for your posts and products.
• Post Excerpts – Set the description for your posts that search engines will display in their search result pages.
• Images – title images with keywords for improved search engine results.
• Internal Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily link your content to other posts and pages
• Post Notification – Configure your site to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories the moment a new post is published on your site.

WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation

As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WP community makes available also a number of plugins that improve your website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your site.

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
• WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin

(A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO)

Other things you can do to improve your website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social features. Here are a few more powerful WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below can be downloaded at no cost):

• BuddyPress – This free WordPress plugin helps you run a social networking community on your WordPress site.
• bbPress – bbPress lets you run a community forum on your website.
• E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP site.
• Disqus – Power discussions and helps to increase engagement on your site.
• Social Media Feather – 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 to their website with WordPress plugins)

Generating More Leads & Enquiries

Let’s take a look now at ways to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries for your medical or health business.

Provide A Newsletter

Adding an email newsletter is an excellent way to build a subscriber list. Adding newsletters] provides a number of benefits and advantages including:

• Sends targeted traffic to your site
• Keeps readers from forgetting about you
• Keeps readers updated
• Provides a targeted marketing channel
• It’s a way to offer special products or services to a select audience
• Increases interaction
• Provides additional ways for subscribers to share your content

An effective way to get visitors to subscribe to your newsletter is to provide them with high value information and give them a free gift in exchange for their details. This could be a time-saving guide, tips for improving health and fitness, access to fitness tools, discount coupons, membership access to courses, podcasts, etc.

Contact Forms

A contact form provides an easy and simple way for prospective customers to contact you. Users can report concerns, contact specific departments, request quotes, send suggestions for new services or products and more.

A contact form provides several benefits and advantages including:

• Reducing spam
• Automated response
• Giving you control over what is sent to you
• You can keep your email address private
• They can be added to any post or page
• Looks professional
• Is convenient for visitors

One of the most popular WordPress contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.

Contact Form 7

(Contact Form 7 Plugin)

This free contact form plugin is easy to install and set up and lets you insert and manage multiple contact forms on your website, customize the forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.

Contact Form 7 also supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.

Another option you may want to consider if you want to set up a website for a health clinic or medical center is to segment your contact form so prospective clients can choose the section of the clinic they want to reach. This ensures that visitors get their message to the correct recipient.

Adding A Map

Adding a map to your site helps your visitors and customers find you.

Adding maps, such as Google Maps to your site also provides a number of benefits, such as:

• They improve local SEO
• Visitors can easily find you
• Displays location of events

(Adding maps helps your visitors and customers find you)

Here are some 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 & Themes That Improve Your Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Traffic

Medical And Health Services Plugins For WordPress

WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your medical or health site to immediately add a range of practical tools for your site visitors. Here are some of these:

Booking Calendar

(Booking Calendar)

Booking Calendar 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 range of uses, e.g. dental practices, physicians, chiropractors, booking sessions with personal trainers, etc.

(Booking Calendar – Overview)

Booking Calendar works right out of the box. Your website visitors can check availability of services and make online bookings easily. Administrators and visitors receive email notifications. The plugin is also widget-ready, and supports multiple languages. A premium plugin version is also available with additional features.

For more details, go here}:

• Booking Calendar

Event Espresso

(Manage Bookings & Registrations Online With Event Espresso WordPress Plugin)

If you run medical events, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.

The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WordPress lets you easily set up your event and begin processing bookings literally in minutes

(Event Espresso)

Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich plugin that gives you full control over the event registration management process.

We have written a detailed article on the benefits and features of using Event Espresso. If you would like to know more here:

• Managing Your Events Online Using Event Espresso WP Plugin

Calculator Pro Calculators

(Calculator Pro Calculators)

Calculator Pro Calculators provides a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed these into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.

Note: Most of them aren’t specifically designed for medical or health usage, but there are a few you can use, including the following:

• Body Statistics – e.g. ANC Calculator, Frame Size Calculator, GFR (Glomerular Filtration Rate) Calculator, Metric BMR Calculator, US Navy Body Fat Calculator, etc.
• Calorie – e.g. Calorie to kJ Calculator, RMR 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, Blood Donation Calculator, Pace Calculator, Smoking Cost Calculator, etc.
• Nutrition – e.g. Carbohydrate Calculator, Water Intake Calculator, etc.
• Weight – e.g. BMI Calculator, Weight Loss Calculator, etc.

For more details, go here}:

• Calculators Pro WP Plugin

Calculated Fields Form

(Calculated Fields Form)

The Calculated Fields Form plugin lets you create dynamically calculated field forms, including:

• Health & Fitness Calculators
• Ideal Weight Calculator
• Pregnancy Calculator
• Calorie Calculators
• And many more

The plugin developers also provide a premium version with many additional features.

For more details, go here}:

• Calculated Fields Form WordPress Plugin

Weight Loss Tracker

(Weight Loss Tracker)

This plugin lets users record their weight on given dates. The results are then displayed in a graph and table.

(Weight Loss Tracker – WordPress Plugin – Graph)

The plugin allows users to enter target weights and supports various weight formats: Metric (Kg), Imperial – Stones & Pounds, Imperial – Pounds only.

For more details, go here}:

• Weight Loss Tracker Plugin For WordPress

Simple BMI Calculator

(Simple Body Mass Index Calculator Widget – WordPress Plugin)

Simple BMI Calculator is a free plugin that installs a widget on your sidebar that can be configured and customized to match your theme.

As well as Simple BMI Calculator, there are additional plugins you can look at to perform similar functions:

• BMI BMR Calculator – A mobile-friendly BMI and Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) calculator that saves calculation data for logged-in users and gives an overview to the administrator.
• BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator that displays a visitor’s BMI
• Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors calculate their basal metabolic rate, by inputting their age, sex and weight.
• And more

For more details, go here}:

• Simple BMI Calculator Plugin

Drug Interaction Data Plugin

(Drug Interaction Data)

This plugin will retrieve and 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 Plugin – Data Results)

Information about drugs can be displayed on your site. 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}:

• Drug Interaction Data Plugin For WordPress

PubMed Posts

(PubMed Posts Plugin)

PubMed Posts adds a dashboard widget that creates posts from PubMed articles, and a search feature that locates posts with specific article 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}:

• PubMed Posts

MJM Clinic

(MJM Clinic Plugin For WordPress)

MJM Clinic can be used to add functionality to clinic and health care related websites, such as inserting service pages with booking forms, organising your services into hierarchical categories, locations, patient feedback entries and more.

For more details, go here}:

• MJM Clinic – WordPress Plugin

Treato

(Treato – WordPress 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 gathers and analyzes experiences sourced directly from patients from online forums and blog posts, then aggregates the posts to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users can access valuable insight about the side effects of 26,500+ medications, drug comparisons across over 14,000 medical conditions, which drugs people feel are working, and more, from over 2 billion collected posts.

For more details, go here}:

• Treato

HealthTap Concierge

(HealthTap Plugin For WordPress)

HealthTap Concierge allows visitors to consult with doctors via HD video or text chat from any mobile device, computer, even smartwatch.

With With the HealthTap Concierge plugin installed, users 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 select a doctor, connect in real time using video or text chat, or send the doctor their question.

For more details, go here}:

• HealthTap Concierge Plugin For WordPress

TrendMD

(TrendMD – WordPress Plugin)

This plugin will 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}:

• Trend MD Plugin For WordPress

WP Nutrition Facts

(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin)

WP Nutrition Facts is a simple WordPress plugin 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.

(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin – Custom Post Type Label Creation)

WP Nutrition Facts uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labelling regulations.

For more details, go here}:

• WP Nutrition Facts Plugin For WordPress

WP Ultimate Recipe

(WP Ultimate Recipe Plugin)

If you run a health-related business that provides diet and nutrition or healthy eating recommendations, a great way to add engaging content to your site is to add great recipes.

Plugins like WP Ultimate Recipe let you add recipes 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 – EasyRecipe makes entering recipes on your site easy with features like cut and 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. Additional features like Google Recipe View formatting and SEO are included.
• And many more.

For more details, go here}:

• WP Ultimate Recipe

Awesome Fitness Testimonials

(Awesome Fitness Testimonials WordPress Plugin)

This plugin lets you add fitness & wellness testimonials, case studies and reviews, before and after pics, videos, etc. to your health and fitness websites.

For more details, go here}:

• Awesome Fitness Testimonials WP Plugin

Exercise Images

(Exercise Images by Everkinetic Plugin)

This plugin lets you display a database of exercise illustrations in your content.

(Exercise Images Plugin – Image Database)

For more details, go here}:

• Exercise Images by Everkinetic Plugin

In the next section, we will look at health and medical themes for WordPress.

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This is the end of part two.

Click on this link to continue:

• How To Successfully Build And Grow A Medical-Related Business Online – Part 3

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