In Part One of this guide on ways to improve your health or medical-related business web presence, we covered the following areas:
- Challenges Medical Businesses Face Online
- Online Opportunities For Health And Medical Services Professionals
- Your Web Pages
- Improving Your Web Content
In this section, we continue looking at more ways to grow your health services online.
Areas covered include:
- Improve Traffic Using WordPress
- Tips For Generating More Leads & Enquiries
- Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using Plugins
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
- Add New Functionality To Your WordPress Web Site With Plugins
- A Newbie’s Guide To Understanding WordPress Themes
Note: Health and medical plugins are covered in this section. Themes for medical businesses are listed in Part Three.
Online Business Tips For Medical And Health Services Professionals – Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation Using WordPress Plugins
Web traffic is vital to your online business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic.
Optimizing Your Website For Search Engines (SEO) With WordPress
There are loads of ways WordPress can help to optimize your website for search engines:
- SEO-Friendly – Set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized web addresses for your article pages (called posts).
- Post Tags – WordPress lets you select the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages (posts) for.
- Categories – Create search engine-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Post Excerpts – Create an excerpt that search engines will show in their search results.
- Images – title your images with keywords for better search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily link internal content
- Pinging – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify other search directories whenever a new post is published on your website.
WordPress Plugins That Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are a number of plugins that improve your health website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your website.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your site’s search engine optimization)
Other ways to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social features. Here are some more WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – Use this free plugin to set up your own social networking community on your website, with member profiles, activity streams, user groups, messaging, and more.
- bbPress – Use the bbPress WordPress plugin to set up and run an online discussion forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard.
- Disqus – This plugin lets you power discussions and increases user engagement on your website or blog.
- Social Media Feather – This WordPress plugin lets you add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your posts and pages.
(You can easily add social features to your website with free or inexpensive plugins)
Generate New Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Applications
Let’s take a look now at how to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries online.
Adding An Email Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is an excellent way to build a list of subscribers. Adding newsletters] provides several benefits and advantages, like:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides updates that could save businesses time and money
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special products or services to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for interaction
- Provides other ways for subscribers to share your content
An effective strategy for attracting newsletter subscribers is to provide high value content and give users free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their personal details. This can be a guide, checklists for improving diet and well-being, access to medical calculators, coupons, access to subscriber-only content, podcasts, etc.
Contact Forms
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for prospective clients to get in touch with you. A contact form also allows visitors to raise problems, contact specific departments, request quotes, send suggestions and more.
A contact form provides 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
- They can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- Convenience for visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WordPress Plugin)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that lets you add multiple contact forms into any post or page, customize your form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is also supported.
Another feature you may want to consider if you are setting up a website for a medical center is to add sections to your contact form so prospective clients can select the practitioner they want to contact. This ensures that contact form enquiries reach the right person.
Add A Map
A map helps your visitors and customers find you.
Maps are useful tools for several reasons:
- A map helps to increase local SEO
- Helps visitors find you easily
- Displays location of events
(Adding maps to your website helps your visitors and clients find you)
Some of the most popular map plugins include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using WordPress Plugins
WordPress Health & Medical Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your site that will immediately add a range of practical tools for users. Here are some of the plugins you can choose from:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar Plugin For WordPress)
The Booking Calendar plugin lets you add appointment bookings to your site. This plugin has an intuitive and user-friendly interface with flexible functionality. It is suitable for a wide range health and medical consulting businesses, such as dental practitioners, surgeons, chiropractors, booking yoga classes, etc.
(Booking Calendar – Overview)
Booking Calendar works out of the box. Your website visitors can check the availability of services you offer and make an online booking easily. Site administrators and visitors receive email notifications. The plugin is also widget-ready, and offers multi-language support. The plugin is also available in a premium version with extra features.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Manager
(Manage Your Events Via The Web With Event Espresso Plugin For WordPress)
If you plan to run medical or health events like seminars or workshops, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WP lets you easily schedule multiple events and begin processing online bookings in just a few minutes
(Event Espresso – Event Manager And Ticketing Registration Software For WordPress)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed application that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.
If you want to learn more about Event Espresso, see this article:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators – WordPress Plugin)
Calculator Pro provides 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. The plugin supports internationalization
Most of them aren’t specifically designed for medical-related use, but there are several you can add to your site, including:
- Body Statistics – e.g. BMR Calculator, Carbohydrate Calculator, Katch-Mcardle BMR Calculator, Metric BMR Calculator, Waist to Hip Ratio Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, kJ to Calorie Calculator, Calories Burned Swimming Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Push-Up Test Calculator, Rockport Walk Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Bike Size Calculator, Cigarette Savings Calculator, Due Date Calculator, Smoking Cost Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, Water Intake Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. BMI Calculator, Weight Loss Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form Plugin)
The Calculated Fields Form plugin lets you create forms that perform single and complex calculations, including:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculators
- And lots more
The plugin is also available in a premium version with many more features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker – WordPress Plugin)
Weight Loss Tracker is a free plugin that lets users record their weight on given dates. The results are then displayed in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker WordPress Plugin – 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 Plugin)
This simple WordPress plugin 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 a number of other plugins you can use that 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 trainer.
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator that displays Body Mass Index
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors calculate their basal metabolic rate, by inputting their age, sex and weight.
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data – WordPress Plugin)
Drug Interaction Data Plugin will retrieve and display drug information, including what the drugs are used to treat and what other medications the drugs are known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data Plugin For WordPress – Information Screen)
Information about drugs can be displayed as a widget or inside your posts and pages. 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 their standardized RxNorm name.
For more details, go here}:
PubMed Posts
(PubMed Posts)
This plugin adds a dashboard widget that lets you publish content to your site from PubMed articles, plus a search feature that helps visitors find posts with specific article data. A basic editor that changes the layout of data in your post content is also included.
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)
MJM Clinic can be used to add functionality to medical and health care related websites that provide information about symptoms and health conditions.
For more details, go here}:
Treato
(Treato – WordPress Plugin)
Treato lets you embed the Treato healthcare search engine into your WordPress sidebar so you and your users can search drugs and see what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato collects and analyzes experiences sourced directly from patients written in forums and blog posts, then aggregates the posts to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users gain valuable insight about 14,500+ medical conditions from over 2.2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap
(HealthTap)
HealthTap Concierge allows consumers to locate and book a virtual consult with doctors, clinical psychologists, etc. via text chat or HD video from any mobile device, computer, even smartwatch.
With With the HealthTap Concierge plugin for WordPress installed, your site visitors 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 text or video, or send the doctor a question.
For more details, go here}:
Trend MD
(TrendMD Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin will add the TrendMD recommendations widget to your WordPress site. The TrendMD recommendations widget is used by scholarly publishers to grow 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 Plugin)
This simple WordPress plugin lets you add a nutrition facts table into your pages, posts and custom post types, allowing your site visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food.
(WP Nutrition Facts WP Plugin – Create Custom Post Type Labels)
This plugin uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labelling regulations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Ultimate Recipe
(WP Ultimate Recipe Plugin)
If you own a health or fitness-related business that provides nutritional or healthy eating suggestions, a great way to add engaging content to your site is to publish healthy recipes.
Plugins like WP Ultimate Recipe let you add healthy and delicious recipes on your site.
Other recipe plugins for WordPress include:
- Recipe Card – Create beautiful recipes that readers can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – Makes publishing recipes on your site easy with features like cut and paste, plain text recipe auto conversion, 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}:
Awesome Fitness Testimonials
(Awesome Fitness Testimonials Plugin)
This plugin lets you add fitness & wellness testimonials, reviews and case studies to your site.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images by Everkinetic
(Exercise Images – WordPress Plugin)
The Exercise Images plugin lets you insert a database of exercise images into your content.
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic Plugin For WordPress – Catalog)
For more details, go here}:
In part three of this detailed guide, we discuss themes that are suitable for medical and health businesses.
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This is the end of part 2 of this article on ways to grow your medical or health business web presence.
Click here to continue reading:
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