In Part 1 of this article on ways to build your health or medical business presence online, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Online Challenges For Health Practitioners
- Opportunities For Health Services Professionals In The Online Economy
- Essential Website Pages
- Tips For Improving The Content On Your Website
In Parts 2 and 3, we continue exploring more ways to grow your health business online.
Areas covered include:
- Tips For Improving Web Traffic Using WordPress
- Generate Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
- WordPress Plugins & Themes That Can Help To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Web Traffic
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
- Add New Functionality To Your WP Website With Plugins
- WordPress For Beginners – An Introduction To Themes
Note: WordPress health and medical plugins are described in this section. Medical and health-related themes are listed in Part Three.
Online Business Tips For Health Services Providers – WordPress Plugins That Can Help Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Visitors
Your web traffic is a vital part of your online business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic.
Optimize Your Site For SEO
There are lots of ways WordPress can help to optimize your medical or health website for search engines:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your article pages.
- Post Tags – WordPress lets you select the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages (posts) for.
- Post Categories – Add categories for your posts and products.
- Post Excerpts – Create the description for your posts that search engines will show in their search results.
- Images – title images with keywords for better search results.
- Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that allows you to easily create internal links
- Pinging – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify (ping) other search directories immediately upon publishing new content on your website.
Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Traffic Using WordPress Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are dozens of WordPress plugins that will improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your business.
Here are some plugins you can use to improve your SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (for search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO)
Other WordPress tools you can add to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing features. Here are some more powerful WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below are also free):
- BuddyPress – Use this free plugin to set up and run your own social networking community on WordPress, with member profiles, messaging, user groups, activity streams, and more.
- bbPress – This free WordPress plugin helps you run your own forum on your WordPress site.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard.
- Disqus – Power discussions and increases engagement on your site.
- Social Media Feather – This WordPress plugin lets you add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your pages and posts.
(You can add social sharing buttons to your site easily using WordPress plugins)
Generating Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
This section looks at how to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries for your health-related business.
Provide An Email Newsletter
Adding a newsletter is an excellent way to retain and grow your readership. Adding a newsletter provides several benefits and advantages, like:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates that can save businesses time and money
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Increases interaction
- Provides additional ways for readers to share your content
An effective strategy for attracting new subscribers to your email newsletter is to provide users with content of high value and give them free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their personal details. This can be a guide, tips for improving health, fitness and well-being, access to fitness calculators, discount coupons, access to videos, contests, etc.
Provide A Contact Form
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for prospective clients to get in touch with you. Users can report issues, ask questions to specific departments, ask for a quote, send suggestions for new services or products and more.
Contact forms provide many benefits and advantages including:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- Convenient for site visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WP Plugin)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that is easy to install and set up and lets you insert and manage multiple contact forms on your posts and pages, customize your form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
The plugin also supports international languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Another feature 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 practitioner they want to contact. This ensures that contact form requests reach the correct area.
Maps
Maps help your visitors and clients find you.
Integrating maps (e.g. Google Maps), with your WordPress site also provides visitors with a number of benefits, such as:
- Maps help to improve local SEO
- Visitors can find your office easily
- Displays location of events
(A map helps 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 For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Traffic Generation
Health & Medical Services Plugins For WordPress
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your website 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 – WordPress Plugin)
This free bookings reservations plugin allows you to add appointment booking services to your site. It has an intuitive and user-friendly interface with flexible functionality. It is suitable for a wide range medical, health, fitness & sports-related businesses, such as dental practitioners, surgeons, massage therapists, booking patient appointments, etc.
(Booking Calendar Plugin For WordPress – Overview)
Booking Calendar works out of the box. Website visitors can check the availability of services you offer and book appointments quickly and easily. Site administrators and visitors receive booking confirmations. The plugin is also widget-ready, and offers multi-language support. A premium version of this plugin is also available with extra features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso
(Manage Event Registrations Online With Event Espresso For WP)
If your business involves running medical or health events, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration WP plugin lets you easily schedule an event and start accepting online bookings literally in a few minutes
(Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed software that gives you full control over the event registration management process.
We have written a detailed article on Event Espresso. Go here to learn more:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin For WordPress)
Calculator Pro is a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed them into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. It supports internationalization
Note: Most of them aren’t specifically designed for health applications, but there are quite a few you can add to your site, including:
- Body Statistics – e.g. Body Fat Calculator, Frame Size Calculator, Lean Body Mass Calculator, Max Heart Rate Calculator, WHtR Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Calorie to kJ Calculator, kJ to Calorie Calculator, Calories Burned Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. BAI (Body Adiposity Index) Calculator, Balke Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Bike Size Calculator, Cigarette Savings Calculator, Due Date Calculator, Running Pace Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Calcium Calculator, Creatine 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)
Calculated Fields Form lets you create forms that perform single and complex calculations, such as:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculator
- And many more
The plugin is also available in a premium version with extra features.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin For WordPress)
Weight Loss Tracker is a simple WordPress plugin that lets logged-in users record their weight on given dates. This data is then shown in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker WP Plugin – Graph)
The plugin allows users to input target weights and supports various 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)
This simple plugin for WordPress installs a widget on your sidebar that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
In addition to Simple BMI Calculator, there are additional WordPress plugins you can look at 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 (administrator).
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator to show your users their Body Mass Index
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors figure out their basal metabolic rate, by entering their age, sex and weight.
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin retrieves and displays drug information, including what the drug is used for and what other medications the drug is known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data – Database Results)
Drug information can be displayed inside your pages and posts, or as a widget on your blog sidebar. The plugin loads the drug and pharmaceutical data from 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 – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin adds a dashboard widget that creates posts from PubMed articles, as well as a search function that locates posts with specific article data. It also includes an editor that changes the layout of your post content data.
PubMed comprises more than 25 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, online books and life science journals.
For more details, go here}:
MJM Clinic
(MJM Clinic)
The MJM Clinic Plugin was designed for clinic and health care related websites. You can add service pages with booking forms, provide related health conditions, add case studies, link indication tags to conditions, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Treato
(Treato WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you embed the Treato healthcare search engine into your WordPress sidebar so your site visitors can 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 content to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users can access insight about over 14,000 medical conditions from over 2.2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap
(HealthTap – WordPress Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows users to locate and book a virtual consult with real doctors via HD video or text chat from any mobile device, personal computer, or smartwatch.
With With the HealthTap Concierge plugin for WordPress installed, your 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 health topic. They can then select a doctor, chat using text or video, or send the doctor a question and get answers via the service.
For more details, go here}:
Trend MD
(TrendMD WP Plugin)
This plugin will add the TrendMD recommendations widget to your website. The TrendMD recommendations widget is used by scholarly publishers to increase 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 WP Plugin)
This plugin lets you add a nutrition facts table into your posts and pages, allowing your site visitors to make more informed decisions about the food they eat.
(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin – Create Labels)
This plugin uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labeling 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 nutrition or healthy eating suggestions, a great way to add engaging content to your site is to add great recipes.
A plugin like WP Ultimate Recipe lets you easily publish recipes on your site.
Other WordPress recipe plugins include:
- Recipe Card – Publish search engine optimized recipes that readers can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – Lets you easily add recipes to your site 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 – You can easily format recipe text and add images. Includes additional SEO and Google Recipe View formatting features.
- And many more.
For more details, go here}:
Awesome Fitness Testimonials
(Awesome Fitness Testimonials Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin lets you add fitness & wellness testimonials, reviews and case studies, before and after photos, etc. to your site.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images
(Exercise Images WP Plugin)
The Exercise Images plugin lets you insert exercise illustrations into your pages and posts.
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic WordPress Plugin – Catalog)
For more details, go here}:
In the next section of this guide, we look at health and medical themes for WordPress.
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This is the end of part two.
Click on this link to access the rest of this article:
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