In Part One of this article on ways to grow your medical or health business web presence, we provided practical tips and suggestions on the following topics:
- Challenges Medical Practitioners Face Online
- Opportunities For The Health Profession In The Digital Economy
- Your Web Pages
- Improve The Content On Your Website
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your medical or health-related business online.
Areas covered in this (and the next section) include:
- Ways To Improve Web Traffic Using WordPress
- Generating New Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Applications
- WordPress Plugins That Can Help To Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic To Your Site Generation
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
- Using WordPress Plugins To Enhance Your Web Site’s Functionality
- WP For Newbies – An Overview Of Themes
Note: Medical and health plugins are described in this section. Health and medical themes are covered in Part Three.
Tips For Medical Professionals – How To Improve Your Business Online With WordPress
Your web traffic is an important part of your online business growth. This section discusses WordPress plugins & themes that can improve SEO, improve user engagement and increase web traffic generation.
Optimize Your Site For Search Engines (SEO) With WordPress
There are lots of ways that WordPress helps optimize your medical website for search engines:
- SEO-Friendly – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your content posts.
- Post Tags – WordPress lets you select the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages (posts) for.
- Categories – Add categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Post Excerpts – Set an excerpt that will show in search results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for improved search results.
- Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that allows you to easily create internal links
- Pinging – Set up your site to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your website.
WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WP community makes available dozens of plugins that improve your website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO)
Other ways to improve your health-related site’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing. Here are some WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below are also free):
- BuddyPress – This free plugin can be used to set up your own social networking community on your site, with member profiles, messaging, user groups, activity streams, and more.
- bbPress – This plugin helps you set up your own community forum on your WordPress website.
- E-Newsletter – Send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP site.
- Disqus – This WordPress plugin lets you power discussions and increases user engagement on your website or blog.
- Social Media Feather – Add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your website.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website using WordPress plugins)
Generate New Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Tools
Let’s now take a look at how to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries.
Adding A Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is an excellent way to build a list of subscribers. It] provides several benefits, like:
- Sends targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides you with a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Increases interaction
- Provides you with additional ways for your content to be shared online with other potential clients
A proven strategy for attracting newsletter subscribers is to provide them with valuable information and offer them free gifts in exchange for their details. This could be a guide, tips for improving fitness and well-being, access to fitness apps, discount coupons, access to videos, podcasts, etc.
Provide Contact Forms
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for readers to contact you. A contact form also lets users report concerns, contact specific departments, ask for quotes, and more.
Contact forms provide a number of benefits including:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what is sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Different forms can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- Convenience for visitors
A popular contact form plugin for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin For WordPress)
Contact Form 7 lets you add and manage multiple contact forms into any page on your site, customize the forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering is also supported.
Something 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 prospects can choose which practitioner they want to contact. This will make sure that visitors get their message to the right department.
Adding A Map
Adding a map to your site helps your visitors and customers find you.
A map is a useful tool for several reasons:
- A map helps to increase local SEO
- Visitors can find you more easily and plan their visits better
- Shows location of events
(Adding a map helps your visitors and clients find you)
Below are some popular plugins that let you embed, customize and display 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 Search Engine Optimization, Increasing User Engagement And Generating More Traffic
Medical Services – WordPress Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your website to immediately add a range of functional tools for your site visitors. Here are just some of these:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar WordPress Plugin)
Booking Calendar allows you to add online bookings to your site. This plugin is well supported, has an intuitive interface with flexible functionality. It is highly suitable for a wide range of medical, health and beauty uses, e.g. dental practitioners, specialists, chiropractors, booking yoga classes, etc.
(Booking Calendar – WordPress Plugin – Overview)
This plugin works right out of the box. Website visitors can check the availability of services 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 plugin version with many more features is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticketing Management Software
(Manage Event Bookings Via The Web With 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 software enables you to easily create your event and start accepting bookings in just minutes
(Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed software that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
Go here if you would like to learn more about managing events with Event Espresso:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
This is a free collection of over 400 calculators that you can display on your website. The plugin also supports internationalization
Most of the calculators aren’t specifically designed for health or medical use, but there are many you can use, including the following:
- Body Statistics – e.g. BMR Calculator, FENa Calculator, Katch-Mcardle BMR Calculator, Metric Body Fat Calculator, Waist to Hip Ratio Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Calorie to kJ Calculator, Daily Energy Expenditure Calculator, Calories Burned Walking Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Push-Up Test Calculator, Balke Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Bike Size Calculator, Blood Donation Calculator, Due Date Calculator, Running Pace Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Carbohydrate Calculator, Creatine Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. BMI Calculator, Weight Loss Percentage Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form Plugin)
With Calculated Fields Form you can create dynamically calculated field forms, such as:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculator
- And more
A premium plugin version with extra features and functionalities is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker)
Weight Loss Tracker lets users record their weight periodically. The data is 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 various weight formats: Metric (Kg), Imperial – Stones & Pounds, Imperial – Pounds only.
For more details, go here}:
Simple BMI Calculator Widget
(Simple BMI Calculator Widget WordPress Plugin)
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator 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 additional WordPress plugins you can look at that perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A Body Mass Index and Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) calculator that saves calculation data for logged-in users and gives an overview to the site administrator.
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator to show users their Body Mass Index
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors figure out their basal metabolic rate, by inputting their age, sex and weight.
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data Plugin For WordPress)
Drug Interaction Data will retrieve and display information about drugs, including what the drugs are used for and what other medications the drugs are known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data – Information Screen)
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.
For more details, go here}:
PubMed Posts
(PubMed Posts WordPress Plugin)
PubMed Posts adds a dashboard widget that creates posts from PubMed articles, as well as a search feature that lets users search for posts with specific data. A simple editor that lets you change the layout of data in the post content is also included with the plugin.
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 plugin was designed for medical and health care related websites. It lets you add service pages with booking forms, service locations, provide information on health conditions and symptoms, 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 you and your site visitors can search a vast drug database and read what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato gathers and analyzes patient experiences written in related forums and blog posts, then aggregates the posts to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users gain valuable insight about the side effects of 26,500+ medications, drug comparisons across 14,000+ medical conditions, which drugs people feel are working, and more, from over 2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap
(HealthTap Concierge Plugin For WordPress)
HealthTap Concierge allows consumers to locate and book a virtual consult with real doctors via HD video or text chat from any mobile device, computer, even smartwatch.
With the widget 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 choose a doctor, chat using video or text, or send questions.
For more details, go here}:
TrendMD
(Trend MD Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin will add the TrendMD recommendations widget to your WP site. The TrendMD recommendations widget is used by scholarly publishers to grow their readership and revenue by allowing people to discover, read or cite interesting scholarly content from your journals or websites through personalized recommendations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Nutrition Facts
(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin For WordPress)
WP Nutrition Facts is a simple WordPress plugin that lets you add a nutrition facts table into your posts and pages, allowing your site visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food and make informed food choices towards healthy eating goals.
(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin For WordPress – Nutritional Facts Label Creation)
This plugin uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labeling regulations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Ultimate Recipe
(WP Ultimate Recipe Plugin For WordPress)
If you run a health-related website that provides diet and nutrition or healthy eating information, a great way to add engaging content to your site is to add healthy recipes.
A plugin like WP Ultimate Recipe lets you publish recipes on your site.
Other WordPress recipe plugins include:
- Recipe Card – Create and publish search optimized recipes with nutrition facts that your readers can print, save and review.
- 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 – Lets you 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 allows you to display fitness & wellness testimonials, reviews and case studies, before and after photos, etc. on your website.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images by Everkinetic
(Exercise Images Plugin)
The Exercise Images plugin lets you display exercise diagrams on your website.
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic Plugin – Catalog)
For more details, go here}:
In part three, we will look at WordPress themes that are suitable for medical businesses.
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This is the end of section two.
Click here to continue:
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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