In Part One of this article on ways to build your medical or health-related business online, we provided in-depth information on the following topics:
- Challenges Medical And Health Services Face Online
- Opportunities For Health Services Practitioners
- Your Website Pages
- Improving Your Content
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your health-related business online.
Topics covered include:
- Tips For Improving Web Traffic
- Generate More Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Tools
- Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using Plugins
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
Note: Plugins are described in this section. Medical and health-related themes are covered in Part Three.
Your Health And Medical Practice Services Website – Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation With WordPress Plugins & Themes
Your web traffic is vital to your online business growth. This section discusses WordPress plugins & themes that can help to improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and drive more traffic.
Optimizing Your Site For Search Engines (SEO) Using WordPress
There are lots of ways WordPress can help to improve SEO:
- SEO-Friendly – configure the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the URL of your pages.
- Post Tags – Choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your articles for.
- Categories – Add SEO-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose an excerpt that search engines will display in their search results.
- Images – title your images with keywords for improved search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily link your content to other posts and pages on your site
- Post Notification – WordPress can be configured to automatically notify (ping) other search directories the moment a new post is published on your site.
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Better User Engagement And Traffic Generation
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are also a number of WordPress plugins that improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your website.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your website’s search engine optimization:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (lists all of your pages and posts for indexing by search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your website’s search engine optimization)
Other things you can do to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing. Here are some useful plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – This plugin helps you set up a social network on your site, with member profiles, activity streams, user groups, messaging, and more.
- bbPress – Set up an online forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – This plugin lets you send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard.
- Disqus – Power discussions and increases engagement on your site.
- Social Media Feather – Use this plugin to 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 website easily with free or inexpensive plugins)
How To Generate New Leads & Enquiries
This section will show you ways to improve sales and generate new leads and enquiries.
Adding A Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is an excellent way to build a list of subscribers. It provides several benefits including:
- 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 improving user interaction
- Provides additional ways for readers to share your content
A proven strategy for attracting new subscribers to your newsletter is to provide them with content of high value and offer them free gifts in exchange for their personal details. This can be a useful report, checklists for improving general health and fitness, access to health calculators, vouchers, access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Add A Contact Form
A contact form makes it easy and simple for prospective customers to contact you. A contact form also lets users raise concerns, ask questions to specific departments, ask for a quote, and more.
Contact forms provide several benefits and advantages, like:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what gets sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- Convenience for site visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin For WordPress)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that is easy to install and configure and allows you to insert and manage multiple contact forms, customize the forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
Contact Form 7 also supports international languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Another feature you may want to consider if you want to set up a website for a clinic or medical center is to add sections to your contact form so prospective clients can select which section of the clinic they are contacting your business about. This ensures that contact form enquiries reach the correct destination.
Maps
Maps help your visitors and customers find you.
Inserting maps (e.g. Google Maps), into your WordPress site also provides many benefits, such as:
- A map increases local SEO
- Allows customers to better plan their meeting or appointments
- Displays location of events
(A map helps your visitors and customers find you)
Some of the most popular map plugins for WordPress include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins & Themes That Can Help To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
Medical Services Plugins For WordPress
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your health-related site that will immediately add a range of practical tools for users. Here are some of these plugins:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar Plugin)
This free bookings reservations plugin allows you to add online bookings to your site. Booking Calendar has an intuitive and user-friendly interface and flexible functionality. It is suitable for a wide range health and medical consulting businesses, such as dental practices, surgeons, health spas, booking yoga classes, etc.
(Booking Calendar Plugin – Overview)
This bookings plugin works right out of the box. Website visitors can check availability of services and book appointments easily. Administrators and visitors receive email notifications. The plugin is also widget-ready, and offers multi-language support. A premium version of this plugin is also available with many more features.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management And Ticket Registration Software
(Manage Your Events Automatically With Event Espresso Plugin For WP)
If you run health seminars, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin enables you to easily create your event and start processing online bookings literally in minutes
(Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticket Management Plugin)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed software that gives you full control over your event registration management process.
To learn more about the benefits and features of using Event Espresso, refer to this article:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators – WordPress Plugin)
This is a free collection of over 400 calculators that you can display on your website and embed into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of them aren’t designed for medical uses, but there are several you can add to your site, including the following:
- Body Statistics – e.g. Blood Volume Calculator, FENa Calculator, Katch-Mcardle BMR Calculator, Ponderal Index Calculator, Stride Length Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Daily Calorie Calculator, Daily Energy Expenditure Calculator, Calories Burned Swimming Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Push-Up Test Calculator, Rockport Walk Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Beats and Breaths Calculator, Blood Donation Calculator, Pregnancy Calculator, Target Heart Rate Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Calcium Calculator, Water Intake Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. Ideal Weight Calculator (kg), Weight Loss Percentage Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form WP Plugin)
This plugin is great for creating forms with dynamically calculated fields to display the calculated values, including:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculator
- And lots more
A premium version is also available with additional features.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin)
This simple plugin lets users record their weight on given dates. The data is then displayed in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin For WordPress – User Graph)
The plugin allows users to enter target weights and supports the following weight formats: Metric (Kg), Imperial – Stones & Pounds, Imperial – Pounds only.
For more details, go here}:
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator
(Simple BMI Calculator)
Simple BMI Calculator lets you add a widget to your sidebar that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
As well as Simple BMI Calculator, there are additional plugins you can use to perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A 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 shows 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 many more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data Plugin)
This plugin 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 Plugin – Database Results)
Information about drugs can be displayed on your site. 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 as defined by the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
For more details, go here}:
PubMed Posts
(PubMed Posts WP Plugin)
This plugin adds a dashboard widget that creates posts from PubMed articles, and a search widget that helps visitors find posts with specific data. An editor that lets you change the layout of data in the post content is also included.
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 Plugin For WordPress)
MJM Clinic was designed to add functionality to medical 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 WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you display information about drugs on your site and see what see what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato collects and analyzes experiences sourced directly from patients from medical forums and blog posts, then aggregates the posts to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users gain valuable insight about side effects, drug comparisons, which drugs people feel work, and more from over 2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap
(HealthTap Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows consumers to consult with doctors via text chat or HD video from any mobile device, computer, or 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 health topic. They can then select a doctor, chat over video or text, or send the doctor their question and get answers with the HealthTap service.
For more details, go here}:
Trend MD
(TrendMD Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin lets you add the TrendMD recommendations widget to your site. The TrendMD recommendations widget is used by scholarly publishers to increase 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 free plugin for WordPress that lets you insert a nutrition facts table into your posts and pages, allowing your site visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food and make more informed food choices.
(WP Nutrition Facts WP Plugin – Create Labels)
This plugin uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labelling regulations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Ultimate Recipe
(WP Ultimate Recipe Plugin For WordPress)
If you run a health or fitness business that provides diet or healthy eating recommendations, a great way to add engaging content to your site is to add great recipes.
A plugin like WP Ultimate Recipe lets you publish recipes on your site.
Other recipe plugins for WordPress include:
- Recipe Card – Create and publish beautiful recipes with nutrition facts that readers can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – Makes publishing recipes on your site easy with features like cut & paste, plain text recipe auto conversion, Google Recipe View formatting and preview button, live custom formatting, automatic ratings and conversion from other recipe plugins.
- ZipList Recipes – 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)
The Awesome Fitness Testimonials plugin lets you add fitness & wellness testimonials, reviews and case studies, before and after photos, etc. to your website.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic Plugin)
The Exercise Images plugin lets you insert a database of exercise illustrations into your web content.
(Exercise Images WordPress Plugin – Image Database)
For more details, go here}:
In part three, we discuss themes for health-related and medical businesses.
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This is the end of section two of this comprehensive guide on ways to improve your medical-related business presence online.
To continue, click here:
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)