In Part One of this guide on ways to improve your medical or health-related business online, we provided many practical tips and suggestions on the following topics:
- Challenges Professional Health Practitioners Face Online
- Online Opportunities For Health Providers
- Your Website Pages
- Tips For Improving Your Content
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your medical-related services online.
Areas covered in this (and the next section) include:
- Improve Traffic
- Generate More Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Applications
- Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Traffic With Plugins
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
Note: Plugins are covered in this section. Medical and health-related themes are listed in Part 3.
Improve Web Traffic Using WordPress
Your web traffic is an integral part of your business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimizing Your Website For Search Engines With WordPress
There are many ways that WordPress helps optimize your website for search engines:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Post Tags – WordPress lets you select the keywords that you want search engines to index your posts for.
- Post Categories – Add search engine-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Post Excerpts – Set the description for your posts that search engines will show.
- Images – title images with keywords for better search engine results.
- Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links
- Pinging – Configure your site to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories immediately upon publishing new content on your website.
WordPress Plugins That Can Help To Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Site
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are quite a number of plugins that will improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your website.
Here are some plugins you can use to improve your website’s search engine optimization:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (for search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO)
Other things you can do to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing features. Here are a few more plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – This plugin can be used to set up a social community on your website.
- bbPress – Use bbPress to run an online community forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – Use this plugin to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard.
- Disqus – This plugin lets you power discussions and increases engagement on your website.
- Social Media Feather – Use this WordPress plugin to add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your website.
(You can easily add social sharing to your website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Tips For Generating New Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Tools
Let’s now discuss ways to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries online.
Providing A Newsletter
Adding a newsletter is a great way to build a list of subscribers. Adding email newsletters] provides several benefits and advantages, like:
- Drives targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Increases interaction
- Provides other ways for readers to share your content
One of the best ways to get visitors to subscribe to your newsletter is to provide them with valuable information and give them free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their details. This can be a time-saving guide, tips for improving fitness and well-being, access to medical calculators, discount vouchers, membership access to courses, podcasts, etc.
Provide Contact Forms
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch. Visitors can report concerns, contact specific departments, request quotes, send suggestions and more.
A contact form provides many benefits and advantages, like:
- Reduces 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
- Improves the professional look of your website
- More convenient for users
A popular contact form plugin for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin)
This free plugin lets you insert multiple contact forms, customize the forms and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is supported.
Something to consider if you plan to set up a website for a health center or medical clinic is to add sections to your contact form so visitors can select the practitioner they want to contact. This ensures that contact form enquiries reach the right area.
Adding Maps
Maps help your visitors and clients find you.
A map is a very useful tool for several reasons:
- A map helps to increase local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Display location of events
(Adding a map helps your visitors and clients find you)
Below are just some 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 That Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Traffic To Your Health Clinic Business Generation
Health Or Medical Services Plugins For WordPress
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your site that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for site visitors. Here are just some of these:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin lets you add online bookings to your site. This plugin is well supported, has an intuitive and user-friendly interface and flexible functionality. It is suitable for a wide range medical, health, fitness and sports-related businesses, such as medical practices, surgeons, health spas, booking yoga classes, etc.
(Booking Calendar – WordPress Plugin – Overview)
Booking Calendar works out of the box. Website visitors can check the availability of services and book appointments online easily. Administrators and visitors receive email notifications. The plugin is also widget-ready, and supports multiple languages. The plugin is also available in a premium version with many more features.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticket Management Software
(Manage Your Events Automatically With Event Espresso Plugin For WordPress)
If your business involves running medical seminars, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WP enables you to easily set up multiple events and begin processing online bookings in just minutes
(Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed application that gives you full control over the event registration management process.
Go here to learn more about managing events with Event Espresso:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
Calculator Pro provides a free collection of 400+ calculators that you can display on your website and embed into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. The plugin also supports internationalization
Most of the calculators aren’t specifically designed for medical or health use, but there are many you can add to your site, including the following:
- Body Statistics – e.g. ANC Calculator, Frame Size Calculator, Katch-Mcardle BMR Calculator, Metric BMR Calculator, VO2 Max Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Daily Calorie Calculator, kJ to Calorie Calculator, Calories Burned By Heart Rate Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. BAI (Body Adiposity Index) Calculator, Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Beats and Breaths Calculator, Blood Sugar Converter Calculator, Pace Calculator, Running Pace Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Carbohydrate Calculator, Water Intake Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. BMI Calculator, Weight Loss Percentage Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form Plugin)
This free plugin is useful for creating dynamically calculated field forms, such as:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculator
- And lots more
A premium version with a ton of extra features and functionalities is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker – WordPress Plugin)
Weight Loss Tracker lets logged-in users record their weight on given dates. The data is then shown 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
(Simple Body Mass Index Calculator Plugin)
Simple BMI Calculator is a simple plugin for WordPress that installs a widget on your website that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
As well as Simple BMI Calculator, there are a number of WordPress plugins you can use that perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A mobile-friendly Body Mass Index and BMR calculator that saves calculation data for logged-in users and gives an overview to the trainer (site admin).
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator that shows your users their BMI
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors figure out their basal metabolic rate, by inputting their age, sex and weight.
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data Plugin)
Drug Interaction Data 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 – Data Results)
Drug information can be displayed as a widget or inside your posts and pages. The plugin loads the drug and pharmaceutical data from 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 lets you add content from PubMed articles, plus a search feature that finds posts with specific article data. A content editor is also included.
PubMed includes over 25 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books.
For more details, go here}:
MJM Clinic
(MJM Clinic – WordPress Plugin)
This versatile plugin was designed for clinic and health care related websites. You can add service pages with booking forms, provide information about symptoms and health conditions, add case studies, link indication tags to services and conditions, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Treato WordPress Plugin
(Treato Plugin For WordPress)
Treato WordPress plugin lets you display information about drugs on your site and see what read what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato collects and analyzes patient experiences written in medical forums and blog posts, then aggregates the posts to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users gain insight about side effects, drug comparisons, which drugs people feel are working, and more from over 2.2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap Concierge
(HealthTap Concierge Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows users to consult with real doctors via HD video or text chat from any mobile device, personal computer, or smartwatch.
With the 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 choose a doctor, chat using video or text, or send the doctor their question.
For more details, go here}:
TrendMD
(Trend MD – WordPress Plugin)
The TrendMD plugin will add the TrendMD recommendations widget to your 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)
WP Nutrition Facts is a free WordPress plugin that lets you add a nutrition facts table into your posts and pages, allowing your site visitors to make informed decisions about the food they consume.
(WP Nutrition Facts – WordPress Plugin – 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 – WordPress Plugin)
If you run a health or fitness business that provides diet or healthy eating advice, a great way to add content that will engage your readers is to add great recipes.
A plugin like WP Ultimate Recipe lets you easily publish healthy recipes on your site.
Other recipe plugins for WordPress include:
- Recipe Card – Create recipes that your site users can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – Lets you easily add recipes to your site with features like cut and paste, auto conversion of your plain text recipe posts, live custom formatting, Google Recipe View formatting and preview button, automatic ratings and conversion from other recipe plugins.
- ZipList Recipes – Easily format recipe text and add images. The plugin also provides a number of additional features, including Google Recipe View formatting and SEO.
- And many more.
For more details, go here}:
Awesome Fitness Testimonials
(Awesome Fitness Testimonials WP Plugin)
The Awesome Fitness Testimonials plugin lets you add fitness and wellness testimonials, case studies and reviews to your site.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic)
Exercise Images lets you add a database of exercise illustrations to your fitness site.
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic Plugin – Database)
For more details, go here}:
In part 3, we will be discussing WordPress themes for health and medical businesses.
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This is the end of section two of this guide on ways to build your health web presence.
Click here to continue:
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