In Part 1 of this article on ways to grow your health business presence online, we provided practical tips and suggestions on the following topics:
- Challenges Medical Professionals Face Online
- Opportunities For The Medical And Health Profession In The Web Economy
- Your Website Pages
- How To Improve The Content On Your Website
In Parts 2 and 3, we explore more ways to grow your health or medical business online.
Areas covered in this (and the next section) include:
- Ways Of Improving Traffic
- Generate More Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Applications
- WordPress Plugins & Themes For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Creating Better User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
Note: Plugins are covered in this section. Themes for medical businesses are covered in Part 3.
Online Business Tips For Health And Medical Services Practitioners – WordPress Plugins That Can Help To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
Web traffic is vital to your business growth. This section discusses ways to improve your business online with WordPress.
Optimize Your Site For SEO With WordPress
There are many ways WordPress can help to improve your website’s SEO:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – Set the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the URL of your pages.
- Tags – WordPress lets you choose the keywords that you want your posts to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Create categories for your posts and products.
- Post Excerpts – Set an excerpt that will show in search results.
- Images – title your images with keywords for improved search results.
- Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily link your content to other posts and pages on your site
- Post Notification – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify (ping) other search directories as soon as a new post is published on your site.
Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress development community makes available a number of plugins that improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your website.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin (for search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO)
Other things you can do to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing. Here are some more fantastic plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below are also free):
- BuddyPress – Set up a social network on your website.
- bbPress – Set up your own online community forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – This plugin lets you send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard.
- Disqus – Power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your website or blog.
- Monarch – Use this plugin to add social sharing features to your website.
(You can easily add social sharing features to your site with WordPress plugins)
Generating More Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Applications
Let’s now discuss ways to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries.
Adding A Newsletter
Adding a newsletter is a great way to build a subscriber list. Adding a newsletter provides many benefits, like:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates that could save businesses time and money
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special products or services to a select audience
- Increases engaging with your users
- Provides another way for your content to be shared with new potential customers
An effective way to attract subscribers is to provide them with high value information and offer them free gifts in exchange for their personal details. This can be a time-saving guide, tips for improving health and nutrition, access to health tools, vouchers, membership access to videos, podcasts, etc.
Contact Forms
Contact forms make it easy and simple for readers to get in touch. A contact form also allows visitors to send feedback, contact specific departments, ask for a quote, send suggestions for new services or products and more.
A contact form provides many benefits including:
- Reducing spam
- Set up automated responses
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- They can be added to any post or page
- Improves the professional look of your website
- Convenient for users
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 easy to install and configure and allows you to add and manage multiple contact forms into any page on your site, customize the form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is supported.
Something else to consider if you are setting up a website for a health center or medical clinic is to add sections to your contact form so prospects can choose the section of the clinic they are contacting your business about. This helps visitors get their comment to the right area.
Add Maps
Adding maps to your site helps your visitors and customers find you.
Maps are a great tool for several reasons:
- A map increases local SEO
- Helps visitors find your office easily
- Display location of events
(Maps help your visitors and customers find you)
Some of the most popular Google Maps plugins for WordPress include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins & Themes For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
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 users. Here are some of these plugins:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar Plugin)
This free plugin allows you to add online booking services to your site. Booking Calendar has an intuitive and user-friendly interface and flexible functionality. It is highly suitable for a range of businesses, such as medical practices, surgical centers, health spas, booking sessions with personal trainers, etc.
(Booking Calendar Plugin For WordPress – Overview)
This booking reservations plugin works right out of the box. Your website visitors can check availability of services you offer and make online bookings quickly and easily. Site administrators and visitors receive booking confirmations. Booking Calendar is also widget-ready, and offers multi-language support. A premium version of this plugin with extra features and functionalities is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management & Registration Plugin
(Manage Bookings & Registrations Automatically With Event Espresso WP Plugin)
If you run health or medical events, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin lets you easily set up your event and start processing online bookings in just a few minutes
(Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed application that gives you complete control of the event registration management process.
We have written a comprehensive article about the benefits and features of using Event Espresso. Go here to learn more:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
Calculator Pro Calculators provides a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed these into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of them aren’t specifically designed for health or medical use, but there are a number you can add to your website, including the following:
- Body Statistics – e.g. Body Fat Calculator, Durnin/Womersley Skinfold Body Fat Calculator, GFR (Glomerular Filtration Rate) Calculator, Max Heart Rate Calculator, WHtR Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Calorie to kJ Calculator, kJ to Calorie Calculator, Calories Burned Swimming Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Push-Up Test Calculator, Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Bike Size Calculator, Blood Sugar Converter Calculator, Ovulation Calculator, Sobriety 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 Plugin)
With Calculated Fields Form you can create forms with dynamically calculated fields to display the calculated values, including:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculators
- And many more
The developers of this plugin also offer a premium version with additional features.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin For WordPress)
Weight Loss Tracker lets users record their weight on given dates. This data is then shown in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin For WordPress – 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 BMI Calculator
(Simple Body Mass Index Calculator Widget)
This free plugin lets you add a widget to your sidebar that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
In addition to Simple BMI Calculator, there are other WordPress plugins you can check out that perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A mobile-friendly BMI and Basal Metabolic Rate calculator that saves calculation data for logged-in users and gives an overview to the site administrator.
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator that displays BMI
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors calculate 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 For WordPress)
This plugin will retrieve and display drug information, including what the drug is used for and what other medications the drug is known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data WordPress Plugin – Data 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.
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, as well as a search widget that lets site visitors search for posts with specific article data. A basic content editor 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)
The MJM Clinic Plugin can be used for medical and health care related websites. It lets you add service pages with booking forms, provide related health conditions, assign case studies, link indication tags to conditions, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Treato
(Treato WordPress Plugin)
Treato WordPress 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 medical forums and blog posts, then aggregates the posts to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users receive insight about 14,700+ medical conditions from over 2.2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap
(HealthTap Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows visitors to locate and book a virtual consult with doctors via text chat or HD video from any mobile device, computer, even smartwatch.
With With the HealthTap Concierge 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 over video or text, or send the doctor their question.
For more details, go here}:
Trend MD
(Trend MD Plugin)
The TrendMD plugin will add the TrendMD recommendations widget to your WordPress website. 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 add a nutrition facts table into your posts and pages, allowing your site visitors to make better decisions about the food they eat.
(WP Nutrition Facts – Create Custom Post Type Labels)
This plugin uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labeling regulations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Ultimate Recipe
(WP Ultimate Recipe)
If you run a health or fitness-related website that provides nutritional or healthy eating information, a great source of engaging content to your site is to publish healthy recipes.
A plugin like WP Ultimate Recipe lets you publish delicious and healthy on your site.
Other recipe plugins for WordPress include:
- Recipe Card – Create recipes with nutrition facts that readers can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – EasyRecipe makes publishing recipes on your site easy with features like cut and paste, auto conversion of your plain text recipe posts, Google Recipe View formatting and preview button, 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 WP Plugin)
Awesome Fitness Testimonials allows you to showcase fitness & wellness testimonials, case studies and reviews on your fitness-related site.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images by Everkinetic
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you insert exercise illustrations into your pages and posts.
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic – Catalog)
For more details, go here}:
In part 3 of this guide, we look at WordPress themes that are suitable for medical businesses.
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This is the end of part 2 of this article on ways to grow your medical web presence.
To view Part 3, click this link:
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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)