In Part One of this article on ways to build your medical business web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Challenges Health And Medical Services Providers Face Online
- Opportunities For Health & Medical Professionals
- Ways To Improve Your Web Pages
- How To Improve Your Web Content
In this section, we continue exploring more ways to grow your medical-related services online.
Topics covered include:
- Ways To Improve Web Traffic
- Ways To Generate Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Applications
- WordPress Plugins That Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
Note: Plugins are listed in this section. Themes for medical businesses are listed in Part Three.
Your Health Website – How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Visitors To Your Website With Plugins
Web traffic is vital to your online business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimize Your Site For Search Engines (SEO) Using WordPress
There are many ways WordPress can help to improve your website’s SEO:
- URLs – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Post Tags – Choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages (posts) for.
- Post Categories – Add categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Excerpts – Set the description for your posts that will appear in search results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for improved search engine results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily create internal links
- Pinging – Configure your site to automatically notify (ping) other search directories whenever a new post is published on your website.
How To Improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors With Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WP community makes available many plugins that will improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your site.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your website’s SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your website’s SEO)
Other ways to improve your health site’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing features. Here are some more useful WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below are also free):
- BuddyPress – Use the BuddyPress plugin to set up and run your own online social community on your site, with member profiles, activity streams, user groups, messaging, and more.
- bbPress – This free WordPress plugin lets you run your own forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP site.
- Disqus – Power discussions and increases user engagement on your website.
- Floating Social – Add powerful social sharing features to your site.
(You can easily add social sharing features to your website with free or inexpensive plugins)
Ways To Generate Leads & Enquiries
In this section we will discuss how to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries online.
Add A Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is a great way to grow and retain your readership. Adding a newsletter provides many benefits and advantages, like:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates
- Provides a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for increasing engaging with your users
- Provides you with additional ways for your content to be shared online with new potential customers
A proven way to attract newsletter subscribers is to provide users with valuable information and give them something for free in exchange for their details. This can be a special report, tips for improving health, fitness and nutrition, access to fitness apps, discount vouchers, membership access to videos, contests, etc.
Adding Contact Forms
A contact form makes it easy and simple for prospective clients to get in touch. Contact forms also let visitors send feedback, ask questions to specific departments, request a quote, give suggestions for new services or products and more.
A contact form provides several benefits and advantages including:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what is sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- They can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- Convenient for site visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WordPress Plugin)
This free contact form plugin is easy to install and set up and allows you to create multiple contact forms, customize the form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
The plugin also supports international languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Something to consider if you are setting up a website for a medical practice is adding sections to your contact form so prospective clients can select which section of the center they are contacting you about. This ensures that visitors’ enquiries reach the right person.
Provide A Map
Adding a map to your site helps your visitors and clients find you.
A map is a very useful tool for several reasons:
- Maps help to improve local SEO
- Visitors can find your office more easily
- Displays location of events
(Adding maps helps your visitors and customers find you)
Below are just some of the more popular plugins that let you embed, customize and display Google maps on your website:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins That Can Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Medical Center Site
Plugins For WordPress
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your medical-related website that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for your site visitors. Here are some of these plugins:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar – WordPress Plugin)
Booking Calendar lets you add appointment bookings to your site. It has an intuitive interface. It is highly suitable for a wide range health and medical consulting businesses, such as dental practitioners, specialists, massage therapists, booking yoga classes, etc.
(Booking Calendar – WordPress Plugin – Overview)
Booking Calendar works right out of the box. Your website visitors can check availability of services you offer and make a booking easily. Administrators and visitors receive booking confirmations. The plugin is also widget-ready, and offers multi-language support. A premium version is also available and includes additional features.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager & Ticketing Registration Software
(Manage Event Bookings Via The Web With Event Espresso For WP)
If you run medical events, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin lets you easily create an event and begin receiving online registrations in a few minutes
(Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticketing Manager Plugin)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich application that gives you full control over your event registration management process.
We have written a detailed article on the benefits and features of using Event Espresso. For more details, go here:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators WP Plugin)
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. It supports internationalization
Most of the calculators aren’t specifically designed for health or medical usage, but there are a few you can use, including the following:
- Body Statistics – e.g. Body Surface Area Calculator, Fat Calculator, Katch-Mcardle BMR Calculator, Max Heart Rate Calculator, WHtR Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, RMR Calculator, Calories Burned Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Astrand Test Calculator, Bruce Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Beats and Breaths Calculator, Blood Donation Calculator, Ovulation Calculator, Smoking Cost Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, Water Intake Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. Ideal Weight Calculator, Weight Loss Percentage Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form – WordPress Plugin)
With Calculated Fields Form you can create forms with dynamically calculated fields to display the calculated values, such as:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculator
- And more
A premium plugin version with a ton of additional features and functionalities is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker – WordPress Plugin)
Weight Loss Tracker is a free WordPress plugin that lets users record their weight periodically. This data is then shown in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker – 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 BMI Calculator Widget)
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator is a simple WordPress plugin that lets you add a widget to your sidebar that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
In addition to Simple Body Mass Index Calculator, there are other plugins you can check out to 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.
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator that displays your site user’s Body Mass Index
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors figure out their basal metabolic rate, based on age, sex and weight.
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data – WordPress Plugin)
Drug Interaction Data will retrieve and display drug information, including what the drug is used to treat and what other medications the drug is known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data – WordPress Plugin – Database Results)
Information about drugs can be displayed as a widget or inside your web content. 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)
This plugin adds a dashboard widget that lets you crate posts from PubMed articles, as well as a search function that locates posts with specific article data. An editor that changes 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 – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin was designed to add functionality to medical and health care related websites, such as inserting service pages with booking forms, related health conditions, multiple clinic locations, patient feedback entries and more.
For more details, go here}:
Treato
(Treato Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin lets you add a sidebar widget that allows you and your site visitors to search drugs and see what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato collects and analyzes experiences sourced directly from patients written in medical forums and blog posts, then aggregates the content 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 Plugin For WordPress)
HealthTap Concierge allows consumers to locate and book a virtual consult with real doctors, clinical psychologists, etc. via HD video or text chat from any mobile device, personal computer, or smartwatch.
With the plugin installed, your visitors 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 text or video, or send the doctor their question.
For more details, go here}:
Trend MD
(TrendMD WordPress Plugin)
The TrendMD plugin will 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 scholarly content from your journals or websites through personalized recommendations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Nutrition Facts
(WP Nutrition Facts – WordPress Plugin)
WP Nutrition Facts lets you insert a nutrition facts table into your pages, posts and custom post types, allowing your site visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food in a standardized format and make more informed decisions about the food products they purchase.
(WP Nutrition Facts WordPress Plugin – Creating 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 – WP Plugin)
If you run a health or fitness business that provides nutrition or healthy eating advice, a great way to add engaging content to your site is to add great recipes.
Plugins like WP Ultimate Recipe let you easily add recipes on your site.
Other recipe plugins for WordPress include:
- Recipe Card – Create beautiful recipes with nutrition facts that your readers can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – Makes publishing recipes on your site easy with features like cut and paste, plain text recipe auto conversion, 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. Includes additional Google Recipe View formatting and SEO features.
- And many more.
For more details, go here}:
Awesome Fitness Testimonials
(Awesome Fitness Testimonials WordPress Plugin)
This plugin allows you to add fitness & wellness testimonials, case studies and reviews to your health & fitness-related site.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images by Everkinetic
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you display exercise illustrations inside your posts and pages.
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic WordPress Plugin – Image Catalog)
For more details, go here}:
In part three of this detailed article, we look at health-related and medical themes.
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This is the end of section two of this article on ways to improve your health-related business online.
To continue, click here:
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