In Part One of this guide on ways to build your medical business web presence, we covered the following areas:
- Challenges Medical And Health Services Professionals Face Online
- Opportunities For Medical And Health Businesses In The Online Economy
- Your Website Pages
- Tips On How To Improve Your Content
In this section, we continue exploring more ways to grow your medical or health services online.
Areas covered in this (and the following section) include:
- Improving Web Traffic Using WordPress
- Ways To Generate More Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Tools
- Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation Using Plugins
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
Note: Health and medical plugins are covered in this section. Health and medical themes are covered in Part 3.
Online Business Tips For Health Providers – WordPress Plugins & Themes For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increasing User Engagement And Traffic Generation
Web traffic is vital to your online business growth. This section explores ways to improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and increase web traffic generation with WordPress plugins and themes.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines (SEO) Using WordPress
There are loads of ways WordPress can help to improve SEO:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – Set the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the web address of your pages.
- Post Tags – Choose the keywords that you want your article pages (posts) to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Categories – Add search engine-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Excerpts – Set descriptions for your posts that will show to search engine users.
- Images – title your images with keywords for better search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily create internal links
- Post Notification – Configure your site to automatically notify other sites and directories the moment a new post is published on your website.
Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Traffic Using WordPress Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are also a number of plugins that will improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.
Here are some plugins you can use to improve your SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your website’s SEO)
Other WordPress tools you can use to improve your site’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social features. Here are some more fantastic WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – Use this free WordPress plugin to set up and manage your own social networking community on your site.
- bbPress – Use bbPress to set up a discussion forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – Use this plugin to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard.
- Disqus – This plugin lets you power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your website or blog.
- Monarch – Add social sharing features and buttons on your website or blog.
(You can easily add social sharing buttons to your site with WordPress plugins)
Generate More Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Applications
This section explains ways to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries online.
Adding An Email Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is a great way to build a list of subscribers. Adding an email newsletter provides a number of benefits including:
- Sends targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides updates
- Provides a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Increases user interaction
- Provides you with additional opportunities for your content to be shared around with others
A proven strategy for attracting new subscribers to your email newsletter is to provide high value information and offer users free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their personal details. This could be a time-saving guide, tips for improving diet and well-being, access to fitness apps, discount coupons, membership access to videos, contests, etc.
Adding Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch with you. A contact form also lets users send feedback, contact specific departments, request quotes, and more.
A contact form provides many benefits and advantages including:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- Gives you control over what is sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- They can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- Convenience for visitors
One of the most popular WordPress contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WordPress Plugin)
This free plugin is easy to install and configure and allows you to create and manage multiple contact forms into any page on your site, 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 segment your contact form so prospects can select the section of the center they are contacting you about. This ensures that visitors’ enquiries reach the right recipient.
Map
Adding maps helps your visitors and clients find you.
Adding maps, such as Google Maps to your website also provides users with a number of benefits, such as:
- Maps help to increase local SEO
- Visitors can find you more easily
- Show location of events
(Adding maps helps your visitors and customers find you)
Some of the more popular Google Maps plugins for WordPress include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Website Using Plugins And Themes
WordPress Plugins
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your medical or health website that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for users. Here are just some of these:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar)
Booking Calendar allows you to add online booking services to your site. It has an intuitive interface with flexible functionality. It is suitable for a wide range health and medical consulting businesses, such as dental practices, physicians, alternative therapists, booking sessions with personal trainers, etc.
(Booking Calendar Plugin For WordPress – Overview)
This bookings plugin works out of the box. Website visitors can check availability of services and make a booking quickly and easily. Administrators and visitors receive notifications. The plugin is also widget-ready, and offers multi-language support. A premium version with many extra features is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso
(Manage Event Registrations Via The Web With Event Espresso For WP)
If your business involves running health or medical events, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration software allows you to easily schedule multiple events and begin receiving online bookings literally in a few minutes
(Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager & Registration System)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich application that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
We have written a detailed article about Event Espresso here:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators – WordPress Plugin)
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.
Most of them aren’t specifically designed for medical-related uses, but there are quite a few you can include in your site, including:
- Body Statistics – e.g. BMI Calculator, Child Height Calculator, Goal Weight Calculator, Max Heart Rate Calculator, Protein Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, RMR Calculator, Calories Burned Walking Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Push-Up Test Calculator, Balke Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. One Rep Max Weight Lifting Calculator, Blood Sugar Converter Calculator, Pace Calculator, Running Pace Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Carbohydrate Calculator, Protein Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. BAI (Body Adiposity Index) Calculator, Weight Loss Percentage Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form – WordPress 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 Calculators
- And many more
The plugin is also available in a premium version with a ton of extra features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker WP Plugin)
This plugin lets logged-in users record their weight periodically. The data is then displayed in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin – User Graph)
The plugin allows users to insert target weights and supports various weight formats: Metric (Kg), Imperial – Stones & Pounds, Imperial – Pounds only.
For more details, go here}:
Simple BMI Calculator Widget
(Simple BMI Calculator Widget Plugin For WordPress)
Simple BMI Calculator lets you add a widget to your website that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
As well as Simple BMI Calculator, there are a number of other WordPress plugins you can look at 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 administrator.
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator that displays your site user’s Body Mass Index
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors calculate 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 WP Plugin)
Drug Interaction Data Plugin for WordPress can be used to 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 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 Plugin For WordPress)
PubMed Posts adds a dashboard widget that creates posts from PubMed articles, and a search widget that finds posts with specific data. A basic 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 Plugin For WordPress)
The MJM Clinic Plugin can be used to add functionality to clinic and health care related websites that provide information on health conditions and symptoms.
For more details, go here}:
Treato WordPress Plugin
(Treato Plugin)
This plugin lets you embed the Treato healthcare search engine into your WordPress sidebar so your site visitors can search a vast drug database and see what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato collects and analyzes patient experiences from related forums and blog posts, then aggregates the content to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users receive valuable insight about side effects, drug comparisons, which drugs people feel are working, and more from over 2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap Concierge
(HealthTap)
HealthTap Concierge allows users to locate and book a virtual consult with real doctors via text chat or HD video from any mobile device, personal computer, even smartwatch.
With With the HealthTap Concierge plugin for WordPress installed, your visitors can type in a health question and receive a list of doctors in their geographic area who specialize in that particular topic. They can then select a doctor, connect in real time over video or text chat, or send questions.
For more details, go here}:
TrendMD
(Trend MD Plugin)
The TrendMD plugin lets you 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, cite or read scholarly content from your journals or websites through personalized recommendations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Nutrition Facts
(WP Nutrition Facts)
This free plugin 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.
(WP Nutrition Facts WordPress Plugin – Create Labels)
WP Nutrition Facts uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labeling regulations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Ultimate Recipe
(WP Ultimate Recipe Plugin)
If you own a health-related business that provides nutritional or healthy eating advice, a great way to add engaging content to your site is to publish healthy recipes.
A plugin like WP Ultimate Recipe lets you add recipes on your site.
Other WordPress recipe plugins include:
- Recipe Card – Create and publish beautiful recipes with nutrition facts that your site users can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – Makes publishing recipes on your site easy with features like cut & paste, auto conversion of your plain text recipe posts, Google Recipe View formatting, live custom formatting, automatic ratings and conversion from other recipe plugins.
- ZipList Recipes – Lets you easily format recipe text and add images. Additional features like SEO and Google Recipe View formatting are included.
- And many more.
For more details, go here}:
Awesome Fitness Testimonials
(Awesome Fitness Testimonials – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin allows you to display fitness and wellness testimonials, reviews and case studies, before and after photos, etc. on your health & fitness sites.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images by Everkinetic
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic Plugin For WordPress)
The Exercise Images plugin lets you display exercise images on your website.
(Exercise Images – Database)
For more details, go here}:
In the next section, we will be discussing health and medical themes for WordPress.
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This is the end of part 2 of this guide on ways to build your medical or health-related business web presence.
Click on this link to access the rest of this article:
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