In Part 1 of this article on ways to build your health-related business presence online, we provided in-depth information on the following topics:
- Online Challenges For Health Services Professionals
- Opportunities For Medical Businesses In The Web Economy
- Improve Your Website Pages
- Tips For Improving Your Web Content
In Parts Two & Three, we discuss more ways to grow your medical business online.
Areas covered include:
- Ways To Improve Traffic With WordPress
- Generate New Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Applications
- How To Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Visitors To Your Site With Plugins
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
- WordPress Plugins To Extend Your Web Site’s Features
- WordPress For Business – An Overview Of WordPress Themes
Note: Medical and health plugins are described in this section. Health and medical themes are listed in Part 3.
Tips For Health Practitioners – Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Website Using WordPress Plugins And Themes
Your web traffic is an integral part of your online business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic.
Optimize Your Site For Search Engines Using WordPress
There are lots of ways that WordPress helps improve SEO:
- SEO-Friendly – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized web addresses for your posts.
- Post Tags – Choose the keywords that you want your posts to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Create categories for your posts and products.
- Excerpts – Set an excerpt that will display to search engine users.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for better search engine results.
- Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily link internal content
- Post Notification – WordPress can be set up to automatically notify (ping) other search directories immediately upon publishing new content on your site.
How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic To Your Site Generation Using Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are a number of plugins that improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your business.
For example, you can install the plugins below to improve your SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your site’s SEO)
Other things you can do to improve your website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing. Here are some more WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – Set up a social network on WordPress.
- bbPress – This plugin allows you to run your own forum on your WordPress site.
- E-Newsletter – This plugin lets you send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress site.
- Disqus – Power discussions and increases user engagement on your site.
- Monarch – Add powerful social sharing features and buttons to your website or blog.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their website using WordPress plugins)
Generate More Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Applications
In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries.
Add An Email Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is a great way to build a list of subscribers. Adding a newsletter provides a number of benefits including:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for user engagement
- Provides you with another way for readers to share your content
A proven strategy for attracting newsletter subscribers is to provide high value information and offer users free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their personal details. This can be a useful report, tips for improving diet and well-being, access to medical calculators, discount coupons, membership access to videos, contests, etc.
Provide A Contact Form
A contact form makes it easy and simple for readers to get in touch with you. Readers can provide feedback, contact specific departments, ask for quotes, and more.
Contact forms provide several benefits including:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what is sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Different forms can be added to any page or post
- Improves the professional look of your site
- More convenient for users
A very popular contact form plugin for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7)
Contact Form 7 allows you to insert and manage multiple contact forms on your site, customize your forms and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is also supported.
Another feature to consider if you plan to set up a website for a health center or medical clinic is to segment your contact form so prospective clients can select which section of the center they are contacting you about. This will make sure that visitors get their comment to the correct area.
Adding A Map
Adding maps to your site helps your visitors and customers find you.
Maps are a useful tool for several reasons:
- A map increases local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Display location of events
(Adding maps helps your visitors and clients 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
Improving SEO, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Visitors To Your Medical Services And Health-Related Website With WordPress Plugins
Health And Medical Services Plugins For WordPress
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your website that will immediately add a range of functional tools for your site visitors. Here are some of these:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar Plugin)
The Booking Calendar plugin lets you add online bookings to your site. It is well supported, provides an intuitive and user-friendly interface with flexible functionality. It is suitable for a range of medical or health-related uses, such as medical practices, specialists, health spas, booking patient appointments, etc.
(Booking Calendar – Overview)
The plugin works right out of the box. Website visitors can check the availability of services and make bookings easily. Site administrators and visitors receive booking confirmations. Booking Calendar is also widget-ready, and supports multiple languages. The plugin is also available in a premium version with many extra features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – Event Management & Ticketing Registration Software For WordPress
(Manage Your Events Online Using Event Espresso Plugin For WP)
If you run health seminars, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration software allows you to easily set up an event and start receiving registrations in a few minutes
(Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticketing Management Plugin)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich software that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
Go here if you would like to learn more about Event Espresso:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators WordPress Plugin)
This is a free collection of over 400 calculators that you can provide to users on your website. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t designed for health or medical usage, but there are several you can add to your site, including:
- Body Statistics – e.g. Body Composition Calculator, Child Height Calculator, GFR (Glomerular Filtration Rate) Calculator, Ponderal Index Calculator, US Navy Body Fat Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, RMR Calculator, Calories Burned Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Coopers 12 Minute Run Test Calculator, Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Bike Size Calculator, Cigarette Savings Calculator, Pace Calculator, Sobriety Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Carbohydrate Calculator, Creatine Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. BAI (Body Adiposity Index) Calculator, Weight Loss Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form)
Calculated Fields Form lets you create forms that perform single and complex calculations, including:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculator
- And many more
The plugin is also available in a premium version with many extra features.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker – WordPress Plugin)
Weight Loss Tracker is a simple plugin for WordPress that lets logged-in users record their weight on given dates. The results are then displayed in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin – Graph)
The plugin allows users to enter target weights and supports various weight formats: Metric (Kg), Imperial – Stones & Pounds, Imperial – Pounds only.
For more details, go here}:
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator
(Simple BMI Calculator Widget Plugin For WordPress)
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator is a simple plugin that installs a widget on your sidebar that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
In addition to Simple BMI Calculator, there are a number of other WordPress 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 (admin).
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator that displays Body Mass Index
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors figure out their basal metabolic rate, based on age, sex and weight.
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data Plugin)
Drug Interaction Data Plugin can be used to display drug information, including what the drug is used for and what other medications the drug is known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data – Information Screen)
Drug information can be displayed on your site. The data is provided by the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the U.S. National Institutes of Health and converts common names of drugs to their standardized RxNorm name.
For more details, go here}:
PubMed Posts
(PubMed Posts Plugin)
PubMed Posts adds a dashboard widget that lets you add posts from PubMed articles, plus a search feature that lets visitors search for posts with specific data. A simple editor that lets you change the layout of data in your post content is also included with the plugin.
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)
The MJM Clinic Plugin can be used for clinic and health care related websites. You can add service pages with booking forms, service locations, provide related health conditions, create case studies, link indication tags to services and conditions, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Treato WordPress Plugin
(Treato Plugin)
Treato WordPress plugin lets you embed the Treato healthcare search engine into your WordPress sidebar so your site visitors can search a vast drug database and read what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato gathers and analyzes patient experiences from forums and blog posts, then aggregates the content to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users can access insight about 14,700+ conditions and 26,600+ medications from over 2.2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap
(HealthTap Concierge Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows users to consult with real doctors, clinical psychologists, etc. via HD video or text chat from any mobile device, personal computer, even smartwatch.
With HealthTap Concierge installed on your WordPress site, your site 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 choose a doctor, connect in real time over video or text chat, or send the doctor their question.
For more details, go here}:
Trend MD
(TrendMD Plugin)
The TrendMD 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 scholarly content from your journals or websites through personalized recommendations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Nutrition Facts
(WP Nutrition Facts – WordPress Plugin)
This simple plugin for WordPress 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 Plugin For WordPress – Custom Post Type Label Creation)
This plugin uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labeling regulations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Ultimate Recipe
(WP Ultimate Recipe Plugin For WordPress)
If you own a health or fitness website that provides nutrition or healthy eating information, a great way to add content that will engage your readers is to add healthy recipes.
Plugins like WP Ultimate Recipe let you publish healthy and delicious recipes on your site.
Other WordPress recipe plugins include:
- Recipe Card – Create recipes with nutrition facts that your readers can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – EasyRecipe lets you easily publish recipes on your site with features like cut and 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 – Lets you 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 Plugin)
This plugin lets you add fitness & wellness testimonials, reviews and case studies, before and after photos, etc. to your site.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images
(Exercise Images – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you add exercise drawings to your site.
(Exercise Images – WordPress Plugin – Catalog)
For more details, go here}:
In the next section, we will be discussing medical clinics and health themes for WordPress.
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This is the end of section two of this comprehensive article on ways to grow your medical or health business presence online.
Click on this link to continue:
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum