In Part One of this step-by-step guide on ways to build your medical-related business online, we covered the following areas:
- Online Challenges For Medical Providers
- Opportunities For Health And Medical Services
- Improving Your Website Pages
- Improve Your Content
In this section, we will continue exploring more ways to grow your health business online.
Areas covered include:
- Improve Traffic Using WordPress
- Generating Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins & Themes That Can Help To Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation
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.
Contents
Ways Of Improving Website Traffic
Your web traffic is vital to your online business growth. This section discusses how to improve search engine optimization, improve user engagement and increase traffic generation with WordPress plugins and themes.
Optimize Your Site For Search Engines (SEO) With WordPress
There are so many ways that WordPress helps improve your medical website’s SEO:
- SEO-Friendly – configure the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your article pages.
- Tags – Choose the keywords that you want your articles to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Categories – Add categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Excerpts – Create the description for your posts that will display to search engine users.
- Images – title your images with keywords for better search engine results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily link your content to other posts
- Pinging – WordPress can be configured to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories immediately upon publishing new content on your website.
How To Improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are dozens of plugins for WordPress that improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your website.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO)
Other WordPress tools you can add to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing. Here are some fantastic plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below are also free):
- BuddyPress – Set up an online social network on WordPress, with member profiles, messaging, activity streams, user groups, and more.
- bbPress – Use the bbPress WordPress plugin to set up and run an online discussion forum on your WordPress site.
- E-Newsletter – Send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard, without requiring a 3rd party subscription.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and increases engagement on your website or blog.
- Floating Social – This plugin lets you add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your site.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Generating More Leads & Enquiries
Let’s now discuss ways to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries online.
Add A Newsletter
Adding a newsletter is a great way to grow and retain your readership. Adding a newsletter provides many benefits including:
- Drives targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates that could save businesses time and money
- Provides a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for increasing engaging with users
- Provides additional ways for readers to share your content
A proven way to get your visitors to subscribe is to provide high value information and offer users free gifts in exchange for their personal details. This could be a time-saving guide, checklists for improving health, fitness and diet, access to health applications, vouchers, access to videos, podcasts, etc.
Contact Forms
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for prospective customers to contact you. Visitors can send feedback, contact specific departments, request quotes, and more.
Contact forms provide many benefits including:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- They can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- Convenience for users
A very popular WordPress contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin For WordPress)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that allows you to add and manage multiple contact forms to your pages and posts, customize the form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Something else to consider if you plan to set up a website for a medical center is to segment your contact form so users can select the section of the practice they are contacting you about. This ensures that visitors’ enquiries reach the correct person.
Map
Adding a map helps your visitors and clients find you.
Adding maps (e.g. Google Maps) to your WordPress site also provides users with many benefits, such as:
- A map improves local SEO
- Helps visitors find your office easily
- Display location of events
(Adding a map to your site helps your visitors and customers find you)
Popular Google Maps plugins include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With WordPress Plugins & Themes
WordPress Plugins
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your site to immediately add a range of practical tools for site visitors. Here are some of these:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar WordPress Plugin)
The Booking Calendar plugin lets you add online booking services to your site. This plugin is well supported, provides an intuitive and user-friendly interface with flexible functionality. It is suitable for a wide range of businesses, e.g. dental practices, specialists, chiropractors, booking sessions with personal trainers, etc.
(Booking Calendar – WordPress Plugin – Overview)
Booking Calendar works right out of the box. Website visitors can check availability of services you offer and book appointments online easily. Site administrators and visitors receive email notifications. Booking Calendar also lets you add a calendar or booking form to your website’s sidebar, and offers multi-language support. A premium version is also available with a ton of extra features.
For more information, go here:
Event Espresso
(Manage Event Bookings Online With Event Espresso WordPress Plugin)
If your business involves running medical or health events, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration software enables you to easily create your event and begin accepting bookings in just minutes
(Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed application that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.
We have written a comprehensive article on the benefits and features of using Event Espresso. For more details, go here:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
This plugin provides a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed these into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of them aren’t specifically designed for medical use, but there are many you can add to your site, including:
- Body Statistics – e.g. Body Surface Area Calculator, FENa Calculator, Katch-Mcardle BMR Calculator, Max Heart Rate Calculator, Skinfold Body Fat Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Daily Calorie Calculator, kJ to Calorie Calculator, Calories Burned Walking Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Coopers 12 Minute Run Test Calculator, Bruce Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. One Rep Max Weight Lifting Calculator, Cigarette Savings Calculator, Pace Calculator, Target Heart Rate Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Calcium Calculator, Macronutrient Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. Ideal Weight Calculator (kg), Weight Loss Calculator, etc.
Go here for more info:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form Plugin)
This plugin is useful for creating dynamically calculated field forms, such as:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculators
- And more
The plugin developers also provide a premium version with many extra features.
More info:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker)
This plugin lets users record their weight on given dates. The results are then shown in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker – WordPress Plugin – User Graph)
The plugin allows users to enter target weights and supports various weight formats: Metric (Kg), Imperial – Stones & Pounds, Imperial – Pounds only.
More info:
Simple BMI Calculator Widget
(Simple Body Mass Index Calculator Widget)
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator is a simple plugin for WordPress 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 other plugins you can check out to 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 your site visitor’s BMI
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors calculate their basal metabolic rate, based on age, sex and weight.
- And lots more
Go here for more details about using this plugin:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data)
Drug Interaction Data Plugin for WordPress can be used to display information about drugs, including what the drugs are used to treat and what other medications the drugs are known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data – WordPress Plugin – Results)
Drug information can be displayed inside your pages and posts, or as a widget on your 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 and converts common names of drugs to the standardized RxNorm name.
For more details about using this plugin, visit the plugin website:
PubMed Posts
(PubMed Posts WP Plugin)
PubMed Posts adds a dashboard widget that lets you crate posts from PubMed articles, plus a search feature that lets your visitors search for posts with specific data. The plugin also includes a simple editor that changes the layout of your post content data.
PubMed includes over 25 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books.
More info:
MJM Clinic
(MJM Clinic Plugin For WordPress)
This versatile plugin can be used for clinic and health care related websites. It lets you add service pages with booking forms, provide related health conditions, add case studies, link indication tags to conditions, etc.
Go here for more information:
Treato WordPress Plugin
(Treato – WordPress Plugin)
Treato 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 experiences sourced directly from patients from 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 work, and more from over 2 billion collected posts.
To learn more about using this plugin, visit the plugin website:
HealthTap
(HealthTap WordPress Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows consumers to consult with real doctors, clinical psychologists, etc. who specialize in a given health topic via HD video or text chat from any mobile device, personal 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 select a doctor, connect in real time over video or text chat, or send the doctor a question.
More information:
Trend MD
(TrendMD – WordPress 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, cite or read scholarly content from your journals or websites through personalized recommendations.
For more information, go here:
WP Nutrition Facts
(WP Nutrition Facts)
WP Nutrition Facts is a free plugin that lets you insert a nutrition facts table into your pages and posts, allowing your visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food.
(WP Nutrition Facts WP Plugin – Nutritional Facts Label Creation)
WP Nutrition Facts uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labeling regulations.
More information:
WP Ultimate Recipe
(WP Ultimate Recipe Plugin For WordPress)
If you own a health or fitness-related website that provides diet and nutrition or healthy eating suggestions, a great way to add content that will engage your readers is to add healthy recipes.
Plugins like WP Ultimate Recipe let you publish delicious and healthy on your site.
Other recipe plugins for WordPress include:
- Recipe Card – Create search optimized recipes with nutrition facts that your site visitors can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – EasyRecipe lets you easily publish recipes on your site with features like cut & 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 – You can easily format recipe text and add images. Includes additional SEO and Google Recipe View formatting features.
- And many more.
For more information about this WordPress plugin, visit the plugin website:
Awesome Fitness Testimonials
(Awesome Fitness Testimonials Plugin For WordPress)
The Awesome Fitness Testimonials plugin allows you to showcase fitness & wellness testimonials, case studies and reviews, before and after pics, videos, etc. on your site.
For more information, go here:
Exercise Images
(Exercise Images)
Exercise Images by Everkinetic lets you add a database of exercise drawings to your fitness website.
(Exercise Images – Database)
Visit the plugin website to learn more about this WordPress plugin:
In part 3, we discuss medical themes for WordPress.
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This is the end of section 2.
Click here to access Part Three:
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