Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress – 2

In Part One of this guide on ways to grow your medical-related business presence online, we covered the following topics:

• Challenges Health Practitioners Face Online
• Opportunities For Medical Businesses In The Web Economy
• Essential Pages
• How To Improve Your Web Content

In Parts 2 and 3, we explore more ways to grow your health business online.

Areas covered in this (and the following section) include:

• Ways To Improve Traffic
• Tips For Generating Leads & Enquiries
• WordPress Plugins That Can Help To Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation

For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:

• Using WordPress Plugins To Enhance Your Blog’s Capability
• WordPress For Newbies – An Overview Of WP Themes

Note: Plugins are covered in this section. Medical and health-related themes are covered in Part Three.

Online Business Tips For Medical Services Professionals – WordPress Plugins And Themes For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Better User Engagement And Generating More Traffic

Your web traffic is an integral part of your business growth. This section explores ways to improve your website with WordPress themes and plugins.

Optimizing Your Site For Search Engines (SEO)

There are lots of ways WordPress can help to improve your website’s SEO:

• SEO-Friendly – configure the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the URL of your pages.
• Post Tags – WordPress lets you choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages (posts) for.
• Post Categories – Add SEO-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
• Post Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose the description for your posts that will display to search engine users.
• Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for improved search results.
• Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links
• Post Notification – Set up your site to automatically notify (ping) other search directories immediately upon publishing new content on your site.

WordPress Plugins That Improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Improve User Engagement And Generate More Traffic

In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are various plugins that will improve your website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your website.

For example, you can install the plugins below to improve your SEO:

• All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
• Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin (for search engines)
• WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)

(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO)

Other things you can do to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing. Here are some more plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below are also free):

• BuddyPress – This free plugin can be used to set up a social community on WordPress.
• bbPress – This free plugin can be used to set up your own discussion forum on your site.
• E-Newsletter – Send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard, without third-party subscriptions.
• Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and increases user engagement on your website or blog.
• Social Media Feather – Add social sharing features and buttons on your site.

(You can add social sharing buttons to your website easily using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)

Generating Leads & Enquiries

This section will show you ways to improve sales and generate more leads and enquiries online.

Providing An Email Newsletter

Adding an email newsletter is an excellent way to build a subscriber list. It] provides many benefits including:

• Sends targeted traffic
• Keeps readers from forgetting about you
• Provides updates that can save businesses time and money
• Provides a highly targeted marketing channel
• It’s a way to provide special services or products to a select audience
• Increases engaging with your users
• Provides additional ways for your content to be shared around with new potential clients

An effective strategy for getting visitors to become subscribers is to provide high value information and give users free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their personal details. This can be a special report, checklists for improving fitness and well-being, access to fitness tools, discount vouchers, membership access to subscriber-only content, podcasts, etc.

Contact Forms

Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for prospective customers to contact you. Visitors can report issues, contact specific departments, ask for a quote, give suggestions and more.

A contact form provides many benefits including:

• Reduces spam
• Set up automated responses
• Giving you control over what gets sent to you
• You can keep your email address private
• Different forms can be added to any page or post
• Looks professional
• Convenience for site visitors

A popular contact form plugin for WordPress is Contact Form 7.

Contact Form 7

(Contact Form 7 Plugin For WordPress)

This plugin is easy to install and set up and allows you to insert multiple contact forms on your website, customize your form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.

Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.

Something to consider if you plan to set up a website for a medical center is to add sections to your contact form so users can select which section of the clinic they want to reach. This ensures that visitors’ requests reach the right department.

Provide A Map

Adding maps helps your visitors and customers find you.

Integrating maps (e.g. Google Maps), with your WordPress site also provides visitors with a number of benefits, such as:

• A map improves local SEO
• Helps visitors find your office easily
• Display location of events

(Adding a map to your website helps your visitors and clients find you)

Below are some plugins that let you embed, customize and display Google maps on your site:

• Google Maps
• Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
• WP Google Maps
• Comprehensive Google Map Plugin

How To Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Traffic Using WordPress Plugins & Themes

WordPress Plugins

WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your site that will immediately add a range of practical tools for users. Here are some of these:

Booking Calendar

(Booking Calendar)

The Booking Calendar plugin lets you add appointment bookings to your site. Booking Calendar is well supported, has an intuitive and user-friendly interface and flexible functionality. It is highly suitable for a wide range medical, fitness and sports-related businesses, such as medical practices, specialists, health spas, booking patient appointments, etc.

(Booking Calendar – WordPress Plugin – Overview)

This plugin works out of the box. Website visitors can check the availability of services you offer and book appointments easily. Site administrators and visitors receive booking confirmations. Booking Calendar also lets you add a calendar or booking form to your website’s sidebar, and supports multiple languages. The plugin developers also provide a premium version with extra features.

For more details, go here}:

• Booking Calendar Plugin

Event Espresso

(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 WordPress plugin allows you to easily create an event and start accepting registrations in just a few minutes

(Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Manager)

Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed application that gives you full control over the event registration management process.

We have written a detailed article about Event Espresso. Go here to learn more:

• How To Manage Event Bookings Via The Web With Event Espresso Plugin For WP

Calculator Pro Calculators

(Calculator Pro Calculators)

Calculator Pro Calculators is a free collection of 400+ calculators that you can display on your website and embed into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.

Most of the calculators aren’t designed for medical or health applications, but there are many you can include in your site, including:

• Body Statistics – e.g. Blood Alcohol Calculator, Fat Calculator, GFR (Glomerular Filtration Rate) Calculator, Modification of Diet in Renal Disease (MDRD) GFR Calculator, Protein Calculator, etc.
• Calorie – e.g. Daily Calorie Calculator, RMR Calculator, Calories Burned By Heart Rate Calculator, etc.
• Fitness Tests – e.g. Astrand Test Calculator, Rockport Walk Test Calculator, etc.
• Miscellaneous – e.g. One Rep Max Weight Lifting Calculator, Cigarette Savings Calculator, Pregnancy Calculator, Sobriety Calculator, etc.
• Nutrition – e.g. Calcium Calculator, Protein Calculator, etc.
• Weight – e.g. Ideal Weight Calculator, Weight Loss Percentage Calculator, etc.

For more details, go here}:

• Calculators Pro Plugin For WordPress

Calculated Fields Form

(Calculated Fields Form – WordPress Plugin)

Calculated Fields Form is great for creating dynamically calculated field forms, including:

• Health & Fitness Calculators
• Ideal Weight Calculator
• Pregnancy Calculator
• Calorie Calculator
• And lots more

The plugin developers also offer a premium version with a ton of additional features and functionalities.

For more details, go here}:

• Calculated Fields Form – WordPress Plugin

Weight Loss Tracker

(Weight Loss Tracker)

This free plugin lets logged-in users record their weight on given dates. This data is then displayed 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}:

• Weight Loss Tracker

Simple BMI Calculator Widget

(Simple Body Mass Index Calculator Widget Plugin For WordPress)

Simple BMI Calculator is a free plugin for WordPress that installs a widget on your sidebar that can be configured and customized to match your theme.

As well as Simple BMI Calculator, there are other plugins you can use that 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 BMI
• Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors figure out their basal metabolic rate, based on their age, sex and weight.
• And many more

For more details, go here}:

• Simple Body Mass Index Calculator Widget

Drug Interaction Data Plugin

(Drug Interaction Data Plugin For WordPress)

Drug Interaction Data Plugin for WordPress will retrieve and display information about drugs, including what the drug is used for and what other medications the drug is known to interact with.

(Drug Interaction Data Plugin For WordPress – Data Results)

Information about drugs 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 drug names are converted to their standardized RxNorm name as defined by the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

For more details, go here}:

• Drug Interaction Data WordPress Plugin

PubMed Posts

(PubMed Posts – WordPress Plugin)

PubMed Posts adds a dashboard widget that lets you crate posts from PubMed articles, plus a search feature that finds posts with specific data. A content editor is also included.

PubMed comprises more than 25 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books.

For more details, go here}:

• PubMed Posts Plugin For WordPress

MJM Clinic

(MJM Clinic Plugin For WordPress)

The MJM Clinic Plugin was designed for medical and health care related websites. It lets you add service pages with booking forms, provide related health conditions, create case studies, link  indication tags to services, etc.

For more details, go here}:

• MJM Clinic

Treato WordPress Plugin

(Treato – WordPress Plugin)

Treato WordPress plugin lets you display information about drugs on your site and see what see what patients are saying about different drugs.

Treato collects and analyzes experiences sourced directly from patients from related forums and blog posts, then aggregates the posts to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users gain insight about over 14,500 medical conditions from over 2 billion collected posts.

For more details, go here}:

• Treato Plugin

HealthTap Concierge

(HealthTap Concierge)

HealthTap Concierge allows visitors to locate and book a virtual consult with real doctors, clinical psychologists, etc. via HD video or text chat from any mobile device, computer, or smartwatch.

With With the HealthTap Concierge plugin for WordPress installed, users 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, chat over video or text, or send the doctor their question.

For more details, go here}:

• HealthTap Concierge Plugin For WordPress

TrendMD

(Trend MD)

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 interesting scholarly content from your journals or websites through personalized recommendations.

For more details, go here}:

• Trend MD Plugin For WordPress

WP Nutrition Facts

(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin)

This plugin lets you add a nutrition facts table into your pages and posts, allowing your visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food in a standardized format and make more informed decisions about the food products they consume.

(WP Nutrition Facts WP Plugin – Create Nutritional Facts Labels)

WP Nutrition Facts uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labelling regulations.

For more details, go here}:

• WP Nutrition Facts WordPress Plugin

WP Ultimate Recipe

(WP Ultimate Recipe Plugin)

If you own a health or fitness-related website that provides nutrition or healthy eating suggestions, a great source of engaging content to your site is to publish healthy recipes.

Plugins like WP Ultimate Recipe let you publish healthy and delicious recipes on your site.

Other recipe plugins for WordPress include:

• Recipe Card – Create and publish search optimized recipes with nutrition facts that your site visitors can print, save and review.
• EasyRecipe – Makes publishing recipes on your site easy with features like cut and paste, plain text recipe auto conversion, Google Recipe View formatting, automatic ratings and conversion from other recipe plugins.
• ZipList Recipes – You can easily format recipe text and add images. The plugin also provides a number of additional features, including SEO and Google Recipe View formatting.
• And many more.

For more details, go here}:

• WP Ultimate Recipe – WP Plugin

Awesome Fitness Testimonials

(Awesome Fitness Testimonials)

The Awesome Fitness Testimonials plugin allows you to add fitness and wellness testimonials, reviews and case studies, before and after photos, etc. to your site.

For more details, go here}:

• Awesome Fitness Testimonials Plugin For WordPress

Exercise Images by Everkinetic

(Exercise Images Plugin For WordPress)

The Exercise Images plugin lets you display exercise drawings on your fitness-related site.

(Exercise Images by Everkinetic – WordPress Plugin – Database)

For more details, go here}:

• Exercise Images by Everkinetic WordPress Plugin

In part three of this guide, we will be discussing WordPress themes for medical clinics and health-related businesses.

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This is the end of part two of this comprehensive article on ways to build your medical-related business web presence.

To continue, click this link:

• How To Grow Your Health Clinic Website – Part 3

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