In Part One of this article on ways to build your health-related business presence online, we provided many practical tips and suggestions on the following areas:
- Online Challenges For Health Businesses
- Online Opportunities For Medical Practitioners
- Essential Web Pages
- Tips On How To Improve Your Web Content
In Parts Two and Three, we discuss more ways to grow your health-related business online.
Areas covered include:
- Improve Web Traffic
- Ways To Generate Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins And Themes That Can Help Improve SEO, Create Better User Engagement And Generate More Traffic
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
- Using WordPress Plugins – The Easy Way To Enhance Your Website’s Features And Functionality
- WordPress Themes – An Overview
Note: WordPress health and medical plugins are covered in this section. Health and medical themes are listed in Part Three.
Online Business Tips For Health Services Professionals – Improve Your Business Online With WordPress Plugins and Themes
Web traffic is vital to your online business growth. This section explores ways to improve your health-related business online using WordPress.
Optimizing Your Website For Search Engines
There are so many ways WordPress can help to optimize your website for search engines:
- URLs – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the URL of your pages.
- Post Tags – WordPress lets you specify the keywords that you want your article pages to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Add search engine-friendly categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Post Excerpts – Create an excerpt that search engines will display in their search results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for better search engine results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that allows you to easily create internal links for faster indexing of your content
- Post Notification – Set up your site to automatically notify (ping) other search directories the moment a new post is published on your site.
WordPress Plugins That Can Help Improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WP community makes available also a number of plugins that improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your site.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your website’s search engine optimization)
Other things you can do to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing. Here are a few more plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – Run your own social network on WordPress, with member profiles, activity streams, messaging, user groups, and more.
- bbPress – Use bbPress to set up an online community forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard.
- Disqus – This plugin lets you power discussions and increases engagement on your site.
- Social Media Feather – Add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your website or blog.
(You can easily add social features to your site with free or inexpensive plugins)
Tips For Generating New Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
Let’s take a look now at ways to improve sales and generate new leads and enquiries online.
Provide An Email Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is an excellent way to grow and retain your readership. It] provides a number of benefits and advantages, like:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides practical tips and advice
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Increases user interaction
- Provides you with additional opportunities for subscribers to share your content
An effective strategy for attracting subscribers is to provide them with high value content and offer them free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their personal details. This could be a useful report, checklists for improving diet and well-being, access to health calculators, discount coupons, membership access to videos, contests, etc.
Adding A Contact Form
Contact forms make it easy and simple for prospective customers to get in touch. Readers can report issues, ask questions to specific departments, request quotes, send suggestions for new services or products and more.
A contact form provides a number of benefits including:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what gets sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- Convenience for visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin For WordPress)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that is easy to install and configure and allows you to add and manage multiple contact forms, customize the form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is also supported.
Another feature you may want to consider if you want to set up a website for a health clinic or medical center is to segment your contact form so users can choose which practitioner they want to contact. This ensures that visitors get their comment to the right destination.
Adding A Map
Maps help your visitors and customers find you.
Integrating maps (e.g. Google Maps), with your site also provides visitors with a number of benefits, such as:
- Maps help to increase local SEO
- Helps visitors find you easily
- Displays location of events
(A map helps your visitors and customers find you)
Some of the most popular map plugins include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins That Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
WordPress Plugins For Health Services Professionals
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your medical-related website that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for visitors. Here are some of these plugins:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar WP Plugin)
The Booking Calendar plugin lets you add appointment bookings to your site. Booking Calendar has an intuitive and user-friendly interface and flexible functionality. It is highly suitable for a wide range of health-related businesses, such as medical practitioners, surgeons, chiropractors, booking yoga classes, etc.
(Booking Calendar Plugin – Overview)
This plugin works right out of the box. Website visitors can check availability of services you offer and book appointments online quickly and easily. 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. The plugin developers also offer a premium version with a ton of extra features.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso
(Manage Bookings And Registrations Via The Web With Event Espresso Plugin For WordPress)
If you run medical or health events, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin enables you to easily create your event and start receiving bookings in just minutes
(Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Manager)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich software 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)
Calculator Pro Calculators provides a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed them into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of them aren’t designed for medical-related usage, but there are several you can add to your site, including the following:
- Body Statistics – e.g. BMI Calculator, Child Height Calculator, Goal Weight Calculator, Ponderal Index Calculator, WHtR Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, Daily Energy Expenditure Calculator, Calories Burned Walking Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. BAI (Body Adiposity Index) Calculator, Rockport Walk Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. One Rep Max Weight Lifting Calculator, Blood Donation Calculator, Pregnancy Calculator, Smoking Cost Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, Water Intake Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. Ideal Weight Calculator, Weight Loss Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form)
This free plugin is great for creating forms that perform single and complex calculations, such as:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculator
- And many more
A premium version is also available with extra features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker WordPress Plugin)
This simple plugin lets users record their weight periodically. The results are then displayed in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker – WordPress Plugin – User Graph)
The plugin allows users to input 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 Widget
(Simple BMI Calculator Plugin)
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator installs a widget on your website that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
In addition to Simple BMI Calculator, there are additional plugins you can check out that perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A Body Mass Index and BMR calculator that saves calculation data for logged-in users and gives an overview to the trainer.
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator that shows users their BMI
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors figure out their basal metabolic rate, by entering their age, sex and weight.
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data – WordPress Plugin)
Drug Interaction Data retrieves and displays drug information, including what the drugs are used for and what other medications the drugs are known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data WP Plugin – Information Screen)
Information about drugs can be displayed on your site. 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 WP Plugin)
PubMed Posts adds a dashboard widget that lets you add content from PubMed articles, and a search widget that finds posts with specific article 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}:
MJM Clinic
(MJM Clinic – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin was designed for medical and health care related websites. It lets you add service pages with booking forms, service locations, provide related health conditions, add case studies, link indication tags to conditions, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Treato
(Treato WP Plugin)
Treato lets you display information about drugs on your site and see what see what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato gathers and analyzes experiences sourced directly from patients written in related forums and blog posts, then aggregates the posts to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users gain valuable insight about over 14,000 conditions and over 26,600 medications from over 2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap Concierge
(HealthTap Plugin For WordPress)
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, or smartwatch.
With With the HealthTap Concierge plugin installed, your visitors can type in a health question and based upon their location and type of question, they will 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 using video or text chat, or send the doctor a question and get answers using the HealthTap service, which has a database of over 70,000 doctors.
For more details, go here}:
TrendMD
(TrendMD)
This plugin lets you add the TrendMD recommendations widget to your website. The TrendMD recommendations widget is used by scholarly publishers to grow 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}:
WP Nutrition Facts
(WP Nutrition Facts)
WP Nutrition Facts is a free plugin that lets you insert a nutrition facts table into your posts, pages and custom post types, allowing your visitors to make informed decisions about the food products they purchase.
(WP Nutrition Facts – Nutritional Facts 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)
If you run a health or fitness website that provides nutritional or healthy eating advice, a great way to add engaging content to your site is to add recipes.
A plugin like WP Ultimate Recipe lets you easily add delicious and healthy on your site.
Other recipe plugins for WordPress include:
- Recipe Card – Publish search optimized recipes with nutrition facts that readers can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – EasyRecipe makes entering recipes on your site easy with features like cut and paste, plain text recipe auto conversion, Google Recipe View formatting, live custom formatting, automatic ratings and conversion from other recipe plugins.
- ZipList Recipes – 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 Plugin)
This plugin lets you display fitness and wellness testimonials, case studies and reviews on your website.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images by Everkinetic
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic Plugin)
The Exercise Images plugin lets you display a database of exercise drawings on your health & fitness sites.
(Exercise Images – WordPress Plugin – Database)
For more details, go here}:
In the next section of this detailed article, we will be discussing themes for medical and health businesses.
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This is the end of section 2.
To view Part 3, click this link:
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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