In Part 1 of this comprehensive guide on ways to improve your health-related business presence online, we covered the following topics:
- Online Challenges For The Health Profession
- Opportunities For The Health & Medical Profession In The Digital Economy
- Your Website Pages
- Tips On How To Improve Your Content
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your health-related business online.
Topics covered in this (and the following section) include:
- Improving Traffic With WordPress
- Generate More Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins & Themes That Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Visitors To Your Website Generation
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
Note: Plugins are listed in this section. WordPress themes for medical businesses are listed in Part 3.
Tips For Medical And Health Services Providers – WordPress Plugins And Themes That Can Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
Your web traffic is an integral part of your online business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines (SEO) With WordPress
There are many ways WordPress can help to improve SEO:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Tags – WordPress lets you choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your articles for.
- Categories – Create SEO-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Post Excerpts – Create descriptions for your posts that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – title your images with keywords for better search results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily link internal content
- Post Notification – Configure your site to automatically notify (ping) other search directories the moment a new post is published on your site.
Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Traffic With Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are many plugins that improve your website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your site’s search engine optimization:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (lists all of your pages for search engines)
- WP Tree – 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 your website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social features. Here are some plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – BuddyPress allows you to set up and manage your own social networking community on your website.
- bbPress – Use the bbPress WordPress plugin to set up your own online forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – Use E-Newsletter to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress site.
- Disqus – Power discussions and helps to increase engagement on your website or blog.
- Monarch – Add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your pages and posts.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Generating New Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
In this section we will show you ways to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries online.
Providing An Email Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is an excellent way to build a subscriber list. It] provides several benefits and advantages including:
- Drives targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates that could save businesses time and money
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for user interaction
- Provides you with another way for subscribers to share your content
An effective way to attract newsletter subscribers is to provide high value content and offer users a free gift in exchange for their details. This could be a time-saving guide, checklists for improving fitness and nutrition, access to health apps, vouchers, membership access to videos, podcasts, etc.
Adding A Contact Form
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch. A contact form also lets users report issues, ask questions to specific departments, ask for quotes, and more.
A contact form provides many benefits, like:
- Reduces 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 post or page
- Improves the professional look of your website
- Convenience for visitors
A very popular WordPress contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin is easy to install and set up and lets you create and manage multiple contact forms into any page or post, customize your form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is also supported.
Something to consider if you are setting 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 your business about. This ensures that visitors get their message to the right department.
Provide Maps
A map helps your visitors and clients find you.
Adding maps (e.g. Google Maps) to your site also provides visitors with many benefits, such as:
- A map increases local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Shows location of events
(Adding maps to your site helps your visitors and clients 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
Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Traffic With Plugins And Themes
WordPress Plugins
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your website that will immediately add a range of practical tools for site visitors. Here are just some of the plugins you can choose from:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar WP Plugin)
Booking Calendar lets you add appointment booking services to your site. It provides users with an intuitive interface. It is highly suitable for a range of health-related businesses, e.g. dental practitioners, physicians, health spas, booking sessions with personal trainers, etc.
(Booking Calendar – Overview)
This plugin works out of the box. Website visitors can check the availability of services you offer and make bookings easily. Administrators and visitors receive notifications. The plugin also lets you add a calendar or booking form to your website’s sidebar, and supports multiple languages. A premium version with many additional features and functionalities is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso
(Manage Bookings And Registrations Via The Web With Event Espresso Plugin For WordPress)
If your business involves running medical seminars, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration software lets you easily create multiple events and begin processing registrations in minutes
(Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager & Registration System)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed application that gives you full control of the event registration management process.
To learn more about the benefits and features of using Event Espresso, refer to this article:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin)
This plugin provides a free collection of over 400 calculators that you can provide to users on your website and embed into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of the calculators aren’t specifically designed for health-related use, but there are a few you can add to your site, including:
- Body Statistics – e.g. BAI (Body Adiposity Index) Calculator, Frame Size Calculator, Katch-Mcardle BMR Calculator, Modification of Diet in Renal Disease (MDRD) GFR Calculator, Skinfold Body Fat Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, RMR Calculator, Calories Burned Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Push-Up Test Calculator, Balke Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Advanced One Rep Max Weight Lifting Calculator, Cigarette Savings Calculator, Pace Calculator, Target Heart Rate Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. BMR Calorie Calculator, Protein Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. Ideal Weight Calculator, Weight Loss Percentage Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form – WordPress Plugin)
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 Calculators
- And many more
The plugin developers also offer a premium version with extra features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker)
This 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 – User 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 Widget
(Simple BMI Calculator Widget)
Simple BMI Calculator installs a widget on your website that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
In addition to Simple Body Mass Index Calculator, there are a number of WordPress plugins you can look at 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 administrator.
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator that shows your users their 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}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data WordPress Plugin)
Drug Interaction Data Plugin for WordPress retrieves and displays drug information, including what the drug is used for and what other medications the drug is known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data – WordPress Plugin – Data Results)
Information about drugs can be displayed inside your posts and pages, or as a widget on your blog 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, go here}:
PubMed Posts
(PubMed Posts Plugin For WordPress)
PubMed Posts adds a dashboard widget that lets you crate posts from PubMed articles, and a search widget that lets your visitors search for posts with specific article data. The plugin also includes a basic editor that lets you change the layout of your post content.
PubMed contains over 25 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, online books and life science journals.
For more details, go here}:
MJM Clinic
(MJM Clinic WP Plugin)
MJM Clinic can be used for clinic and health care related websites. It lets you add service pages with booking forms, provide information to site visitors on symptoms and health conditions, assign case studies, link indication tags to services and conditions, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Treato WordPress Plugin
(Treato – WordPress Plugin)
Treato lets you embed the Treato healthcare search engine into your WordPress sidebar so you and your users can search a vast drug database and see what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato gathers and analyzes patient experiences from forums and blog posts, then aggregates the posts 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
(HealthTap Concierge)
HealthTap Concierge allows users to consult with real doctors, clinical psychologists, etc. via HD video or text chat from any mobile device, computer, even smartwatch.
With the widget 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 choose a doctor, chat using text or video, or send the doctor a question.
For more details, go here}:
TrendMD
(TrendMD)
This plugin will add the TrendMD recommendations widget to your website. The TrendMD recommendations widget is used by scholarly publishers to increase their readership and revenue by allowing people to discover, cite or read interesting scholarly content from your journals or websites through personalized recommendations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Nutrition Facts
(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin)
WP Nutrition Facts lets you insert a nutrition facts table into your posts and pages, allowing your visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food and make informed decisions about the food products they consume.
(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin – Nutritional Facts Label Creation)
WP Nutrition Facts uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labeling regulations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Ultimate Recipe
(WP Ultimate Recipe – WordPress Plugin)
If you own a health or fitness-related business that provides diet or healthy eating information, a great source of content that will engage your readers is to publish recipes.
A plugin like WP Ultimate Recipe lets you publish healthy and delicious recipes on your site.
Other WordPress recipe plugins include:
- Recipe Card – Create and publish search engine optimized recipes that readers can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – Makes publishing recipes on your site easy with features like cut & paste, plain text recipe auto conversion, live custom formatting, Google Recipe View formatting, automatic ratings and conversion from other recipe plugins.
- ZipList Recipes – Lets you easily format recipe text and add images. Includes additional SEO and Google Recipe View formatting features.
- And many more.
For more details, go here}:
Awesome Fitness Testimonials
(Awesome Fitness Testimonials Plugin)
This plugin allows you to add fitness & wellness testimonials, reviews and case studies to your website.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin lets you display a database of exercise diagrams inside your posts and pages.
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic WordPress Plugin – Image Catalog)
For more details, go here}:
In part 3 of this detailed guide, we will be discussing health-related and medical WordPress themes.
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This is the end of part two of this article on ways to build your health web presence.
Click on this link to view Part 3:
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)