In Part One of this step-by-step article on ways to build your health or medical business presence online, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Challenges Health And Medical Services Practitioners Face Online
- Opportunities For Health & Medical Businesses In The Digital Economy
- Essential Pages
- Ways To Improve Your Web Content
In Parts Two and Three, we discuss more ways to grow your health or medical-related business online.
Topics covered include:
- Improve Web Traffic With WordPress
- Ways To Generate More Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Tools
- How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation With WordPress Plugins
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
Note: Medical and health plugins are covered in this section. Medical and health-related themes are listed in Part Three.
Improve Traffic With WordPress
Your web traffic is an integral part of your business growth. In this section, we discuss ways to improve search engine optimization, improve user engagement and increase web traffic generation using plugins.
Optimize Your Site For SEO
There are many ways WordPress can help to optimize your website for search engines:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Tags – WordPress lets you specify the keywords that you want your posts to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Categories – Add search engine-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Post Excerpts – Set the description for your posts that will show in search results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for improved search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily link your content to other posts and pages
- Post Notification – WordPress can be configured to automatically notify (ping) other search directories immediately upon publishing new content on your website.
WordPress Plugins That Can Help Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are various plugins that improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your site.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your website’s SEO:
- All in One 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 known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO)
Other ways to improve your medical or health site’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social features. Here are a few useful plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – Use the BuddyPress WordPress plugin to set up an online social community on WordPress.
- bbPress – This free WordPress plugin allows you to set up a community forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter lets you send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard, without a third party subscription.
- Disqus – Power discussions and increases engagement on your website.
- Monarch – Add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your pages and posts.
(You can add social sharing features to your site easily using WordPress plugins)
Ways To Generate Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
Let’s discuss now how to improve sales and generate more leads and enquiries online.
Adding A Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is a great way to build a subscriber list. Adding newsletters] provides many benefits, like:
- Drives targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides useful updates
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for engaging with users
- Provides you with additional ways for subscribers to share your content
A proven way to attract subscribers is to provide them with valuable information and give them free gifts in exchange for their details. This can be a guide, tips for improving health, fitness and nutrition, access to health tools, discount coupons, access to videos, podcasts, etc.
Contact Forms
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for prospective customers to contact you. Contact forms also let users report issues, ask questions to specific departments, ask for quotes, and more.
A contact form provides a number of benefits and advantages, like:
- Reducing spam
- Set up automated responses
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Can be added to any page or post
- Improves the professional look of your site
- Is convenient for visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 – WordPress Plugin)
Contact Form 7 lets you insert multiple contact forms, customize your form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Something to consider if you are setting up a website for a health center or medical clinic is to add sections to your contact form so visitors can select the practitioner they want to contact. This ensures that contact form enquiries reach the right person.
Map Integration
Maps help your visitors and customers find you.
Integrating maps (e.g. Google Maps), with your WordPress site also provides visitors with many benefits, such as:
- A map improves local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Displays location of events
(Adding maps to your website helps your visitors and clients find you)
Here are some popular plugins that let you embed, customize and display maps on your website:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Visitors To Your Website With Plugins And Themes
Health Services Plugins For WordPress
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your health-related site that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for visitors. Here are some of these:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar Plugin)
The Booking Calendar plugin lets you add online bookings to your site. Booking Calendar is well supported and has an intuitive and user-friendly interface. It is highly suitable for a wide range of health-related businesses, such as dental practitioners, surgical centers, health spas, booking yoga classes, etc.
(Booking Calendar Plugin – Overview)
This bookings plugin works right out of the box. Website visitors can check the availability of services you offer and book appointments easily. Administrators and visitors receive notifications. The plugin is also widget-ready, and offers multi-language support. The developers of this plugin also offer a premium version with additional features.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso
(Manage Your Events Via The Web Using Event Espresso Plugin For WordPress)
If your business involves running health or medical events like seminars or workshops, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration software lets you easily create an event and start receiving bookings in a few minutes
(Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management And Registration Plugin)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich plugin that gives you complete control of the event registration management process.
We have written a detailed article on Event Espresso. For more info, see this article:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin For WordPress)
Calculator Pro Calculators provides a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed them into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. The plugin also supports internationalization
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t specifically designed for health or medical-related use, but there are quite a number you can add to your site, including:
- Body Statistics – e.g. Body Composition Calculator, Fat Calculator, Lean Body Mass Calculator, Metric BMR Calculator, Protein Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Calorie to kJ Calculator, Daily Energy Expenditure Calculator, Calories Burned Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Push-Up Test Calculator, Bruce Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Beats and Breaths Calculator, Blood Sugar Converter Calculator, Pregnancy Calculator, Sobriety Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Carbohydrate Calculator, Creatine Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. BMI Calculator, Weight Loss Percentage Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form Plugin For WordPress)
The Calculated Fields Form plugin is great for creating dynamically calculated field forms, including:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculator
- And more
A premium version of this plugin is also available with additional features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets users record their weight on given dates. The data is then shown in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker – WordPress Plugin – Graph)
The plugin allows users to insert target weights and provides support for the following weight formats: Metric (Kg), Imperial – Stones & Pounds, Imperial – Pounds only.
For more details, go here}:
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator Widget
(Simple BMI Calculator Plugin)
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator is a free WordPress plugin that lets you add a widget to your sidebar that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
In addition to Simple BMI Calculator, there are a number of other plugins you can look at that perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A responsive BMI and Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) calculator that saves calculation data for logged-in users and gives an overview to the administrator.
- 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 lots more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data Plugin)
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.
For more details, go here}:
PubMed Posts
(PubMed Posts Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin adds a dashboard widget that lets you crate posts from PubMed articles, as well as a search function that finds posts with specific data. A simple content editor is also included with the plugin.
PubMed includes over 25 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books.
For more details, go here}:
MJM Clinic
(MJM Clinic WP Plugin)
This plugin can be used to add functionality to clinic and health care related websites, such as adding service pages with booking forms, related health conditions, service locations, create service listings and more.
For more details, go here}:
Treato WordPress Plugin
(Treato Plugin)
Treato lets you add a sidebar widget that allows your site visitors to search a vast drug database and read what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato gathers and analyzes patient experiences from medical forums and blog posts, then aggregates the content to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users receive valuable insight about the side effects of 26,600+ medications, drug comparisons across 14,700+ medical conditions, which drugs people feel work, and more, from over 2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap
(HealthTap Concierge – WordPress Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows visitors to consult with doctors via text chat or HD video from any mobile device, computer, or smartwatch.
With HealthTap Concierge installed on your site, 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 health topic. They can then choose a doctor, chat over text or video, or send the doctor a question and get answers using the HealthTap service.
For more details, go here}:
TrendMD
(TrendMD Plugin)
TrendMD adds the TrendMD recommendations widget to your site. 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 – WordPress Plugin)
WP Nutrition Facts is a free WordPress plugin that lets you add a nutrition facts table into your posts and pages, allowing your visitors to make better food choices.
(WP Nutrition Facts – WordPress Plugin – 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)
If you own a health or fitness-related website that provides diet or healthy eating recommendations, a great way to add engaging content to your site is to publish healthy recipes.
A plugin like WP Ultimate Recipe lets you easily add healthy and delicious recipes on your site.
Other WordPress recipe plugins include:
- Recipe Card – Create and publish search optimized recipes that your site visitors can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – Lets you easily add recipes to your site with features like cut and paste, auto conversion of your plain text recipe posts, 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 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 display fitness & wellness testimonials, reviews and case studies, before and after photos, etc. on your health and fitness sites.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images by Everkinetic
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic Plugin)
This plugin lets you display a database of exercise images inside your web content.
(Exercise Images – Image Database)
For more details, go here}:
In the next section of this detailed guide, we look at WordPress themes for medical and health businesses.
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This is the end of part 2 of this guide on ways to improve your medical or health business presence online.
To view Part Three, click this link:
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"I was absolutely amazed at the scope and breadth of these tutorials! The most in-depth training I have ever received on any subject!" - Myke O'Neill, DailyGreenPost.com