In Part 1 of this guide on ways to improve your medical or health business presence online, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Challenges Medical & Health Professionals Face Online
- Opportunities For The Medical And Health Profession In The Digital Economy
- Your Website Pages
- Improve The Content On Your Website
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your health business online.
Areas covered include:
- Improving Traffic
- Generating More Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Applications
- WordPress Plugins That Can Help To Improve SEO, Create Better User Engagement And Generate More Visitors
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
Note: Plugins are covered in this section. Themes for medical businesses are covered in Part 3.
Grow Your Health Website – Improving Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Visitors Using WordPress Plugins And Themes
Your web traffic is vital to your online business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimizing Your Website For SEO
There are so many ways that WordPress helps optimize your health website for search engines:
- URLs – Set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized web addresses for your articles and posts.
- Tags – Choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your articles for.
- Categories – Add search engine-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Excerpts – Create descriptions for your posts that search engines will show in their search results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for improved search engine results.
- Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that allows you to easily link your content to other posts and pages on your site
- Pinging – Set up your site to automatically notify other search directories the moment a new post is published on your site.
Improving Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Web Traffic Using WordPress Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are many plugins that improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.
For example, you can install the plugins below to improve your SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(A plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO)
Other things you can do to improve your medical-related website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing features. Here are a few more WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – This free plugin lets you run a social networking community on your website, with member profiles, user groups, messaging, activity streams, and more.
- bbPress – This free plugin allows you to run your own discussion forum on your WordPress site.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter lets you send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard, without requiring 3rd-party subscriptions.
- Disqus – Power discussions and increases user engagement on your site.
- Monarch – Easily add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your website or blog.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website with free or inexpensive plugins)
Ways To Generate Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Applications
In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve your sales and generate more leads and enquiries online.
Adding A Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is a great way to build a list of subscribers. It] provides a number of benefits and advantages, like:
- Sends targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides updates that could save businesses time and money
- Provides a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special products or services to a select audience
- Increases user engagement
- Provides you with additional ways for your content to be shared with other prospective clients
A proven strategy for attracting newsletter subscribers is to provide high value content and give users additional items of value for free in exchange for their personal details. This could be a guide, checklists for improving health, fitness and nutrition, access to fitness apps, free trials, access to videos, podcasts, etc.
Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch. Contact forms also allow visitors to send feedback, contact specific departments, ask for a quote, and more.
A contact form provides many benefits and advantages, like:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what gets sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Can be added to any post or page
- Improves the professional look of your website
- Convenience for users
A popular contact form plugin for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 – WordPress Plugin)
This free contact form plugin lets you add and manage multiple contact forms into any post or page, customize your forms and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is 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 visitors can select the practitioner they want to contact. This will help make sure that visitors get their message to the right recipient.
Map
Adding a map helps your visitors and customers find you.
A map is a useful tool for several reasons:
- A map improves local SEO
- Visitors can find your office easily
- Display location of events
(Adding maps helps your visitors and clients find you)
Below are just some of the more popular 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
WordPress Plugins That Can Help Improve Your SEO, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Site
Health – WordPress Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your health website that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for users. Here are just some of the plugins you can choose from:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar)
This free bookings plugin allows you to add appointment booking services to your site. Booking Calendar is well supported, provides an intuitive and user-friendly interface with flexible functionality. It is suitable for a wide range medical, health, fitness & sports businesses, e.g. medical practitioners, physicians, massage therapists, booking patient appointments, etc.
(Booking Calendar Plugin – Overview)
This plugin works out of the box. Your website visitors can check the availability of services and make a booking quickly and easily. Site administrators and visitors receive booking confirmations. Booking Calendar is also widget-ready, and supports multiple languages. A premium version with many more features and functionalities is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Manager
(Manage Your Events Via The Web With Event Espresso Plugin For WP)
If you plan to run medical seminars, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WP enables you to easily schedule multiple events and begin processing online bookings literally in a few minutes
(Event Espresso – Event Manager And Ticketing Registration Plugin For WordPress)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich 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 – WordPress Plugin)
Calculator Pro provides a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed these into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. It also supports internationalization
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t specifically designed for health or medical-related usage, but there are several you can add to your site, including:
- Body Statistics – e.g. BMI Calculator, Carbohydrate Calculator, Lean Body Mass Calculator, Metric Body Fat Calculator, US Navy Body Fat Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Calorie to kJ Calculator, kJ to Calorie Calculator, Calories Burned By Heart Rate Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Push-Up Test Calculator, Rockport Walk Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Beats and Breaths Calculator, Cigarette Savings Calculator, Pregnancy Calculator, Smoking Cost Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, Creatine Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. BAI (Body Adiposity Index) Calculator, Weight Loss Percentage Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form – WordPress Plugin)
With Calculated Fields Form you can create forms that perform single and complex calculations, including:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculator
- And lots more
A premium version with many more features and functionalities is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker – WordPress Plugin)
Weight Loss Tracker lets logged-in users record their weight periodically. This data is then shown in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker – WordPress Plugin – User 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}:
Simple BMI Calculator
(Simple Body Mass Index Calculator WordPress Plugin)
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator is a free plugin that lets you add a widget to your website 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 mobile-friendly Body Mass Index 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 BMI
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors figure out their basal metabolic rate, by inputting 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 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 Plugin – Data Results)
Drug information can be displayed as a widget or inside your posts and pages. 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)
PubMed Posts adds a dashboard widget that lets you add content from PubMed articles, plus a search feature that helps visitors find posts with specific article data. A simple content editor is also included with the plugin.
PubMed contains over 25 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books.
For more details, go here}:
MJM Clinic
(MJM Clinic Plugin For WordPress)
MJM Clinic can be used to add functionality to clinic and health care related websites, such as service pages with booking forms, related health conditions, locations, create staff listings for practitioners and more.
For more details, go here}:
Treato WordPress Plugin
(Treato Plugin For WordPress)
Treato WordPress plugin 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 collects and analyzes experiences sourced directly from patients written in online forums and blog posts, then aggregates the posts to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users gain 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 Concierge
(HealthTap WordPress Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows visitors to consult with real doctors, clinical psychologists, etc. via text chat or HD video from any mobile device, computer, even smartwatch.
With With the HealthTap Concierge plugin installed, your visitors 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 choose a doctor, chat over video or text, or send questions.
For more details, go here}:
TrendMD
(Trend MD WP Plugin)
The TrendMD 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, 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)
WP Nutrition Facts is a free plugin that lets you add a nutrition facts table into your posts and pages, allowing your visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food in a standardized format.
(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin For WordPress – Create Nutritional Facts Labels)
WP Nutrition Facts uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labeling regulations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Ultimate Recipe
(WP Ultimate Recipe Plugin For WordPress)
If you own a health-related business that provides nutrition or healthy eating suggestions, a great way to add content that will engage your readers is to publish recipes.
A plugin like WP Ultimate Recipe lets you easily publish healthy and delicious recipes on your site.
Other WordPress recipe plugins include:
- Recipe Card – Create search optimized recipes that your readers can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – EasyRecipe makes entering recipes on your site easy with features like cut & paste, auto conversion of your plain text recipe posts, Google Recipe View formatting and preview button, live custom 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 WordPress Plugin)
Awesome Fitness Testimonials lets you showcase fitness & wellness testimonials, reviews and case studies on your site.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic – WordPress Plugin)
The Exercise Images plugin lets you display a database of exercise drawings in your web content.
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic Plugin For WordPress – Image Catalog)
For more details, go here}:
In the next section, we look at WordPress themes for medical and health businesses.
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This is the end of section 2 of this step-by-step article on ways to build your medical or health-related web presence.
To view the rest of this article, click this link:
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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)