In Part One of this article on ways to build your medical or health-related business presence online, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Challenges Medical Providers Face Online
- Opportunities For Health & Medical Businesses In The Digital Economy
- Essential Website Pages
- Ways To Improve Your Content
In Parts Two & Three, we discuss more ways to grow your health or medical-related business online.
Areas covered include:
- How To Improve Web Traffic
- How To Generate New Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins & Themes That Can Help To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Visitors
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
Note: Plugins are covered in this section. Medical and health-related themes are covered in Part Three.
Online Business Tips For Health And Medical Services Professionals – How To Improve Your Business Online Using WordPress Plugins and Themes
Web traffic is an important part of your business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimize Your Website For SEO
There are loads of ways WordPress can help to improve your health-related website’s SEO:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – configure the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the URL of your pages.
- Tags – WordPress lets you choose the keywords that you want your article pages to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Create search engine-friendly categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Post Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose the description for your posts that search engines will display in their search result pages.
- Images – title images used in your content with keywords for better search engine results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links for faster indexing of your content
- Post Notification – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify (ping) other search directories immediately upon publishing new content on your site.
WordPress Plugins That Can Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Visitors
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are also a number of plugins that will improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your website.
Here are some plugins you can use to improve your SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your site’s search engine optimization)
Other WordPress plugins you can use to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing features. Here are a few plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – This free WordPress plugin helps you set up a social networking community on your site.
- bbPress – Set up your own online forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – Use this plugin to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard, without requiring 3rd-party subscriptions.
- Disqus – This WordPress plugin lets you power discussions and helps to increase engagement on your website.
- Floating Social – This WordPress plugin lets you add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your website.
(You can add social features to your website easily using WordPress plugins)
Ways To Generate New Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
This section explains how to improve your sales and generate more leads and enquiries online.
Add An Email Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is an excellent way to grow and retain your readership. It] provides a number of benefits including:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides useful information and advice
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for improving user engagement
- Provides an additional way for readers to share your content
A proven strategy for attracting newsletter subscribers is to provide high value information and give users additional bonuses for free in exchange for their details. This can be a handy guide, checklists for improving general health and nutrition, access to fitness apps, coupons, membership access to videos, podcasts, etc.
Provide Contact Forms
A contact form makes it easy and simple for readers to get in touch with you. Readers can raise problems, contact specific departments, request quotes, and more.
A contact form provides many benefits, like:
- Reduces spam
- Set up automated responses
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- They can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- Convenience for visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin allows you to create and manage multiple contact forms, customize your forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
The plugin also supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Another feature to consider if you plan to set up a website for a health clinic or medical center is to add sections to your contact form so users can select which practitioner they want to contact. This ensures that contact form requests reach the correct department.
Map Integration
A map helps your visitors and clients find you.
Inserting maps (e.g. Google Maps), into your WordPress site also provides users with a number of benefits, such as:
- They improve local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Show location of events
(Maps help your visitors and customers find you)
Here are some of the more plugins that let you embed, customize and display 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 Increase Web Traffic Generation Using Plugins
Health WordPress Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your website to immediately add a range of practical tools for your site visitors. Here are some of these:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar Plugin)
This free plugin allows you to add online bookings to your site. This plugin has an intuitive interface and flexible functionality. It is highly suitable for a wide range of medical or health-related uses, such as medical practices, physicians, massage therapists, booking yoga classes, etc.
(Booking Calendar – WordPress Plugin – Overview)
The plugin works out of the box. Website visitors can check the availability of services you offer and book appointments quickly and easily. Administrators and visitors receive notifications. The plugin is also widget-ready, and supports multiple languages. A premium version with many extra features is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management & Ticket Registration Plugin
(Manage Event Registrations Automatically With Event Espresso For WordPress)
If you plan to run health seminars, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration WP plugin lets you easily set up an event and begin receiving online registrations in just a few minutes
(Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticket Management Software)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich plugin that gives you full control of your event registration management process.
We have written a comprehensive article about the benefits and features of using Event Espresso. Go here to learn more about this:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin For WordPress)
Calculator Pro is a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed these into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. It also supports internationalization
Note: Most of them aren’t specifically designed for health or medical applications, but there are several you can use, including:
- Body Statistics – e.g. BMI Calculator, Frame Size Calculator, Goal Weight Calculator, Metric BMR Calculator, Stride Length Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, kJ to Calorie Calculator, Calories Burned By Heart Rate Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. BAI (Body Adiposity Index) Calculator, Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Beats and Breaths Calculator, Blood Sugar Converter Calculator, Due Date Calculator, Sobriety Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, Protein Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. BAI (Body Adiposity Index) Calculator, Weight Loss Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form Plugin)
Calculated Fields Form is great for creating dynamically calculated field forms, such as:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculators
- And lots more
A premium version of this plugin is also available and includes a ton of extra features.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin)
This plugin lets logged-in users record their weight on given dates. 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 the following weight formats: Metric (Kg), Imperial – Stones & Pounds, Imperial – Pounds only.
For more details, go here}:
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator
(Simple BMI Calculator)
This plugin installs a widget on your sidebar that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
As well as Simple Body Mass Index Calculator, there are other plugins you can check out that perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A Body Mass Index 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 calculate 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 – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin 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 WordPress Plugin – Database Results)
Drug information can be displayed as a widget or inside your web content. 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)
PubMed Posts adds a dashboard widget that lets you publish content to your site from PubMed articles, plus a search widget that lets users find 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 Plugin For WordPress)
MJM Clinic was designed for medical and health care related websites. You can add service pages with booking forms, locations, provide related health conditions, create case studies, link indication tags to conditions, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Treato
(Treato Plugin)
Treato WordPress plugin lets you embed the Treato healthcare search engine into your WordPress sidebar so your site visitors can search drugs and see what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato collects and analyzes patient experiences written in medical forums and blog posts, then aggregates the content to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users gain insight about over 14,700 conditions and over 26,600 medications from over 2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap Concierge
(HealthTap Concierge – WordPress Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows consumers to consult with doctors via HD video or text chat from any mobile device, personal computer, even smartwatch.
With HealthTap Concierge installed on your website, your site 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 choose a doctor, connect in real time using video or text chat, or send questions and get answers using the HealthTap service, which has a database of over 70,000 doctors.
For more details, go here}:
TrendMD
(TrendMD Plugin For WordPress)
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 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 is a simple plugin for WordPress that lets you insert a nutrition facts table into your posts and pages, allowing your visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food.
(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin For WordPress – Creating Nutritional Facts Labels)
This plugin uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labeling regulations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Ultimate Recipe
(WP Ultimate Recipe – WordPress Plugin)
If you run a health or fitness-related business that provides diet and nutrition or healthy eating information, a great way to add engaging content to your site is to publish great recipes.
A plugin like WP Ultimate Recipe lets you publish healthy recipes on your site.
Other recipe plugins for WordPress include:
- Recipe Card – Create beautiful recipes that your site visitors can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – EasyRecipe lets you easily add recipes to your site with features like cut and paste, auto conversion of your plain text recipe posts, live custom formatting, Google Recipe View formatting, automatic ratings and conversion from other recipe plugins.
- ZipList Recipes – You can 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 For WordPress)
Awesome Fitness Testimonials allows you to showcase fitness and wellness testimonials, case studies and reviews on your health and fitness sites.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic WP Plugin)
Exercise Images lets you display a database of exercise drawings on your website.
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic Plugin For WordPress – Image Database)
For more details, go here}:
In part three of this guide, we will be discussing medical and health WordPress themes.
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This is the end of section two.
To view the rest of this article, click here:
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