In Part 1 of this guide on ways to grow your medical business web presence, we covered the following topics:
- Challenges Professional Health Practitioners Face Online
- Online Opportunities For Health Services Practitioners
- Your Website Pages
- Tips For Improving The Content On Your Site
In this section, we will continue looking at more ways to grow your health or medical-related business online.
Topics covered include:
- Ways Of Improving Traffic With WordPress
- Generating New Leads & Enquiries
- How To Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation Using Plugins & Themes
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
Note: Medical and health plugins are described in this section. Medical and health-related themes are covered in Part 3.
Ways To Improve Traffic
Your web traffic is vital to your business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimize Your Site For Search Engines (SEO)
There are lots of ways WordPress can help to improve your website’s SEO:
- SEO-Friendly – Set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized web addresses for your article pages.
- Tags – Choose the keywords that you want your article pages (posts) to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Categories – Add categories for your posts and products.
- Post Excerpts – Set an excerpt that search engines will show.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for improved search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that allows you to easily link internal content
- Post Notification – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify (ping) other search directories the moment a new post is published on your site.
WordPress Plugins That Can Improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress developer community makes available various plugins that improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your business.
For example, you can install the plugins below to improve your site’s search engine optimization:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (for search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO)
Other WordPress tools you can add to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing features. Here are a few more WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below are also free):
- BuddyPress – Run an online social networking community on your site.
- bbPress – bbPress allows you to run your own forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter lets you send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard.
- Disqus – Power discussions and increases engagement on your website.
- Floating Social – This plugin lets you add social sharing features and buttons to your website.
(You can easily add social features to your site with WordPress plugins)
Tips For Generating More Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
Let’s discuss now ways to improve sales and generate new leads and enquiries for your health or medical business.
Adding A Newsletter
Adding a newsletter is a great way to build a list of subscribers. Adding an email newsletter provides many benefits and advantages including:
- Sends 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 products or services to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for increasing user engagement
- Provides you with other ways for readers to share your content
A proven way to get your visitors to subscribe is to provide high value information and give users a free gift in exchange for their details. This could be an exclusive report, tips for improving health, fitness and diet, access to medical applications, coupons, access to videos, podcasts, etc.
Adding A Contact Form
Contact forms make it easy and simple for readers to get in touch. Visitors can raise problems, ask questions to specific departments, request quotes, give suggestions and more.
Contact forms provide many benefits and advantages, like:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- Gives you control over what is sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- They can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- Convenient for visitors
A popular contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WP Plugin)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that allows you to add and manage multiple contact forms to your posts and pages, customize your form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is also supported.
Something to consider if you are setting up a website for a medical practice is adding sections to your contact form so prospects can select which section of the center they want to reach. This will help get their comment to the correct department.
Maps
Adding a map helps your visitors and customers find you.
Integrating maps, such as Google Maps, with your WordPress site also provides visitors with many benefits, such as:
- They improve local SEO
- Allows customers to better plan their meeting and appointments
- Display location of events
(Adding a map to your website helps your visitors and customers find you)
Some of the more popular Google Maps plugins for WordPress include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins That Can Help To Improve Your SEO, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Website
WordPress Plugins For Medical Services
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your site that will immediately add a range of functional tools for visitors. Here are some of these:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar)
This free bookings plugin lets you add appointment booking services to your site. Booking Calendar provides an intuitive interface and flexible functionality. It is highly suitable for a range health and medical consulting businesses, e.g. dental practices, specialists, health spas, booking sessions with personal trainers, etc.
(Booking Calendar Plugin – Overview)
The plugin works right out of the box. Website visitors can check the availability of services you offer and make a booking quickly and easily. Administrators and visitors receive email notifications. The plugin is also widget-ready, and offers multi-language support. A premium plugin version with extra features is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso
(Manage Bookings & Registrations Online Using Event Espresso WordPress Plugin)
If you plan to run health or medical seminars, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WordPress enables you to easily set up your event and begin accepting online registrations in minutes
(Event Espresso – Event Manager And Ticketing Registration System For WordPress)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich software that gives you full control over the event registration management process.
We have written a detailed article about Event Espresso. To learn more about this go here:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators WordPress Plugin)
Calculator Pro provides a free collection of over 400 calculators that you can provide to users on your website. Internationalization is supported.
Most of the calculators aren’t specifically designed for health applications, but there are many you can add to your site, including the following:
- Body Statistics – e.g. ANC Calculator, FENa Calculator, GFR (Glomerular Filtration Rate) Calculator, Max Heart Rate 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. Advanced One Rep Max Weight Lifting Calculator, Blood Sugar Converter Calculator, Pace Calculator, Sobriety Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Calcium Calculator, Creatine Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. Ideal Weight Calculator, Weight Loss Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form – WordPress Plugin)
Calculated Fields Form is useful for creating forms that perform single and complex calculations, such as:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculator
- And lots more
The plugin developers also offer a premium version with a ton of extra features.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin)
Weight Loss Tracker lets 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 enter target weights and provides support for various weight formats: Metric (Kg), Imperial – Stones & Pounds, Imperial – Pounds only.
For more details, go here}:
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator Widget
(Simple Body Mass Index Calculator Widget Plugin)
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator is a simple plugin that installs a widget on your sidebar that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
In addition to Simple BMI Calculator, there are a number of WordPress plugins you can check out to perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A mobile-friendly 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 to show your users their BMI
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors calculate 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)
Drug Interaction Data Plugin retrieves and displays drug information, including what the drug is used to treat and what other medications the drug is known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data Plugin – Results)
Drug information can be displayed inside your web content, or as a widget on your sidebar. 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 creates posts from PubMed articles, as well as a search function that locates posts with specific article data. A simple content editor is also included with the plugin.
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)
MJM Clinic was designed to add functionality to medical and health care related websites that provide information about health conditions and symptoms.
For more details, go here}:
Treato WordPress Plugin
(Treato WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you add a sidebar widget that allows you and your users to search drugs and see what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato collects and analyzes experiences sourced directly from patients 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 over 26,600 medications, drug comparisons across over 14,500 medical conditions, which drugs people feel work, and more, from over 2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap
(HealthTap Concierge Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows visitors to locate and book a virtual consult with doctors, clinical psychologists, etc. who specialize in a given health topic via text chat or HD video from any mobile device, personal computer, even smartwatch.
With HealthTap Concierge installed on your WordPress website or blog, users 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 select a doctor, chat over text or video, or send questions and get answers using the HealthTap service, which has a database of over 70,000 doctors.
For more details, go here}:
Trend MD
(TrendMD Plugin)
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 – WordPress Plugin)
WP Nutrition Facts is a simple plugin for WordPress that lets you insert a nutrition facts table into your posts, pages and custom post types, allowing your visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food in a standardized format and make informed decisions about the food they eat.
(WP Nutrition Facts – WordPress Plugin – 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 Plugin For WordPress)
If you own a health or fitness-related website that provides nutrition or healthy eating advice, a great source of content that will engage your readers is to add great recipes.
Plugins like WP Ultimate Recipe let you publish healthy and delicious recipes on your site.
Other WordPress recipe plugins include:
- Recipe Card – Create recipes with nutrition facts that your site users can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – 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)
This plugin lets you display fitness & wellness testimonials, reviews and case studies, before and after photos, etc. on your website.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images
(Exercise Images Plugin For WordPress)
Exercise Images lets you insert a database of exercise drawings into your posts and pages.
(Exercise Images WP Plugin – Catalog)
For more details, go here}:
In part 3, we will look at medical themes.
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This is the end of section 2 of this step-by-step guide on ways to grow your health or medical-related business web presence.
To continue reading, click here:
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