In Part One of this article on ways to build your health business web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Challenges Professional Health And Medical Services Practitioners Face Online
- Opportunities For Medical Businesses
- Improving Your Web Pages
- Improving Your Web Content
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your health or medical services online.
Areas covered include:
- Ways To Improve Traffic With WordPress
- Ways To Generate More Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
- WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Driving More Visitors
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
Note: WordPress health and medical plugins are listed in this section. Health and medical themes are listed in Part Three.
Ways To Improve Website Traffic With WordPress
Your web traffic is vital to your online business growth. In this section, you will learn WordPress plugins & themes that can help to improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and increase web traffic generation.
Optimizing Your Website For Search Engines
There are so many ways that WordPress helps improve your medical-related website’s SEO:
- URLs – Set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your article pages (called posts).
- Post Tags – WordPress lets you choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your posts for.
- Post Categories – Add search engine-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose an excerpt that will appear in search results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for better search results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily link your content to other posts and pages
- Pinging – Set up your site to automatically notify other sites and directories the moment a new post is published on your site.
How To Improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Improve User Engagement And Generate More Visitors To Your Website Using Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are a number of plugins that will improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your website.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your site’s search engine optimization:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML 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 plugins you can add to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing. Here are some fantastic WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – Use BuddyPress to run a social community on WordPress, with member profiles, messaging, user groups, activity streams, and more.
- bbPress – Use the bbPress WordPress plugin to set up and manage an online community forum on your WordPress site.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard.
- Disqus – use this plugin to power discussions and helps to increase engagement on your website or blog.
- Social Media Feather – Easily add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your posts and pages.
(You can easily add social sharing features to your site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Generate New Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
Let’s now take a look at how to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries for your business.
Provide A Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is a great way to build a list of subscribers. Adding newsletters] provides several benefits and advantages, like:
- Sends targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides useful updates
- Provides you with a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Increases engagement with users
- Provides additional ways for subscribers to share your content
A proven strategy for enticing visitors to subscribe is to provide high value content and offer users free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their personal details. This can be a time-saving guide, checklists for improving health and nutrition, access to medical apps, discount vouchers, membership access to courses, contests, etc.
Provide Contact Forms
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch with you. A contact form also allows readers to provide feedback, contact specific departments, request quotes, give suggestions for improvements and more.
Contact forms provide a number of benefits and advantages including:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what gets sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Different forms can be added to any page or post
- Improves the professional look of your website
- Convenient for site visitors
One of the most popular WordPress contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 – WordPress Plugin)
This free contact form plugin lets you create multiple contact forms, customize the form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is supported.
Something else to consider if you are setting up a website for a medical practice is adding sections to your contact form so prospective clients can select which section of the practice they want to reach. This helps get their comment to the right recipient.
Map
Adding a map helps your visitors and clients find you.
A map is a very useful tool for several reasons:
- A map helps to improve local SEO
- Visitors can find you easily
- Show location of events
(Adding a map to your website helps your visitors and clients 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 And Themes For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increasing User Engagement And Traffic Generation
Health And Medical Services Plugins For WordPress
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your health or medical-related site that will immediately add a range of functional tools for visitors. Here are just some of the plugins you can choose from:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar Plugin)
The Booking Calendar plugin allows you to add online booking services to your site. This plugin is well supported, has an intuitive and user-friendly interface and flexible functionality. It is suitable for a wide range medical and health consulting businesses, e.g. dental practices, surgical centers, chiropractors, 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 and book appointments quickly and easily. Administrators and visitors receive notifications. The plugin also lets you add a calendar or booking form to your site’s sidebar, and offers multi-language support. The developers of this plugin also offer a premium version with a ton of additional features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Manager
(Manage Your Events Via The Web Using Event Espresso WP Plugin)
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 WordPress software lets you easily schedule your event and start processing registrations literally in minutes
(Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager And Ticketing Registration System)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich plugin that gives you complete control of the event registration management process.
We have written a comprehensive article on the benefits and features of using Event Espresso. For more details:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
This plugin provides a free collection of 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 designed for health usage, but there are several you can add to your site, including the following:
- Body Statistics – e.g. BMI Calculator, FENa Calculator, Katch-Mcardle BMR Calculator, Metric BMR Calculator, Waist to Hip Ratio Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, Daily Energy Expenditure Calculator, Calories Burned Running Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. BAI (Body Adiposity Index) Calculator, Rockport Walk Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. One Rep Max Weight Lifting Calculator, Cigarette Savings Calculator, Pregnancy Calculator, Smoking Cost Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, Macronutrient Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. Ideal Weight Calculator, Weight Loss Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form WP Plugin)
With Calculated Fields Form you can create forms with dynamically calculated fields to display the calculated values, including:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculator
- And more
A premium plugin version is also available and includes many more features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker WordPress Plugin)
Weight Loss Tracker lets users record their weight periodically. The results are then displayed in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin For WordPress – 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 Widget)
This simple plugin for WordPress installs a widget on your sidebar that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
In addition to Simple Body Mass Index Calculator, there are additional WordPress plugins you can check out that perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A BMI and BMR calculator that saves calculation data for logged-in users and gives an overview to the trainer.
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator that shows users their Body Mass Index
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors calculate their basal metabolic rate, by entering their age, sex and weight.
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data)
Drug Interaction Data Plugin for WordPress will retrieve and display 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 – Results)
Information about drugs can be displayed on your site. The plugin loads the drug and pharmaceutical data from the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
For more details, go here}:
PubMed Posts
(PubMed Posts WP Plugin)
PubMed Posts adds a dashboard widget that lets you crate posts from PubMed articles, plus a search function that locates posts with specific data. A simple content editor is also included with the plugin.
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 Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin can be used to add functionality to medical and health care related websites, such as service pages with booking forms, related health conditions, locations, feedback entries and more.
For more details, go here}:
Treato
(Treato WP Plugin)
Treato WordPress plugin lets you display information about drugs on your site and see what read what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato gathers and analyzes experiences sourced directly from patients written in related forums and blog posts, then aggregates the posts to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users can access 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 WordPress Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows users to consult with doctors, clinical psychologists, etc. via HD video or text chat from any mobile device, personal computer, even smartwatch.
With With the HealthTap Concierge plugin installed, your site 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 using text or video, or send the doctor a question and get answers via the service.
For more details, go here}:
Trend MD
(Trend MD Plugin For WordPress)
The TrendMD 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)
This plugin 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 and make better decisions about the food products they purchase.
(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin For WordPress – 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)
If you run a health or fitness-related website that provides nutrition or healthy eating advice, a great source of engaging content to your site is to add great recipes.
Plugins like WP Ultimate Recipe let you add delicious and healthy on your site.
Other WordPress recipe plugins include:
- Recipe Card – Publish search engine optimized recipes that site visitors can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – EasyRecipe makes entering recipes on your site easy with features like cut and 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 – 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)
The Awesome Fitness Testimonials plugin lets you add fitness and wellness testimonials, reviews and case studies, before and after photos, etc. to your website.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images by Everkinetic
(Exercise Images Plugin)
Exercise Images by Everkinetic lets you display exercise drawings inside your content.
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic – WordPress Plugin – Database)
For more details, go here}:
In the next section of this guide, we will be discussing health-related and medical themes for WordPress.
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This is the end of part two.
Click on this link to continue reading:
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