In Part One of this comprehensive article on ways to grow your medical or health business web presence, we provided practical tips and suggestions on the following topics:
- Online Challenges For The Medical And Health Profession
- Online Opportunities For Medical And Health Businesses
- Your Website Pages
- Tips On How To Improve The Content On Your Site
In Parts 2 & 3, we explore more ways to grow your health or medical-related business online.
Topics covered in this (and the following section) include:
- Improve Traffic Using WordPress
- Generating Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Creating Better User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
- Add New Features And Functionality To Your Website With Plugins
- WP For Business – An Overview Of Themes
Note: Health and medical plugins are listed in this section. Health and medical themes are listed in Part 3.
Grow Your Medical Website – Improve Your Business Online Using WordPress Plugins and Themes
Web traffic is an integral part of your business growth. This section discusses ways to improve your website with WordPress plugins and themes.
Optimizing Your Site For Search Engines Using WordPress
There are so many ways that WordPress helps optimize your medical website for search engines:
- URLs – Set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Tags – Choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your articles for.
- Post Categories – Create categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Post Excerpts – Create an excerpt that will show in search results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for improved search engine results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that allows you to easily link internal content
- Post Notification – WordPress can be set up to automatically notify (ping) other search directories whenever a new post is published on your website.
Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are various WordPress plugins that improve your website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your website.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your website’s search engine optimization)
Other ways to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social features. Here are some more fantastic plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – BuddyPress can be used to run a social networking community on your website, with member profiles, user groups, messaging, activity streams, and more.
- bbPress – This free WordPress plugin helps you set up a community forum on your WordPress site.
- E-Newsletter – Use this plugin to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard.
- Disqus – Power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your website.
- Monarch – Use this plugin to add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your website or blog.
(You can easily add social features to your site with free or inexpensive plugins)
Generate New Leads & Enquiries
In this section we show you how to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries.
Adding An Email Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is a great way to build a list of subscribers. It] provides several benefits, like:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates that can save businesses time and money
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for engaging with your users
- Provides you with other ways for your content to be shared around with others
One of the things you can do to get visitors to become subscribers is to provide them with high value content and offer them free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their personal details. This can be a handy guide, checklists for improving diet and well-being, access to health calculators, discount coupons, membership access to courses, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
A contact form makes it easy and simple for readers to contact you. A contact form also allows users to send feedback, ask questions to specific departments, request quotes, and more.
Contact forms provide many benefits and advantages, like:
- Reducing spam
- Set up automated responses
- Giving you control over what gets sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- Convenience for visitors
A very popular contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7)
Contact Form 7 allows you to create and manage multiple contact forms, customize the forms and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering is also supported.
Something else to consider if you plan to set up a website for a health center or medical clinic is adding sections to your contact form so prospects can choose which section of the clinic they are contacting you about. This will help get their message to the correct department.
Add Maps
A map helps your visitors and clients find you.
Integrating maps (e.g. Google Maps), with your website also provides many benefits, such as:
- A map improves local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Display location of events
(Maps help your visitors and customers find you)
Here are just some 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
WordPress Plugins & Themes That Can Improve Your SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Visitors To Your Website Generation
WordPress Plugins
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your medical or health website to immediately add a range of practical tools for your site visitors. Here are just some of the plugins you can choose from:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar)
This free bookings plugin allows you to add online bookings to your site. This plugin is well supported, has an intuitive and user-friendly interface with flexible functionality. It is suitable for a wide range medical, health, fitness & sports-related businesses, such as dental practitioners, surgeons, chiropractors, booking sessions with personal trainers, etc.
(Booking Calendar – WordPress Plugin – Overview)
This booking reservations plugin works out of the box. Website visitors can check availability of services and make a booking quickly and easily. Site administrators and visitors receive booking confirmations. The plugin also lets you add a calendar or booking form to your site’s sidebar, and offers multi-language support. A premium version of this plugin is also available with many more features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management & Ticket Registration Plugin
(Manage Your Events Online Using Event Espresso For WP)
If you plan to run health seminars, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration WP software lets you easily set up an event and start receiving online bookings literally in minutes
(Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Management)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed application that gives you complete control of the event registration management process.
We have written an in-depth article on Event Espresso here:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators – WordPress Plugin)
Calculator Pro Calculators provides a free collection of over 400 calculators that you can display on your website. It supports internationalization
Most of the calculators aren’t specifically designed for medical or health-related usage, but there are a number you can use, including the following:
- Body Statistics – e.g. BMR Calculator, Fat Calculator, GFR (Glomerular Filtration Rate) Calculator, Metric Body Fat Calculator, Skinfold Body Fat Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Daily Calorie Calculator, Daily Energy Expenditure Calculator, Calories Burned Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. BAI (Body Adiposity Index) Calculator, Bruce Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. One Rep Max Weight Lifting Calculator, Blood Donation Calculator, Pace Calculator, Running Pace Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. BMR Calorie Calculator, Macronutrient 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)
The Calculated Fields Form plugin lets you create forms with dynamically calculated fields to display the calculated values, including:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculators
- And lots more
The plugin is also available in a premium version with additional features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker – WordPress Plugin)
Weight Loss Tracker lets logged-in users record their weight on given dates. The results are then displayed in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker WP Plugin – User Graph)
The plugin allows users to insert target weights and supports the following weight formats: Metric (Kg), Imperial – Stones & Pounds, Imperial – Pounds only.
For more details, go here}:
Simple BMI Calculator
(Simple Body Mass Index Calculator Widget Plugin For WordPress)
Simple BMI Calculator is a free plugin for WordPress that installs a widget on your website that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
As well as Simple Body Mass Index Calculator, there are additional WordPress plugins you can look at that perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A responsive Body Mass Index and BMR calculator that saves calculation data for logged-in users and gives an overview to the site administrator.
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator that shows users their BMI
- 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 WP Plugin)
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 – 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 – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin adds a dashboard widget that lets you add posts from PubMed articles, plus a search function that lets users search posts with specific data. The plugin also includes a basic editor that lets you change the layout of data in the post content.
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)
MJM Clinic can be used for medical and health care related websites. It lets you add service pages with booking forms, locations, provide information on health conditions and symptoms, assign case studies, link indication tags to services, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Treato
(Treato WP Plugin)
Treato WordPress plugin lets you add a sidebar widget that allows your site visitors to search a vast drug database and see what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato collects and analyzes experiences sourced directly from patients written in medical forums and blog posts, then aggregates the content to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users receive valuable insight about side effects, drug comparisons, which drugs people feel work, and more from over 2.2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap
(HealthTap Plugin For WordPress)
HealthTap Concierge allows consumers to locate and book a virtual consult with real doctors, clinical psychologists, etc. via HD video or text chat from any mobile device, computer, or smartwatch.
With the widget installed, 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 select a doctor, chat using video or text, or send the doctor their question.
For more details, go here}:
Trend MD
(TrendMD Plugin)
This plugin will 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 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 lets you insert a nutrition facts table into your posts and pages, allowing your site visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food and make informed food choices.
(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin – Nutritional Facts Label Creation)
WP Nutrition Facts uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labelling regulations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Ultimate Recipe
(WP Ultimate Recipe Plugin)
If you run a health or fitness business that provides nutritional or healthy eating suggestions, a great source of engaging content to your site is to publish healthy recipes.
Plugins like WP Ultimate Recipe let you add delicious and healthy on your site.
Other WordPress recipe plugins include:
- Recipe Card – Create search engine optimized recipes that your site users 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, live custom formatting, Google Recipe View formatting and preview button, automatic ratings and conversion from other recipe plugins.
- ZipList Recipes – Easily format recipe text and add images. The plugin also provides a number of additional features, including SEO and Google Recipe View formatting.
- And many more.
For more details, go here}:
Awesome Fitness Testimonials
(Awesome Fitness Testimonials)
This plugin lets you display fitness and wellness testimonials, case studies and reviews, before and after photos, videos, etc. on your site.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you display a database of exercise illustrations on your site.
(Exercise Images Plugin For WordPress – Image Catalog)
For more details, go here}:
In the next section of this guide, we discuss themes that are suitable for health-related and medical businesses.
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This is the end of part two.
Click on this link to access Part Three:
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)