In Part One of this article on ways to grow your health or medical-related business web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Challenges Medical And Health Services Providers Face Online
- Online Opportunities For Health And Medical Services Providers
- Your Web Pages
- How To Improve The Content On Your Site
In Parts 2 & 3, we discuss more ways to grow your medical business online.
Areas covered in this (and the next section) include:
- Improve Traffic
- Generating Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins That Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Traffic
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
- Using WordPress Plugins To Improve Your Web Site’s Features And Functionality
- WP Themes – An Overview
Note: WordPress health and medical plugins are covered in this section. Medical and health-related themes are covered in Part 3.
Your Medical Practice Website – WordPress Plugins And Themes For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Generating More Visitors To Your Site
Web traffic is vital to your online business growth. This section discusses WordPress plugins that can help improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and increase traffic generation.
Optimizing Your Site For SEO Using WordPress
There are many ways WordPress can help to optimize your health or medical-related website for search engines:
- SEO-Friendly – configure the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the web address of your pages.
- Tags – WordPress lets you choose the keywords that you want your articles to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Create search engine-friendly categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Post Excerpts – Create descriptions for your posts that search engines will show.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for improved search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily link your content to other posts
- Pinging – Configure your site to automatically notify other sites and directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your website.
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Increasing User Engagement And Traffic Generation
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are a number of plugins for WordPress that improve your medical website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your SEO:
- 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)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO)
Other WordPress tools you can add to improve your website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social features. Here are a few useful plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – This free plugin can be used to run your own social community on your site.
- bbPress – This free WordPress plugin can be used to run your own forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – Send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard, without requiring a third party subscription.
- Disqus – This WordPress plugin lets you power discussions and increases user engagement on your website.
- Social Media Feather – Use this WordPress plugin to add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your site.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site using WordPress plugins)
Ways To Generate More Leads & Enquiries
Let’s discuss now ways to improve your sales and generate more leads and enquiries.
Provide An Email Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is a great way to build a subscriber list. It] provides a number of benefits, like:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides useful updates
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Increases user interaction
- Provides an additional way for your content to be shared around with others
One of the best ways to get visitors to become subscribers is to provide them with valuable information and give them a free gift in exchange for their details. This can be an exclusive report, checklists for improving fitness and well-being, access to health applications, coupons, membership access to videos, podcasts, etc.
Provide A Contact Form
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for readers to contact you. Contact forms also allow visitors to report issues, contact specific departments, ask for a quote, and more.
A contact form provides many benefits and advantages including:
- 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
- Looks professional
- More convenient for users
One of the most popular contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WP Plugin)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that lets you add multiple contact forms, customize the form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Something to consider if you are setting up a website for a clinic or medical center is adding sections to your contact form so prospects can select the practitioner they want to contact. This helps get their comment to the right destination.
Maps
Maps help your visitors and customers find you.
Maps are a very useful tool for several reasons:
- A map improves local SEO
- Allows customers to better plan their visits or appointments
- Display location of events
(A map helps your visitors and clients find you)
Popular Google Maps plugins for WordPress include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Better User Engagement And Traffic Generation
Health & Medical Services Plugins For WordPress
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your health site that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for site visitors. Here are some of the plugins you can choose from:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar – WordPress Plugin)
Booking Calendar lets you add online bookings to your site. It has an intuitive interface. It is suitable for a range medical and health consulting uses, e.g. dental practitioners, specialists, alternative therapists, booking patient appointments, etc.
(Booking Calendar – Overview)
This booking reservations plugin works right out of the box. Website visitors can check 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 supports multiple languages. A premium version of this plugin with extra features is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Management
(Manage Event Bookings Online With Event Espresso Plugin For WP)
If you plan to run health events, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration WordPress plugin lets you easily set up your event and start accepting online registrations in minutes
(Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich plugin that gives you full control over the event registration management process.
We have written a detailed article about the benefits and features of using Event Espresso. For more info, see this article:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators WP Plugin)
Calculator Pro Calculators provides a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed them into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. The plugin supports internationalization
Note: Most of them aren’t specifically designed for health-related applications, but there are a few you can use, including the following:
- Body Statistics – e.g. BMR Calculator, Carbohydrate Calculator, GFR (Glomerular Filtration Rate) Calculator, Max Heart Rate Calculator, US Navy Body Fat Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Daily Calorie Calculator, RMR Calculator, Calories Burned By Heart Rate Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Coopers 12 Minute Run Test Calculator, Bruce Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Bike Size Calculator, Cigarette Savings Calculator, Pregnancy Calculator, Target Heart Rate Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Calcium 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 Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin is great for creating forms with dynamically calculated fields to display the calculated values, including:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculator
- And lots more
A premium plugin version with many extra features is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin)
Weight Loss Tracker 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 – Graph)
The plugin allows users to enter target weights and provides support for the following 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)
Simple BMI Calculator installs a widget on 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 use to 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 BMI
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors figure out their basal metabolic rate, by inputting their age, sex and weight.
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data WordPress Plugin)
Drug Interaction Data Plugin retrieves and displays 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 – Data Results)
Drug information can be displayed as a widget or inside your pages and posts. The data is provided by the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the U.S. National Institutes of Health and drug names are converted to the standardized RxNorm name.
For more details, go here}:
PubMed Posts
(PubMed Posts Plugin For WordPress)
PubMed Posts adds a dashboard widget that lets you add content from PubMed articles, as well as a search feature that lets users find posts with specific article data. A basic 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 WP Plugin)
MJM Clinic can be used to add functionality to clinic and health care related websites that provide information to site visitors about health conditions and symptoms.
For more details, go here}:
Treato
(Treato Plugin For WordPress)
Treato 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 gathers and analyzes patient experiences written in related forums and blog posts, then aggregates the content 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 Concierge WordPress Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows consumers to locate and book a virtual consult with real doctors, clinical psychologists, etc. via text chat or HD video from any mobile device, computer, even smartwatch.
With the plugin installed, users 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 select a doctor, chat using text or video, or send the doctor their question.
For more details, go here}:
TrendMD
(Trend MD)
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 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 WordPress plugin that lets you add a nutrition facts table into your posts, pages and custom post types, allowing your site visitors to make better food choices.
(WP Nutrition Facts – Create Labels)
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 own a health-related website that provides nutrition or healthy eating recommendations, a great way to add engaging content to your site is to publish great recipes.
Plugins like WP Ultimate Recipe let you add recipes on your site.
Other recipe plugins for WordPress include:
- Recipe Card – Create recipes that site visitors can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – EasyRecipe makes publishing recipes on your site easy with features like cut and paste, auto conversion of your plain text recipe posts, Google Recipe View formatting, live custom formatting, 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 WP Plugin)
Awesome Fitness Testimonials allows you to add fitness and wellness testimonials, reviews and case studies to your site.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic)
Exercise Images by Everkinetic lets you insert a database of exercise drawings into your web content.
(Exercise Images Plugin – Catalog)
For more details, go here}:
In the next section of this detailed article, we look at medical and health WordPress themes.
***
This is the end of section two of this guide on ways to grow your health-related web presence.
To view Part 3, click this link:
***
***
"I love the way your email series "Infinite Web Content Creation Training Series" is documented and presented. It is very absorbing and captivating. The links and tutorials are interesting and educational. This has motivated me to rewrite my content following the concepts I am learning from the email series." - Mani Raju, www.fortuneinewaste.com