In Part One of this article on ways to build your medical or health business online, we covered the following areas:
- Online Challenges For Medical Services Professionals
- Opportunities For Medical Businesses In The Online Economy
- How To Improve Your Web Pages
- Improve The Content On Your Website
In Parts 2 and 3, we discuss more ways to grow your health-related services online.
Areas covered include:
- Improve Web Traffic Using WordPress
- Tips For Generating Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins That Can Help To Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Web Traffic
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
Note: Plugins are listed in this section. Themes for medical businesses are covered in Part 3.
Tips For Medical Services Practitioners – WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increasing User Engagement And Driving More Traffic
Web traffic is a vital part of your online business growth. This section discusses ways of improving search engine optimization, improve user engagement and drive more traffic using WordPress plugins.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines (SEO) With WordPress
There are loads of ways that WordPress helps optimize your website for search engines:
- SEO-Friendly – Set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your posts.
- Post Tags – Specify the keywords that you want search engines to index your articles for.
- Categories – Create categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Excerpts – Set the description for your posts that will display in search results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for improved search engine results.
- Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily link your content to other posts and pages
- Post Notification – WordPress can be set up to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories as soon as a new post is published on your website.
WordPress Plugins That Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Traffic
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are quite a number of plugins that will improve your health-related website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.
Here are some plugins you can use to improve your SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO)
Other things you can do to improve your health or medical-related site’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing features. Here are some more WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below are also free):
- BuddyPress – This free plugin can be used to run a social network on WordPress, with member profiles, activity streams, user groups, messaging, and more.
- bbPress – Set up an online discussion forum on your WordPress website.
- E-Newsletter – Use this plugin to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard.
- Disqus – This WordPress plugin lets you power discussions and increases user engagement on your site.
- Social Media Feather – Easily add powerful social sharing features on your website.
(You can add social sharing buttons to your site easily using free or inexpensive plugins)
Generating Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Tools
This section will show you ways to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries for your medical or health business.
Add A Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is a great way to build a list of subscribers. It provides many benefits, like:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides useful updates
- Provides a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Increases user interaction
- Provides other ways for subscribers to share your content
A proven way to attract subscribers to your email newsletter is to provide high value information and give users something for free in exchange for their personal details. This can be a handy guide, checklists for improving health and nutrition, access to fitness applications, vouchers, access to courses, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
Contact forms make it easy and simple for prospective customers to get in touch. Users can report issues, ask questions to specific departments, request quotes, and more.
A contact form provides many benefits including:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Gives you control over what is sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Can be added to any page or post
- Improves the professional look of your site
- Convenience for users
A very popular contact form plugin for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin is easy to install and set up and lets you insert multiple contact forms into any page or post, customize your form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Something else to consider if you are setting up a website for a medical center is to add sections to your contact form so visitors can select the practitioner they want to contact. This helps visitors get their message to the right department.
Map
Adding maps helps your visitors and customers find you.
Maps are useful tools for several reasons:
- Maps improve local SEO
- Clients can better plan their visits or appointments
- Shows location of events
(Adding a map helps your visitors and customers find you)
Below are some popular 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 Drive More Web Traffic With Plugins And Themes
Medical Plugins For WordPress
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your site that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for your site visitors. Here are just some of these plugins:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar Plugin For WordPress)
The Booking Calendar plugin lets you add online booking services to your site. It provides an intuitive and user-friendly interface and flexible functionality. It is suitable for a wide range health and medical consulting uses, such as dental practices, surgeons, health spas, booking sessions with personal trainers, etc.
(Booking Calendar – Overview)
Booking Calendar works right out of the box. Website visitors can check availability of services and book appointments online quickly and easily. Site administrators and visitors receive booking confirmations. Booking Calendar is also widget-ready, and supports multiple languages. A premium version with extra features and functionalities is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso
(Manage Event Registrations Automatically With Event Espresso For WP)
If your business involves running health or medical events, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin enables you to easily create multiple events and start processing bookings literally in a few minutes
(Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticketing Management Plugin)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed software that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.
We have written a comprehensive article on the benefits and features of using Event Espresso. To learn more, go here:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
Calculator Pro Calculators is a free collection of over 400 calculators that you can provide to users on your website and embed into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of them aren’t specifically designed for medical or health-related use, but there are several you can add to your site, including:
- Body Statistics – e.g. BAI (Body Adiposity Index) Calculator, Frame Size Calculator, Lean Body Mass Calculator, Max Heart Rate Calculator, Waist to Hip Ratio Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Daily Calorie Calculator, RMR Calculator, Calories Burned Running Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. BAI (Body Adiposity Index) Calculator, Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Advanced One Rep Max Weight Lifting Calculator, Blood Sugar Converter Calculator, Due Date Calculator, Running Pace Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, Protein Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. BMI Calculator, Weight Loss Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form)
The Calculated Fields Form plugin lets you create dynamically calculated field forms, such as:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculator
- And lots more
A premium version of this plugin is also available with additional features.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin For WordPress)
This free plugin lets users record their weight periodically. The results are then shown in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin – Graph)
The plugin allows users to input target weights and provides support for various weight formats: Metric (Kg), Imperial – Stones & Pounds, Imperial – Pounds only.
For more details, go here}:
Simple BMI Calculator Widget
(Simple Body Mass Index Calculator Widget Plugin For WordPress)
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator lets you add a widget to your website that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
As well as Simple BMI Calculator, there are a number of other WordPress plugins you can check out to perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A mobile-friendly BMI and BMR calculator that saves calculation data for logged-in users and gives an overview to the trainer (site administrator).
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator that displays BMI
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors calculate their basal metabolic rate, by entering their age, sex and weight.
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data)
Drug Interaction Data retrieves and displays drug information, including what the drugs are used to treat and what other medications the drugs are known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data Plugin – Results)
Information about drugs can be displayed as a widget or inside your posts and pages. The data is provided by the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the U.S. National Institutes of Health and converts common names of drugs to the standardized RxNorm name.
For more details, go here}:
PubMed Posts
(PubMed Posts Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin adds a dashboard widget that lets you crate posts from PubMed articles, and a search function that finds posts with specific data. An editor that changes the layout of data in your post content is also included.
PubMed comprises more than 25 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, online books and life science journals.
For more details, go here}:
MJM Clinic
(MJM Clinic WordPress Plugin)
The MJM Clinic Plugin can be used for medical and health care related websites. It lets you add service pages with booking forms, service locations, provide related health conditions, add case studies, link indication tags to services and conditions, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Treato
(Treato Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin lets you embed the Treato healthcare search engine into your WordPress sidebar so your site visitors can search a vast drug database and see what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato gathers and analyzes experiences sourced directly from patients written in online forums and blog posts, then aggregates the content to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users can access insight about the side effects of 26,500+ medications, drug comparisons across 14,500+ medical conditions, which drugs people feel are working, and more, from over 2.2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap Concierge
(HealthTap Concierge WordPress Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows users to consult with real doctors via text chat or HD video from any mobile device, personal computer, even smartwatch.
With the widget installed, users 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 the doctor a question and get answers using the service, which has a database of over 73,000 doctors.
For more details, go here}:
Trend MD
(Trend MD WordPress Plugin)
TrendMD 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, 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 Plugin)
WP Nutrition Facts lets you insert a nutrition facts table into your posts and pages, allowing your visitors to make informed decisions about the food they eat.
(WP Nutrition Facts – Custom Post Type Label Creation)
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 own a health or fitness-related website that provides diet and nutrition or healthy eating suggestions, a great way to add content that will engage your readers 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 – Publish search engine optimized recipes with nutrition facts that site visitors can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – Makes entering recipes on your site easy with features like cut & 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 – Lets you easily format recipe text and add images. Additional features like Google Recipe View formatting and SEO are included.
- And many more.
For more details, go here}:
Awesome Fitness Testimonials
(Awesome Fitness Testimonials – WordPress Plugin)
Awesome Fitness Testimonials lets you display fitness and wellness testimonials, reviews and case studies, before and after photos, etc. on your site.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic – WordPress Plugin)
The Exercise Images plugin lets you display a database of exercise diagrams in your posts and pages.
(Exercise Images WordPress Plugin – Image Catalog)
For more details, go here}:
In the next section of this guide, we will be discussing health and medical WordPress themes.
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This is the end of part 2 of this step-by-step article on ways to grow your health-related business online.
To continue, click here:
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