In Part 1 of this guide on ways to grow your health or medical business presence online, we provided many practical tips and suggestions on the following areas:
- Online Challenges For Medical Professionals
- Opportunities For The Health & Medical Profession In The Online Economy
- Essential Website Pages
- How To Improve Your Web Content
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your medical or health-related services online.
Topics covered include:
- Improve Traffic
- Generate Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins And Themes That Can Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Web Traffic
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
- Adding New Functionality To Your Website With Plugins
- WordPress For Beginners – An Introduction To Themes
Note: Plugins are described in this section. Health and medical themes are listed in Part Three.
Ways To Improve Web Traffic
Web traffic is vital to your business growth. In this section, you will learn how to improve your medical or health website with WordPress plugins and themes.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines (SEO) With WordPress
There are lots of ways WordPress can help to improve SEO:
- SEO-Friendly – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Tags – WordPress lets you choose the keywords that you want your article pages to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Create search engine-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Post Excerpts – Set an excerpt that will display to search engine users.
- Images – title your images with keywords for better search results.
- Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links
- Post Notification – WordPress can be set up to automatically notify (ping) other search directories whenever a new post is published on your website.
How To Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Web Traffic With Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are many plugins that improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your business.
For example, you can install the plugins below to improve your site’s search engine optimization:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO)
Other WordPress tools you can use to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social features. Here are a few WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – BuddyPress can be used to run your own social networking community on your website.
- bbPress – bbPress lets you set up your own discussion forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – Use E-Newsletter to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress site.
- Disqus – This plugin lets you power discussions and helps to increase engagement on your website.
- Floating Social – This plugin lets you add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your posts and pages.
(You can easily add social sharing buttons to your site with WordPress plugins)
Ways To Generate More Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
Let’s now take a look at how to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries online.
Providing An Email Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is a great way to build a subscriber list. Adding newsletters] provides many benefits and advantages, like:
- Sends targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides updates that could save businesses time and money
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special products or services to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for user engagement
- Provides you with additional ways for readers to share your content
An effective strategy for enticing visitors to subscribe is to provide high value information and offer users a free gift in exchange for their details. This can be a special report, checklists for improving fitness and well-being, access to medical applications, discount coupons, membership access to courses, podcasts, etc.
Contact Forms
A contact form makes it easy and simple for prospective clients to contact you. Contact forms also allow users to report problems, contact specific departments, request a quote, send suggestions for improvements and more.
A contact form provides many benefits, like:
- Reduces spam
- Set up automated responses
- Gives you control over what is sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Different forms can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- Is convenient for site visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WP Plugin)
This free contact form plugin allows you to insert multiple contact forms, customize your form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering is supported.
Something to consider if you want to set up a website for a health center or medical clinic is to segment your contact form so users can choose the section of the practice they want to reach. This ensures that visitors’ requests reach the right department.
Maps
A map helps your visitors and clients find you.
Adding maps, such as Google Maps to your site also provides many benefits, such as:
- They improve local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Show location of events
(Adding maps helps your visitors and clients find you)
Popular map plugins include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Medical Practice Site With WordPress Plugins & Themes
Health Or Medical Plugins For WordPress
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your medical-related website that will immediately add a range of practical tools for your site visitors. Here are some of these:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar – WordPress Plugin)
The Booking Calendar plugin allows you to add online bookings to your site. It is well supported and provides users with an intuitive and user-friendly interface. It is highly suitable for a range of uses, e.g. medical practices, surgeons, chiropractors, booking sessions with personal trainers, etc.
(Booking Calendar – Overview)
This plugin works out of the box. Website visitors can check availability of services and book appointments easily. Site administrators and visitors receive notifications. The plugin also lets you add a calendar or booking form to your website’s sidebar, and supports multiple languages. A premium version of this plugin with many extra features and functionalities is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso
(Manage Bookings And Registrations Automatically Using Event Espresso WP Plugin)
If you plan to run health or medical events like seminars or workshops, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration software lets you easily schedule multiple events and start accepting bookings in just a few minutes
(Event Espresso – Event Management And Ticketing Registration Software For WordPress)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed application that gives you full control of the event registration management process.
We have written an in-depth article about Event Espresso here:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators – WordPress Plugin)
Calculator Pro Calculators provides a free collection of 400+ calculators that you can display on your website. The plugin supports internationalization
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t designed for health uses, but there are several you can add to your website, including:
- Body Statistics – e.g. ANC Calculator, Carbohydrate Calculator, Lean Body Mass Calculator, Max Heart Rate Calculator, Skinfold Body Fat Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, kJ to Calorie Calculator, Calories Burned Swimming Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Astrand Test Calculator, Rockport Walk Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Bike Size Calculator, Blood Sugar Converter Calculator, Ovulation Calculator, Running Pace Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Carbohydrate Calculator, Water Intake Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. Ideal Weight Calculator (kg), Weight Loss Percentage Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you create forms that perform single and complex calculations, such as:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculator
- And lots more
The plugin is also available in a premium version with extra features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker)
Weight Loss Tracker is a simple plugin for WordPress that lets logged-in users record their weight periodically. The results are then displayed in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker WordPress Plugin – User 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 BMI Calculator
(Simple Body Mass Index Calculator Widget WP Plugin)
This simple plugin installs a widget on your website that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
As well as Simple BMI Calculator, there are a number of plugins you can look at that perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A BMI and Basal Metabolic Rate (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 your site visitor’s BMI
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors figure out their basal metabolic rate, based on age, sex and weight.
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data WordPress Plugin)
Drug Interaction Data Plugin for WordPress will retrieve and display information about drugs, including what the drug is used to treat and what other medications the drug is known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data – WordPress Plugin – Results)
Information about drugs 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 converts common names of drugs to the standardized RxNorm name as defined by the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
For more details, go here}:
PubMed Posts
(PubMed Posts WordPress Plugin)
PubMed Posts adds a dashboard widget that creates posts from PubMed articles, plus a search widget that lets visitors find posts with specific article data. A basic editor that changes the layout of data in the post content is also included with the plugin.
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)
This plugin was designed to add functionality to clinic and health care related websites, such as adding service pages with booking forms, organising your services into hierarchical categories, locations, create staff member pages for therapists/doctors and more.
For more details, go here}:
Treato WordPress Plugin
(Treato – WordPress Plugin)
Treato WordPress plugin lets you add a sidebar widget that allows you and your users to 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 forums and blog posts, then aggregates the posts to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users receive insight about the side effects of over 26,600 medications, drug comparisons across 14,700+ medical conditions, which drugs people feel are working, and more, from over 2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap
(HealthTap Concierge – WordPress Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows visitors to consult with real doctors, clinical psychologists, etc. via text chat or HD video from any mobile device, computer, even 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 over video or text, or send the doctor a question.
For more details, go here}:
TrendMD
(Trend MD – WordPress Plugin)
TrendMD will add the TrendMD recommendations widget to your site. 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)
This simple plugin for WordPress lets you insert a nutrition facts table into your pages and posts, allowing your visitors to make informed decisions about the food they consume.
(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin For WordPress – Creating Custom Post Type Labels)
WP Nutrition Facts uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labeling regulations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Ultimate Recipe
(WP Ultimate Recipe Plugin)
If you own a health or fitness-related business that provides diet and nutrition or healthy eating information, a great source of content that will engage your readers is to publish recipes.
A plugin like WP Ultimate Recipe lets you publish recipes on your site.
Other WordPress recipe plugins include:
- Recipe Card – Create recipes with nutrition facts that your site visitors can print, save and review.
- 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 and preview button, live custom formatting, automatic ratings and conversion from other recipe plugins.
- ZipList Recipes – Lets you easily format recipe text and add images. The plugin also provides a number of additional features, including Google Recipe View formatting and SEO.
- And many more.
For more details, go here}:
Awesome Fitness Testimonials
(Awesome Fitness Testimonials Plugin For WordPress)
The Awesome Fitness Testimonials plugin lets you add fitness & wellness testimonials, case studies and reviews to your website.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images by Everkinetic
(Exercise Images – WordPress Plugin)
Exercise Images lets you insert a database of exercise images into your posts and pages.
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic – Catalog)
For more details, go here}:
In part three of this guide, we discuss WordPress themes for medical businesses.
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This is the end of section two.
To keep reading, click this link:
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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)