In Part 1 of this article on ways to grow your health or medical business online, we provided many practical tips and suggestions on the following topics:
- Challenges Professional Health Practitioners Face Online
- Opportunities For The Medical & Health Profession In The Digital Economy
- Your Website Pages
- Tips For Improving The Content On Your Website
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your medical or health-related services online.
Topics covered in this (and the next section) include:
- Tips For Improving Traffic
- Generating New Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
- WordPress Plugins And Themes For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Generating More Web Traffic
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
Note: Medical and health plugins are described in this section. Health and medical themes are listed in Part Three.
Improve Website Traffic
Your web traffic is vital to your business growth. This section discusses ways of improving your website using WordPress.
Optimizing Your Website For Search Engines
There are lots of ways WordPress can help to optimize your medical or health website for search engines:
- URLs – configure the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your article pages (called posts).
- Post Tags – WordPress lets you select the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages (posts) for.
- Post Categories – Create categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Excerpts – Create the description for your posts that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for better search results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that allows you to easily link internal content
- Post Notification – Configure your site to automatically notify (ping) other search directories immediately upon publishing new content on your website.
WordPress Plugins That Can Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are quite a number of plugins for WordPress that will improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your website.
Here are some plugins you can use 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 (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your site’s search engine optimization)
Other ways to improve your medical-related website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social features. Here are some useful WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below are also free):
- BuddyPress – BuddyPress allows you to set up a social community on your website, with member profiles, user groups, activity streams, messaging, and more.
- bbPress – This free plugin lets you run your own forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard.
- Disqus – use this WordPress plugin to power discussions and increases 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.
(You can easily add social features to your website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Generate New Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Tools
In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve your sales and generate new leads and enquiries for your business.
Providing An Email Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is a great way to build a subscriber list. Adding email newsletters] provides a number of benefits including:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Increases user engagement
- Provides you with additional opportunities for your content to be shared around with others
A proven way to entice your visitors to subscribe to your newsletter is to provide high value information and give users something valuable for free in exchange for their details. This can be a time-saving guide, tips for improving general health and diet, access to fitness apps, vouchers, access to courses, podcasts, etc.
Contact Forms
A contact form makes it easy and simple for prospective customers to get in touch with you. A contact form also allows visitors to report problems, ask questions to specific departments, ask for quotes, send suggestions for new services or products and more.
Contact forms provide many benefits and advantages including:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what is sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- Convenience for visitors
A very popular WordPress contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7)
This free plugin is easy to install and configure and lets you create and manage multiple contact forms on your posts and pages, customize the form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering is supported.
Something to consider if you plan to set up a website for a medical practice is to segment your contact form so prospective clients can choose which section of the center they want to reach. This ensures that visitors’ enquiries reach the correct destination.
Provide Maps
Adding a map to your site helps your visitors and customers find you.
Inserting maps, such as Google Maps, into your site also provides many benefits, such as:
- Maps help to improve local SEO
- Visitors can find you more easily
- Shows location of events
(A map helps your visitors and customers find you)
Popular Google Maps plugins for WordPress include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
Improving SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With Plugins And Themes
WordPress Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your website to immediately add a range of functional tools for users. Here are just some of these:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar Plugin For WordPress)
This free plugin allows you to add appointment booking services to your site. This plugin provides an intuitive interface and flexible functionality. It is suitable for a range medical and health consulting businesses, such as medical practitioners, surgeons, massage therapists, booking patient appointments, etc.
(Booking Calendar WP Plugin – Overview)
The plugin works right out of the box. Website visitors can check availability of services and book appointments online easily. Site administrators and visitors receive notifications. Booking Calendar also lets you add a calendar or booking form to your website’s sidebar, and offers multi-language support. A premium version of this plugin with many extra features is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticket Manager System
(Manage Bookings & Registrations Via The Web Using Event Espresso WordPress Plugin)
If your business involves running health events, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WordPress enables you to easily schedule multiple events and start receiving registrations in just a few minutes
(Event Espresso – Event Management & Ticketing Registration System For WordPress)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich plugin that gives you full control of the event registration management process.
We have written a comprehensive article about the benefits and features of using Event Espresso. Go here to learn more about this:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin)
Calculator Pro Calculators is a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed these into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of them aren’t specifically designed for health applications, but there are several you can add to your site, including the following:
- Body Statistics – e.g. ANC Calculator, Child Height Calculator, Goal Weight Calculator, Max Heart Rate Calculator, Skinfold Body Fat Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, Daily Energy Expenditure Calculator, Calories Burned Running Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Coopers 12 Minute Run Test Calculator, Rockport Walk Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Bike Size Calculator, Cigarette Savings Calculator, Pregnancy Calculator, Target Heart Rate Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, Water Intake 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 Plugin For WordPress)
With Calculated Fields Form you can create forms that perform single and complex calculations, such as:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculators
- And many more
A premium version of this plugin with additional features and functionalities is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker – WordPress Plugin)
Weight Loss Tracker is a simple WordPress plugin that lets users record their weight periodically. This data is 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 various weight formats: Metric (Kg), Imperial – Stones & Pounds, Imperial – Pounds only.
For more details, go here}:
Simple BMI Calculator Widget
(Simple BMI Calculator Widget – WordPress Plugin)
Simple BMI Calculator is a free plugin for WordPress that lets you add a widget to your sidebar that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
In addition to Simple Body Mass Index Calculator, there are a number of other plugins you can check out that perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A Body Mass Index and 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 a visitor’s Body Mass Index
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors calculate 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 Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin retrieves and displays 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 WP Plugin – Database Results)
Information about drugs can be displayed on your site. 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)
PubMed Posts adds a dashboard widget that creates posts from PubMed articles, as well as a search feature that locates posts with specific data. A simple editor that changes the layout of data in your post content is also included.
PubMed includes over 25 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books.
For more details, go here}:
MJM Clinic
(MJM Clinic Plugin For WordPress)
MJM Clinic was designed to add functionality to clinic and health care related websites that provide information to site visitors about symptoms and health conditions.
For more details, go here}:
Treato WordPress Plugin
(Treato)
Treato lets you display information about drugs on your site and see what read what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato collects and analyzes patient experiences from forums and blog posts, then aggregates the content to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users can access valuable insight about over 14,700 conditions and over 26,600 medications from over 2.2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap Concierge
(HealthTap Concierge)
HealthTap Concierge allows visitors to locate and book a virtual consult with real doctors, clinical psychologists, etc. via text chat or HD video from any mobile device, personal computer, even smartwatch.
With the plugin 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 select a doctor, chat over text or video, or send questions and get answers with the service, which has a database of over 70,000 doctors.
For more details, go here}:
Trend MD
(Trend MD Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin lets you 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 scholarly content from your journals or websites through personalized recommendations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Nutrition Facts
(WP Nutrition Facts WP Plugin)
WP Nutrition Facts is a free plugin that lets you insert a nutrition facts table into your pages, posts and custom post types, allowing your visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food in a standardized format.
(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin For WordPress – Custom Post Type 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 Plugin For WordPress)
If you run a health-related business that provides nutrition or healthy eating suggestions, a great source of content that will engage your readers is to add great recipes.
Plugins like WP Ultimate Recipe let you add healthy recipes on your site.
Other WordPress recipe plugins include:
- Recipe Card – Create and publish search engine optimized recipes with nutrition facts that your readers 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, 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 SEO and Google Recipe View formatting.
- And many more.
For more details, go here}:
Awesome Fitness Testimonials
(Awesome Fitness Testimonials Plugin For WordPress)
The Awesome Fitness Testimonials plugin allows you to display fitness & wellness testimonials, reviews and case studies on your site.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images by Everkinetic
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic)
This plugin lets you add exercise illustrations to your fitness-related website.
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic Plugin – Database)
For more details, go here}:
In the next section, we will look at health and medical themes for WordPress.
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This is the end of section two of this guide on ways to improve your health or medical business online.
To view Part Three, click this link:
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group