In Part 1 of this comprehensive article on ways to grow your medical-related business web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following topics:
- Online Challenges For Medical & Health Practitioners
- Opportunities For Health Services Providers
- Improving Your Web Pages
- How To Improve The Content On Your Site
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your health-related services online.
Topics covered in this (and the next section) include:
- Tips For Improving Traffic Using WordPress
- How To Generate Leads & Enquiries
- Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Web Traffic With WordPress Plugins
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
Note: Plugins are described in this section. Themes for medical businesses are listed in Part Three.
Grow Your Medical And Health Practice Website – WordPress Plugins That Can Help Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Traffic
Your web traffic is vital to your online business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimizing Your Site For SEO With WordPress
There are loads of ways WordPress can help to improve your health or medical website’s SEO:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Tags – Choose the keywords that you want your article pages (posts) to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Add search engine-friendly categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Excerpts – Set descriptions for your posts that will show to search engine users.
- Images – title your images with keywords for better search engine results.
- Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links
- Pinging – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories immediately upon publishing new content on your website.
Improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Increase User Engagement And Drive More Traffic With Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are various plugins for WordPress that will improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your website.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your site’s SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (for search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO)
Other ways to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social features. Here are a few useful plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – This free plugin lets you set up a social network on WordPress, with member profiles, user groups, messaging, activity streams, and more.
- bbPress – Set up a discussion forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – Send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard, without 3rd-party subscriptions.
- Disqus – Power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your website.
- Monarch – Use this WordPress plugin to add social sharing features to your pages and posts.
(You can add social sharing buttons to your site easily using WordPress plugins)
Generating New Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
Let’s take a look now at how to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries for your business.
Add A Newsletter
Adding a newsletter is an excellent way to build a list of subscribers. It provides several benefits including:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates
- Provides you with a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for engagement with your users
- Provides you with additional opportunities for subscribers to share your content
An effective way to entice your visitors to subscribe is to provide them with information of high value and give them something valuable for free in exchange for their personal details. This can be a time-saving guide, tips for improving fitness and well-being, access to medical apps, free trials, access to subscriber-only content, podcasts, etc.
Add Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for prospective customers to get in touch. A contact form also allows visitors to raise problems, ask questions to specific departments, request quotes, send suggestions for improvements and more.
A contact form provides a number of benefits including:
- Reduces spam
- Set up automated responses
- Gives you control over what is sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Can be added to any post or page
- Improves the professional look of your website
- Convenient for users
A popular contact form plugin for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 – WordPress Plugin)
Contact Form 7 allows you to create multiple contact forms into any page on your site, customize your forms and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering is also supported.
Something to consider if you plan to set up a website for a health center or medical clinic is to add sections to your contact form so visitors can select the section of the practice they are contacting your business about. This will help make sure that visitors get their comment to the right area.
Map Integration
Adding maps to your website helps your visitors and customers find you.
Integrating maps, such as Google Maps, with your WordPress site also provides visitors with many benefits, such as:
- A map improves local SEO
- Customers can better plan their visits and appointments
- Display location of events
(Adding a map helps your visitors and clients find you)
Here are just some popular plugins that let you embed, customize and display Google maps on your site:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins And Themes For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Traffic Generation
Medical Services Plugins For WordPress
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your health or medical-related site that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for visitors. Here are some of these plugins:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar WP Plugin)
Booking Calendar lets you add online bookings to your site. This flexible plugin is well supported and provides users with an intuitive and user-friendly interface. It is highly suitable for a wide range medical, health, fitness & sports uses, such as dental practitioners, specialists, health spas, booking yoga classes, etc.
(Booking Calendar – WordPress Plugin – Overview)
This bookings plugin works out of the box. Your website visitors can check availability of services you offer and make an online booking quickly and easily. Administrators and visitors receive booking confirmations. Booking Calendar is also widget-ready, and offers multi-language support. The developers of this plugin also offer a premium version with extra features.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – Event Management And Ticketing Registration Software For WordPress
(Manage Bookings And Registrations Online Using Event Espresso Plugin For WP)
If your business involves running medical events like seminars or workshops, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin allows you to easily schedule multiple events and begin receiving online registrations in just minutes
(Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Management)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich software that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
To learn more about Event Espresso, refer to this article:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
Calculator Pro provides a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed these into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t designed for medical uses, but there are several you can add to your site, including:
- Body Statistics – e.g. Body Fat Calculator, FENa Calculator, GFR (Glomerular Filtration Rate) Calculator, Ponderal Index Calculator, Protein Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, Daily Energy Expenditure Calculator, Calories Burned Swimming Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Coopers 12 Minute Run Test Calculator, Balke Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. One Rep Max Weight Lifting Calculator, Cigarette Savings Calculator, Ovulation Calculator, Running Pace Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Carbohydrate Calculator, Protein Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. BMI Calculator, Weight Loss Percentage Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form WP Plugin)
This plugin lets you create forms that perform single and complex calculations, including:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculator
- And many more
A premium version is also available with extra features.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker WordPress Plugin)
Weight Loss Tracker lets logged-in users record their weight periodically. The data is then shown in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker – Graph)
The plugin allows users to input 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
(Simple BMI Calculator Plugin For WordPress)
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator installs a widget on 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 WordPress plugins you can check out to perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A responsive Body Mass Index and Basal Metabolic Rate calculator that saves calculation data for logged-in users and gives an overview to the site administrator.
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator that displays BMI
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors calculate their basal metabolic rate, based on age, sex and weight.
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data Plugin For WordPress)
Drug Interaction Data Plugin for WordPress can be used to display information about drugs, including what the drugs are used for and what other medications the drugs are known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data Plugin – Database Results)
Information about drugs can be displayed inside your posts and pages, or as a widget on your sidebar. The data is provided by the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
For more details, go here}:
PubMed Posts
(PubMed Posts Plugin)
This plugin adds a dashboard widget that lets you publish content to your site from PubMed articles, as well as a search function that locates posts with specific data. The plugin also includes a basic editor that changes the layout of your post content.
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)
MJM Clinic can be used for clinic and health care related websites. You can add service pages with booking forms, locations, provide information about symptoms and health conditions, assign case studies, link indication tags to services, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Treato
(Treato Plugin For WordPress)
Treato lets you display information about drugs on your site and see what read what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato gathers and analyzes experiences sourced directly from patients written in related forums and blog posts, then aggregates the posts to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users gain insight about the side effects of 26,500+ medications, drug comparisons across over 14,000 medical conditions, which drugs people feel work, 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 locate and book a virtual consult with doctors, clinical psychologists, etc. via text chat or HD video from any mobile device, personal computer, or smartwatch.
With HealthTap Concierge installed on your site, users can type in a health question and receive a list of doctors in their geographic area who specialize in that particular topic. They can then choose a doctor, chat over text or video, or send questions.
For more details, go here}:
Trend MD
(TrendMD – WordPress Plugin)
TrendMD adds the TrendMD recommendations widget to your WP website. 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 Plugin For WordPress)
This simple plugin lets you add a nutrition facts table into your posts, pages and custom post types, allowing your visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food and make better food choices.
(WP Nutrition Facts WP Plugin – 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 For WordPress)
If you own a health or fitness website that provides nutrition or healthy eating suggestions, a great source of engaging content to your site is to add healthy recipes.
A plugin like WP Ultimate Recipe lets you publish recipes on your site.
Other recipe plugins for WordPress include:
- Recipe Card – Publish recipes that your site visitors can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – Makes publishing recipes on your site easy with features like cut & 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 – Easily format recipe text and add images. Includes additional SEO and Google Recipe View formatting features.
- And many more.
For more details, go here}:
Awesome Fitness Testimonials
(Awesome Fitness Testimonials – WordPress Plugin)
The Awesome Fitness Testimonials plugin lets you add fitness and wellness testimonials, reviews and case studies to your website.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images by Everkinetic
(Exercise Images Plugin For WordPress)
Exercise Images by Everkinetic lets you insert a database of exercise diagrams into your posts and pages.
(Exercise Images – WordPress Plugin – Database)
For more details, go here}:
In part three, we discuss WordPress themes that are suitable for medical businesses.
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This is the end of part two of this step-by-step article on ways to improve your health business presence online.
To continue, click here:
- The Complete Guide On How To Build And Grow A Medical And Health Center Business Online – Part Three
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"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie