In Part One of this comprehensive guide on ways to build your medical or health business online, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Challenges Health Firms Face Online
- Online Opportunities For Medical And Health Services Providers
- Your Web Pages
- Tips On How To Improve Your Web Content
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your health services online.
Areas covered include:
- Ways To Improve Web Traffic
- Ways To Generate Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
- WordPress Plugins & Themes For Improving SEO, Creating Better User Engagement And Driving More Web Traffic
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
Note: WordPress health and medical plugins are listed in this section. Medical and health-related themes are listed in Part Three.
Grow Your Medical Services And Health Practice Website – Improve Your Business Online Using WordPress Themes And Plugins
Your web traffic is vital to your business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic.
Optimizing Your Website For Search Engines
There are many ways WordPress can help to improve SEO:
- URLs – Set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Tags – WordPress lets you specify the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages for.
- Categories – Add search engine-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Post Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose descriptions for your posts that will display to search engine users.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for better search engine results.
- Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily link your content to other posts and pages
- Post Notification – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify other sites and directories as soon as a new post is published on your website.
WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are a number of WordPress plugins that will improve your medical or health-related website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your website.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your website’s SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin (lists all of your pages for indexing by search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your website’s search engine optimization)
Other things you can do to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing features. Here are some more plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – Use this plugin to run an online social networking community on your website, with member profiles, activity streams, user groups, messaging, and more.
- bbPress – Set up your own discussion forum on your WordPress site.
- E-Newsletter – Use this WordPress plugin to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress site.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and increases engagement on your site.
- Social Media Feather – Add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your website.
(You can add social sharing buttons to your site easily with WordPress plugins)
Tips For Generating New Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Applications
In this section we discuss how to improve your sales and generate more leads and enquiries online.
Providing An Email Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is an excellent way to build a list of subscribers. Adding email newsletters] provides a number of benefits including:
- Drives targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides useful updates
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Increases user engagement
- Provides you with another way for your content to be shared online with others
A proven way to attract subscribers to your newsletter is to provide high value content and give users free gifts in exchange for their personal details. This can be an exclusive guide, tips for improving general health and diet, access to health applications, discount coupons, membership access to videos, contests, etc.
Add A Contact Form
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for readers to contact you. A contact form also lets readers raise problems, contact specific departments, ask for quotes, send suggestions for improvements and more.
A contact form provides a number of benefits including:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- They can be added to any post or page
- Improves the professional look of your site
- Convenient for site visitors
One of the most popular WordPress contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin)
This plugin is easy to install and set up and lets you insert multiple contact forms into any page on your site, customize the form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Something else to consider if you want to set up a website for a health clinic or medical center is to segment your contact form so prospective clients can choose the practitioner they want to contact. This ensures that contact form enquiries reach the right recipient.
Add Maps
Adding maps helps your visitors and clients find you.
Adding maps (e.g. Google Maps) to your WordPress site also provides users with a number of benefits, such as:
- A map increases local SEO
- Helps visitors find you easily
- Displays location of events
(Adding a map helps your visitors and customers find you)
Popular map plugins include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins & Themes For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Better User Engagement And Driving More Visitors
Medical & Health – WordPress Plugins
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your medical-related website that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for visitors. Here are some of these:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar WP Plugin)
This free bookings plugin lets you add online bookings to your site. It has an intuitive and user-friendly interface. It is highly suitable for a wide range of medical, health & beauty-related businesses, e.g. medical practices, physicians, chiropractors, booking sessions with personal trainers, etc.
(Booking Calendar – WordPress Plugin – Overview)
This booking reservations plugin works right out of the box. Website visitors can check availability of services you offer and make an online booking easily. Site administrators and visitors receive email notifications. Booking Calendar is also widget-ready, and supports multiple languages. The plugin developers also provide a premium version with many additional features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Management
(Manage Event Registrations Via The Web With Event Espresso For WordPress)
If you run health or medical events like seminars or workshops, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin lets you easily set up your event and start processing bookings in a few minutes
(Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich software that gives you full control of your event registration management process.
Go here to learn more about managing events with Event Espresso:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin)
This is a free collection of over 400 calculators that you can display on your website. The plugin supports internationalization
Note: Most of them aren’t designed for health or medical uses, but there are many you can use, including the following:
- Body Statistics – e.g. Body Fat Calculator, Child Height Calculator, Lean Body Mass Calculator, Modification of Diet in Renal Disease (MDRD) GFR Calculator, Skinfold Body Fat Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, Daily Energy Expenditure Calculator, Calories Burned Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Coopers 12 Minute Run Test Calculator, Rockport Walk Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. One Rep Max Weight Lifting Calculator, Cigarette Savings Calculator, Due Date Calculator, Smoking Cost Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Calcium Calculator, Water Intake Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. Ideal Weight Calculator (kg), Weight Loss Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form)
This plugin lets you create forms with dynamically calculated fields to display the calculated values, such as:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculators
- And many more
A premium plugin version is also available and includes many more features.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker WP Plugin)
Weight Loss Tracker lets users record their weight on given dates. The results are then displayed in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin For WordPress – Graph)
The plugin allows users to insert target weights and supports 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)
This plugin installs a widget on your sidebar that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
In addition to Simple BMI Calculator, there are additional plugins you can look at 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 trainer (site administrator).
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator that displays 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)
Drug Interaction Data Plugin for WordPress retrieves and displays drug information, including what the drug is used to treat and what other medications the drug is known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data WordPress Plugin – Data Results)
Information about drugs can be displayed inside your posts and pages, or as a widget on your sidebar menu. The plugin loads the drug and pharmaceutical data from 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)
This plugin adds a dashboard widget that lets you add content from PubMed articles, and a search function that helps visitors find posts with specific data. It also includes an editor that lets you change the layout of your post content data.
PubMed includes over 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)
MJM Clinic was designed for clinic and health care related websites. You can add service pages with booking forms, locations, provide related health conditions, create case studies, link indication tags to conditions, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Treato WordPress Plugin
(Treato)
Treato lets you add a sidebar widget that allows you and your site visitors to search drugs and see what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato gathers and analyzes experiences sourced directly from patients from online forums and blog posts, then aggregates the posts to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users gain insight about over 14,700 medical conditions from over 2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap Concierge
(HealthTap)
HealthTap Concierge allows users to consult with real doctors via HD video or text chat from any mobile device, computer, or 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 health topic. They can then select a doctor, chat using video or text, or send questions.
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 grow 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 Plugin)
WP Nutrition Facts lets you insert a nutrition facts table into your posts, pages and custom post types, allowing your site visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food.
(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin For WordPress – Label Creation)
This plugin uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labelling regulations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Ultimate Recipe
(WP Ultimate Recipe Plugin For WordPress)
If you own a health-related website that provides nutritional or healthy eating recommendations, a great source of content that will engage your readers is to publish recipes.
Plugins like WP Ultimate Recipe let you add recipes on your site.
Other WordPress recipe plugins include:
- Recipe Card – Create search optimized recipes that readers can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – EasyRecipe lets you easily publish recipes on your site with features like cut and paste, plain text recipe auto conversion, live custom formatting, Google Recipe View formatting and preview button, automatic ratings and conversion from other recipe plugins.
- ZipList Recipes – Easily format recipe text and add images. Includes additional Google Recipe View formatting and SEO features.
- And many more.
For more details, go here}:
Awesome Fitness Testimonials
(Awesome Fitness Testimonials – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin allows you to 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 Plugin)
Exercise Images lets you insert exercise drawings into your posts and pages.
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic Plugin – Catalog)
For more details, go here}:
In part 3, we discuss medical and health WordPress themes.
***
This is the end of section 2.
Click here to continue:
***
***
"Learning WordPress has been a huge stumbling block for me. I've been looking for something that covers absolutely everything but doesn't cost an arm and a leg. Thank you so much ... you have just provided me with what I have been looking for! Truly appreciated!" - Tanya