In Part 1 of this article on ways to grow your medical-related business online, we covered the following areas:
- Challenges Professional Health Practitioners Face Online
- Online Opportunities For Health & Medical Businesses
- How To Improve Your Web Pages
- How To Improve The Content On Your Website
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your medical-related services online.
Areas covered include:
- Improve Traffic
- Generate More Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
- WordPress Plugins And Themes For Improving SEO, Creating Better User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
- WordPress Plugins – The Easy Way To Enhance Your Website’s Capability
- WordPress For Business – An Overview Of WordPress Themes
Note: Medical and health plugins are listed in this section. Medical and health-related themes are covered in Part Three.
Improving Traffic Using WordPress
Web traffic is an integral part of your online business growth. In this section, we explore WordPress plugins for improving search engine optimization, increasing user engagement and web traffic generation.
Optimizing Your Site For SEO
There are lots of ways WordPress can help to improve SEO:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – Set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Post Tags – Specify the keywords that you want your article pages to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Create search engine-friendly categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Excerpts – Create the description for your posts that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – title your images with keywords for improved search engine results.
- Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily create internal links
- Post Notification – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify other search directories the moment a new post is published on your website.
How To Improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are also a number of plugins that will improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more 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 (for search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your site’s search engine optimization)
Other ways to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing. Here are a few plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – This free plugin can be used to set up your own social community on your WordPress website.
- bbPress – This free plugin can be used to set up a community forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard, without third-party subscriptions.
- Disqus – Power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your website.
- Floating Social – This plugin lets you add powerful social sharing features on your website.
(You can add social sharing to your website easily using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Tips For Generating More Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Applications
Let’s discuss now how to improve your sales and generate more leads and enquiries online.
Add A Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is a great way to retain and grow your readership. It] provides a number of benefits and advantages, like:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides useful updates
- Provides you with a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for user interaction
- Provides you with other ways for readers to share your content
An effective strategy for attracting newsletter subscribers is to provide high value information and offer users free gifts in exchange for their personal details. This could be a time-saving guide, checklists for improving general health and diet, access to health calculators, vouchers, access to videos, contests, etc.
Add Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch with you. Users can raise concerns, ask questions to specific departments, ask for a quote, and more.
A contact form provides many 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 page or post
- Improves the professional look of your site
- Convenience for site visitors
A very popular contact form plugin for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin For WordPress)
This free contact form plugin is easy to install and set up and lets you insert multiple contact forms to your website, customize the form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is also supported.
Something to consider if you plan to set up a website for a clinic or medical center is to segment your contact form so prospective clients can choose the section of the center they are contacting your business about. This ensures that visitors’ requests reach the right department.
Provide A Map
Adding a map to your website helps your visitors and customers find you.
Integrating maps (e.g. Google Maps), with your site also provides a number of benefits, such as:
- A map improves local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Show location of events
(Adding maps to your site helps your visitors and clients find you)
Some of the most popular map plugins include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins & Themes That Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Traffic To Your Website Generation
Medical – WordPress Plugins
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your medical-related site that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for users. Here are some of these plugins:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar WP Plugin)
The Booking Calendar plugin lets you add appointment booking services to your site. It provides visitors with an intuitive interface. It is suitable for a range of health-related businesses, e.g. medical practices, surgeons, massage therapists, booking sessions with personal trainers, etc.
(Booking Calendar WP Plugin – Overview)
This plugin works right out of the box. Your website visitors can check availability of services you offer and book appointments online quickly and easily. Site administrators and visitors receive booking confirmations. The plugin also lets you add a calendar or booking form to your site’s sidebar, and supports multiple languages. A premium plugin version is also available with many additional features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager And Ticketing Registration Software
(Manage Bookings & Registrations Automatically With Event Espresso WP Plugin)
If you plan to run medical or health events like seminars or workshops, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration WP plugin lets you easily create an event and start receiving bookings in a few minutes
(Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Management)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich application that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
We have written a comprehensive article on Event Espresso. To learn more about this go here:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin For WordPress)
Calculator Pro is a free collection of 400+ calculators that you can display on your website and embed into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. It supports internationalization
Most of the calculators aren’t specifically designed for health-related uses, but there are many you can add to your site, including:
- Body Statistics – e.g. ANC Calculator, Durnin/Womersley Skinfold Body Fat Calculator, GFR (Glomerular Filtration Rate) Calculator, Ponderal Index Calculator, VO2 Max Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Calorie to kJ Calculator, kJ to Calorie Calculator, Calories Burned Walking Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Push-Up Test Calculator, Bruce Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Advanced One Rep Max Weight Lifting Calculator, Blood Sugar Converter Calculator, Due Date Calculator, Sobriety Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Carbohydrate Calculator, Creatine Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. BMI Calculator, Weight Loss Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form Plugin For WordPress)
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 with extra features and functionalities is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets users record their weight on given dates. The results are then shown in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker WP Plugin – Graph)
The plugin allows users to input target weights and supports the following weight formats: Metric (Kg), Imperial – Stones & Pounds, Imperial – Pounds only.
For more details, go here}:
Simple BMI Calculator Widget
(Simple Body Mass Index Calculator)
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 BMI Calculator, there are other WordPress plugins you can check out that perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A responsive BMI and Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) 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 a user’s Body Mass Index
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors figure out their basal metabolic rate, by entering their age, sex and weight.
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data Plugin For WordPress)
Drug Interaction Data Plugin for WordPress will retrieve and display information about drugs, including what the drugs are used to treat and what other medications the drugs are known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data Plugin – Database Results)
Drug information can be displayed as a widget or inside your posts and pages. The plugin loads the drug and pharmaceutical data from the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
For more details, go here}:
PubMed Posts
(PubMed Posts)
This plugin adds a dashboard widget that lets you crate posts from PubMed articles, plus a search function that lets visitors search for posts with specific data. A basic content editor is also included.
PubMed contains over 25 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, online books and life science journals.
For more details, go here}:
MJM Clinic
(MJM Clinic)
The MJM Clinic Plugin can be used for clinic and health care related websites. It lets you add service pages with booking forms, locations, provide information to site visitors on health conditions and symptoms, add case studies, link indication tags to conditions, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Treato WordPress Plugin
(Treato Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin lets you add a sidebar widget that allows your site visitors to search a vast drug database and read what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato gathers and analyzes patient experiences from online forums and blog posts, then aggregates the posts to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users receive valuable insight about over 14,000 medical conditions from over 2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap
(HealthTap WP Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows consumers to consult with real doctors, clinical psychologists, etc. via text chat or HD video from any mobile device, computer, even 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 health topic. They can then choose a doctor, chat using video or text, or send questions and get answers using the service, which has a database of over 73,000 doctors.
For more details, go here}:
TrendMD
(TrendMD)
TrendMD lets you add the TrendMD recommendations widget to your WordPress website. The TrendMD recommendations widget is used by scholarly publishers to grow their readership and revenue by allowing people to discover, read or cite scholarly content from your journals or websites through personalized recommendations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Nutrition Facts
(WP Nutrition Facts WordPress Plugin)
WP Nutrition Facts lets you add a nutrition facts table into your pages and posts, allowing your visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food and make informed food choices.
(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin – Creating Custom Post Type Labels)
This plugin uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labelling regulations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Ultimate Recipe
(WP Ultimate Recipe – WordPress Plugin)
If you own a health or fitness website that provides diet or healthy eating advice, a great way to add engaging content to your site is to add recipes.
A plugin like WP Ultimate Recipe lets you add delicious and healthy on your site.
Other WordPress recipe plugins include:
- Recipe Card – Publish recipes with nutrition facts that site visitors can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – Lets you easily publish recipes on your site with features like cut & paste, plain text recipe auto conversion, Google Recipe View formatting, live custom formatting, automatic ratings and conversion from other recipe plugins.
- ZipList Recipes – You can 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 Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin lets you add fitness and wellness testimonials, case studies and reviews to your site.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you display exercise illustrations on your website.
(Exercise Images – Catalog)
For more details, go here}:
In the next section of this detailed guide, we look at health-related and medical themes.
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This is the end of section two.
To view Part Three, click this link:
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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