In Part 1 of this comprehensive guide on ways to grow your medical-related business online, we provided in-depth tips and suggestions on the following areas:
- Challenges Medical Services Practitioners Face Online
- Opportunities For The Medical & Health Profession In The Web Economy
- Your Website Pages
- Improving Your Web Content
In this section, we continue exploring more ways to grow your medical-related business online.
Topics covered include:
- Ways Of Improving Web Traffic
- Generating More Leads & Enquiries
- How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors Using Plugins
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
Note: Plugins are listed in this section. Health and medical themes are covered in Part 3.
Your Health Practice Website – Improve Your Business Online With WordPress
Your web traffic is a vital part of your business growth. This section discusses how to improve your health-related business online using WordPress.
Optimizing Your Website For SEO
There are many ways that WordPress helps optimize your medical website for search engines:
- URLs – Set the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the URL of your pages.
- Post Tags – Choose the keywords that you want your article pages to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Categories – Create categories for your posts and products.
- Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose the description for your posts that will appear in search results.
- Images – title your images with keywords for improved search results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily link internal content
- Pinging – Configure your site to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories whenever a new post is published on your website.
WordPress Plugins That Can Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic To Your Website Generation
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress community makes available also a number of plugins that improve your health website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your site.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your site’s search engine optimization:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin (for search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO)
Other WordPress tools you can add to improve your health or medical-related website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors 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 can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – This plugin can be used to set up a social community on your site, with member profiles, activity streams, user groups, messaging, and more.
- bbPress – This free plugin allows you to set up and run a discussion forum on WordPress.
- 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 helps to increase user engagement on your website or blog.
- Monarch – This plugin lets you add powerful social sharing features and buttons on your website.
(You can add social sharing to your site easily using free or inexpensive plugins)
Generate More Leads & Enquiries
In this section we show you how to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries.
Providing A Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is an excellent way to retain and grow your readership. Adding a newsletter provides several benefits and advantages, like:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides useful updates
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special products or services to a select audience
- Increases user interaction
- Provides you with an additional way for your content to be shared online with others
An effective strategy for enticing your visitors to subscribe is to provide high value information and offer users free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their details. This can be a guide, checklists for improving health, fitness and nutrition, access to fitness apps, discount coupons, membership access to subscriber-only content, podcasts, etc.
Adding Contact Forms
A contact form makes it easy and simple for readers to contact you. Users can raise problems, contact specific departments, request quotes, and more.
A contact form provides many benefits, like:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- They can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- More convenient for visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7)
This free contact form plugin is easy to install and configure and lets you add and manage multiple contact forms to your posts and pages, customize your forms and the email contents, add fields, and more.
The plugin also supports international languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Something else to consider if you plan to set up a website for a medical center is to segment your contact form so users can select the section of the center they want to reach. This ensures that visitors get their message to the right recipient.
Add Maps
Adding maps to your website helps your visitors and clients find you.
A map is a very useful tool for several reasons:
- Maps improve local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Display location of events
(A map helps your visitors and clients find you)
Some of the most popular Google Maps plugins include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins And Themes For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Better User Engagement And Traffic Generation
WordPress Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your site to immediately add a range of functional tools for visitors. Here are just some of the plugins you can choose from:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar Plugin For WordPress)
The Booking Calendar plugin allows you to add online booking services to your site. Booking Calendar has an intuitive and user-friendly interface. It is suitable for a wide range of health-related uses, e.g. medical practices, surgeons, chiropractors, booking yoga classes, etc.
(Booking Calendar Plugin – Overview)
This booking reservations plugin works out of the box. Website visitors can check the availability of services you offer and book appointments online quickly and easily. Site administrators and visitors receive booking confirmations. Booking Calendar 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 a ton of additional features and functionalities is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticketing Management Plugin
(Manage Your Events Online Using Event Espresso WP Plugin)
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 for WordPress lets you easily schedule multiple events and begin receiving online bookings in a few minutes
(Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Manager)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed plugin that gives you full control of your event registration management process.
To learn more about Event Espresso, see this article:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin)
This is a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed them into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. The plugin supports internationalization
Most of the calculators aren’t designed for medical or health use, but there are several you can include in your site, including the following:
- Body Statistics – e.g. ANC Calculator, Fat Calculator, Lean Body Mass Calculator, Ponderal Index Calculator, US Navy Body Fat Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Calorie to kJ Calculator, kJ to Calorie Calculator, Calories Burned Running 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, Cigarette Savings Calculator, Ovulation Calculator, Sobriety Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, Water Intake Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. Ideal Weight Calculator, Weight Loss Percentage Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form WP Plugin)
This free plugin is great for creating dynamically calculated field forms, such as:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculators
- And many more
The plugin is also available in a premium version with a ton of extra features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker WP Plugin)
Weight Loss Tracker lets users record their weight periodically. The data is then shown in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin For WordPress – User Graph)
The plugin allows users to enter target weights and supports various weight formats: Metric (Kg), Imperial – Stones & Pounds, Imperial – Pounds only.
For more details, go here}:
Simple BMI Calculator
(Simple Body Mass Index Calculator Widget)
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator installs a widget on your sidebar that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
As well as Simple BMI Calculator, there are a number of WordPress plugins you can check out to perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A Body Mass Index and Basal Metabolic Rate calculator that saves calculation data for logged-in users and gives an overview to the trainer.
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator that displays a visitor’s Body Mass Index
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors calculate their basal metabolic rate, based on age, sex and weight.
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data Plugin)
Drug Interaction Data Plugin will retrieve and display 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)
Drug information 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.
For more details, go here}:
PubMed Posts
(PubMed Posts – WordPress Plugin)
PubMed Posts adds a dashboard widget that lets you add content from PubMed articles, and a search widget that lets your visitors find posts with specific data. A basic content editor is also included with the plugin.
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)
This versatile plugin was designed for medical and health care related websites. It lets you add service pages with booking forms, multiple clinic locations, provide related health conditions, create case studies, link indication tags to services and conditions, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Treato
(Treato – WordPress Plugin)
Treato lets you embed the Treato healthcare search engine into your WordPress sidebar so you and your users can search drugs and read what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato collects 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 can access valuable insight about 14,500+ conditions and over 26,500 medications from over 2.2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap
(HealthTap Concierge WP Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows visitors to consult with real doctors via HD video or text chat from any mobile device, computer, even smartwatch.
With the widget installed, 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 select a doctor, connect in real time using video or text chat, or send the doctor a question and get answers using the HealthTap service.
For more details, go here}:
TrendMD
(TrendMD Plugin)
This plugin will 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, read or cite 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 add a nutrition facts table into your posts and pages, allowing your visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food in a standardized format.
(WP Nutrition Facts – WordPress Plugin – 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)
If you run a health or fitness-related business that provides dietary or healthy eating advice, a great source of content that will engage your readers is to add great recipes.
A plugin like WP Ultimate Recipe lets you easily publish recipes on your site.
Other recipe plugins for WordPress include:
- Recipe Card – Create and publish search engine optimized recipes with nutrition facts that your site users can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – EasyRecipe lets you easily publish recipes on your site with features like cut and paste, auto conversion of your plain text recipe posts, live custom formatting, Google Recipe View formatting and preview button, automatic ratings and conversion from other recipe plugins.
- ZipList Recipes – Lets you 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 Plugin For WordPress)
Awesome Fitness Testimonials allows you to showcase fitness & wellness testimonials, case studies and reviews, before and after photos, etc. on your site.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images by Everkinetic
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic)
Exercise Images lets you add a database of exercise diagrams to your health and fitness-related websites.
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic Plugin For WordPress – Catalog)
For more details, go here}:
In the next section, we will look at medical and health WordPress themes.
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This is the end of part two of this guide on ways to grow your health or medical-related web presence.
Click here to continue:
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum