In Part 1 of this step-by-step article on ways to grow your health-related business presence online, we covered the following topics:
- Online Challenges For The Health & Medical Profession
- Online Opportunities For Health And Medical Services Providers
- Your Web Pages
- How To Improve Your Web Content
In this section, we continue exploring more ways to grow your health or medical business online.
Areas covered include:
- Improving Traffic
- Generating New Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Tools
- WordPress Plugins & Themes For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Driving More Web Traffic
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
- Add New Functionality To Your WordPress Website With Plugins
- WordPress For Newbies – An Introduction To WP Themes
Note: Plugins are described in this section. Health and medical themes are listed in Part 3.
Tips For Improving Traffic
Your web traffic is vital to your online business growth. In this section, we explore WordPress plugins that can help to improve SEO, increase user engagement and generate more web traffic.
Optimizing Your Site For Search Engines
There are so many ways that WordPress helps improve your health or medical-related website’s SEO:
- SEO-Friendly – Set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Tags – WordPress lets you choose the keywords that you want your article pages to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Add SEO-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Excerpts – Create the description for your posts that will display to search engine users.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for better search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links
- Post Notification – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify (ping) other search directories immediately upon publishing new content on your website.
WordPress Plugins That Can Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are dozens of plugins for WordPress that will improve your health or medical website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your website.
Here are some plugins you can use to improve your website’s search engine optimization:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (lists all of your pages and posts for indexing by search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your site’s search engine optimization)
Other WordPress plugins you can use to improve your website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing features. Here are a few more fantastic plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – Set up a social community on your site.
- bbPress – Run your own community forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – Use this WordPress plugin to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard, without a 3rd party subscription.
- Disqus – use this plugin to power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your website.
- Social Media Feather – Use this WordPress plugin to add social sharing features and buttons on your website or blog.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Tips For Generating Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Applications
Let’s discuss now how to improve your sales and generate new 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 including:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides you with a highly targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Increases user interaction
- Provides you with an additional way for your content to be shared with others
A proven strategy for attracting subscribers is to provide high value information and offer users additional bonuses for free in exchange for their personal details. This could be a handy guide, checklists for improving health, fitness and well-being, access to fitness applications, coupons, access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for prospective customers to contact you. Users can provide feedback, contact specific departments, request quotes, give suggestions for improvements and more.
A contact form provides a number of benefits and advantages, like:
- Reducing spam
- Set up automated responses
- Gives you control over what is sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- They can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- Convenience for visitors
A popular contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WP Plugin)
This free plugin is easy to install and configure and allows you to insert and manage multiple contact forms on your posts and pages, customize your forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is also supported.
Another option to consider if you plan to set up a website for a medical center is adding sections to your contact form so prospective clients can choose the practitioner they want to contact. This will make sure that visitors get their comment to the right department.
Provide Maps
Adding maps helps your visitors and clients find you.
A map is a very useful tool for several reasons:
- They improve local SEO
- Visitors can find you easily
- Display location of events
(Adding maps to your website helps your visitors and clients find you)
Below are some plugins that let you embed, customize and display Google maps on your website:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Web Traffic Using Plugins & Themes
Health WordPress Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your site that will immediately add a range of practical tools for users. Here are some of these:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar Plugin For WordPress)
The Booking Calendar plugin allows you to add appointment bookings to your site. Booking Calendar has an intuitive and user-friendly interface with flexible functionality. It is suitable for a wide range medical and health consulting businesses, e.g. dental practices, surgical centers, alternative therapists, booking sessions with personal trainers, etc.
(Booking Calendar WordPress Plugin – Overview)
This plugin works right out of the box. Website visitors can check availability of services and book appointments quickly and easily. Site administrators and visitors receive notifications. Booking Calendar is also widget-ready, and supports multiple languages. The plugin is also available in a premium version with additional features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management & Ticket Registration System
(Manage Event Bookings Online With Event Espresso WP Plugin)
If your business involves running medical or health seminars, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WordPress allows you to easily create your event and start processing registrations in just a few minutes
(Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed application that gives you full control of your event registration management process.
We have written a detailed article about Event Espresso. Go here to learn more:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators WordPress Plugin)
This plugin provides a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed these into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of them aren’t specifically designed for medical-related use, but there are quite a number you can add to your site, including:
- Body Statistics – e.g. Body Surface Area Calculator, Fat Calculator, Katch-Mcardle BMR Calculator, Max Heart Rate Calculator, Stride Length Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Daily Calorie Calculator, kJ to Calorie Calculator, Calories Burned Running Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Push-Up Test Calculator, Rockport Walk Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Advanced One Rep Max Weight Lifting Calculator, Blood Sugar Converter Calculator, Pregnancy Calculator, Sobriety Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Calcium Calculator, Creatine Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. Ideal Weight Calculator, Weight Loss Percentage Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form – WordPress Plugin)
Calculated Fields Form lets you create dynamically calculated field forms, including:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculator
- And lots more
A premium version is also available and includes many extra features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker)
Weight Loss Tracker lets logged-in users record their weight periodically. The data is then displayed in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker – WordPress Plugin – User Graph)
The plugin allows users to insert 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 Body Mass Index Calculator Widget)
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator is a simple plugin for WordPress that installs a widget on your website that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
In addition to Simple BMI Calculator, there are a number of WordPress plugins you can look at 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 trainer.
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator that displays BMI
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors calculate their basal metabolic rate, based on their age, sex and weight.
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data Plugin)
Drug Interaction Data Plugin for WordPress retrieves and displays drug information, including what the drugs are used for and what other medications the drugs are known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data – WordPress Plugin – Database Results)
Drug information can be displayed as a widget or inside your pages and posts. 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 WordPress Plugin)
This plugin adds a dashboard widget that lets you add posts from PubMed articles, plus a search widget that finds posts with specific data. It also includes a basic editor that changes the layout of data in your post content.
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)
MJM Clinic can be used to add functionality to clinic and health care related websites, such as inserting service pages with booking forms, related health conditions, clinic locations, feedback entries and more.
For more details, go here}:
Treato
(Treato)
This plugin lets you display information about drugs on your site and see what see what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato collects and analyzes patient experiences written in 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 over 14,500 conditions and over 26,000 medications from over 2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap
(HealthTap Concierge WP Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows visitors to locate and book a virtual consult with doctors, clinical psychologists, etc. via HD video or text chat from any mobile device, computer, or smartwatch.
With With the HealthTap Concierge plugin for WordPress 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 questions.
For more details, go here}:
Trend MD
(TrendMD – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you add the TrendMD recommendations widget to your site. 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 WP Plugin)
WP Nutrition Facts is a free plugin that lets you add a nutrition facts table into your pages and posts, allowing your visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food.
(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin For WordPress – Create Labels)
WP Nutrition Facts uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labelling regulations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Ultimate Recipe
(WP Ultimate Recipe)
If you own a health or fitness-related website that provides diet or healthy eating advice, a great way to add content that will engage your readers is to publish recipes.
Plugins like WP Ultimate Recipe let you easily publish recipes on your site.
Other recipe plugins for WordPress include:
- Recipe Card – Publish search engine optimized recipes that your site users can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – EasyRecipe lets you easily publish recipes on your site 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 – Easily format recipe text and add images. The plugin also provides a number of additional features, including Google Recipe View formatting and SEO.
- And many more.
For more details, go here}:
Awesome Fitness Testimonials
(Awesome Fitness Testimonials Plugin)
Awesome Fitness Testimonials lets you add fitness and wellness testimonials, reviews and case studies, before and after photos, etc. to your health and fitness sites.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images
(Exercise Images Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin lets you add exercise images to your health & fitness-related websites.
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic Plugin For WordPress – Catalog)
For more details, go here}:
In part 3, we look at health and medical WordPress themes.
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This is the end of part two.
To keep reading, click here:
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)