Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress – 2

In Part One of this guide on ways to improve your health-related business online, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:

• Online Challenges For Medical & Health Practitioners
• Opportunities For Medical Businesses In The Web Economy
• Improve Your Website Pages
• Tips For Improving Your Content

In Parts Two & Three, we discuss more ways to grow your health or medical business online.

Areas covered in this (and the next section) include:

• Tips For Improving Web Traffic With WordPress
• Generating More Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Tools
• WordPress Plugins And Themes That Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Site

For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:

• WordPress Plugins – Enhance Your Website’s Features
• WordPress For Beginners – An Overview Of WordPress Themes

Note: Health and medical plugins are covered in this section. Health and medical themes are covered in Part 3.

Tips For Improving Traffic

Your web traffic is a vital part of your business growth. This section explores ways to improve your health-related website with WordPress plugins and themes.

Optimize Your Website For Search Engines (SEO) Using WordPress

There are many ways WordPress can help to optimize your website for search engines:

• Search Engine-Friendly URLs – configure the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the URL of your pages.
• Tags – Choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your posts for.
• Categories – Add SEO-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
• Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose the description for your posts that will appear in search results.
• Images – title images with keywords for better search results.
• Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily create internal links
• Pinging – WordPress can be set up to automatically notify other search directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your site.

How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Visitors To Your Site Using Plugins

As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress community makes available also a number of plugins that improve your medical or health-related website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your business.

For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your SEO:

• Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
• Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin
• Page-List – WordPress site map plugin

(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your site’s search engine optimization)

Other things you can do to improve your health or medical website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social features. Here are a few more plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below can be downloaded at no cost):

• BuddyPress – Use this free plugin to set up your own online social network on your WordPress website, with member profiles, user groups, messaging, activity streams, and more.
• bbPress – This plugin helps you set up a forum on your site.
• E-Newsletter – This plugin lets you send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard, without a 3rd party subscription.
• Disqus – This WordPress plugin lets you power discussions and helps to increase engagement on your site.
• Social Media Feather – Easily add powerful social sharing features and buttons on your website or blog.

(You can easily add social sharing buttons to your site using free or inexpensive plugins)

Generating More Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Tools

In this section, we’ll look at how to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries for your business.

Adding A Newsletter

Providing an email newsletter is a great way to retain and grow your readership. Adding a newsletter provides a number of benefits and advantages, like:

• Sends targeted traffic to your site
• Keeps readers from forgetting about you
• Keeps readers updated
• Provides a targeted marketing channel
• Allows you to offer special products or services to a select audience
• Provides new opportunities for increasing engagement with your users
• Provides you with an additional way for subscribers to share your content

One of the things you can do to get visitors to become subscribers is to provide them with valuable content and offer them additional items of value for free in exchange for their details. This could be a guide, tips for improving health and diet, access to health apps, free trials, access to courses, podcasts, etc.

Add A Contact Form

Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch. Users can provide feedback, ask questions to specific departments, request a quote, give suggestions and more.

A contact form provides several benefits and advantages, like:

• Reduces spam
• Automated response
• Giving you control over what gets sent to you
• You can keep your email address private
• Different forms can be added to any post or page
• Looks professional
• Convenience for site visitors

One of the most popular contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.

Contact Form 7

(Contact Form 7 WP Plugin)

Contact Form 7 is easy to install and configure and allows you to add 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 feature you may want to consider if you are setting up a website for a health clinic or medical center is adding sections to your contact form so visitors can choose which section of the clinic they want to reach. This will make sure that visitors get their message to the right recipient.

Provide Maps

Adding a map helps your visitors and customers find you.

Maps are a very useful tool for several reasons:

• A map improves local SEO
• Helps visitors find your office easily
• Displays location of events

(Adding a map to your site helps your visitors and customers find you)

Below are just some 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 For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation

WordPress Plugins - Medical Professionals

WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your health or medical-related website to immediately add a range of practical tools for site visitors. Here are just some of the plugins you can choose from:

Booking Calendar

(Booking Calendar WordPress Plugin)

This plugin lets you add appointment bookings to your site. Booking Calendar has an intuitive and user-friendly interface with flexible functionality. It is highly suitable for a wide range medical, fitness & sports businesses, such as dental practitioners, specialists, alternative therapists, booking sessions with personal trainers, etc.

(Booking Calendar Plugin For WordPress – Overview)

This booking reservations plugin works out of the box. Your website visitors can check the availability of services and make bookings easily. Site administrators and visitors receive booking confirmations. The plugin is also widget-ready, and offers multi-language support. A premium plugin version with many more features and functionalities is also available.

For more information, go here: Booking Calendar WordPress Plugin

Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Management

(Manage Event Bookings Automatically Using Event Espresso Plugin For WordPress)

If you plan to run health seminars, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.

The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WP lets you easily schedule an event and start receiving bookings in just a few minutes

(Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Management)

Event Espresso is a feature-packed application that gives you complete control of the event registration management process.

We have written a comprehensive article on Event Espresso. For more details: How To Manage Event Bookings Via The Web With Event Espresso Plugin For WordPress

Calculator Pro Calculators

(Calculator Pro Calculators WP Plugin)

Calculator Pro provides a free collection of over 400 calculators that you can display on your website. It also supports internationalization

Note: Most of the calculators aren’t designed for medical use, but there are a few you can include in your site, including:

• Body Statistics – e.g. BMR Calculator, Frame Size Calculator, GFR (Glomerular Filtration Rate) Calculator, Metric Body Fat Calculator, US Navy Body Fat Calculator, etc.
• Calorie – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, RMR Calculator, Calories Burned Running Calculator, etc.
• Fitness Tests – e.g. Coopers 12 Minute Run Test Calculator, Balke Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
• Miscellaneous – e.g. Advanced One Rep Max Weight Lifting Calculator, Blood Sugar Converter Calculator, Pace Calculator, Target Heart Rate Calculator, etc.
• Nutrition – e.g. BMR Calorie Calculator, Creatine Calculator, etc.
• Weight – e.g. BAI (Body Adiposity Index) Calculator, Weight Loss Percentage Calculator, etc.

Go here for more details: Calculators Pro WP Plugin

Calculated Fields Form

(Calculated Fields Form Plugin)

This plugin is great for creating forms that perform single and complex calculations, such as:

• Health & Fitness Calculators
• Ideal Weight Calculator
• Pregnancy Calculator
• Calorie Calculator
• And more

A premium version is also available with additional features.

Go here to learn more about using this WordPress plugin: Calculated Fields Form WordPress Plugin

Weight Loss Tracker

(Weight Loss Tracker)

Weight Loss Tracker is a free plugin for WordPress that lets logged-in users record their weight on given dates. The results are then displayed in a graph and table.

(Weight Loss Tracker WordPress Plugin – Graph)

The plugin allows users to insert target weights and supports the following weight formats: Metric (Kg), Imperial – Stones & Pounds, Imperial – Pounds only.

Go here to learn more about using this plugin: Weight Loss Tracker Plugin For WordPress

Simple BMI Calculator

(Simple BMI Calculator Plugin)

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 Body Mass Index Calculator, there are other WordPress plugins you can check out that perform similar functions:

• BMI BMR Calculator – A BMI 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, by entering their age, sex and weight.
• And lots more

More information: Simple BMI Calculator Widget Plugin

Drug Interaction Data Plugin

(Drug Interaction Data WP Plugin)

This plugin will retrieve and display information about drugs, including what the drug is used to treat and what other medications the drug is known to interact with.

(Drug Interaction Data – WordPress Plugin – Database Results)

Information about drugs 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.

To learn more about this WordPress plugin, visit the plugin website: Drug Interaction Data – WordPress Plugin

PubMed Posts

(PubMed Posts WordPress Plugin)

This plugin adds a dashboard widget that lets you crate posts from PubMed articles, plus a search feature that finds posts with specific data. A basic editor that changes the layout of data in your post content is also included with the plugin.

PubMed contains over 25 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, online books and life science journals.

For more details, go here: PubMed Posts Plugin For WordPress

MJM Clinic

(MJM Clinic – WordPress Plugin)

This versatile plugin can be used for clinic and health care related websites. You can add service pages with booking forms, clinic locations, provide related health conditions, add case studies, link  indication tags to conditions, etc.

Go here for more info: MJM Clinic Plugin For WordPress

Treato

(Treato Plugin)

Treato lets you add a sidebar widget that allows your site visitors to search drugs and read what patients are saying about different drugs.

Treato collects and analyzes patient experiences from online forums and blog posts, then aggregates the content to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users gain valuable insight about over 14,000 conditions and over 26,500 medications from over 2.2 billion collected posts.

To learn more about using this WordPress plugin, go here: Treato Plugin

HealthTap Concierge

(HealthTap Concierge – WordPress Plugin)

HealthTap Concierge allows users to consult with real doctors 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 video or text, or send the doctor their question.

For more information, go here: HealthTap Concierge Plugin For WordPress

Trend MD

(TrendMD Plugin)

TrendMD adds 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, cite or read scholarly content from your journals or websites through personalized recommendations.

Visit this site to learn more about this plugin: Trend MD Plugin For WordPress

WP Nutrition Facts

(WP Nutrition Facts)

This simple WordPress plugin lets you add a nutrition facts table into your posts, pages and custom post types, allowing your site visitors to make more informed food choices towards healthy eating goals.

(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin – Custom Post Type Label Creation)

This plugin uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labeling regulations.

Go here to learn more about this plugin: WP Nutrition Facts WP Plugin

WP Ultimate Recipe

(WP Ultimate Recipe Plugin)

If you run a health or fitness-related business that provides diet or healthy eating suggestions, a great way to add content that will engage your readers is to publish recipes.

A plugin like WP Ultimate Recipe lets you add healthy and delicious recipes on your site.

Other WordPress recipe plugins include:

• Recipe Card – Create and publish search optimized recipes with nutrition facts that site users can print, save and review.
• EasyRecipe – Lets you easily publish recipes on your site with features like cut and paste, auto conversion of your plain text recipe posts, Google Recipe View formatting, automatic ratings and conversion from other recipe plugins.
• ZipList Recipes – Lets you easily format recipe text and add images. Additional features like SEO and Google Recipe View formatting are included.
• And many more.

Go here for more information: WP Ultimate Recipe Plugin For WordPress

Awesome Fitness Testimonials

(Awesome Fitness Testimonials Plugin)

Awesome Fitness Testimonials lets you showcase fitness and wellness testimonials, reviews and case studies, before and after photos, etc. on your health & fitness website.

Go here for more details: Awesome Fitness Testimonials Plugin For WordPress

Exercise Images by Everkinetic

(Exercise Images WP Plugin)

This plugin lets you add exercise images to your fitness websites.

(Exercise Images Plugin For WordPress – Database)

Visit the plugin website for more information about this WordPress plugin: Exercise Images

In part 3 of this guide, we take a look at health and medical themes for WordPress.

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This is the end of section 2 of this step-by-step guide on ways to grow your health or medical business web presence.

To continue reading, click this link: How To Build And Grow Your Medical Clinic Services Business Online Successfully With WordPress – Part Three

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Other Recommended WordPress Themes And Plugins:

Disclaimer: We are not directly associated with WordPress or any of the WordPress-related products reviewed on this site. We may derive an affiliate commission of financial benefit from the sale of any third-party products advertised on this site. All images remain the copyright of their respective owners, comply with all license terms and agreements of use to the best of our knowledge and are being used solely for illustrative or training purposes.

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