In Part One of this step-by-step article on ways to improve your medical-related business web presence, we provided practical tips and suggestions on the following topics:
- Online Challenges For Health Practitioners
- Opportunities For Medical Services Providers In The Digital Economy
- Your Website Pages
- Ways To Improve Your Web Content
In Parts 2 & 3, we explore more ways to grow your health-related services online.
Areas covered in this (and the following section) include:
- Tips For Improving Web Traffic With WordPress
- Tips For Generating More Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
- How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Web Traffic With Plugins
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
- Using WordPress Plugins – The Easy Way To Extend Your Site’s Capabilities
- A Newbie’s Guide To Understanding WordPress Themes
Note: Plugins are listed in this section. WordPress themes for medical businesses are listed in Part Three.
Ways Of Improving Traffic
Web traffic is vital to your online business growth. This section discusses WordPress plugins for improving search engine optimization, increasing user engagement and driving more visitors.
Optimize Your Site For Search Engines (SEO) With WordPress
There are loads of ways that WordPress helps optimize your health website for search engines:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – configure the permalinks to create search engine-optimized web addresses for your content posts.
- Tags – Specify the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages (posts) for.
- Post Categories – Add SEO-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Excerpts – Set an excerpt that search engines will show.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for improved search results.
- Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links for better indexing of pages
- Post Notification – Configure your site to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories whenever a new post is published on your site.
Improving Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Improve User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation Using WordPress Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WP development community makes available various plugins that improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your site’s SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (lists all of your pages for search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO)
Other ways to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social features. Here are some WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – Run an online social network on your WordPress site, with member profiles, user groups, messaging, activity streams, and more.
- bbPress – bbPress can be used to run a discussion forum on your WordPress website.
- E-Newsletter – This plugin lets you send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP site.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and increases engagement on your site.
- Social Media Feather – Easily add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your website.
(You can easily add social sharing features to your site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Generate More Leads & Enquiries
In this section we will show you how to improve sales and generate new leads and enquiries for your health or medical-related business.
Adding An Email Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is an excellent way to build a subscriber list. Adding newsletters] provides many benefits including:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides updates
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for interaction
- Provides another way for readers to share your content
A proven way to get visitors to subscribe is to provide high value content and give users free gifts in exchange for their details. This could be a handy guide, tips for improving fitness and well-being, access to medical applications, discount coupons, access to courses, podcasts, etc.
Add A Contact Form
A contact form makes it easy and simple for readers to get in touch. Visitors can provide feedback, contact specific departments, ask for a quote, send suggestions for improvements and more.
A contact form provides many benefits, like:
- Reduces spam
- Set up automated responses
- Gives you control over what is sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- Convenient for site visitors
One of the most popular WordPress contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WordPress Plugin)
This free contact form plugin is easy to install and set up and lets you insert multiple contact forms, customize the form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Another option you may want to consider if you are setting up a website for a medical center is to add sections to your contact form so users can choose the section of the practice they want to reach. This will make sure that visitors get their comment to the right destination.
Adding A Map
Adding maps to your website helps your visitors and clients find you.
Inserting maps (e.g. Google Maps), into your WordPress site also provides visitors with a number of benefits, such as:
- A map increases local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Show location of events
(A map helps your visitors and customers find you)
Below are some of the more popular 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 And Themes For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increasing User Engagement And Generating More Web Traffic
Medical Plugins For WordPress
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your website that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for users. Here are some of these:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar WordPress Plugin)
The Booking Calendar plugin lets you add appointment booking services to your site. Booking Calendar provides users with an intuitive interface. It is suitable for a wide range health and medical consulting uses, e.g. dental practices, specialists, alternative therapists, booking sessions with personal trainers, etc.
(Booking Calendar Plugin – Overview)
This booking reservations plugin works right out of the box. Website visitors can check availability of services you offer and book appointments quickly and easily. Site administrators and visitors receive email notifications. Booking Calendar also lets you add a calendar or booking form to your website’s sidebar, and supports multiple languages. The developers of this plugin also provide a premium version with a ton of additional features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticket Manager System
(Manage Bookings & Registrations Automatically Using Event Espresso WordPress Plugin)
If your business involves running health or medical events like seminars or workshops, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration WP software lets you easily set up your event and begin receiving online registrations in minutes
(Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Management)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed application that gives you full control of your event registration management process.
We have written a comprehensive article on Event Espresso here:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
Calculator Pro is a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed them into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of them aren’t designed for medical-related uses, but there are quite a few you can use, including:
- Body Statistics – e.g. BMR Calculator, Durnin/Womersley Skinfold Body Fat Calculator, GFR (Glomerular Filtration Rate) Calculator, Ponderal Index Calculator, WHtR Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Calorie to kJ Calculator, RMR Calculator, Calories Burned Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. BAI (Body Adiposity Index) Calculator, Balke Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Advanced One Rep Max Weight Lifting Calculator, Blood Sugar Converter Calculator, Pace Calculator, Sobriety Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. BMR Calorie Calculator, Macronutrient Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. Ideal Weight Calculator (kg), Weight Loss Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form)
The Calculated Fields Form plugin is great for creating dynamically calculated field forms, including:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculator
- And many more
The plugin is also available in a premium version with extra features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin For WordPress)
Weight Loss Tracker is a simple WordPress plugin that lets users record their weight on given dates. This data is then displayed in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker – Graph)
The plugin allows users to insert target weights and supports the following weight formats: Metric (Kg), Imperial – Stones & Pounds, Imperial – Pounds only.
For more details, go here}:
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator
(Simple BMI Calculator Plugin For WordPress)
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator is a simple WordPress plugin that lets you add a widget to your sidebar that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
As well as Simple BMI Calculator, there are a number of other plugins you can use that 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 (site administrator).
- 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 For WordPress)
Drug Interaction Data Plugin for WordPress will retrieve and display information about drugs, including what the drugs are used for and what other medications the drugs are known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data Plugin For WordPress – Data Results)
Information about drugs can be displayed inside your pages and posts, or as a widget on your sidebar menu. The data is provided by the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the U.S. National Institutes of Health and converts common names of drugs to the standardized RxNorm name.
For more details, go here}:
PubMed Posts
(PubMed Posts Plugin For WordPress)
PubMed Posts adds a dashboard widget that lets you add content from PubMed articles, as well as a search function that locates posts with specific data. The plugin also includes an 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 Plugin)
The MJM Clinic Plugin was designed to add functionality to clinic and health care related websites, such as adding service pages with booking forms, organising your services into hierarchical categories, clinic locations, feedback entries and more.
For more details, go here}:
Treato
(Treato Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin lets you embed the Treato healthcare search engine into your WordPress sidebar so you and your site visitors can search a vast drug database and read what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato collects and analyzes patient experiences from related forums and blog posts, then aggregates the content to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users gain insight about the side effects of over 26,500 medications, drug comparisons across 14,700+ medical conditions, which drugs people feel are working, and more, from over 2.2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap Concierge
(HealthTap Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows users to consult with doctors via text chat or HD video from any mobile device, computer, or smartwatch.
With the widget installed, your site visitors 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 select a doctor, connect in real time over video or text chat, or send questions.
For more details, go here}:
TrendMD
(TrendMD Plugin)
This plugin lets you add the TrendMD recommendations widget to your site. The TrendMD recommendations widget is used by scholarly publishers to increase their readership and revenue by allowing people to discover, cite or read interesting 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 posts and pages, allowing your site visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food in a standardized format.
(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin For WordPress – Creating Custom Post Type Labels)
WP Nutrition Facts uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labeling regulations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Ultimate Recipe
(WP Ultimate Recipe Plugin)
If you own a health-related business that provides nutritional or healthy eating suggestions, a great way to add content that will engage your readers is to add healthy recipes.
A plugin like WP Ultimate Recipe lets you publish recipes on your site.
Other recipe plugins for WordPress include:
- Recipe Card – Publish search engine optimized recipes with nutrition facts that site visitors can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – Makes entering recipes on your site easy with features like cut and paste, auto conversion of your plain text recipe posts, Google Recipe View formatting and preview button, automatic ratings and conversion from other recipe plugins.
- ZipList Recipes – Easily format recipe text and add images. Additional features like Google Recipe View formatting and SEO are included.
- And many more.
For more details, go here}:
Awesome Fitness Testimonials
(Awesome Fitness Testimonials)
The Awesome Fitness Testimonials plugin allows you to add fitness and wellness testimonials, reviews and case studies to your fitness websites.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images by Everkinetic
(Exercise Images Plugin)
Exercise Images lets you add a database of exercise images to your website.
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic – WordPress Plugin – Database)
For more details, go here}:
In part three, we will be discussing health and medical WordPress themes.
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This is the end of part two.
To view the rest of this guide, click this link:
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum