In Part 1 of this guide on ways to grow your health-related business web presence, we provided practical tips and suggestions on the following areas:
- Challenges Professional Health Services Practitioners Face Online
- Opportunities For Medical Providers
- Improving Your Web Pages
- Improving Your Content
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your medical or health services online.
Areas covered in this (and the next section) include:
- Tips For Improving Traffic With WordPress
- How To Generate More Leads & Enquiries
- Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Visitors Using WordPress Plugins
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
Note: Plugins are covered in this section. Medical and health-related themes are listed in Part 3.
Improve Web Traffic
Your web traffic is an integral part of your business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic.
Optimize Your Site For Search Engines (SEO)
There are many ways that WordPress helps improve SEO:
- 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 search engines to index your article pages for.
- Categories – Add search engine-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Excerpts – Create an excerpt that search engines will display.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for improved search engine results.
- Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links for better indexing of your web pages
- Pinging – WordPress can be set up to automatically notify other sites and directories the moment a new post is published on your website.
Improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WP development community makes available various plugins that improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your website.
For example, you can install the plugins below to improve your website’s search engine optimization:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin (lists all of your pages for search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your site’s search engine optimization)
Other things you can do to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing features. Here are some WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – Set up your own online social networking community on your website, with member profiles, activity streams, user groups, messaging, and more.
- bbPress – This free plugin allows you to set up a forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – Use E-Newsletter to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress site.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and increases user engagement on your website or blog.
- Monarch – Easily add social sharing features to your pages and posts.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their site using free or inexpensive plugins)
Tips For Generating Leads & Enquiries
In this section we show you how to improve your sales and generate more leads and enquiries online.
Adding An Email Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is a great way to build a subscriber list. It] provides a number of benefits and advantages, like:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for increasing engaging with your users
- Provides you with additional opportunities 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 free gifts in exchange for their details. This could be a time-saving guide, tips for improving health, fitness and nutrition, access to fitness tools, vouchers, membership access to courses, podcasts, etc.
Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for prospective clients to get in touch with you. Users can send feedback, ask questions to specific departments, request a quote, and more.
A contact form provides a number of benefits including:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Giving 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
- Improves the professional look of your website
- Convenient for users
One of the most popular WordPress contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin lets you add multiple contact forms into any page or post, customize the form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
The plugin also supports international languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Something else to consider if you want to set up a website for a medical center is to add sections to your contact form so prospective clients can select the practitioner they want to contact. This ensures that visitors’ enquiries reach the correct area.
Map
A map helps your visitors and clients find you.
Adding maps, such as Google Maps to your site also provides users with many benefits, such as:
- A map improves local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Display location of events
(Adding maps to your website helps your visitors and clients find you)
Popular Google Maps plugins for WordPress include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation With Plugins & Themes
Medical & Health Plugins For WordPress
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your website to immediately add a range of practical tools for your site visitors. Here are just some of the plugins you can choose from:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar Plugin)
Booking Calendar lets you add appointment bookings to your site. It provides an intuitive and user-friendly interface and flexible functionality. It is suitable for a wide range medical, health, fitness and sports-related businesses, e.g. medical practices, physicians, chiropractors, booking patient appointments, etc.
(Booking Calendar – WordPress Plugin – Overview)
The plugin works 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 is also widget-ready, and supports multiple languages. The plugin is also available in a premium version with many extra features.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Management
(Manage Event Registrations Via The Web Using Event Espresso For WordPress)
If you run medical seminars, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WordPress enables you to easily set up an event and begin receiving online bookings in minutes
(Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich application that gives you full control of the event registration management process.
If you want to learn more about the benefits and features of using Event Espresso, refer to this article:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin)
This plugin provides a free collection of over 400 calculators that you can provide to users on your website. It also supports internationalization
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t specifically designed for medical or health applications, but there are several you can include in your website, including:
- Body Statistics – e.g. BMR Calculator, Frame Size Calculator, Goal Weight Calculator, Metric Body Fat Calculator, WHtR Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, kJ to Calorie Calculator, Calories Burned Swimming Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. BAI (Body Adiposity Index) Calculator, 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. Ideal Weight Calculator, Weight Loss Percentage Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form – WordPress Plugin)
With Calculated Fields Form you can create forms that perform single and complex calculations, such as:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculator
- And many more
A premium plugin version with additional features and functionalities is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker)
Weight Loss Tracker lets users record their weight on given dates. The results are then shown in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker – WordPress Plugin – Graph)
The plugin allows users to enter 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 Widget
(Simple BMI Calculator Widget Plugin)
This simple plugin for WordPress installs a widget on your sidebar that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
In addition to Simple Body Mass Index Calculator, there are a number of other plugins you can check out to perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A mobile-friendly Body Mass Index and BMR calculator that saves calculation data for logged-in users and gives an overview to the site administrator.
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator to show your users their BMI
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors figure out their basal metabolic rate, by entering their age, sex and weight.
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data Plugin For WordPress)
Drug Interaction Data Plugin for WordPress retrieves and displays information about drugs, including what the drugs are used for and what other medications the drugs are known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data – WordPress Plugin – Results)
Drug information can be displayed as a widget or inside your web content. The data is provided by the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the U.S. National Institutes of Health and drug names are converted to the standardized RxNorm name as defined by the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
For more details, go here}:
PubMed Posts
(PubMed Posts WP Plugin)
PubMed Posts adds a dashboard widget that creates posts from PubMed articles, plus a search feature that lets your visitors find posts with specific data. The plugin also includes a basic editor that changes the layout of your post content data.
PubMed contains over 25 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books.
For more details, go here}:
MJM Clinic
(MJM Clinic Plugin)
This plugin was designed to add functionality to medical and health care related websites that provide information to site visitors about health conditions and symptoms.
For more details, go here}:
Treato
(Treato Plugin)
This plugin lets you embed the Treato healthcare search engine into your WordPress sidebar so your site visitors can search a vast drug database and see 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 gain valuable insight about 14,000+ medical conditions from over 2.2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap
(HealthTap Plugin For WordPress)
HealthTap Concierge allows users to consult with doctors via text chat or HD video from any mobile device, personal computer, or smartwatch.
With the plugin installed, 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 select a doctor, connect in real time using video or text chat, or send the doctor a question and get answers via the service.
For more details, go here}:
Trend MD
(TrendMD Plugin)
TrendMD will 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)
This simple WordPress plugin lets you add a nutrition facts table into your pages, posts and custom post types, allowing your visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food in a standardized format and make more informed food choices towards healthy eating goals.
(WP Nutrition Facts – WordPress Plugin – Label Creation)
WP Nutrition Facts uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labeling regulations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Ultimate Recipe
(WP Ultimate Recipe Plugin For WordPress)
If you own a health-related website that provides nutrition or healthy eating suggestions, a great way to add content that will engage your readers is to add great recipes.
Plugins like WP Ultimate Recipe let you easily publish delicious and healthy on your site.
Other WordPress recipe plugins include:
- Recipe Card – Create recipes with nutrition facts that your site visitors can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – EasyRecipe lets you easily add recipes to your site with features like cut and paste, plain text recipe auto conversion, 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. 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 Plugin For WordPress)
Awesome Fitness Testimonials allows you to add fitness and wellness testimonials, reviews and case studies, before and after photos, etc. to your website.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images by Everkinetic
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic WordPress Plugin)
Exercise Images by Everkinetic lets you display a database of exercise diagrams on your health & fitness website.
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic Plugin – Image Database)
For more details, go here}:
In the next section of this guide, we look at health and medical themes.
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This is the end of part 2.
Click on this link to continue reading:
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