In Part 1 of this step-by-step article on ways to build your health or medical business web presence, we provided practical tips and suggestions on the following areas:
- Challenges Medical & Health Businesses Face Online
- Opportunities For Medical And Health Services Practitioners In The Online Economy
- Essential Web Pages
- Tips For Improving The Content On Your Site
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your medical-related services online.
Topics covered in this (and the next section) include:
- Tips For Improving Traffic
- Ways To Generate More Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins That Can Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Visitors
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
- Using WordPress Plugins To Extend Your Website’s Capability
- WP For Business – An Introduction To WP Themes
Note: Medical and health plugins are covered in this section. Health and medical themes are listed in Part 3.
Ways To Improve Traffic Using WordPress
Your web traffic is vital to your online business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines
There are so many ways WordPress can help to optimize your health or medical website for search engines:
- URLs – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the web address of your pages.
- Post Tags – Specify the keywords that you want search engines to index your posts for.
- Categories – Add search engine-friendly categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Excerpts – Create descriptions for your posts that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – title images used in your content with keywords for improved search engine results.
- Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily create internal links for better indexing of pages
- Post Notification – Configure your site to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories as soon as a new post is published on your website.
WordPress Plugins That Can Help To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Visitors To Your Site
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress developer community makes available various plugins that improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your website.
Here are some plugins you can use to improve your SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO)
Other things you can do to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social features. Here are a few plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – Use the BuddyPress plugin to run a social networking community on your website, with member profiles, user groups, messaging, activity streams, and more.
- bbPress – This free WordPress plugin lets you run your own community forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter lets you send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress site.
- Disqus – Power discussions and increases engagement on your website.
- Monarch – Add social sharing features on your website.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Generating More Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Tools
Let’s now take a look at ways to improve your sales and generate more leads and enquiries.
Add A Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is an excellent way to retain and grow your readership. Adding newsletters] provides a number of benefits and advantages, like:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides you with 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 additional ways for your content to be shared with new potential clients
An effective way to attract subscribers is to provide high value content and offer users additional items of value for free in exchange for their details. This could be a guide, checklists for improving health, fitness and diet, access to health applications, discount vouchers, access to videos, podcasts, etc.
Contact Forms
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch with you. Visitors can provide feedback, contact specific departments, request a quote, send suggestions and more.
Contact forms provide many benefits and advantages including:
- Reducing spam
- Set up automated responses
- 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
- Improves the professional look of your site
- Convenient for visitors
One of the most popular WordPress contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7)
This free contact form plugin allows you to insert multiple contact forms, customize your form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering is also supported.
Another option you may want to consider if you want to set up a website for a health center or medical clinic is to segment your contact form so users can select the practitioner they want to contact. This ensures that contact form enquiries reach the correct destination.
Provide Maps
Maps help your visitors and clients find you.
A map is a very useful tool for several reasons:
- Maps improve local SEO
- Visitors can find your office easily
- Display location of events
(Adding maps helps your visitors and customers find you)
Popular map plugins for WordPress include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins And Themes For Improving SEO, Better User Engagement And Generating More Visitors
Medical Services WordPress Plugins
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your website that will immediately add a range of functional tools for visitors. Here are just some of these plugins:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar Plugin)
The Booking Calendar plugin lets you add appointment bookings to your site. This flexible plugin is well supported and provides users with an intuitive and user-friendly interface. It is suitable for a range medical and health consulting uses, such as dental practitioners, surgeons, chiropractors, booking sessions with personal trainers, etc.
(Booking Calendar – Overview)
The plugin works right out of the box. Website visitors can check availability of services and book appointments 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 additional features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso
(Manage Event Bookings Online With Event Espresso WP Plugin)
If you plan to run medical or health seminars, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration software allows you to easily create your event and start receiving bookings in a few minutes
(Event Espresso – Event Management & Ticketing Registration Plugin For WordPress)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed plugin that gives you full control of your event registration management process.
We have written an in-depth article about Event Espresso here:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
This plugin provides a free collection of 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 usage, but there are several you can add to your website, including:
- Body Statistics – e.g. BMR Calculator, Child Height Calculator, GFR (Glomerular Filtration Rate) Calculator, Max Heart Rate Calculator, Skinfold Body Fat Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Calorie to kJ Calculator, RMR Calculator, Calories Burned Running Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Astrand Test Calculator, Rockport Walk Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Beats and Breaths Calculator, Cigarette Savings Calculator, Due Date Calculator, Target Heart Rate Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Carbohydrate 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 Plugin)
This free plugin is useful for creating forms that perform single and complex calculations, including:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculators
- And many more
A premium plugin version is also available and includes many extra features.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker)
Weight Loss Tracker is a simple plugin for WordPress that lets logged-in users record their weight on given dates. The results are then shown in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin For WordPress – Graph)
The plugin allows users to input 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
(Simple BMI Calculator WordPress Plugin)
This simple plugin installs a widget on your sidebar that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
In addition to Simple BMI Calculator, there are a number of other plugins you can use to 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 administrator.
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator to show users their Body Mass Index
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors calculate their basal metabolic rate, by entering their age, sex and weight.
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data Plugin For WordPress)
Drug Interaction Data Plugin can be used to display information about drugs, including what the drugs are used to treat and what other medications the drugs are known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data – WordPress Plugin – Database Results)
Drug information can be displayed inside your pages and posts, or as a widget on your sidebar. 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 their standardized RxNorm name as defined by the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
For more details, go here}:
PubMed Posts
(PubMed Posts Plugin)
PubMed Posts adds a dashboard widget that lets you add posts from PubMed articles, plus a search widget that locates posts with specific article data. A simple editor that changes the layout of data in your post content is also included.
PubMed comprises more than 25 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books.
For more details, go here}:
MJM Clinic
(MJM Clinic – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin can be used to add functionality to medical and health care related websites that provide information to site visitors on symptoms and health conditions.
For more details, go here}:
Treato
(Treato Plugin)
This plugin lets you add a sidebar widget that allows you and your site visitors to search drugs and read what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato collects and analyzes patient experiences written in forums and blog posts, then aggregates the posts to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users gain insight about the side effects of over 26,000 medications, drug comparisons across over 14,000 medical conditions, which drugs people feel are working, and more, from over 2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap
(HealthTap Concierge Plugin For WordPress)
HealthTap Concierge allows users to locate and book a virtual consult with real doctors, clinical psychologists, etc. via HD video or text chat from any mobile device, personal computer, or smartwatch.
With HealthTap Concierge installed on your WordPress website or blog, 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, chat using video or text, or send the doctor a question.
For more details, go here}:
TrendMD
(TrendMD)
The TrendMD plugin adds 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 WordPress Plugin)
This simple 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.
(WP Nutrition Facts – WordPress Plugin – Creating Nutritional Facts Labels)
WP Nutrition Facts uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labelling regulations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Ultimate Recipe
(WP Ultimate Recipe – WP Plugin)
If you own a health-related business that provides dietary or healthy eating advice, a great way to add engaging content to your site is to add healthy recipes.
Plugins like WP Ultimate Recipe let you easily add delicious and healthy on your site.
Other recipe plugins for WordPress include:
- Recipe Card – Publish recipes with nutrition facts that site visitors can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – Makes entering recipes on your site easy with features like cut & 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 – Lets you easily format recipe text and add images. Additional features like SEO and Google Recipe View formatting are included.
- And many more.
For more details, go here}:
Awesome Fitness Testimonials
(Awesome Fitness Testimonials – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin allows you to display fitness & wellness testimonials, reviews and case studies, before and after photos, etc. on your fitness websites.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images by Everkinetic
(Exercise Images Plugin)
The Exercise Images plugin lets you insert a database of exercise illustrations into your web content.
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic Plugin For WordPress – Database)
For more details, go here}:
In the next section, we look at medical WordPress themes.
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This is the end of section 2 of this guide on ways to build your medical web presence.
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