In Part One of this guide on ways to build your health-related business web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Challenges Medical And Health Firms Face Online
- Opportunities For Health And Medical Services Practitioners In The Online Economy
- Improving Your Website Pages
- Improving The Content On Your Website
In Parts 2 and 3, we explore more ways to grow your medical or health services online.
Topics covered in this (and the following section) include:
- Ways Of Improving Web Traffic
- Tips For Generating Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins And Themes That Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
- Add New Features And Functionality To Your Site With WP Plugins
- WordPress For Beginners – An Introduction To Themes
Note: WordPress medical and health plugins are covered in this section. WordPress themes for medical businesses are listed in Part 3.
Ways To Improve Website Traffic
Your web traffic is an important part of your business growth. In this section, we discuss WordPress plugins and themes that can improve SEO, improve user engagement and drive more visitors.
Optimize Your Site For Search Engines
There are loads of ways that WordPress helps improve SEO:
- URLs – configure the permalinks to create search engine-optimized web addresses for your article pages.
- Post Tags – Specify the keywords that you want search engines to index your posts for.
- Categories – Create categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Post Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose descriptions for your posts that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – title images with keywords for improved search results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily link internal content
- Post Notification – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify other sites and directories whenever a new post is published on your website.
Improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Improve User Engagement And Increase Visitors To Your Business Generation Using Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are dozens of plugins that will improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your website.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin (lists all of your pages for search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your site’s SEO)
Other things you can do to improve your site’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social features. Here are some WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – Set up your own online social networking community on your site, with member profiles, user groups, activity streams, messaging, and more.
- bbPress – Run a forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard, without a third party subscription.
- Disqus – This plugin lets you power discussions and increases engagement on your website or blog.
- Monarch – This WordPress plugin lets you add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your website or blog.
(You can add social sharing to your website easily with WordPress plugins)
Generate More Leads & Enquiries
This section looks at how to improve sales and generate new leads and enquiries for your business.
Providing A Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is a great way to retain and grow your readership. Adding email newsletters] provides a number of benefits, like:
- Drives targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides updates that could save businesses time and money
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special products or services to a select audience
- Increases engagement with your users
- Provides you with additional ways for readers to share your content
One of the things you can do to get visitors to subscribe is to provide users with valuable information and offer them free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their personal details. This can be an exclusive guide, tips for improving general health and fitness, access to fitness applications, discount vouchers, access to videos, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch. Contact forms also allow visitors to send feedback, contact specific departments, request quotes, and more.
Contact forms provide many benefits, like:
- Reduces spam
- Set up automated responses
- Giving you control over what is sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- They can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- Convenience for site visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7)
This plugin allows you to add and manage multiple contact forms to your pages and posts, customize the form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Something else to consider if you plan to set up a website for a health center or medical clinic is to segment your contact form so prospective clients can choose which section of the practice they want to reach. This will help make sure that visitors get their message to the correct person.
Provide A Map
Maps help your visitors and customers find you.
Maps are a very useful tool for several reasons:
- A map improves local SEO
- Allows clients to better plan their visits or appointments
- Shows location of events
(Adding maps helps your visitors and clients find you)
Here are just some of the more plugins that let you embed, customize and display maps on your site:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins And Themes That Can Help Improve Your Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation
Medical & Health – WordPress Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your website that will immediately add a range of functional tools for users. Here are just some of these plugins:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar Plugin For WordPress)
Booking Calendar lets you add online bookings to your site. This flexible plugin provides visitors with an intuitive and user-friendly interface. It is suitable for a wide range health and medical consulting businesses, such as medical practices, physicians, chiropractors, booking patient appointments, etc.
(Booking Calendar Plugin – Overview)
Booking Calendar works out of the box. Website visitors can check the availability of services and make a booking quickly and easily. Site administrators and visitors receive booking confirmations. Booking Calendar also lets you add a calendar or booking form to your website’s sidebar, and supports multiple languages. A premium plugin version is also available and includes many more features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticket Manager Plugin
(Manage Bookings And Registrations Via The Web With Event Espresso WP Plugin)
If you run medical seminars, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration WordPress software allows you to easily create your event and begin accepting online bookings literally in minutes
(Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Management)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich application that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
We have written a comprehensive article on the benefits and features of using Event Espresso. Go here to learn more:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators WordPress Plugin)
Calculator Pro provides a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed them into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of the calculators aren’t designed for health or medical-related usage, but there are quite a number you can add to your site, including the following:
- Body Statistics – e.g. Blood Alcohol Calculator, Carbohydrate Calculator, Lean Body Mass Calculator, Metric BMR Calculator, Protein Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Calorie to kJ Calculator, Daily Energy Expenditure Calculator, Calories Burned Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Coopers 12 Minute Run Test Calculator, Rockport Walk Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Beats and Breaths Calculator, Blood Donation Calculator, Pregnancy Calculator, Running Pace Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Calcium Calculator, Protein Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. BMI Calculator, Weight Loss Percentage Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form WP Plugin)
This plugin lets you create dynamically calculated field forms, including:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculator
- And many more
A premium version is also available and includes many more features.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker WP Plugin)
Weight Loss Tracker is a free plugin for WordPress that lets logged-in users record their weight on given dates. The data is then displayed in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin For WordPress – Graph)
The plugin allows users to enter target weights and supports various weight formats: Metric (Kg), Imperial – Stones & Pounds, Imperial – Pounds only.
For more details, go here}:
Simple BMI Calculator
(Simple Body Mass Index Calculator Widget – WordPress Plugin)
Simple BMI Calculator is a free WordPress plugin that installs a widget on your website that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
In addition to Simple Body Mass Index Calculator, there are a number of WordPress plugins you can check out that perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A responsive Body Mass Index and BMR calculator that saves calculation data for logged-in users and gives an overview to the administrator.
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator that displays a user’s 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 WordPress Plugin)
This plugin will retrieve and display drug information, including what the drugs are used to treat and what other medications the drugs are known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data Plugin – Database Results)
Drug information 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 and converts common names of drugs to their standardized RxNorm name.
For more details, go here}:
PubMed Posts
(PubMed Posts – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin adds a dashboard widget that lets you publish content to your site from PubMed articles, and a search feature that finds posts with specific data. A content editor is also included with the plugin.
PubMed comprises more than 25 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, online books and life science journals.
For more details, go here}:
MJM Clinic
(MJM Clinic WordPress Plugin)
MJM Clinic can be used for medical and health care related websites. You can add service pages with booking forms, provide related health conditions, add case studies, link indication tags to services and conditions, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Treato WordPress Plugin
(Treato – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you embed the Treato healthcare search engine into your WordPress sidebar so your site visitors can search drugs and read what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato gathers 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 gain valuable insight about side effects, drug comparisons, which drugs people feel are working, and more from over 2.2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap
(HealthTap Concierge Plugin For WordPress)
HealthTap Concierge allows users to consult with real doctors, clinical psychologists, etc. via HD video or text chat from any mobile device, personal computer, even smartwatch.
With the widget 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 choose a doctor, chat over text or video, or send the doctor a question and get answers with the service.
For more details, go here}:
TrendMD
(TrendMD)
The TrendMD plugin will add 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 interesting 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 WordPress plugin lets you insert a nutrition facts table into your pages and posts, allowing your site visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food in a standardized format.
(WP Nutrition Facts – Creating Labels)
WP Nutrition Facts uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labelling regulations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Ultimate Recipe
(WP Ultimate Recipe – WordPress Plugin)
If you run a health or fitness website that provides nutritional or healthy eating recommendations, a great way to add content that will engage your readers is to publish healthy recipes.
Plugins like WP Ultimate Recipe let you easily add recipes on your site.
Other recipe plugins for WordPress include:
- Recipe Card – Create and publish beautiful recipes that your 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, live custom formatting, Google Recipe View formatting, automatic ratings and conversion from other recipe plugins.
- ZipList Recipes – Lets you 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 WordPress Plugin)
This plugin allows you to add fitness & wellness testimonials, case studies and reviews to your website.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin lets you display a database of exercise images on your website.
(Exercise Images Plugin – Image Catalog)
For more details, go here}:
In part 3, we will be discussing WordPress themes that are suitable for medical businesses.
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This is the end of part 2 of this guide on ways to build your health-related web presence.
Click here to continue:
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now