In Part 1 of this article on ways to improve your medical or health-related web presence, we covered the following areas:
- Online Challenges For Health And Medical Services Professionals
- Opportunities For Medical And Health Businesses
- How To Improve Your Website Pages
- Improving The Content On Your Website
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your health business online.
Areas covered in this (and the next section) include:
- Ways Of Improving Web Traffic
- Generating New Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Tools
- How To Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With Plugins
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
Note: Medical and health plugins are described in this section. WordPress themes for medical businesses are listed in Part 3.
Improving Web Traffic
Web traffic is vital to your business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines (SEO) With WordPress
There are so many ways WordPress can help to optimize your medical website for search engines:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – Set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your content posts.
- Post Tags – WordPress lets you specify the keywords that you want your article pages to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Create categories for your posts and products.
- Post Excerpts – Set an excerpt that will display to search engine users.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for improved search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily link your content to other posts and pages
- Post Notification – Configure your site to automatically notify other sites and directories whenever a new post is published on your website.
How To Improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using WordPress Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are quite a number of plugins that improve your website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your website.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (for search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your site’s SEO)
Other WordPress tools you can use to improve your medical-related website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social features. Here are a few useful plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – Run your own online social community on your WordPress website.
- bbPress – Run an online community forum on your WordPress website.
- E-Newsletter – This plugin lets you send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and increases user engagement on your site.
- Monarch – Add social sharing features and buttons to your website.
(You can easily add social sharing to your website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Generating Leads & Enquiries
In this section we will show you ways to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries for your business.
Providing A Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is a great way to build a subscriber list. Adding email newsletters] provides a number of benefits and advantages, like:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Increases interaction
- Provides another way for your content to be shared with others
A proven way to attract newsletter subscribers is to provide users with information of high value and give them something valuable for free in exchange for their details. This can be a special report, tips for improving fitness and well-being, access to health apps, discount vouchers, membership access to courses, contests, etc.
Add A Contact Form
A contact form makes it easy and simple for readers to get in touch with you. Contact forms also allow readers to raise concerns, contact specific departments, request a quote, give suggestions for new services or products and more.
A contact form provides several benefits and advantages including:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what is sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Different forms can be added to any post or page
- Improves the professional look of your website
- Convenience for visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin For WordPress)
This free contact form plugin lets you add multiple contact forms on your website, customize your form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
Contact Form 7 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 segment your contact form so prospective clients can choose the section of the clinic they want to reach. This will help make sure that visitors get their message to the right recipient.
Provide A Map
Adding maps to your website helps your visitors and clients find you.
A map is a great tool for several reasons:
- They help to increase local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Show location of events
(Adding maps helps your visitors and clients find you)
Popular Google Maps plugins include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation With Plugins And Themes
WordPress Plugins
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your health website that will immediately add a range of practical tools for users. Here are some of these:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar Plugin)
Booking Calendar allows you to add appointment bookings to your site. This plugin is well supported, provides an intuitive and user-friendly interface with flexible functionality. It is highly suitable for a wide range of uses, such as medical practitioners, specialists, chiropractors, booking yoga classes, etc.
(Booking Calendar – WordPress Plugin – Overview)
This booking reservations plugin works out of the box. Your website visitors can check the availability of services and book appointments online easily. Administrators and visitors receive booking confirmations. Booking Calendar also lets you add a calendar or booking form to your site’s sidebar, and offers multi-language support. The plugin developers also offer a premium version with additional features.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Management
(Manage Bookings And Registrations Online Using Event Espresso WordPress Plugin)
If your business involves running medical events like seminars or workshops, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin allows you to easily set up your event and start receiving registrations in just a few minutes
(Event Espresso – Event Management & Ticketing Registration Software For WordPress)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed plugin that gives you full control over your event registration management process.
We have written a detailed article about Event Espresso. For more details, go here:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
Calculator Pro is a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed them into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of them aren’t specifically designed for medical or health use, but there are quite a few you can add to your website, including the following:
- Body Statistics – e.g. BMR Calculator, FENa Calculator, Lean Body Mass Calculator, Max Heart Rate Calculator, VO2 Max Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Calorie to kJ Calculator, RMR Calculator, Calories Burned By Heart Rate Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Astrand Test Calculator, Balke Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Bike Size Calculator, Cigarette Savings Calculator, Pregnancy Calculator, Sobriety Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. BMR Calorie Calculator, Water Intake Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. Ideal Weight Calculator (kg), 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 with dynamically calculated fields to display the calculated values, including:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculators
- And many more
A premium plugin version with many additional features is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker WordPress Plugin)
Weight Loss Tracker lets users record their weight on given dates. This data is then displayed in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin – 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 Body Mass Index Calculator Plugin)
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator is a free plugin for WordPress that installs a widget on your website that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
As well as Simple Body Mass Index Calculator, there are a number of WordPress plugins you can look at that perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A responsive BMI and BMR 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 figure out their basal metabolic rate, based on age, sex and weight.
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin retrieves and displays drug information, including what the drug is used to treat and what other medications the drug is known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data Plugin For WordPress – Results)
Drug information can be displayed on your site. 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 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 WordPress Plugin)
This plugin adds a dashboard widget that lets you publish content to your site from PubMed articles, plus a search widget that helps visitors find posts with specific article data. A simple editor that lets you change the layout of data in your post content is also included.
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 WP Plugin)
This plugin can be used to add functionality to medical and health care related websites, such as service pages with booking forms, related health conditions, clinic locations, patient feedback entries and more.
For more details, go here}:
Treato WordPress Plugin
(Treato Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin lets you display information about drugs on your site and see what see what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato gathers 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 insight about the side effects of over 26,500 medications, drug comparisons across over 14,000 medical conditions, which drugs people feel work, and more, from over 2.2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap
(HealthTap Concierge Plugin)
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, computer, even 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 select a doctor, chat over video or text, or send the doctor a question and get answers using the service.
For more details, go here}:
Trend MD
(Trend MD – WordPress Plugin)
The TrendMD plugin 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, read or cite 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 free plugin lets you add 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 and make informed decisions about the food they eat.
(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin For WordPress – Create Custom Post Type Labels)
This plugin uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labelling regulations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Ultimate Recipe
(WP Ultimate Recipe Plugin For WordPress)
If you run a health-related business that provides dietary or healthy eating recommendations, a great way to add engaging content to your site is to publish recipes.
Plugins like WP Ultimate Recipe let you easily add recipes on your site.
Other recipe plugins for WordPress include:
- Recipe Card – Create search optimized recipes with nutrition facts that your site visitors can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – EasyRecipe lets you easily publish recipes on your site with features like cut and 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. 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 WordPress Plugin)
Awesome Fitness Testimonials lets you add fitness & wellness testimonials, case studies and reviews, before and after photos, etc. to your site.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images by Everkinetic
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic Plugin)
Exercise Images lets you display a database of exercise illustrations inside your pages and posts.
(Exercise Images WP Plugin – Database)
For more details, go here}:
In part 3, we will be discussing themes for medical businesses.
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This is the end of part two of this guide on ways to grow your medical or health-related web presence.
Click here to read the rest of this guide:
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