In Part One of this article on ways to improve your health web presence, we provided practical tips and suggestions on the following areas:
- Challenges Medical Practitioners Face Online
- Online Opportunities For Medical Services
- Basic Pages
- Ways To Improve Your Web Content
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your medical services online.
Areas covered in this (and the next section) include:
- Ways To Improve Web Traffic With WordPress
- Generate New Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
- WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Creating Better User Engagement And Traffic Generation
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
- Add New Functionality To Your Blog With WordPress Plugins
- WP For Business – An Introduction To WP Themes
Note: Health and medical plugins are described in this section. Health and medical themes are listed in Part Three.
Tips For Medical Services Professionals – Improving Your Business Online Using WordPress Plugins and Themes
Your web traffic is vital to your business growth. In this section, you will learn WordPress plugins & themes that can improve SEO, improve user engagement and drive more visitors to your website.
Optimizing Your Site For Search Engines Using WordPress
There are many ways that WordPress helps optimize your 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 – WordPress lets you specify the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages for.
- Categories – Add SEO-friendly categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Excerpts – Set the description for your posts that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for improved search results.
- Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links for faster page indexing
- Pinging – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your website.
Improving Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using WordPress Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress development community makes available dozens of plugins that improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your business.
For example, 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)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your site’s search engine optimization)
Other things you can do to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social features. Here are some fantastic plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – This free WordPress plugin can be used to run a social network on your site.
- bbPress – Set up a community forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – This plugin lets you send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard, without requiring third-party subscriptions.
- Disqus – This plugin lets you power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your website or blog.
- Social Media Feather – Easily add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your website or blog.
(You can add social features to your website easily using free or inexpensive plugins)
Ways To Generate Leads & Enquiries
Let’s take a look now at how to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries for your business.
Add An Email Newsletter
Adding a newsletter is an excellent way to build a list of subscribers. Adding email newsletters] provides a number of benefits including:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates that could save businesses time and money
- Provides you with a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for user interaction
- Provides another way for readers to share your content
A proven strategy for getting your visitors to subscribe to your email newsletter is to provide them with high value content and offer them a free gift in exchange for their details. This can be a handy guide, checklists for improving general health and nutrition, access to health applications, free trials, access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Add Contact Forms
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for prospective customers to contact you. Contact forms also allow visitors to report issues, ask questions to specific departments, ask for a quote, send suggestions for new services or products and more.
A contact form provides many benefits including:
- Reducing spam
- Set up automated responses
- Giving you control over what is sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Different forms can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- Convenience for visitors
A popular WordPress contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin For WordPress)
Contact Form 7 lets you create and manage multiple contact forms into any page on your site, customize the form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is supported.
Something else to consider if you are setting up a website for a health clinic or medical center is adding sections to your contact form so prospective clients can select the section of the center they are contacting your business about. This ensures that visitors get their comment to the right person.
Adding A Map
Adding a map helps your visitors and clients find you.
Maps are very useful tools for several reasons:
- A map helps to increase local SEO
- Customers can better plan their meeting and appointments
- Show location of events
(Maps help 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
How To Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Web Traffic With WordPress Plugins And Themes
WordPress Plugins
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your medical site that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for your site visitors. Here are just some of these plugins:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar)
Booking Calendar allows you to add online bookings to your site. Booking Calendar is well supported, provides an intuitive and user-friendly interface and flexible functionality. It is highly suitable for a wide range medical and health consulting businesses, such as medical practices, surgeons, health spas, booking patient appointments, etc.
(Booking Calendar WP Plugin – Overview)
This plugin works right out of the box. Website visitors can check availability of services you offer and book appointments online quickly and 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 is also available in a premium version with additional features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager & Registration System
(Manage Bookings & Registrations Via The Web With Event Espresso Plugin For WP)
If your business involves running medical or health events like seminars or workshops, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration software lets you easily schedule multiple events and begin accepting online registrations literally in a few minutes
(Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Management)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich software that gives you complete control of your event registration management process.
We have written a comprehensive article on Event Espresso here:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin)
This plugin provides a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed them into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of them aren’t specifically designed for health or medical-related use, but there are several you can add to your site, including the following:
- Body Statistics – e.g. Blood Alcohol Calculator, Fat Calculator, Katch-Mcardle BMR Calculator, Ponderal Index Calculator, US Navy Body Fat Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, kJ to Calorie Calculator, Calories Burned Walking Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. BAI (Body Adiposity Index) Calculator, Rockport Walk Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. One Rep Max Weight Lifting Calculator, Blood Sugar Converter Calculator, Ovulation Calculator, Target Heart Rate Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, Water Intake 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 For WordPress)
Calculated Fields Form lets you create forms with dynamically calculated fields to display the calculated values, including:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculator
- And many more
The plugin is also available in a premium version with many additional features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets logged-in users record their weight periodically. The data is then displayed in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker – 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 Body Mass Index Calculator Widget
(Simple BMI Calculator Widget Plugin)
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator lets you add a widget to your sidebar that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
In addition to Simple Body Mass Index Calculator, there are other 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 trainer.
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator that displays a user’s BMI
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors calculate their basal metabolic rate, based on their age, sex and weight.
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin will retrieve and display information about drugs, including what the drug is used to treat and what other medications the drug is known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data – WordPress Plugin – Results)
Information about drugs can be displayed inside your posts and pages, or as a widget on your blog sidebar. The data is provided by the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
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 widget that lets site visitors search for posts with specific data. It also includes a basic editor that changes the layout of your post content data.
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 Plugin For WordPress)
The MJM Clinic Plugin can be used to add functionality to medical and health care related websites, such as inserting service pages with booking forms, organising your services into hierarchical categories, multiple service locations, create staff listings for doctors and more.
For more details, go here}:
Treato
(Treato WP Plugin)
This plugin lets you embed the Treato healthcare search engine into your WordPress sidebar so you and your site visitors can search drugs and see 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 can access insight about the side effects of 26,600+ medications, drug comparisons across over 14,700 medical conditions, which drugs people feel are working, and more, from over 2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap Concierge
(HealthTap WP Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows visitors to consult with real doctors via HD video or text chat from any mobile device, computer, or smartwatch.
With HealthTap Concierge installed on your WordPress website or blog, 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 choose a doctor, chat over text or video, or send the doctor their question.
For more details, go here}:
TrendMD
(TrendMD)
This plugin lets you add the TrendMD recommendations widget to your website. The TrendMD recommendations widget is used by scholarly publishers to grow their readership and revenue by allowing people to discover, cite or read scholarly content from your journals or websites through personalized recommendations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Nutrition Facts
(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin lets you insert a nutrition facts table into your pages, posts and custom post types, allowing your site visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food and make informed food choices towards healthy eating goals.
(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin For WordPress – Create Labels)
This plugin uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labeling regulations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Ultimate Recipe
(WP Ultimate Recipe)
If you own a health or fitness business that provides diet and nutrition or healthy eating suggestions, a great way to add engaging content to your site is to publish healthy recipes.
A plugin like WP Ultimate Recipe lets you add healthy and delicious recipes on your site.
Other WordPress recipe plugins include:
- Recipe Card – Publish beautiful recipes that site users can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – Makes publishing 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 and preview button, automatic ratings and conversion from other recipe plugins.
- ZipList Recipes – Lets you easily format recipe text and add images. Includes additional Google Recipe View formatting and SEO features.
- And many more.
For more details, go here}:
Awesome Fitness Testimonials
(Awesome Fitness Testimonials – WordPress Plugin)
Awesome Fitness Testimonials lets you display fitness and wellness testimonials, reviews and case studies on 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 images in your web content.
(Exercise Images – Catalog)
For more details, go here}:
In part 3 of this guide, we will look at health and medical themes.
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This is the end of part two of this article on ways to improve your health-related business web presence.
To view Part Three, click this link:
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"I was absolutely amazed at the scope and breadth of these tutorials! The most in-depth training I have ever received on any subject!" - Myke O'Neill, DailyGreenPost.com