In Part 1 of this step-by-step article on ways to improve your health or medical-related web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Challenges Health Services Providers Face Online
- Online Opportunities For Medical Businesses
- Improving Your Website Pages
- Improve The Content On Your Website
In Parts Two and Three, we discuss more ways to grow your medical-related services online.
Areas covered in this (and the next section) include:
- Improving Traffic Using WordPress
- Tips For Generating More Leads & Enquiries
- Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Traffic Using Plugins & Themes
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
- Using WordPress Plugins To Extend Your Blog’s Features And Functionality
- WP Themes – An Introduction
Note: Medical and health plugins are listed in this section. Medical and health-related themes are covered in Part 3.
How To Improve Web Traffic
Web traffic is a vital part of your business growth. In this section, you will learn how to improve your business online with WordPress.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines (SEO)
There are loads of ways WordPress can help to improve SEO:
- SEO-Friendly – Set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your article pages.
- Tags – Choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages (posts) 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 provides a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links for faster indexing of your web pages
- Post Notification – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories as soon as a new post is published on your site.
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Increasing User Engagement And Generating More Web Traffic
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are dozens of WordPress plugins that will improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your website.
For example, you can install the plugins below to improve your site’s SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO)
Other ways to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social features. Here are some WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – Set up your own online social community on your site, with member profiles, user groups, messaging, activity streams, and more.
- bbPress – Set up your own online community forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – Send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress site.
- Disqus – This WordPress plugin lets you power discussions and increases engagement on your site.
- Monarch – Add powerful social sharing features to your website.
(You can easily add social sharing features to your website using free or inexpensive plugins)
Ways To Generate New Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
In this section we’ll show you how to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries for your medical or health business.
Providing An Email Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is a great way to build a list of subscribers. Adding an email newsletter provides a number of benefits, like:
- Drives targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for interaction
- Provides you with additional ways for subscribers to share your content
An effective way to attract subscribers is to provide users with high value information and give them something for free in exchange for their details. This could be an exclusive report, checklists for improving health, fitness and nutrition, access to medical applications, vouchers, access to courses, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for prospective clients to get in touch with you. A contact form also lets visitors report concerns, contact specific departments, ask for a quote, give suggestions for improvements and more.
A contact form provides several benefits and advantages, like:
- Reducing spam
- Set up automated responses
- Gives you control over what is sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Contact forms can be added to any post or page
- Improves the professional look of your site
- Convenience for users
A popular contact form plugin for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 – WordPress Plugin)
This free contact form plugin lets you create multiple contact forms, customize your form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is also supported.
Another feature 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 visitors can select the section of the clinic they are contacting your business about. This helps get their message to the correct destination.
Add A Map
Adding a map to your website helps your visitors and customers find you.
Maps are very useful tools for several reasons:
- A map helps to improve local SEO
- Helps visitors find your office easily
- Displays location of events
(Adding a map helps your visitors and customers find you)
Some of the more popular map plugins include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins And Themes That Can Help To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
Medical Or Health Services – WordPress Plugins
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your website to immediately add a range of functional tools for visitors. Here are just some of the plugins you can choose from:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar)
Booking Calendar lets you add appointment booking services to your site. It has an intuitive interface. It is suitable for a range of health or medical-related businesses, e.g. dental practitioners, specialists, alternative therapists, booking sessions with personal trainers, etc.
(Booking Calendar Plugin For WordPress – Overview)
The plugin works out of the box. Your website visitors can check availability of services you offer and book appointments quickly and easily. Administrators and visitors receive email notifications. The plugin 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 with many more features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso
(Manage Event Registrations Online Using Event Espresso For WordPress)
If you plan to run medical or health events, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration software enables you to easily schedule your event and begin accepting registrations in just minutes
(Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich application that gives you full control of your event registration management process.
If you want to learn more about Event Espresso, refer to this article:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin For WordPress)
Calculator Pro is a free collection of over 400 calculators that you can display on your website and embed into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. It supports internationalization
Most of the calculators aren’t designed for health or medical use, but there are many you can add to your site, including:
- Body Statistics – e.g. Body Surface Area Calculator, Child Height Calculator, GFR (Glomerular Filtration Rate) Calculator, Modification of Diet in Renal Disease (MDRD) GFR Calculator, Waist to Hip Ratio Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, Daily Energy Expenditure Calculator, Calories Burned Walking Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. BAI (Body Adiposity Index) Calculator, Bruce Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Advanced One Rep Max Weight Lifting 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 WP 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 more
A premium version with many more features is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin)
This free plugin lets logged-in users record their weight on given dates. The results are then displayed in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker – WordPress Plugin – Graph)
The plugin allows users to input 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)
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator is a simple plugin for WordPress that 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 a number of plugins you can look at that perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A Body Mass Index and BMR calculator that saves calculation data for logged-in users and gives an overview to the trainer (site administrator).
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator to show your users their Body Mass Index
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors calculate 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)
Drug Interaction Data Plugin for WordPress can be used to display information about drugs, including what the drugs are used for and what other medications the drugs are known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data Plugin – Information Screen)
Drug information can be displayed on your site. The data is provided by the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the U.S. National Institutes of Health and converts common names of drugs to the standardized RxNorm name.
For more details, go here}:
PubMed Posts
(PubMed Posts Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin adds a dashboard widget that lets you publish content to your site from PubMed articles, and a search feature that helps visitors find posts with specific article data. A basic content editor is also included.
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 Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin was designed to add functionality to medical and health care related websites, such as service pages with booking forms, related health conditions, multiple clinic locations, feedback entries and more.
For more details, go here}:
Treato WordPress Plugin
(Treato)
Treato lets you add a sidebar widget that allows your site visitors to search drugs and read what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato collects and analyzes experiences sourced directly from patients written in forums and blog posts, then aggregates the content to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users can access 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 WP Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows visitors to locate and book a virtual consult with real doctors, clinical psychologists, etc. via HD video or text chat from any mobile device, computer, or smartwatch.
With the widget installed, 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, connect in real time using video or text chat, or send the doctor a question.
For more details, go here}:
Trend MD
(TrendMD)
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 WP Plugin)
This free 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 in a standardized format and make more informed decisions about the food they consume.
(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin For WordPress – Custom Post Type Label Creation)
WP Nutrition Facts uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labelling regulations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Ultimate Recipe
(WP Ultimate Recipe Plugin)
If you own a health-related business that provides nutrition or healthy eating recommendations, a great source of content that will engage your readers is to publish healthy recipes.
A plugin like WP Ultimate Recipe lets you publish healthy and delicious recipes on your site.
Other recipe plugins for WordPress include:
- Recipe Card – Create recipes that your site visitors can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – EasyRecipe makes publishing recipes on your site easy with features like cut and paste, plain text recipe auto conversion, live custom formatting, Google Recipe View formatting, automatic ratings and conversion from other recipe plugins.
- ZipList Recipes – 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 WP Plugin)
The Awesome Fitness Testimonials plugin lets you add fitness & wellness testimonials, case studies and reviews, before and after photos, videos, etc. to your site.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic Plugin For WordPress)
Exercise Images by Everkinetic lets you display a database of exercise diagrams in your posts and pages.
(Exercise Images Plugin For WordPress – Database)
For more details, go here}:
In the next section, we look at WordPress themes that are suitable for health and medical businesses.
***
This is the end of section two of this article on ways to grow your health business online.
Click here to continue:
***
***
"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum