In Part One of this comprehensive article on ways to grow your medical-related business web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following topics:
- Online Challenges For Medical Practitioners
- Opportunities For Medical And Health Services Providers In The Online Economy
- How To Improve Your Web Pages
- Ways To Improve The Content On Your Website
In Parts 2 and 3, we continue looking at more ways to grow your health-related business online.
Areas covered include:
- Improve Traffic
- Generate Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Creating Better User Engagement And Driving More Traffic
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
- Adding New Functionality To Your Web Site With Plugins
- WordPress For Beginners – An Introduction To WP Themes
Note: Plugins are listed in this section. WordPress themes for medical businesses are listed in Part 3.
Improve Website Traffic Using WordPress
Web traffic is vital to your online business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimizing Your Site For SEO
There are lots of ways that WordPress helps improve SEO:
- SEO-Friendly – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized web addresses for your article pages (called posts).
- Tags – WordPress lets you choose the keywords that you want your posts to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Categories – Add categories for your posts and products.
- Excerpts – Create descriptions for your posts that search engines will show.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for improved search engine results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily link your content to other posts and pages on your site
- Post Notification – Configure your site to automatically notify (ping) other search directories the moment a new post is published on your site.
WordPress Plugins That Can Help To Improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are also a number of WordPress plugins that will improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your business.
For example, you can install the plugins below to improve your website’s SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your site’s SEO)
Other ways to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing. Here are a few more useful plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – This free WordPress plugin can be used to run a social networking community on your WordPress site.
- bbPress – This plugin lets you run your own forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – Send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard.
- Disqus – Power discussions and increases user engagement on your site.
- Floating Social – Easily add social sharing features on your posts and pages.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site using free or inexpensive plugins)
Generating More Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Applications
Let’s take a look now at ways to improve your sales and generate more leads and enquiries online.
Providing A Newsletter
Adding a newsletter is an excellent way to build a list of subscribers. It] provides several benefits, like:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special products or services to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for user engagement
- Provides you with additional ways for readers to share your content
One of the best ways to get visitors to subscribe to your newsletter is to provide high value information and offer users free gifts in exchange for their details. This could be an exclusive report, checklists for improving fitness and well-being, access to fitness apps, free trials, access to courses, podcasts, etc.
Contact Forms
A contact form makes it easy and simple for readers to get in touch. Contact forms also allow readers to report issues, ask questions to specific departments, ask for quotes, give suggestions and more.
Contact forms provide a number of benefits, like:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what gets sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Contact forms can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- Convenience for site visitors
A very popular contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you insert multiple contact forms into any page or post, customize the forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering is also supported.
Something to consider if you plan to set up a website for a health center or medical clinic is to segment your contact form so users can choose which section of the center they want to reach. This ensures that visitors’ requests reach the correct person.
Add Maps
A map helps your visitors and clients find you.
Integrating maps, such as Google Maps, with your site also provides visitors with many benefits, such as:
- A map increases local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Show location of events
(Adding a map to your site helps your visitors and clients find you)
Here are some plugins that let you embed, customize and display maps on your website:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Visitors With WordPress Plugins
WordPress Plugins For Health And Medical Services Providers
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your website that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for users. Here are some of the plugins you can choose from:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar Plugin For WordPress)
This free plugin allows you to add appointment booking services to your site. Booking Calendar is well supported and has an intuitive and user-friendly interface. It is highly suitable for a range of businesses, e.g. dental practices, surgical centers, massage therapists, booking patient appointments, etc.
(Booking Calendar Plugin For WordPress – Overview)
This bookings plugin works right out of the box. Website visitors can check availability of services you offer and make online bookings easily. Site administrators and visitors receive notifications. The plugin also lets you add a calendar or booking form to your website’s sidebar, and supports multiple languages. The developers of this plugin also provide a premium version with a ton of additional features.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – Event Manager And Ticket Registration System For WordPress
(Manage Bookings & Registrations Via The Web With Event Espresso For WP)
If your business involves running medical or health seminars, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WordPress lets you easily set up multiple events and start receiving bookings literally in a few minutes
(Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticketing Manager Plugin)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed software that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.
We have written an in-depth article on Event Espresso here:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
Calculator Pro is a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed these into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of the calculators aren’t designed for health or medical applications, but there are a number you can add to your site, including the following:
- Body Statistics – e.g. BMR Calculator, Carbohydrate Calculator, Katch-Mcardle BMR Calculator, Metric BMR Calculator, US Navy Body Fat Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, kJ to Calorie Calculator, Calories Burned Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Astrand Test Calculator, Bruce Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Beats and Breaths Calculator, Blood Donation Calculator, Pregnancy Calculator, Sobriety Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Carbohydrate Calculator, Water Intake Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. BAI (Body Adiposity Index) Calculator, Weight Loss Percentage Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form Plugin)
The Calculated Fields Form plugin is great for creating forms that perform single and complex calculations, including:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculators
- And more
A premium plugin version with extra features and functionalities is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin)
Weight Loss Tracker is a free plugin that lets logged-in users record their weight on given dates. The results are then displayed in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin For WordPress – Graph)
The plugin allows users to enter 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 Plugin For WordPress)
This free plugin lets you add a widget to your sidebar that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
As well as 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 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 that displays Body Mass Index
- 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)
This plugin will retrieve and display information about drugs, including what the drug is used for and what other medications the drug is known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data – WordPress Plugin – Database Results)
Drug information can be displayed inside your web content, 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.
For more details, go here}:
PubMed Posts
(PubMed Posts Plugin)
PubMed Posts adds a dashboard widget that creates posts from PubMed articles, plus a search widget that lets visitors search for posts with specific article data. The plugin also includes a basic editor that changes the layout of your post content.
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 versatile plugin can be used to add functionality to clinic and health care related websites, such as inserting service pages with booking forms, organising your services into hierarchical categories, clinic locations, feedback entries and more.
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 you and your users can search drugs and see what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato collects and analyzes experiences sourced directly from patients written in medical forums and blog posts, then aggregates the content to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users receive insight about the side effects of 26,000+ medications, drug comparisons across over 14,700 medical conditions, which drugs people feel are working, and more, from over 2.2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap
(HealthTap Concierge Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows users to consult with real doctors, clinical psychologists, etc. via text chat or HD video from any mobile device, computer, or smartwatch.
With the widget installed, users can type in a health question and based upon their location and type of question, they will 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 a question and get answers with the HealthTap service, which has a database of over 73,000 doctors.
For more details, go here}:
TrendMD
(TrendMD WP Plugin)
This plugin will add the TrendMD recommendations widget to your site. 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 Plugin)
This simple WordPress plugin lets you add a nutrition facts table into your pages, posts and custom post types, allowing your visitors to make more informed decisions about the food products they consume.
(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin For WordPress – Creating 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 – WordPress Plugin)
If you own a health-related website that provides nutritional or healthy eating advice, a great way to add engaging content to your site is to add recipes.
A plugin like WP Ultimate Recipe lets you add healthy and delicious recipes on your site.
Other recipe plugins for WordPress include:
- Recipe Card – Publish recipes with nutrition facts that your site visitors can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – Makes publishing recipes on your site easy with features like cut and paste, auto conversion of your plain text recipe posts, Google Recipe View formatting, live custom formatting, 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 lets you add fitness and wellness testimonials, reviews and case studies to your health & fitness sites.
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 – Image Catalog)
For more details, go here}:
In part 3 of this detailed article, we take a look at medical and health themes for WordPress.
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This is the end of part 2.
Click here to continue:
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"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