In Part 1 of this article on ways to build your medical or health-related business web presence, we provided in-depth tips and suggestions on the following areas:
- Challenges Health Businesses Face Online
- Opportunities For The Medical And Health Profession In The Web Economy
- Your Web Pages
- Improve The Content On Your Website
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your health or medical-related services online.
Areas covered include:
- Ways To Improve Traffic
- Generate Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Tools
- WordPress Plugins & Themes That Can Help Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
Note: Plugins are described in this section. Health and medical themes are listed in Part Three.
Tips For Improving Web Traffic Using WordPress
Your web traffic is a vital part of your online business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines (SEO)
There are so many ways WordPress can help to optimize your website for search engines:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – configure the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your posts.
- Tags – Choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages for.
- Post Categories – Add categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Post Excerpts – Create descriptions for your posts that search engines will display.
- Images – title images used in your content with keywords for better search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily link internal content
- Pinging – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify other sites and directories whenever a new post is published on your site.
Improving Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With WordPress Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress community makes available dozens of plugins that will improve your health website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your business.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO)
Other ways to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing. Here are a few more WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – This free WordPress plugin allows you to run your own social network on your WordPress site, with member profiles, user groups, activity streams, messaging, and more.
- bbPress – Use this WordPress plugin to set up and manage an online community forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter lets you send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your site.
- Monarch – Use this WordPress plugin to add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your pages and posts.
(You can add social sharing to your site easily with free or inexpensive plugins)
Generate New Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Applications
Let’s now take a look at how to improve your sales and generate new leads and enquiries.
Adding A Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is a great way to grow and retain your readership. It] provides a number of benefits and advantages including:
- Sends targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for increasing user interaction
- Provides additional ways for your content to be shared around with others
One of the things you can do to get visitors to subscribe to your newsletter is to provide users with content of high value and offer them a free gift in exchange for their details. This can be a guide, checklists for improving health, fitness and diet, access to health tools, coupons, membership access to courses, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
A contact form makes it easy and simple for prospective customers to contact you. A contact form also allows visitors to provide feedback, contact specific departments, request a quote, send suggestions for improvements and more.
Contact forms provide many benefits and advantages, like:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- They can be added to any page or post
- Improves the professional look of your website
- Convenience for site visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WP Plugin)
This free contact form plugin allows you to 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 submitting, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is supported.
Another feature to consider if you plan to set up a website for a health center or medical clinic is adding sections to your contact form so users can select the practitioner they want to contact. This helps get their comment to the correct recipient.
Add Maps
Adding maps helps your visitors and customers find you.
A map is a useful tool for several reasons:
- A map increases local SEO
- Visitors can find your office easily and plan their trips better
- Shows location of events
(Adding a map to your website helps your visitors and clients find you)
Popular Google Maps plugins for WordPress include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins & Themes For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Better User Engagement And Traffic Generation
WordPress Plugins
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your site that will immediately add a range of practical tools for site visitors. Here are some of these plugins:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar)
The Booking Calendar plugin lets you add online booking services to your site. This flexible plugin provides users with an intuitive and user-friendly interface. It is suitable for a wide range medical and health consulting businesses, such as dental practitioners, specialists, alternative therapists, booking sessions with personal trainers, etc.
(Booking Calendar – WordPress Plugin – Overview)
The plugin works out of the box. Website visitors can check the availability of services and book appointments quickly and easily. Site administrators and visitors receive email notifications. Booking Calendar also lets you add a calendar or booking form to your site’s sidebar, and offers multi-language support. A premium version is also available and includes extra features.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticket Manager Plugin
(Manage Bookings & Registrations Via The Web Using Event Espresso WP Plugin)
If your business involves running health events like seminars or workshops, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration WordPress software enables you to easily set up your event and begin accepting registrations literally in a few minutes
(Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed plugin that gives you full control of your event registration management process.
Go here to learn more about managing events with Event Espresso:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin For WordPress)
This is a free collection of over 400 calculators that you can provide to users on your website. It also supports internationalization
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t designed for health or medical-related uses, but there are many you can include in your website, including:
- Body Statistics – e.g. ANC Calculator, Durnin/Womersley Skinfold Body Fat Calculator, GFR (Glomerular Filtration Rate) Calculator, Modification of Diet in Renal Disease (MDRD) GFR Calculator, WHtR Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, Daily Energy Expenditure Calculator, Calories Burned Walking Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Astrand Test Calculator, Bruce Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. One Rep Max Weight Lifting Calculator, Blood Donation Calculator, Due Date Calculator, Sobriety Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. BMR Calorie Calculator, Macronutrient 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)
With Calculated Fields Form you can create dynamically calculated field forms, such as:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculator
- And more
The plugin is also available in a premium version with many extra features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin For WordPress)
This free plugin lets logged-in users record their weight periodically. The results are then displayed in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker WP Plugin – User 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 BMI Calculator
(Simple BMI Calculator Plugin For WordPress)
This simple plugin for WordPress installs a widget on your website that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
In addition to Simple BMI Calculator, there are additional plugins you can check out to perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A BMI 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 figure out their basal metabolic rate, by entering their age, sex and weight.
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data)
Drug Interaction Data Plugin can be used to 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 – Information Screen)
Drug information can be displayed inside your pages and posts, or as a widget on your sidebar menu. The plugin loads the drug and pharmaceutical data from 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 For WordPress)
This plugin adds a dashboard widget that lets you publish content to your site from PubMed articles, as well as a search feature that lets users search posts with specific article data. The plugin also includes an editor that changes the layout of your post content.
PubMed includes over 25 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books.
For more details, go here}:
MJM Clinic
(MJM Clinic Plugin)
This versatile plugin can be used to add functionality to medical and health care related websites that provide information about health conditions and symptoms.
For more details, go here}:
Treato
(Treato Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin lets you embed the Treato healthcare search engine into your WordPress sidebar so you and your site visitors can search a vast drug database and see what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato gathers and analyzes experiences sourced directly from patients written in online forums and blog posts, then aggregates the posts to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users can access insight about over 14,000 conditions and over 26,500 medications from over 2.2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap
(HealthTap – WordPress Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows visitors to consult with doctors, clinical psychologists, etc. via text chat or HD video from any mobile device, personal computer, even 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 health topic. They can then select a doctor, chat using video or text, or send questions and get answers with the service, which has a database of over 73,000 doctors.
For more details, go here}:
TrendMD
(TrendMD)
TrendMD adds the TrendMD recommendations widget to your WP 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)
WP Nutrition Facts lets you insert a nutrition facts table into your pages, posts and custom post types, allowing your site visitors to make informed food choices towards healthy eating goals.
(WP Nutrition Facts WordPress Plugin – Create Nutritional Facts Labels)
This plugin uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labeling regulations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Ultimate Recipe
(WP Ultimate Recipe – WordPress Plugin)
If you run a health-related website that provides diet and nutrition or healthy eating recommendations, a great source of content that will engage your readers is to add great recipes.
A plugin like WP Ultimate Recipe lets you easily add delicious and healthy on your site.
Other WordPress recipe plugins include:
- Recipe Card – Publish recipes that your site visitors can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – EasyRecipe makes publishing recipes on your site easy with features like cut & paste, auto conversion of your plain text recipe posts, Google Recipe View formatting and preview button, live custom formatting, automatic ratings and conversion from other recipe plugins.
- ZipList Recipes – Easily format recipe text and add images. The plugin also provides a number of additional features, including SEO and Google Recipe View formatting.
- 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, reviews and case studies to your website.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images by Everkinetic
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic)
Exercise Images lets you add a database of exercise diagrams to your site.
(Exercise Images Plugin – Image Database)
For more details, go here}:
In part three, we will be discussing medical and health-related themes for WordPress.
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This is the end of part two.
To view Part Three, click here:
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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