In Part 1 of this guide on ways to grow your medical or health-related web presence, we provided in-depth tips and suggestions on the following areas:
- Challenges Professional Health Services Providers Face Online
- Opportunities For Medical Providers In The Web Economy
- Ways To Improve Your Website Pages
- Improve Your Web Content
In Parts Two and Three, we continue looking at more ways to grow your medical-related business online.
Topics covered include:
- Tips For Improving Traffic
- Generate New Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Traffic Generation
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
- Using WP Plugins – The Easy Way To Enhance Your Site’s Functionality
- WordPress For Business – An Introduction To Themes
Note: Plugins are described in this section. Health and medical themes are covered in Part Three.
Improving Web Traffic Using WordPress
Your web traffic is vital to your business growth. This section explores ways to improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and generate more visitors to your site with WordPress plugins and themes.
Optimizing Your Site For SEO With WordPress
There are so many ways WordPress can help to optimize your website for search engines:
- SEO-Friendly – Set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Post Tags – Choose the keywords that you want your article pages to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Add search engine-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Excerpts – Set the description for your posts that search engines will display in their search result pages.
- Images – title images used in your content with keywords for improved search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily link internal content
- Pinging – WordPress can be set up to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories whenever a new post is published on your site.
Improving Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic To Your Business Generation Using WordPress Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress developer community makes available quite a number of plugins that improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your business.
Here are some plugins you can use to improve your SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your site’s search engine optimization)
Other WordPress tools you can add to improve your site’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social features. Here are some plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – This free plugin lets you set up a social network on your site.
- bbPress – This free WordPress plugin allows you to run a community forum on your WordPress site.
- E-Newsletter – Send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP site.
- Disqus – Power discussions and increases user engagement on your website.
- Monarch – Easily add social sharing features and buttons on your site.
(You can easily add social sharing buttons to your website using free or inexpensive plugins)
Generating Leads & Enquiries
In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve your sales and generate more leads and enquiries.
Adding A Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is a great way to retain and grow your readership. Adding a newsletter provides several benefits, like:
- Sends targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides useful updates
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for user engagement
- Provides you with an additional way for your content to be shared around with other potential clients
An effective strategy for attracting subscribers to your email newsletter is to provide high value content and offer users something for free in exchange for their details. This can be an exclusive guide, tips for improving general health and nutrition, access to health apps, free trials, access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for prospective customers to contact you. Contact forms also let readers send feedback, ask questions to specific departments, ask for quotes, and more.
A contact form provides a number of benefits including:
- Reduces spam
- Set up automated responses
- Gives you control over what is sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- Convenience for visitors
One of the most popular WordPress contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that lets you create multiple contact forms, customize your forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering is supported.
Something else to consider if you are setting up a website for a medical center is to add sections to your contact form so users can select which section of the practice they want to reach. This ensures that visitors get their comment to the right recipient.
Map
Adding a map to your site helps your visitors and customers find you.
Inserting maps, such as Google Maps, into your website also provides users with many benefits, such as:
- A map increases local SEO
- Visitors can find you more easily
- Displays location of events
(Adding maps helps your visitors and clients find you)
Popular map plugins for WordPress include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins & Themes That Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
Medical Services Plugins For WordPress
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your health-related website that will immediately add a range of practical tools for site visitors. Here are just some of these:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar WordPress Plugin)
Booking Calendar lets you add online bookings to your site. It provides an intuitive and user-friendly interface and flexible functionality. It is highly suitable for a range medical and health consulting businesses, such as medical practices, specialists, health spas, booking sessions with personal trainers, etc.
(Booking Calendar Plugin – Overview)
This booking reservations plugin works out of the box. Website visitors can check the availability of services you offer and make a booking easily. Administrators and visitors receive email notifications. Booking Calendar is also widget-ready, and offers multi-language support. A premium version is also available and includes a ton of additional features.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso
(Manage Event Bookings Online Using 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 lets you easily set up an event and begin receiving bookings literally in minutes
(Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich software that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.
If you want to learn more about the benefits and features of using Event Espresso, refer to this article:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
Calculator Pro provides a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed these into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of them aren’t specifically designed for health or medical applications, but there are quite a few you can add to your site, including:
- Body Statistics – e.g. Body Fat Calculator, Child Height Calculator, GFR (Glomerular Filtration Rate) Calculator, Max Heart Rate Calculator, US Navy Body Fat Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Daily Calorie Calculator, Daily Energy Expenditure Calculator, Calories Burned Running Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Coopers 12 Minute Run Test Calculator, Bruce Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. One Rep Max Weight Lifting Calculator, Cigarette Savings Calculator, Pace Calculator, Sobriety Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Carbohydrate Calculator, Water Intake Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. Ideal Weight Calculator, Weight Loss Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin is great for creating forms that perform single and complex calculations, such as:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculator
- And lots more
A premium plugin version with additional features and functionalities is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin For WordPress)
Weight Loss Tracker is a free plugin that lets users record their weight on given dates. This data is then shown in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker – Graph)
The plugin allows users to insert 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 BMI Calculator installs a widget on your website that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
As well as Simple BMI Calculator, there are other WordPress plugins you can check out 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.
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator that shows your users their Body Mass Index
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors figure out their basal metabolic rate, based on age, sex and weight.
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data WP Plugin)
Drug Interaction Data Plugin for WordPress will retrieve and display drug information, including what the drug is used to treat and what other medications the drug is known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data – Database 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.
For more details, go here}:
PubMed Posts
(PubMed Posts WordPress Plugin)
PubMed Posts adds a dashboard widget that creates posts from PubMed articles, plus a search function that locates posts with specific article data. A simple editor that lets you change the layout of data in your post content is also included with the plugin.
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 WordPress Plugin)
MJM Clinic was designed to add functionality to clinic and health care related websites, such as adding service pages with booking forms, organising your services into hierarchical categories, multiple service locations, feedback entries and more.
For more details, go here}:
Treato
(Treato WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you add a sidebar widget that allows your site visitors to search a vast drug database and see what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato collects and analyzes experiences sourced directly from patients written in related forums and blog posts, then aggregates the content to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users receive valuable insight about the side effects of over 26,600 medications, drug comparisons across over 14,500 medical conditions, which drugs people feel are working, and more, from over 2.2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap Concierge
(HealthTap Plugin For WordPress)
HealthTap Concierge allows visitors to locate and book a virtual consult with doctors via text chat or HD video from any mobile device, personal computer, even smartwatch.
With the widget installed, your visitors 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 select a doctor, chat using video or text, or send questions and get answers using the HealthTap service, which has a database of over 73,000 doctors.
For more details, go here}:
Trend MD
(TrendMD)
TrendMD lets you 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 scholarly content from your journals or websites through personalized recommendations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Nutrition Facts
(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin)
WP Nutrition Facts lets you add a nutrition facts table into your posts, pages and custom post types, allowing your site visitors to make better food choices towards healthy eating goals.
(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin For WordPress – 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 For WordPress)
If you run a health or fitness-related website that provides dietary or healthy eating information, a great source of content that will engage your readers is to publish 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 – Publish beautiful recipes that your readers can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – Makes publishing recipes on your site easy with features like cut and paste, plain text recipe auto conversion, 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. The plugin also provides a number of additional features, including Google Recipe View formatting and SEO.
- And many more.
For more details, go here}:
Awesome Fitness Testimonials
(Awesome Fitness Testimonials)
This plugin allows you to display fitness & wellness testimonials, case studies and reviews, before and after pics, videos, etc. on your site.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images by Everkinetic
(Exercise Images)
Exercise Images lets you insert exercise drawings into your pages and posts.
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic – WordPress Plugin – Image Catalog)
For more details, go here}:
In the next section, we look at WordPress themes that are suitable for medical businesses.
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This is the end of part 2.
Click on this link to continue reading:
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum