In Part One of this guide on ways to build your health-related web presence, we covered the following topics:
- Online Challenges For The Health & Medical Profession
- Opportunities For Medical & Health Professionals
- Your Web Pages
- Improve Your Content
In Parts 2 & 3, we explore more ways to grow your health-related services online.
Topics covered in this (and the following section) include:
- Improving Web Traffic
- Generate New Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins That Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Visitors To Your Website
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
- WP Plugins – The Easy Way To Extend Your Site’s Features And Functionality
- WordPress For Business – An Introduction To WP Themes
Note: Medical and health plugins are described in this section. Health and medical themes are covered in Part 3.
Ways To Improve Web Traffic With WordPress
Web traffic is an important part of your online business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic.
Optimize Your Website For SEO
There are loads of ways that WordPress helps improve SEO:
- SEO-Friendly – 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 your articles to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Add SEO-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Excerpts – Create an excerpt that will appear in search results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for better search results.
- Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links for faster page indexing
- Post Notification – Set up your site to automatically notify other search directories immediately upon publishing new content on your website.
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Better User Engagement And Traffic Generation
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WP community makes available dozens of plugins that will improve your health-related website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your site.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your site’s SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress 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 engagement and drive more web traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing features. Here are a few WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below are also free):
- BuddyPress – This plugin helps you run your own social network on your site.
- bbPress – This free plugin allows you to set up your own discussion forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – Use this WordPress plugin to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard, without requiring a 3rd party subscription.
- Disqus – use this WordPress plugin to power discussions and increases user engagement on your website or blog.
- Monarch – Add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your site.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their website with free or inexpensive plugins)
Ways To Generate New Leads & Enquiries
In this section we will discuss how to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries online.
Adding An Email Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is a great way to build a subscriber list. Adding an email newsletter provides a number of benefits including:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates
- Provides you with a highly targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for improving user interaction
- Provides other ways for your content to be shared around with new potential clients
A proven strategy for attracting newsletter subscribers is to provide high value information and offer users a free gift in exchange for their details. This could be an exclusive report, checklists for improving health and diet, access to health applications, coupons, membership access to videos, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
A contact form makes it easy and simple for prospective clients to contact you. Readers can raise concerns, ask questions to specific departments, request a quote, and more.
A contact form provides a number of benefits and advantages including:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what is sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Different forms can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- Convenient for visitors
A popular contact form plugin for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WordPress Plugin)
This free plugin is easy to install and configure and lets you create multiple contact forms into any page on your site, customize your form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Another feature to consider if you want to set up a website for a medical center is to add sections to your contact form so prospective clients can select the practitioner they want to contact. This helps get their comment to the correct person.
Adding Maps
Adding a map helps your visitors and clients find you.
Integrating maps (e.g. Google Maps), with your website also provides users with many benefits, such as:
- They help to increase local SEO
- Customers can better plan their visits and appointments
- Show location of events
(Adding a map to your site helps your visitors and customers find you)
Popular Google Maps plugins include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins And Themes For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Better User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
Health Services – WordPress Plugins
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your site to immediately add a range of functional tools for your site visitors. Here are some of these:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar WP Plugin)
The Booking Calendar plugin allows you to add online booking services to your site. It provides an intuitive interface with flexible functionality. It is highly suitable for a wide range of health-related businesses, e.g. dental practices, physicians, alternative therapists, booking patient appointments, etc.
(Booking Calendar Plugin For WordPress – Overview)
The plugin works out of the box. Website visitors can check the availability of services you offer and book appointments quickly and easily. Site administrators and visitors receive booking confirmations. The plugin also lets you add a calendar or booking form to your site’s sidebar, and supports multiple languages. A premium version is also available and includes additional features.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso
(Manage Bookings And Registrations Automatically Using Event Espresso 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 set up an event and start receiving online bookings literally in a few minutes
(Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich software that gives you complete control of the event registration management process.
We have written a detailed article about the benefits and features of using Event Espresso. For more details, go here:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators – WordPress Plugin)
Calculator Pro provides a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed them into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of the calculators aren’t designed for medical or health uses, but there are a number you can use, including:
- Body Statistics – e.g. Body Surface Area Calculator, Child Height Calculator, Katch-Mcardle BMR Calculator, Ponderal Index Calculator, VO2 Max Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Daily Calorie Calculator, kJ to Calorie Calculator, Calories Burned Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Astrand Test Calculator, Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Beats and Breaths Calculator, Cigarette Savings Calculator, Due Date Calculator, Running Pace Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Carbohydrate Calculator, Protein 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)
This plugin lets you create dynamically calculated field forms, including:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculator
- And more
The plugin is also available in a premium version with many more features.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker WordPress Plugin)
This free plugin lets users record their weight on given dates. This data is then displayed in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin – User Graph)
The plugin allows users to enter target weights and provides support for the following weight formats: Metric (Kg), Imperial – Stones & Pounds, Imperial – Pounds only.
For more details, go here}:
Simple BMI Calculator
(Simple BMI Calculator Plugin For WordPress)
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator is a free WordPress plugin that installs a widget on your sidebar that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
As well as Simple Body Mass Index Calculator, there are additional WordPress plugins you can check out that perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A BMI and Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) calculator that saves calculation data for logged-in users and gives an overview to the trainer (admin).
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator that shows users their BMI
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors calculate their basal metabolic rate, based on their age, sex and weight.
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data WordPress Plugin)
Drug Interaction Data can be used to display information about drugs, including what the drugs are used to treat and what other medications the drugs are known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data Plugin – Information Screen)
Drug information can be displayed inside your web content, or as a widget on your sidebar. The plugin loads the drug and pharmaceutical data from the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the U.S. National Institutes of Health and drug names are converted to the standardized RxNorm name.
For more details, go here}:
PubMed Posts
(PubMed Posts)
This plugin adds a dashboard widget that lets you add posts from PubMed articles, as well as a search widget that helps visitors find posts with specific article data. A simple content editor is also included with the plugin.
PubMed contains over 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 can be used for medical and health care related websites. It lets you add service pages with booking forms, provide information to site visitors about symptoms and health conditions, assign case studies, link indication tags to services, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Treato WordPress Plugin
(Treato Plugin)
Treato lets you embed the Treato healthcare search engine into your WordPress sidebar so your site visitors can search a vast drug database and read what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato collects and analyzes patient experiences written in medical forums and blog posts, then aggregates the content to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users receive valuable insight about side effects, drug comparisons, which drugs people feel work, and more from over 2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap Concierge
(HealthTap Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows users to locate and book a virtual consult with real doctors who specialize in a given health topic via text chat or HD video from any mobile device, computer, even smartwatch.
With With the HealthTap Concierge plugin installed, your site 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 health topic. They can then choose a doctor, chat using video or text, or send questions and get answers via the HealthTap service, which has a database of over 73,000 doctors.
For more details, go here}:
TrendMD
(Trend MD)
This plugin adds 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 interesting 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 and pages, allowing your visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food in a standardized format and make more informed decisions about the food they eat.
(WP Nutrition Facts – WordPress Plugin – Label Creation)
WP Nutrition Facts uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labeling regulations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Ultimate Recipe
(WP Ultimate Recipe Plugin For WordPress)
If you own a health or fitness-related business that provides dietary or healthy eating advice, a great source of content that will engage your readers is to publish healthy recipes.
A plugin like WP Ultimate Recipe lets you easily publish healthy recipes on your site.
Other recipe plugins for WordPress include:
- Recipe Card – Publish search engine optimized recipes with nutrition facts that site visitors can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – EasyRecipe lets you easily publish recipes on your site with features like cut & paste, plain text recipe auto conversion, Google Recipe View formatting and preview button, 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 allows you to add fitness & wellness testimonials, case studies and reviews to your site.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic WordPress Plugin)
Exercise Images lets you add a database of exercise diagrams to your website.
(Exercise Images Plugin – Image Database)
For more details, go here}:
In the next section, we look at WordPress themes that are suitable for medical and health businesses.
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This is the end of section two.
Click on this link to keep reading:
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