In Part 1 of this guide on ways to grow your medical or health web presence, we covered the following areas:
- Online Challenges For Health Practitioners
- Online Opportunities For Health And Medical Professionals
- Essential Web Pages
- Improve The Content On Your Website
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your health or medical business online.
Areas covered include:
- Tips For Improving Traffic
- Generating More Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins That Improve Search Engine Optimization, 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. Medical and health-related themes are covered in Part 3.
Grow Your Health And Medical Clinic Website – Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Traffic With WordPress Plugins
Your web traffic is vital to your business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimizing Your Site For Search Engines (SEO) Using WordPress
There are many ways that WordPress helps improve SEO:
- URLs – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the web address of your pages.
- Tags – Choose the keywords that you want your article pages (posts) to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Add categories for your posts and products.
- Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose the description for your posts that will display to search engine users.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for better search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily link your content to other posts and pages on your site
- Pinging – WordPress can be set up to automatically notify other sites and directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your website.
WordPress Plugins That Can Help To Improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WP development community makes available dozens of plugins that improve your website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your business.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (for search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO)
Other WordPress tools you can use to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing features. Here are a few more plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – Set up your own online social networking community on WordPress.
- bbPress – This free plugin can be used to set up your own forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – This plugin lets you send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard, without requiring a 3rd party subscription.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and increases user engagement on your website.
- Monarch – Use this WordPress plugin to add social sharing features and buttons to your website.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website using WordPress plugins)
Generating More Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
In this section we will show you how to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries for your health-related business.
Provide An Email Newsletter
Adding a newsletter is an excellent way to build a list of subscribers. It] provides a number of benefits and advantages, like:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides a highly targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special products or services to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for user interaction
- Provides additional opportunities for subscribers to share your content
A proven way to get visitors to subscribe to your newsletter is to provide high value content and offer users free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their personal details. This could be a handy guide, tips for improving health, fitness and well-being, access to fitness applications, coupons, access to videos, podcasts, etc.
Provide Contact Forms
A contact form makes it easy and simple for prospective customers to get in touch with you. Readers can provide feedback, ask questions to specific departments, ask for quotes, and more.
Contact forms provide several benefits and advantages, like:
- Reducing spam
- Set up automated responses
- Giving you control over what is sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- They can be added to any post or page
- Improves the professional look of your website
- Convenient for site visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7)
This free contact form plugin is easy to install and configure and allows you to insert and manage multiple contact forms into any post or page, customize your form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering is supported.
Something else to consider if you are setting up a website for a health center or medical clinic is adding sections to your contact form so users can select which section of the center they are contacting you about. This helps get their comment to the correct recipient.
Adding A Map
Adding a map helps your visitors and customers find you.
Integrating maps, such as Google Maps, with your WordPress site also provides many benefits, such as:
- Maps improve local SEO
- Helps visitors find you easily
- Display location of events
(A map 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
Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Visitors Using WordPress Plugins
Health Services Plugins For WordPress
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your medical website that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for visitors. Here are just some of the plugins you can choose from:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar – WordPress Plugin)
The Booking Calendar plugin lets you add appointment bookings to your site. It is well supported, has an intuitive and user-friendly interface and flexible functionality. It is suitable for a range medical and health consulting uses, e.g. dental practices, physicians, chiropractors, booking yoga classes, etc.
(Booking Calendar – Overview)
This bookings plugin works out of the box. Your website visitors can check the availability of services and book appointments online quickly and easily. Administrators and visitors receive email notifications. Booking Calendar also lets you add a calendar or booking form to your website’s sidebar, and offers multi-language support. The developers of this plugin also provide a premium version with a ton of additional features.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticket Manager Software
(Manage Your Events Online With Event Espresso Plugin For WP)
If you plan to run health events like seminars or workshops, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin lets you easily create an event and begin receiving registrations in just minutes
(Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed application that gives you complete control of your event registration management process.
We have written a comprehensive article on Event Espresso. Go here to learn more about this:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin)
Calculator Pro Calculators provides a free collection of 400+ calculators that you can display on your website. Internationalization is supported.
Most of the calculators aren’t specifically designed for medical or health applications, but there are several you can add to your site, including the following:
- Body Statistics – e.g. Body Surface Area Calculator, Durnin/Womersley Skinfold Body Fat Calculator, Lean Body Mass Calculator, Max Heart Rate Calculator, US Navy Body Fat Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, kJ to Calorie Calculator, Calories Burned Walking Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. BAI (Body Adiposity Index) Calculator, Rockport Walk Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Beats and Breaths Calculator, Blood Donation Calculator, Ovulation Calculator, Target Heart Rate Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Carbohydrate Calculator, Protein 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 many more
The developers of this plugin also provide 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 on given dates. The results are then shown in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker – Graph)
The plugin allows users to insert target weights and provides support for various weight formats: Metric (Kg), Imperial – Stones & Pounds, Imperial – Pounds only.
For more details, go here}:
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator
(Simple Body Mass Index Calculator Plugin For WordPress)
Simple BMI Calculator is a free WordPress plugin that lets you add a widget to your website that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
In addition to Simple Body Mass Index Calculator, there are a number of other plugins you can check out to perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A BMI and BMR 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 inputting their age, sex and weight.
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data)
Drug Interaction Data Plugin for WordPress retrieves and displays drug information, including what the drugs are used to treat and what other medications the drugs are known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data Plugin – Data Results)
Drug information can be displayed inside your posts and pages, or as a widget on your blog sidebar. The data is provided by 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 as defined by the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
For more details, go here}:
PubMed Posts
(PubMed Posts Plugin)
This plugin adds a dashboard widget that lets you add content from PubMed articles, plus a search feature that lets your visitors find posts with specific data. It also includes a basic editor that lets you change the layout of data in your post content.
PubMed contains over 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 adding service pages with booking forms, organising your services into hierarchical categories, locations, create staff listings for practitioners and more.
For more details, go here}:
Treato WordPress Plugin
(Treato)
Treato lets you display information about drugs on your site and see what read what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato collects and analyzes patient experiences written in online forums and blog posts, then aggregates the content to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users receive insight about over 14,500 conditions and 26,500+ medications from over 2.2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap Concierge
(HealthTap Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows visitors to locate and book a virtual consult with real doctors via HD video or text chat from any mobile device, personal computer, even smartwatch.
With HealthTap Concierge installed on your WordPress site, 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 choose a doctor, connect in real time using video or text chat, or send the doctor their question.
For more details, go here}:
TrendMD
(Trend MD Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin 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 interesting scholarly content from your journals or websites through personalized recommendations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Nutrition Facts
(WP Nutrition Facts – WordPress Plugin)
WP Nutrition Facts lets you add a nutrition facts table into your posts, pages and custom post types, allowing your site visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food.
(WP Nutrition Facts – Custom Post Type Label Creation)
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 own a health or fitness-related business that provides diet or healthy eating recommendations, a great source of content that will engage your readers is to add healthy recipes.
A plugin like WP Ultimate Recipe lets you add healthy and delicious recipes on your site.
Other WordPress recipe plugins include:
- Recipe Card – Publish recipes that your site users can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – EasyRecipe lets you easily publish recipes on your site 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. Additional features like Google Recipe View formatting and SEO are included.
- And many more.
For more details, go here}:
Awesome Fitness Testimonials
(Awesome Fitness Testimonials WP Plugin)
The Awesome Fitness Testimonials plugin allows you to add fitness and wellness testimonials, reviews and case studies, before and after photos, etc. to your website.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images
(Exercise Images WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you display a database of exercise images in your pages and posts.
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic WordPress Plugin – Database)
For more details, go here}:
In part three of this guide, we will be discussing health and medical WordPress themes.
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This is the end of part 2.
To view Part Three, click this link:
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"I was absolutely amazed at the scope and breadth of these tutorials! The most in-depth training I have ever received on any subject!" - Myke O'Neill, DailyGreenPost.com