In Part 1 of this guide on ways to build your medical-related web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following topics:
- Online Challenges For Medical Professionals
- Opportunities For Health And Medical Services Practitioners
- Improve Your Website Pages
- Improve The Content On Your Site
In Parts 2 and 3, we discuss more ways to grow your medical or health services online.
Areas covered include:
- How To Improve Web Traffic
- Generating Leads & Enquiries
- Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Visitors With WordPress Plugins And Themes
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
Note: Plugins are listed in this section. Medical and health-related themes are listed in Part 3.
Your Medical Services & Health Clinic Website – WordPress Plugins & Themes That Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
Web traffic is an integral part of your online business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines (SEO) With WordPress
There are lots of ways that WordPress helps improve SEO:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – configure the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your posts.
- Tags – WordPress lets you choose the keywords that you want your articles to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Create categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Excerpts – Set the description for your posts that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for improved search results.
- Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily link internal content
- Pinging – Set up your site 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, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are a number of plugins for WordPress that improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your site.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin
(A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your site’s SEO)
Other things you can do to improve your site’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing. Here are some more powerful WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below are also free):
- BuddyPress – BuddyPress helps you set up a social community on WordPress, with member profiles, activity streams, user groups, messaging, and more.
- bbPress – This free plugin allows you to run your own discussion forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – Use E-Newsletter to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard, without requiring 3rd-party subscriptions.
- Disqus – use this WordPress plugin to power discussions and increases engagement on your site.
- Social Media Feather – Add powerful social sharing features and buttons to your site.
(You can add social sharing to your site easily using free or inexpensive plugins)
Ways To Generate New Leads & Enquiries
In this section we will show you how to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries online.
Providing An Email Newsletter
Adding a newsletter is an excellent way to build a list of subscribers. Adding email newsletters] provides many benefits, like:
- Sends targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides updates that can save businesses time and money
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Increases interaction
- Provides an additional way for readers to share your content
One of the things you can do to get visitors to become subscribers is to provide them with high value information and offer them a free gift in exchange for their personal details. This could be a guide, checklists for improving fitness and nutrition, access to health applications, free trials, membership access to courses, podcasts, etc.
Contact Forms
Contact forms make it easy and simple for readers to get in touch with you. Contact forms also allow visitors to raise concerns, ask questions to specific departments, request quotes, send suggestions for improvements and more.
Contact forms provide several benefits and advantages, like:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what is 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
- More convenient for site visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin is easy to install and set up and lets you create and manage multiple contact forms, customize the forms and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is also supported.
Something to consider if you want to set up a website for a health clinic or medical center is adding sections to your contact form so prospective clients can choose the section of the practice they want to reach. This ensures that visitors’ enquiries reach the right area.
Map Integration
Adding a map helps your visitors and customers find you.
Adding maps, such as Google Maps to your site also provides visitors with many benefits, such as:
- A map helps to improve local SEO
- Helps visitors find you easily
- Display location of events
(Adding a map helps your visitors and clients find you)
Below are just some of the more plugins that let you embed, customize and display maps on your WordPress site:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
How To Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors Using WordPress Plugins
WordPress Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your website that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for site visitors. Here are just some of these plugins:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar – WordPress Plugin)
This free bookings reservations 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 highly suitable for a wide range health and medical consulting businesses, e.g. dental practices, surgical centers, chiropractors, booking patient appointments, etc.
(Booking Calendar – Overview)
This plugin works right out of the box. Website visitors can check the availability of services and book appointments easily. Administrators and visitors receive email notifications. Booking Calendar also lets you add a calendar or booking form to your site’s sidebar, and supports multiple languages. A premium version of this plugin is also available with many more features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso
(Manage Event Registrations Via The Web Using Event Espresso WordPress Plugin)
If your business involves running health seminars, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration software allows you to easily schedule an event and start accepting bookings in minutes
(Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed plugin that gives you full control of your event registration management process.
To learn more about the benefits and features of using Event Espresso, see this article:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators – WordPress Plugin)
Calculator Pro Calculators provides a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed them into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t specifically designed for medical or health-related use, but there are several you can add to your website, including:
- Body Statistics – e.g. ANC Calculator, Fat Calculator, Katch-Mcardle BMR Calculator, Ponderal Index Calculator, Waist to Hip Ratio Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Daily Calorie Calculator, RMR Calculator, Calories Burned Walking Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. BAI (Body Adiposity Index) Calculator, Balke Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. One Rep Max Weight Lifting Calculator, Cigarette Savings Calculator, Pregnancy Calculator, Running Pace Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Calcium Calculator, Creatine 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 WP Plugin)
The Calculated Fields Form plugin lets you create forms that perform single and complex calculations, including:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculators
- And many more
The plugin is also available in a premium version with additional features.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin For WordPress)
Weight Loss Tracker is a simple plugin for WordPress that lets logged-in users record their weight on given dates. The data is then shown in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker – WordPress Plugin – User Graph)
The plugin allows users to insert target weights and supports the following weight formats: Metric (Kg), Imperial – Stones & Pounds, Imperial – Pounds only.
For more details, go here}:
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator Widget
(Simple Body Mass Index Calculator Widget)
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator is a simple plugin that lets you add a widget to your sidebar that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
In addition to Simple BMI Calculator, there are other WordPress plugins you can use that perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A mobile-friendly 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 displays your site visitor’s Body Mass Index
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors calculate their basal metabolic rate, based on their age, sex and weight.
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data – WordPress Plugin)
Drug Interaction Data Plugin for WordPress can be used to display drug information, including what the drug is used for and what other medications the drug is known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data Plugin – Results)
Information about drugs can be displayed inside your pages and posts, or as a widget on your blog 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.
For more details, go here}:
PubMed Posts
(PubMed Posts WP Plugin)
This plugin adds a dashboard widget that lets you crate posts from PubMed articles, as well as a search feature that helps visitors find posts with specific data. A simple content editor is also included with the plugin.
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)
MJM Clinic can be used to add functionality to medical and health care related websites that provide information on health conditions and symptoms.
For more details, go here}:
Treato WordPress Plugin
(Treato)
Treato lets you display information about drugs on your site and see what see 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 the side effects of over 26,500 medications, drug comparisons across over 14,000 medical conditions, which drugs people feel are working, and more, from over 2.2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap
(HealthTap)
HealthTap Concierge allows consumers to consult with real doctors, clinical psychologists, etc. via text chat or HD video from any mobile device, personal computer, even smartwatch.
With the plugin installed, users can type in a health question and 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 over video or text chat, or send the doctor a question.
For more details, go here}:
TrendMD
(TrendMD Plugin For WordPress)
TrendMD lets you add the TrendMD recommendations widget to your website. The TrendMD recommendations widget is used by scholarly publishers to increase their readership and revenue by allowing people to discover, read or cite scholarly content from your journals or websites through personalized recommendations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Nutrition Facts
(WP Nutrition Facts)
This free plugin lets you insert a nutrition facts table into your pages and posts, allowing your visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food.
(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin – Creating Custom Post Type Labels)
This plugin uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labeling regulations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Ultimate Recipe
(WP Ultimate Recipe Plugin)
If you run a health or fitness-related business that provides nutritional or healthy eating advice, a great way to add engaging content to your site is to publish healthy recipes.
A plugin like WP Ultimate Recipe lets you add healthy recipes on your site.
Other WordPress recipe plugins include:
- Recipe Card – Publish search engine optimized recipes with nutrition facts that your site users can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – EasyRecipe lets you easily add recipes to your site with features like cut and paste, plain text recipe auto conversion, live custom formatting, Google Recipe View formatting and preview button, automatic ratings and conversion from other recipe plugins.
- ZipList Recipes – You can 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 Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin allows you to showcase fitness and wellness testimonials, case studies and reviews, before and after photos, etc. on your site.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images
(Exercise Images – WordPress Plugin)
The Exercise Images plugin lets you add exercise drawings to your site.
(Exercise Images WP Plugin – Image Database)
For more details, go here}:
In the next section of this detailed guide, we take a look at medical and health themes.
***
This is the end of part 2 of this article on ways to grow your medical-related business web presence.
To continue, click this link:
***
***
"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