In Part 1 of this guide on ways to build your health-related web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Online Challenges For The Health Profession
- Opportunities For Medical & Health Businesses In The Digital Economy
- Your Web Pages
- Ways To Improve Your Web Content
In Parts Two & Three, we explore more ways to grow your health or medical business online.
Topics covered include:
- Improving Web Traffic
- Generating New Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Applications
- WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Creating Better User Engagement And Traffic Generation
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
Note: Plugins are described in this section. Health and medical themes are covered in Part 3.
Improve Website Traffic With WordPress
Web traffic is a vital part of your business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimize Your Site For Search Engines (SEO)
There are many ways that WordPress helps optimize your website for search engines:
- URLs – configure the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your article pages.
- Post Tags – Specify the keywords that you want your articles 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 – WordPress lets you compose an excerpt that search engines will show.
- Images – title images used in your content with keywords for better search results.
- Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that allows you to easily create internal links
- Post Notification – Configure your site to automatically notify other search directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your website.
How To Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress development community makes available many plugins that improve your website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your site.
Here are some plugins you can use to improve your site’s search engine optimization:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin (for search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your site’s search engine optimization)
Other things you can do to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social features. Here are a few powerful WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – Set up your own online social network on your site.
- bbPress – This free plugin can be used to run your own discussion forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – Use E-Newsletter to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP site.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your website.
- Monarch – This plugin lets you add social sharing features and buttons to your pages and posts.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their website using free or inexpensive plugins)
Ways To Generate More Leads & Enquiries
Let’s now take a look at how to improve sales and generate more leads and enquiries online.
Adding An Email Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is an excellent way to retain and grow your readership. It provides a number of benefits and advantages including:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides useful updates
- Provides a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Increases user interaction
- Provides you with other ways for readers to share your content
One of the things you can do to get visitors to subscribe to your newsletter is to provide high value content and offer users something for free in exchange for their details. This could be a handy guide, tips for improving fitness and nutrition, access to fitness apps, discount coupons, membership access to courses, podcasts, etc.
Contact Forms
Contact forms make it easy and simple for readers to get in touch. Visitors can raise concerns, ask questions to specific departments, ask for quotes, and more.
A contact form provides several benefits and advantages including:
- Reducing spam
- Set up automated responses
- Giving you control over what gets sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- 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)
This plugin is easy to install and configure and lets you insert and manage multiple contact forms on your posts and pages, customize your forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Something else to consider if you plan to set up a website for a medical center is adding sections to your contact form so prospective clients can choose the section of the center they are contacting you about. This will help get their comment to the correct department.
Map Integration
Maps help your visitors and customers find you.
Maps are very useful tools for several reasons:
- A map increases local SEO
- Customers can better plan their visits or appointments
- Show location of events
(Adding a map helps your visitors and clients find you)
Below are some of the more plugins that let you embed, customize and display Google maps on your WordPress site:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
Improving Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Web Traffic Using Plugins & Themes
Medical Or Health Services Plugins For WordPress
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your health or medical site that will immediately add a range of functional tools for users. Here are just some of these:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar Plugin For WordPress)
The Booking Calendar plugin allows you to add appointment booking services to your site. Booking Calendar is well supported, has an intuitive and user-friendly interface and flexible functionality. It is suitable for a range of businesses, such as medical practices, specialists, alternative therapists, booking yoga classes, etc.
(Booking Calendar – Overview)
This plugin works right out of the box. Your website visitors can check availability of services you offer and make a booking quickly and easily. Administrators and visitors receive booking confirmations. Booking Calendar is also widget-ready, and offers multi-language support. A premium version with additional features is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager & Ticketing Registration Software
(Manage Event Bookings Via The Web With Event Espresso For WP)
If you run health or medical events, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin enables you to easily set up multiple events and start processing online bookings literally in a few minutes
(Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticket Management Software)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich application that gives you full control over the event registration management process.
Go here if you would like to learn more about Event Espresso:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators WP Plugin)
Calculator Pro Calculators provides a free collection of 400+ calculators that you can display on your website. Internationalization is supported.
Most of them aren’t specifically designed for medical or health use, but there are many you can include in your website, including the following:
- Body Statistics – e.g. Body Composition Calculator, Fat Calculator, GFR (Glomerular Filtration Rate) Calculator, Metric BMR Calculator, Protein Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, kJ to Calorie Calculator, Calories Burned Walking Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Push-Up Test Calculator, Bruce Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Bike Size Calculator, Blood Donation Calculator, Due Date Calculator, Sobriety Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, Macronutrient Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. Ideal Weight Calculator (kg), Weight Loss Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form – WordPress Plugin)
The Calculated Fields Form plugin is useful for creating forms with dynamically calculated fields to display the calculated values, including:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculators
- And lots more
A premium version of this plugin is also available with extra features.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker WordPress Plugin)
Weight Loss Tracker is a simple plugin for WordPress that lets logged-in users record their weight on given dates. This data is then displayed in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker – WordPress Plugin – User Graph)
The plugin allows users to enter target weights and supports various weight formats: Metric (Kg), Imperial – Stones & Pounds, Imperial – Pounds only.
For more details, go here}:
Simple BMI 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.
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 mobile-friendly BMI and BMR calculator that saves calculation data for logged-in users and gives an overview to the site 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 many more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data Plugin For WordPress)
Drug Interaction Data Plugin for WordPress will retrieve and 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 WordPress Plugin – Information Screen)
Drug information can be displayed as a widget or inside your posts and pages. The data is provided by 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)
This plugin adds a dashboard widget that lets you add posts from PubMed articles, as well as a search feature that finds posts with specific data. A basic editor that changes 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)
The MJM Clinic Plugin was designed for clinic and health care related websites. It lets you add service pages with booking forms, multiple clinic locations, provide information to site visitors about health conditions and symptoms, create case studies, link indication tags to services and conditions, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Treato
(Treato Plugin For WordPress)
Treato WordPress plugin lets you display information about drugs on your site and see what read what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato gathers and analyzes patient experiences written in forums and blog posts, then aggregates the content to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users can access valuable insight about over 14,500 medical conditions from over 2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap Concierge
(HealthTap Concierge – WordPress Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows users to consult with real doctors, clinical psychologists, etc. via text chat or HD video from any mobile device, computer, or smartwatch.
With With the HealthTap Concierge plugin for WordPress installed, your visitors 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 their question and get answers via the service.
For more details, go here}:
TrendMD
(TrendMD WP Plugin)
The TrendMD plugin 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 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 is a simple plugin for WordPress that 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 and make informed food choices.
(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin For WordPress – Creating Labels)
This plugin 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 own a health or fitness-related website that provides nutrition or healthy eating suggestions, a great source of content that will engage your readers is to add recipes.
A plugin like WP Ultimate Recipe lets you easily add recipes on your site.
Other WordPress recipe plugins include:
- Recipe Card – Create and publish search optimized recipes with nutrition facts that readers can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – EasyRecipe lets you easily add recipes to your site with features like cut and paste, auto conversion of your plain text recipe posts, 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 Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin lets you showcase fitness & wellness testimonials, reviews and case studies on your site.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images
(Exercise Images Plugin For WordPress)
Exercise Images by Everkinetic lets you display a database of exercise diagrams on your site.
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic Plugin For WordPress – Database)
For more details, go here}:
In the next section, we will be discussing themes for medical clinics and health businesses.
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This is the end of part two.
Click here to keep reading:
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)