In Part 1 of this guide on ways to grow your health or medical web presence, we covered the following topics:
- Challenges Professional Medical Providers Face Online
- Online Opportunities For Health And Medical Services Providers
- How To Improve Your Web Pages
- How To Improve The Content On Your Site
In Parts Two and Three, we explore more ways to grow your health-related business online.
Topics covered in this (and the next section) include:
- Ways Of Improving Web Traffic
- Tips For Generating More Leads & Enquiries
- Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using WordPress Plugins
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
- Using WP Plugins To Improve Your Website’s Capability
- WP For Business – An Introduction To WordPress Themes
Note: WordPress medical and health plugins are listed in this section. Medical and health-related themes are covered in Part Three.
Grow Your Medical Website – WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Driving More Visitors
Web traffic is vital to your business growth. This section explores how to improve your health or medical website using WordPress themes and plugins.
Optimizing Your Website For Search Engines (SEO) With WordPress
There are lots of ways that WordPress helps optimize your website for search engines:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Tags – Specify the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages (posts) for.
- Categories – Create categories for your posts and products.
- Excerpts – Set an excerpt that will appear in search results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for better search results.
- Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that allows you to easily create internal links for faster indexing of your web pages
- Post Notification – Set up your site to automatically notify other search directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your site.
WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Better User Engagement And Generating More Traffic
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are also a number of WordPress plugins that will improve your website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your website’s SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your site’s search engine optimization)
Other things you can do to improve your health site’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing. Here are a few more plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – Set up your own online social community on your site, with member profiles, activity streams, messaging, user groups, and more.
- bbPress – This plugin can be used to set up and manage a forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – Send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard, without a 3rd party subscription.
- Disqus – Power discussions and helps to increase engagement on your site.
- Social Media Feather – Easily add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your pages and posts.
(You can add social sharing buttons to your site easily using free or inexpensive plugins)
Generating More Leads & Enquiries
In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve your sales and generate new leads and enquiries online.
Adding A Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is an excellent way to build a subscriber list. It] provides many benefits and advantages including:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides useful updates
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special products or services to a select audience
- Increases interaction
- Provides another way for your content to be shared with others
A proven way to attract new subscribers to your newsletter is to provide users with valuable information and offer them free gifts in exchange for their personal details. This can be a special report, tips for improving general health and diet, access to medical calculators, vouchers, membership access to videos, podcasts, etc.
Contact Forms
Contact forms make it easy and simple for readers to get in touch. Users can report issues, ask questions to specific departments, ask for a quote, and more.
Contact forms provide several benefits, like:
- Reduces 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 page or post
- Improves the professional look of your website
- More convenient for visitors
A popular contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin lets you add and manage multiple contact forms into any page or post, customize your form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is also supported.
Another feature you may want to consider if you want to set up a website for a medical practice is to add sections to your contact form so prospective clients can choose which practitioner they want to contact. This ensures that visitors’ requests reach the correct destination.
Add Maps
A map helps your visitors and customers find you.
Maps are very useful tools for several reasons:
- A map increases local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Show location of events
(Adding a map helps your visitors and clients find you)
Below are some plugins that let you embed, customize and display maps on your site:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increasing User Engagement And Generating More Visitors To Your Medical Website
Plugins For WordPress
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your site that will immediately add a range of functional tools for your site visitors. Here are just some of these:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar Plugin)
Booking Calendar allows you to add online booking services to your site. This flexible plugin is well supported and provides users with an intuitive interface. It is suitable for a range of medical-related uses, such as medical practitioners, specialists, massage therapists, booking yoga classes, etc.
(Booking Calendar Plugin For WordPress – Overview)
The plugin works right out of the box. Website visitors can check the availability of services and book appointments easily. Site administrators and visitors receive notifications. The plugin also lets you add a calendar or booking form to your website’s sidebar, and supports multiple languages. The plugin is also available in a premium version with additional features.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Management
(Manage Event Registrations Automatically With Event Espresso Plugin For WordPress)
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 plugin for WP lets you easily create your event and start accepting online bookings in minutes
(Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager And Ticketing Registration Plugin)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich software that gives you full control of the event registration management process.
To learn more about the benefits and features of using Event Espresso, refer to this article:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin For WordPress)
Calculator Pro provides a free collection of over 400 calculators that you can display on your website and embed into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t designed for medical or health-related applications, but there are many you can include in your website, including:
- Body Statistics – e.g. Blood Volume Calculator, Child Height Calculator, GFR (Glomerular Filtration Rate) Calculator, Max Heart Rate Calculator, Stride Length Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Calorie to kJ Calculator, kJ to Calorie Calculator, Calories Burned Swimming Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Coopers 12 Minute Run Test Calculator, Bruce Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Bike Size Calculator, Blood Sugar Converter Calculator, Due Date Calculator, Smoking Cost Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Carbohydrate Calculator, Water Intake Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. BMI Calculator, Weight Loss Percentage Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form – WordPress Plugin)
Calculated Fields Form lets you create dynamically calculated field forms, including:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculators
- And many more
A premium version of this plugin is also available and includes extra features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets users record their weight on given dates. The data is then shown in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker – WordPress Plugin – 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 BMI Calculator Widget
(Simple BMI Calculator – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin installs a widget on your sidebar that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
As well as Simple BMI Calculator, there are additional plugins you can check out to perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A responsive 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 BMI
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors calculate their basal metabolic rate, by entering their age, sex and weight.
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data Plugin)
Drug Interaction Data will retrieve and display information about drugs, including what the drugs are used for and what other medications the drugs are known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data – WordPress Plugin – Data Results)
Information about drugs can be displayed as a widget or inside your pages and posts. 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 – WordPress Plugin)
PubMed Posts adds a dashboard widget that lets you add content from PubMed articles, as well as a search feature that finds posts with specific article data. It also includes an editor that lets you change the layout of your post content.
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 WordPress Plugin)
This versatile plugin can be used for clinic and health care related websites. You can add service pages with booking forms, locations, provide information on health conditions and symptoms, add case studies, link indication tags to services and conditions, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Treato
(Treato)
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 from related forums and blog posts, then aggregates the content to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users can access 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
(HealthTap Concierge – WordPress Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows consumers to consult with real doctors, clinical psychologists, etc. via HD video or text chat from any mobile device, computer, or smartwatch.
With the widget installed, users 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, chat using text or video, or send the doctor a question.
For more details, go here}:
TrendMD
(Trend MD)
TrendMD lets you add the TrendMD recommendations widget to your website. 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)
WP Nutrition Facts is a simple plugin for WordPress that lets you insert 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 – WordPress Plugin – Nutritional Facts 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)
If you own a health-related business that provides nutritional 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 recipes on your site.
Other WordPress recipe plugins include:
- Recipe Card – Create recipes with nutrition facts that 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 – 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)
Awesome Fitness Testimonials allows you to display fitness and wellness testimonials, reviews and case studies, before and after photos, etc. on your site.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images
(Exercise Images Plugin For WordPress)
The Exercise Images plugin lets you add exercise images to your site.
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic – Image Catalog)
For more details, go here}:
In the next section, we will be discussing WordPress themes for medical and health businesses.
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This is the end of section 2.
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