In Part 1 of this guide on ways to build your medical or health-related web presence, we covered the following areas:
- Online Challenges For The Health Profession
- Opportunities For Health Providers In The Digital Economy
- Your Website Pages
- Tips For Improving Your Web Content
In this section, we continue looking at more ways to grow your medical or health business online.
Areas covered in this (and the next section) include:
- Ways To Improve Web Traffic With WordPress
- Generate Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins That Can Improve Search Engine Optimization, Create Better User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
- Adding New Features And Functionality To Your Website With WordPress Plugins
- WP For Beginners – An Introduction To Themes
Note: Plugins are listed in this section. WordPress themes for medical businesses are listed in Part Three.
Ways Of Improving Traffic
Your web traffic is vital to your business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic.
Optimize Your Site For Search Engines (SEO)
There are many ways that WordPress helps improve your website’s SEO:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – Set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your article pages (called posts).
- Post Tags – Specify the keywords that you want your posts to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Categories – Add SEO-friendly categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Post Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose an excerpt that search engines will show.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for improved search results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that allows you to easily link internal content
- Post Notification – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify other search directories whenever a new post is published on your website.
WordPress Plugins That Can Help Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are various plugins for WordPress that improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your business.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your site’s search engine optimization:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO)
Other things you can do to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing. Here are some more WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – This plugin allows you to run a social network on WordPress.
- bbPress – This free plugin lets you run your own discussion forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – This plugin lets you send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress site.
- Disqus – This WordPress plugin lets you power discussions and increases engagement on your website.
- Floating Social – 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 WordPress plugins)
Ways To Generate More Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
Let’s take a look now at how to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries online.
Provide An Email Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is a great way to build a subscriber list. It provides several benefits, like:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides useful information and advice
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Increases user interaction
- Provides an additional way for your content to be shared around with new prospective customers
A proven way to attract subscribers 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 an exclusive guide, tips for improving diet and nutrition, access to fitness calculators, free trials, membership access to courses, contests, etc.
Add Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for prospective clients to contact you. A contact form also allows visitors to provide feedback, ask questions to specific departments, request a quote, and more.
Contact forms provide a number of benefits and advantages including:
- Reduces spam
- Set up automated responses
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- They can be added to any post or page
- Improves the professional look of your site
- Convenience for visitors
One of the most popular WordPress contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin For WordPress)
This free contact form plugin is easy to install and configure and lets you create and manage multiple contact forms, customize the forms and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering is supported.
Something to consider if you plan to set up a website for a health center or medical clinic is to segment your contact form so prospective clients can select which practitioner they want to contact. This helps visitors get their comment to the right department.
Add A Map
Adding maps to your site helps your visitors and customers find you.
Maps are a useful tool for several reasons:
- They help to increase local SEO
- Allows clients to better plan their meeting or appointments
- Show location of events
(A map helps your visitors and clients find you)
Below are just some plugins that let you embed, customize and display Google maps on your website:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using WordPress Plugins
Health – WordPress Plugins
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your health website that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for site visitors. Here are just some of these:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar Plugin For WordPress)
This free bookings plugin allows you to add online bookings to your site. This plugin has an intuitive and user-friendly interface and flexible functionality. It is suitable for a range health and medical consulting businesses, e.g. medical practitioners, specialists, chiropractors, booking sessions with personal trainers, etc.
(Booking Calendar – Overview)
This booking reservations plugin works out of the box. Your website visitors can check availability of services and book appointments online quickly and easily. Site administrators and visitors receive booking confirmations. Booking Calendar is also widget-ready, and supports multiple languages. A premium version of this plugin is also available and includes a ton of extra features.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso
(Manage Event Bookings Automatically Using Event Espresso Plugin For WordPress)
If you run health or medical events like seminars or workshops, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin lets you easily create your event and start accepting online registrations literally in minutes
(Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed software that gives you complete control of the event registration management process.
Go here to learn more about Event Espresso:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
Calculator Pro Calculators provides a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed them into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. It also supports internationalization
Most of them aren’t designed for medical or health-related usage, but there are many you can use, including the following:
- Body Statistics – e.g. Body Composition Calculator, FENa Calculator, Katch-Mcardle BMR Calculator, Modification of Diet in Renal Disease (MDRD) GFR Calculator, Stride Length Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Daily Calorie Calculator, RMR Calculator, Calories Burned Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Push-Up Test Calculator, Rockport Walk Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Bike Size Calculator, Blood Donation Calculator, Ovulation Calculator, Running Pace Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. BMR Calorie 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 is great for creating forms that perform single and complex calculations, including:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculator
- 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 logged-in users record their weight periodically. The data is then displayed in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin – User Graph)
The plugin allows users to insert target weights and supports various weight formats: Metric (Kg), Imperial – Stones & Pounds, Imperial – Pounds only.
For more details, go here}:
Simple BMI Calculator
(Simple BMI Calculator Widget – WordPress Plugin)
Simple BMI Calculator 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 other WordPress plugins you can use to perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A mobile-friendly Body Mass Index and Basal Metabolic Rate (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 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 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 – WordPress Plugin – Results)
Information about drugs can be displayed on your site. The data is provided by the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the U.S. National Institutes of Health and converts common names of drugs to the standardized RxNorm name as defined by the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
For more details, go here}:
PubMed Posts
(PubMed Posts WordPress Plugin)
PubMed Posts adds a dashboard widget that creates posts from PubMed articles, and a search feature that helps visitors find posts with specific data. The plugin also includes a simple editor that changes the layout of your post content data.
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 Plugin)
The MJM Clinic Plugin can be used for clinic and health care related websites. You can add service pages with booking forms, multiple clinic locations, 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
(Treato – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you add a sidebar widget that allows your site visitors to search drugs and read what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato collects and analyzes experiences sourced directly from patients written in medical forums and blog posts, then aggregates the content to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users can access valuable insight about 14,700+ conditions and over 26,000 medications from over 2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap Concierge
(HealthTap WordPress Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows users to locate and book a virtual consult with real doctors who specialize in a given health topic via HD video or text chat from any mobile device, computer, or smartwatch.
With With the HealthTap Concierge plugin for WordPress 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 select a doctor, chat using text or video, or send the doctor their question.
For more details, go here}:
TrendMD
(Trend MD – WordPress Plugin)
The TrendMD plugin lets you add the TrendMD recommendations widget to your WordPress 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)
WP Nutrition Facts is a free plugin for WordPress that lets you insert a nutrition facts table into your pages, posts and custom post types, allowing your visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food in a standardized format.
(WP Nutrition Facts 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 run a health-related business that provides diet or healthy eating information, a great way to add engaging content to your site is to publish recipes.
Plugins like WP Ultimate Recipe let you easily add healthy recipes on your site.
Other WordPress recipe plugins include:
- Recipe Card – Create and publish beautiful recipes with nutrition facts that site visitors can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – Makes publishing recipes on your site easy with features like cut & paste, auto conversion of your plain text recipe posts, Google Recipe View formatting and preview button, live custom formatting, automatic ratings and conversion from other recipe plugins.
- ZipList Recipes – You can easily format recipe text and add images. Includes additional Google Recipe View formatting and SEO features.
- And many more.
For more details, go here}:
Awesome Fitness Testimonials
(Awesome Fitness Testimonials Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin allows you to display fitness and wellness testimonials, case studies and reviews, before and after photos, etc. on your website.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images by Everkinetic
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you display exercise drawings on your site.
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic Plugin For WordPress – Database)
For more details, go here}:
In the next section, we will look at medical and health themes for WordPress.
***
This is the end of section 2.
To keep reading, click this link:
***
***
"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie