In Part 1 of this step-by-step article on ways to improve your medical web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Online Challenges For The Health & Medical Profession
- Online Opportunities For Medical Services
- Your Web Pages
- Tips On How To Improve The Content On Your Site
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your health or medical services online.
Areas covered include:
- Improving Web Traffic
- Generating More Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
- Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Web Traffic Using WordPress Plugins
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
- Using WordPress Plugins To Improve Your Site’s Functionality
- A Newbie’s Guide To Understanding WordPress Themes
Note: Plugins are listed in this section. Health and medical themes are covered in Part 3.
Ways Of Improving Website Traffic Using WordPress
Web traffic is an important part of your online business growth. In this section, you will learn how to improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and increase traffic generation using WordPress plugins & themes.
Optimizing Your Site For SEO With WordPress
There are lots of ways that WordPress helps improve your website’s SEO:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – configure the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your article pages (called posts).
- Tags – Choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your articles for.
- Categories – Create SEO-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Excerpts – Create an excerpt that will appear in search results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for better search results.
- Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily link your content to other posts 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 Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are various plugins for WordPress that improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your site.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your website’s search engine optimization:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (for search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your website’s search engine optimization)
Other things you can do to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing. Here are some fantastic plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below are also free):
- BuddyPress – Use the BuddyPress plugin to run your own social community on your WordPress website, with member profiles, messaging, activity streams, user groups, and more.
- bbPress – This plugin can be used to set up your own discussion forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – Use this WordPress plugin to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard, without requiring third-party subscriptions.
- Disqus – Power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your website.
- Floating Social – Add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your website or blog.
(You can add social sharing features to your site easily using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Generate More Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Tools
In this section, we’ll look at how to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries online.
Add A Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is a great way to build a list of subscribers. Adding an email newsletter provides many benefits including:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides updates
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Increases engaging with your users
- Provides you with another way for readers to share your content
One of the things you can do to get visitors to subscribe is to provide users with valuable content and offer them something valuable for free in exchange for their details. This can be a time-saving guide, checklists for improving general health and fitness, access to medical calculators, discount coupons, membership access to courses, podcasts, etc.
Provide A Contact Form
A contact form makes it easy and simple for readers to contact you. Readers can raise concerns, contact specific departments, ask for a quote, give suggestions for improvements and more.
A contact form provides several benefits and advantages, like:
- Reduces spam
- Set up automated responses
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Can be added to any page or post
- Improves the professional look of your site
- More convenient for users
A very popular WordPress contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7)
This free plugin lets you insert and manage multiple contact forms, customize the forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is supported.
Another feature 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 select the section of the center they want to reach. This ensures that contact form requests reach the right destination.
Add Maps
Adding a map helps your visitors and clients find you.
A map is a very useful tool for several reasons:
- A map improves local SEO
- Visitors can find you more easily
- Show location of events
(A map helps your visitors and clients find you)
Here are just some of the more popular 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 Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Traffic To Your Site Generation With Plugins And Themes
Medical Services Plugins For WordPress
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your health or medical-related website that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for site visitors. Here are just some of the plugins you can choose from:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar – WordPress Plugin)
This free bookings reservations plugin lets you add online booking services to your site. This plugin provides an intuitive interface and flexible functionality. It is highly suitable for a wide range health and medical consulting uses, such as medical practitioners, surgeons, chiropractors, booking patient appointments, etc.
(Booking Calendar – Overview)
This bookings plugin works out of the box. Your website visitors can check the availability of services and book appointments quickly and easily. 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 developers also provide a premium version with many more features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – Event Manager & Ticket Registration Software For WordPress
(Manage Event Registrations Via The Web With Event Espresso Plugin For WP)
If you plan to run medical events, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WordPress allows you to easily create your event and start processing online bookings literally in minutes
(Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticketing Management System)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed application that gives you complete control of the event registration management process.
We have written a comprehensive article on the benefits and features of using Event Espresso. Go here to learn more about this:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin For WordPress)
Calculator Pro provides a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed these into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of them aren’t specifically designed for medical use, but there are a number you can use, including:
- Body Statistics – e.g. Body Composition Calculator, Carbohydrate Calculator, Lean Body Mass Calculator, Modification of Diet in Renal Disease (MDRD) GFR Calculator, Stride Length Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Calorie to kJ Calculator, RMR Calculator, Calories Burned Walking Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Astrand Test Calculator, Balke Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Beats and Breaths Calculator, Cigarette Savings Calculator, Ovulation Calculator, Sobriety Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, Macronutrient Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. BMI Calculator, Weight Loss Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form Plugin)
With Calculated Fields Form you can create forms with dynamically calculated fields to display the calculated values, such as:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculator
- And many more
The plugin developers also provide a premium version with a ton of additional features.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker WP Plugin)
This plugin lets users record their weight on given dates. This data is then shown in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin – Graph)
The plugin allows users to input 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 – WordPress Plugin)
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator is a free plugin that installs a widget on your website that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
As well as Simple Body Mass Index Calculator, there are a number of other plugins you can check out that 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 trainer.
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator that displays BMI
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors figure out 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)
Drug Interaction Data Plugin 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 – Data 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 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 crate posts from PubMed articles, as well as a search function that helps visitors find posts with specific data. A simple content editor is also included.
PubMed includes over 25 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books.
For more details, go here}:
MJM Clinic
(MJM Clinic – WordPress Plugin)
The MJM Clinic Plugin can be used to add functionality to clinic and health care related websites that provide information about health conditions and symptoms.
For more details, go here}:
Treato
(Treato – WordPress Plugin)
Treato lets you add a sidebar widget that allows your site visitors to search drugs and see what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato collects and analyzes experiences sourced directly from patients from online forums and blog posts, then aggregates the content to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users receive valuable insight about side effects, drug comparisons, which drugs people feel work, and more from over 2.2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap Concierge
(HealthTap Plugin For WordPress)
HealthTap Concierge allows users to consult with real doctors via HD video or text chat from any mobile device, personal computer, or smartwatch.
With the widget installed, 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 select a doctor, connect in real time using video or text chat, or send the doctor a question.
For more details, go here}:
Trend MD
(Trend MD)
This 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 scholarly content from your journals or websites through personalized recommendations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Nutrition Facts
(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin For WordPress)
WP Nutrition Facts lets you insert a nutrition facts table into your pages, posts and custom post types, allowing your site visitors to make more informed food choices towards healthy eating goals.
(WP Nutrition Facts WordPress 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 own a health or fitness-related website that provides dietary or healthy eating recommendations, a great source of engaging content to your site is to add healthy recipes.
Plugins like WP Ultimate Recipe let you easily add healthy and delicious recipes on your site.
Other WordPress recipe plugins include:
- Recipe Card – Create recipes with nutrition facts that site visitors can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – EasyRecipe lets you easily add recipes to your site with features like cut & paste, plain text recipe auto conversion, Google Recipe View formatting, 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 – WordPress Plugin)
Awesome Fitness Testimonials lets you add fitness and wellness testimonials, case studies and reviews, before and after photos, etc. to your health and fitness website.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic Plugin For WordPress)
Exercise Images by Everkinetic lets you display a database of exercise drawings in your pages and posts.
(Exercise Images WP Plugin – Image Database)
For more details, go here}:
In part three of this detailed article, we discuss themes that are suitable for medical and health businesses.
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This is the end of section 2 of this article on ways to improve your medical-related business online.
To continue, click this link:
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