In Part 1 of this article on ways to improve your medical or health-related business web presence, we provided practical tips and suggestions on the following areas:
- Challenges Professional Health And Medical Services Practitioners Face Online
- Opportunities For Health Services Professionals In The Digital Economy
- Your Web Pages
- Ways To Improve The Content On Your Website
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your health or medical services online.
Topics covered in this (and the next section) include:
- Ways To Improve Traffic
- Tips For Generating Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
- WordPress Plugins That Can Improve SEO, Create Better User Engagement And Generate More Traffic
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
Note: WordPress medical and health plugins are listed in this section. Medical and health-related themes are covered in Part 3.
Ways Of Improving Website Traffic
Your web traffic is vital to your online business growth. In this section, we explore WordPress plugins for improving search engine optimization, increasing user engagement and traffic generation.
Optimizing Your Site For Search Engines (SEO)
There are so many ways that WordPress helps optimize your medical or health website for search engines:
- URLs – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the URL of your pages.
- Tags – Specify the keywords that you want search engines to index your articles for.
- Post Categories – Create categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Excerpts – Set descriptions for your posts that will show in search results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for improved search engine results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily link your content to other posts on your site
- Post Notification – Configure your site to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your site.
Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation Using WordPress Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are dozens of plugins that improve your health or medical website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your website.
For example, you can install the plugins below to improve your SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin (lists all of your pages and posts for search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO)
Other WordPress tools you can add to improve your site’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social features. Here are a few powerful plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – This plugin lets you set up and run your own social network on your WordPress website, with member profiles, activity streams, user groups, messaging, and more.
- bbPress – This plugin can be used to set up and manage a community forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard, without requiring third-party subscriptions.
- Disqus – This WordPress plugin lets you power discussions and helps to increase engagement on your website.
- Monarch – This WordPress plugin lets you add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your website or blog.
(You can add social sharing to your website easily with WordPress plugins)
Ways To Generate New Leads & Enquiries
In this section, we’ll look at how to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries online.
Provide An Email Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is an excellent way to build a subscriber list. Adding an email newsletter provides several benefits, like:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides useful updates
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Increases interaction
- Provides you with another way for subscribers to share your content
One of the best ways to get visitors to subscribe to your email newsletter is to provide them with content of high value and offer them free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their details. This could be a guide, tips for improving health, fitness and diet, access to medical calculators, free trials, membership access to courses, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch with you. Readers can report issues, ask questions to specific departments, ask for quotes, send suggestions for improvements and more.
Contact forms provide several benefits and advantages including:
- Reducing spam
- Set up automated responses
- Gives you control over what is sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Different forms can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- Convenience for users
A popular contact form plugin for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WordPress Plugin)
This free contact form plugin is easy to install and configure and lets you create and manage multiple contact forms to your posts and pages, customize the form 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 clinic or medical center is to segment your contact form so users can select which section of the practice they are contacting your business about. This ensures that visitors’ enquiries reach the right recipient.
Provide A Map
Maps help your visitors and clients find you.
A map is a useful tool for several reasons:
- A map improves local SEO
- Visitors can find you easily and customers can plan their visits better
- Shows location of events
(Adding a map helps your visitors and customers find you)
Popular map plugins include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors With Plugins
WordPress Plugins
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your site that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for visitors. Here are some of the plugins you can choose from:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar Plugin For WordPress)
Booking Calendar allows you to add appointment booking services to your site. Booking Calendar provides users with an intuitive and user-friendly interface. It is highly suitable for a wide range of medical or health-related uses, such as medical practices, physicians, health spas, booking yoga classes, etc.
(Booking Calendar – WordPress Plugin – Overview)
This bookings plugin works right out of the box. Your website visitors can check the availability of services you offer and make a booking quickly and easily. Administrators and visitors receive email notifications. Booking Calendar is also widget-ready, and offers multi-language support. The developers of this plugin also offer a premium version with extra features.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso
(Manage Event Registrations Online With Event Espresso For WP)
If you run health seminars, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin enables you to easily schedule your event and begin receiving registrations literally in a few minutes
(Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management & Ticket Registration Plugin)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich software that gives you full control over your event registration management process.
We have written a detailed article on Event Espresso. To learn more, go here:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin provides a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed them into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. The plugin also supports internationalization
Most of the calculators aren’t designed for health-related use, but there are many you can include in your site, including:
- Body Statistics – e.g. Body Fat Calculator, Child Height Calculator, Katch-Mcardle BMR Calculator, Max Heart Rate Calculator, Waist to Hip Ratio Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Daily Calorie Calculator, Daily Energy Expenditure Calculator, Calories Burned Running Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Astrand Test Calculator, Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Beats and Breaths Calculator, Blood Donation Calculator, Ovulation Calculator, Smoking Cost Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, Water Intake Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. Ideal Weight Calculator, Weight Loss Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form Plugin For WordPress)
Calculated Fields Form lets you create forms with dynamically calculated fields to display the calculated values, including:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculators
- And lots more
The plugin is also available in a premium version with many more features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker – WordPress Plugin)
Weight Loss Tracker is a simple plugin that lets users record their weight periodically. 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 provides support for various weight formats: Metric (Kg), Imperial – Stones & Pounds, Imperial – Pounds only.
For more details, go here}:
Simple BMI Calculator
(Simple BMI Calculator Widget Plugin)
Simple BMI Calculator installs a widget on your website that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
As well as Simple BMI Calculator, there are a number of WordPress plugins you can check out to perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A mobile-friendly BMI and Basal Metabolic Rate calculator that saves calculation data for logged-in users and gives an overview to the trainer.
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator that displays your site user’s BMI
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors calculate their basal metabolic rate, by entering their age, sex and weight.
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin retrieves and displays drug information, including what the drug is used for and what other medications the drug is known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data WordPress Plugin – Information Screen)
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.
For more details, go here}:
PubMed Posts
(PubMed Posts Plugin For WordPress)
PubMed Posts adds a dashboard widget that lets you crate posts from PubMed articles, plus a search function that lets users search for posts with specific article data. A content editor is also included.
PubMed includes over 25 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, online books and life science journals.
For more details, go here}:
MJM Clinic
(MJM Clinic)
This versatile plugin was designed to add functionality to clinic and health care related websites, such as adding service pages with booking forms, related health conditions, clinic locations, patient feedback entries and more.
For more details, go here}:
Treato
(Treato WP Plugin)
Treato lets you embed the Treato healthcare search engine into your WordPress sidebar so you and your users can search drugs and see what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato gathers 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 can access valuable insight about over 14,500 medical conditions from over 2.2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap
(HealthTap)
HealthTap Concierge allows consumers to locate and book a virtual consult with doctors via HD video or text chat from any mobile device, computer, even 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 health topic. They can then select a doctor, chat over video or text, or send the doctor a question.
For more details, go here}:
Trend MD
(Trend MD Plugin For WordPress)
TrendMD lets you add the TrendMD recommendations widget to your site. 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 Plugin)
WP Nutrition Facts is a free plugin that lets you add a nutrition facts table into your pages and posts, allowing your visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food in a standardized format and make better decisions about the food they consume.
(WP Nutrition Facts WordPress Plugin – Nutritional Facts 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 – WP Plugin)
If you run a health-related business that provides diet or healthy eating suggestions, a great way to add engaging content to your site is to add healthy recipes.
A plugin like WP Ultimate Recipe lets you add recipes on your site.
Other WordPress recipe plugins include:
- Recipe Card – Create and publish search engine optimized recipes with nutrition facts that your site users can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – Makes publishing recipes on your site easy with features like cut & 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 – Lets you easily format recipe text and add images. Includes additional SEO and Google Recipe View formatting features.
- And many more.
For more details, go here}:
Awesome Fitness Testimonials
(Awesome Fitness Testimonials)
This plugin allows you to showcase fitness & wellness testimonials, case studies and reviews, before and after photos, videos, etc. on your website.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic Plugin For WordPress)
The Exercise Images plugin lets you insert exercise illustrations into your posts and pages.
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic – WordPress Plugin – Catalog)
For more details, go here}:
In the next section, we take a look at themes that are suitable for health and medical businesses.
***
This is the end of section 2 of this step-by-step article on ways to grow your health-related web presence.
To view Part 3, click this link:
***
***
"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum