In Part 1 of this guide on ways to improve your health or medical business presence online, we provided practical tips and suggestions on the following topics:
- Online Challenges For Medical Services Professionals
- Opportunities For The Medical Profession In The Digital Economy
- Improving Your Web Pages
- Improve Your Web Content
In Parts 2 & 3, we explore more ways to grow your medical or health-related business online.
Topics covered in this (and the next section) include:
- Ways To Improve Web Traffic With WordPress
- Tips For Generating More Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Tools
- WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Driving More Traffic
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
- Adding New Functionality To Your Blog With WordPress Plugins
- WP For Business – An Overview Of Themes
Note: Plugins are described in this section. Health and medical themes are covered in Part Three.
How To Improve Traffic
Web traffic is vital to your online business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimize Your Site For Search Engines (SEO)
There are many ways WordPress can help to improve SEO:
- URLs – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Post Tags – Specify the keywords that you want your posts to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Create SEO-friendly categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose descriptions for your posts that will display to search engine users.
- Images – title your images with keywords for improved search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links
- Post Notification – Configure your site to automatically notify (ping) other search directories the moment a new post is published on your site.
WordPress Plugins That Can Help To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Web Traffic
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are various plugins that will improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your website.
For example, you can install the plugins below to improve your website’s search engine optimization:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (lists all of your pages and posts for search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO)
Other WordPress plugins you can add to improve your website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing. Here are a few WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – Run your own social networking community on your site.
- bbPress – bbPress lets you set up your own forum on your WordPress site.
- E-Newsletter – Send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard, without requiring 3rd-party subscriptions.
- Disqus – This WordPress plugin lets you power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your website.
- Social Media Feather – This WordPress plugin lets you add powerful social sharing features and buttons to your website.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website with free or inexpensive plugins)
Ways To Generate Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Tools
In this section we’ll show you how to improve your sales and generate new leads and enquiries for your medical or health-related business.
Provide An Email Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is an excellent way to build a subscriber list. Adding a newsletter provides a number of benefits including:
- Drives targeted traffic to your site
- 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
- Provides regular opportunities for increasing user engagement
- Provides you with another way for your content to be shared online with new prospective customers
An effective strategy for attracting subscribers to your email newsletter is to provide users with information of high value and offer them free gifts in exchange for their details. This could be an exclusive guide, tips for improving health, fitness and nutrition, access to fitness calculators, vouchers, access to courses, podcasts, etc.
Contact Forms
A contact form makes it easy and simple for readers to get in touch. Readers can send feedback, contact specific departments, ask for a quote, and more.
A contact form provides many benefits and advantages including:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- 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 site
- Convenience for visitors
One of the most popular WordPress contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WordPress Plugin)
This plugin is easy to install and set up and lets you create and manage multiple contact forms into any page on your site, customize the form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is supported.
Something to consider if you are setting up a website for a medical center is to add sections to your contact form so prospects can select the section of the center they want to reach. This ensures that visitors’ requests reach the right area.
Provide A Map
Adding maps helps your visitors and clients find you.
Adding maps (e.g. Google Maps) to your site also provides visitors with a number of benefits, such as:
- A map increases local SEO
- Allows clients to better plan their visits and appointments
- Display location of events
(Adding a map helps your visitors and clients find you)
Below are just some of the more popular 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 Increase Traffic Generation Using WordPress Plugins & Themes
WordPress Plugins
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your health-related website that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for users. Here are some of these:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar WordPress Plugin)
Booking Calendar lets you add appointment booking services to your site. This plugin has an intuitive and user-friendly interface with flexible functionality. It is highly suitable for a range medical, health, fitness & sports-related businesses, such as dental practitioners, physicians, chiropractors, booking patient appointments, etc.
(Booking Calendar WordPress Plugin – Overview)
The plugin works out of the box. Website visitors can check availability of services you offer and book appointments quickly and easily. Administrators and visitors receive email notifications. The plugin also lets you add a calendar or booking form to your site’s sidebar, and supports multiple languages. A premium version with a ton of additional features and functionalities is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso
(Manage Event Bookings Automatically Using Event Espresso For WordPress)
If you plan to run medical events like seminars or workshops, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration WordPress software lets you easily schedule an event and start processing online bookings in just minutes
(Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticketing Manager Software)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich application that gives you complete control of your event registration management process.
We have written a detailed article about Event Espresso here:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin)
Calculator Pro is a free collection of over 400 calculators that you can provide to users on your website. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t designed for health or medical-related applications, but there are several you can add to your website, including the following:
- Body Statistics – e.g. BMR Calculator, Durnin/Womersley Skinfold Body Fat Calculator, GFR (Glomerular Filtration Rate) Calculator, Modification of Diet in Renal Disease (MDRD) GFR Calculator, VO2 Max Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Calorie to kJ Calculator, kJ to Calorie Calculator, Calories Burned Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. BAI (Body Adiposity Index) Calculator, Rockport Walk Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Bike Size Calculator, Blood Donation Calculator, Due Date Calculator, Target Heart Rate Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. BMR Calorie Calculator, Creatine Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. BMI Calculator, Weight Loss Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form – WordPress Plugin)
Calculated Fields Form lets you create forms that perform single and complex calculations, such as:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculator
- And more
The plugin is also available in a premium version with extra features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin For WordPress)
Weight Loss Tracker is a simple WordPress plugin that lets logged-in users record their weight on given dates. This data is then shown in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker – Graph)
The plugin allows users to enter target weights and provides support for the following weight formats: Metric (Kg), Imperial – Stones & Pounds, Imperial – Pounds only.
For more details, go here}:
Simple BMI Calculator
(Simple Body Mass Index Calculator Widget Plugin For WordPress)
This free plugin installs a widget on your sidebar that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
In addition to Simple Body Mass Index Calculator, there are additional plugins you can check out to perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A BMI and 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 calculate their basal metabolic rate, by inputting their age, sex and weight.
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data WordPress Plugin)
This plugin 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 – 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.
For more details, go here}:
PubMed Posts
(PubMed Posts)
This plugin adds a dashboard widget that lets you crate posts from PubMed articles, as well as a search widget that finds posts with specific data. A basic 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 Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin can be used for medical and health care related websites. It lets you add service pages with booking forms, provide information to site visitors about health conditions and symptoms, add case studies, link indication tags to services and conditions, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Treato
(Treato – WordPress Plugin)
Treato lets you embed the Treato healthcare search engine into your WordPress sidebar so your site visitors can search drugs and read what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato gathers and analyzes patient experiences from forums and blog posts, then aggregates the content to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users can access valuable insight about 14,000+ conditions and 26,500+ medications from over 2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap
(HealthTap Concierge – WordPress Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows users to locate and book a virtual consult with real doctors, clinical psychologists, etc. via HD video or text chat from any mobile device, computer, even 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 health topic. They can then choose a doctor, chat over video or text, or send questions.
For more details, go here}:
Trend MD
(TrendMD Plugin For WordPress)
The TrendMD plugin adds 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 WordPress Plugin)
This simple plugin for WordPress 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 and make better food choices.
(WP Nutrition Facts – Custom Post Type Label Creation)
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 business that provides nutrition or healthy eating suggestions, a great source of engaging content to your site is to publish great recipes.
Plugins like WP Ultimate Recipe let you easily add healthy and delicious recipes on your site.
Other recipe plugins for WordPress include:
- Recipe Card – Create and publish recipes that site users can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – EasyRecipe lets you easily publish recipes on your site with features like cut & paste, auto conversion of your plain text recipe posts, 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)
The Awesome Fitness Testimonials plugin lets you add fitness & wellness testimonials, case studies and reviews, before and after photos, etc. to your site.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic Plugin)
Exercise Images by Everkinetic lets you add exercise drawings to your fitness sites.
(Exercise Images Plugin – Database)
For more details, go here}:
In part three, we take a look at WordPress themes that are suitable for medical clinics and health businesses.
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This is the end of part 2 of this guide on ways to improve your medical or health-related business web presence.
To view Part Three, click here:
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"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