In Part One of this step-by-step guide on ways to improve your medical or health-related web presence, we provided in-depth tips and suggestions on the following topics:
- Online Challenges For Medical And Health Businesses
- Online Opportunities For Medical Businesses
- Ways To Improve Your Web Pages
- Improving The Content On Your Website
In Parts 2 & 3, we explore more ways to grow your health or medical services online.
Areas covered include:
- Ways To Improve Traffic With WordPress
- Ways To Generate New Leads & Enquiries
- How To Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Visitors Using WordPress Plugins And Themes
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
- Add New Functionality To Your Site With WP Plugins
- WordPress For Business – An Overview Of WordPress Themes
Note: Medical and health plugins are described in this section. Medical and health-related themes are covered in Part 3.
Improving Web Traffic
Web traffic is vital to your business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic.
Optimize Your Site For Search Engines (SEO) With WordPress
There are loads of ways that WordPress helps optimize your website for search engines:
- URLs – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Post Tags – WordPress lets you select the keywords that you want your article pages (posts) to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Categories – Create categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Post Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose the description for your posts that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for improved search engine results.
- Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that allows you to easily link your content to other posts on your site
- Pinging – Configure your site to automatically notify other sites and directories whenever a new post is published on your site.
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Better User Engagement And Traffic Generation
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are also a number of plugins that will improve your medical-related 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 SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (for search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO)
Other ways to improve your medical or health website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing. Here are a few more plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – Use this free plugin to set up your own online social community on your site.
- bbPress – Set up a discussion forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard.
- Disqus – Power discussions and increases engagement on your website.
- Floating Social – This plugin lets you add social sharing features and buttons to your website.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their site using free or inexpensive plugins)
Generating Leads & Enquiries
Let’s now take a look at how to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries for your business.
Add An Email Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is a great way to build a list of subscribers. It provides several benefits and advantages including:
- Drives targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides useful updates
- Provides you with a highly targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Increases user engagement
- Provides an additional way for readers to share your content
A proven strategy for attracting new subscribers to your email newsletter is to provide them with valuable content and give them free gifts in exchange for their personal details. This could be an exclusive guide, checklists for improving general health and diet, access to health calculators, coupons, membership access to courses, contests, etc.
Add Contact Forms
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for readers to contact you. Visitors can send feedback, contact specific departments, request a quote, and more.
A contact form provides a number of benefits including:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- 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 users
One of the most popular contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin)
This free contact form plugin allows you to add multiple contact forms into any page or post, customize the forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering is also supported.
Another option you may want to consider if you want to set up a website for a medical practice is adding sections to your contact form so prospects can choose the practitioner they want to contact. This ensures that contact form enquiries reach the right area.
Provide Maps
Adding a map helps your visitors and clients find you.
Inserting maps, such as Google Maps, into your website also provides many benefits, such as:
- Maps increase local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Shows location of events
(A map helps your visitors and customers find you)
Below are just some of the more popular 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
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Better User Engagement And Generating More Visitors To Your Site
WordPress Plugins - Medical
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your website that will immediately add a range of functional tools for site visitors. Here are some of these:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar WP Plugin)
This free bookings plugin lets you add appointment bookings to your site. It is well supported, provides an intuitive interface and flexible functionality. It is highly suitable for a wide range of businesses, such as medical practices, surgeons, health spas, booking patient appointments, etc.
(Booking Calendar – Overview)
Booking Calendar works right out of the box. Website visitors can check availability of services and book appointments online easily. Administrators and visitors receive booking confirmations. Booking Calendar also lets you add a calendar or booking form to your website’s sidebar, and offers multi-language support. A premium version of this plugin with many more features and functionalities is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager And Ticketing Registration System
(Manage Your Events Via The Web Using Event Espresso WordPress Plugin)
If your business involves running medical events like seminars or workshops, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration WordPress plugin enables you to easily create your event and start receiving registrations in just minutes
(Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticketing Management Software)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed plugin that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.
We have written an in-depth article on Event Espresso here:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin)
This plugin provides 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-related applications, but there are many you can add to your site, including the following:
- Body Statistics – e.g. ANC Calculator, Frame Size Calculator, Lean Body Mass Calculator, Ponderal Index Calculator, Stride Length Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Calorie to kJ Calculator, RMR Calculator, Calories Burned Running Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Push-Up Test Calculator, Balke Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. One Rep Max Weight Lifting Calculator, Blood Donation Calculator, Pace Calculator, Running Pace 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 Plugin)
The Calculated Fields Form plugin lets you create forms with dynamically calculated fields to display the calculated values, such as:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculators
- And lots more
The plugin developers also offer a premium version with extra features.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets logged-in users record their weight on given dates. The data is then shown in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin – Graph)
The plugin allows users to insert 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 Widget
(Simple Body Mass Index Calculator Plugin)
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator lets you add a widget to your sidebar that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
In addition to Simple BMI Calculator, there are a number of other WordPress plugins you can look at that 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 site administrator.
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator that displays Body Mass Index
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors figure out their basal metabolic rate, based on age, sex and weight.
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data – WordPress Plugin)
Drug Interaction Data will retrieve and display information about drugs, including what the drug is used for and what other medications the drug is known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data Plugin For WordPress – 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 – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin adds a dashboard widget that lets you crate posts from PubMed articles, as well as a search widget that lets users search posts with specific data. A simple editor that lets you change the layout of data in your post content is also included.
PubMed contains over 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 plugin was designed for clinic and health care related websites. It lets you add service pages with booking forms, multiple service locations, provide related health conditions, create case studies, link indication tags to conditions, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Treato
(Treato – WordPress Plugin)
Treato WordPress plugin lets you embed the Treato healthcare search engine into your WordPress sidebar so your site visitors can search a vast drug database and see what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato gathers and analyzes experiences sourced directly from patients 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 14,700+ medical conditions from over 2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap
(HealthTap)
HealthTap Concierge allows consumers to consult with real doctors via text chat or HD video from any mobile device, personal computer, even smartwatch.
With the plugin installed, your visitors can type in a health question and 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 questions and get answers via the service.
For more details, go here}:
TrendMD
(TrendMD Plugin)
This plugin lets you add the TrendMD recommendations widget to your WordPress 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 lets you add a nutrition facts table into your posts and pages, allowing your visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food in a standardized format.
(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin For WordPress – Creating Custom Post Type Labels)
WP Nutrition Facts uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labelling regulations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Ultimate Recipe
(WP Ultimate Recipe – WordPress Plugin)
If you run a health or fitness-related website that provides nutritional or healthy eating suggestions, a great source of content that will engage your readers is to add recipes.
Plugins like WP Ultimate Recipe let you easily add delicious and healthy on your site.
Other recipe plugins for WordPress include:
- Recipe Card – Create and publish beautiful recipes with nutrition facts that your site users can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – EasyRecipe makes publishing recipes on your site easy with features like cut and paste, auto conversion of your plain text recipe posts, live custom formatting, 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 Google Recipe View formatting and SEO.
- And many more.
For more details, go here}:
Awesome Fitness Testimonials
(Awesome Fitness Testimonials Plugin For WordPress)
Awesome Fitness Testimonials allows you to add fitness & wellness testimonials, case studies and reviews, before and after pics, videos, etc. to your health & fitness-related site.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images by Everkinetic
(Exercise Images Plugin)
Exercise Images by Everkinetic lets you display a database of exercise drawings in your web content.
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic Plugin – Catalog)
For more details, go here}:
In part 3, we take a look at health and medical WordPress themes.
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This is the end of section two.
To continue, click this link:
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now