In Part 1 of this step-by-step article on ways to grow your medical or health web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Challenges Health Professionals Face Online
- Opportunities For Medical And Health Services
- How To Improve Your Website Pages
- Tips On How To Improve Your Web Content
In Parts 2 and 3, we explore more ways to grow your medical services online.
Topics covered in this (and the next section) include:
- Improve Web Traffic
- Generating Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Applications
- Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Traffic With Plugins
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
Note: WordPress health and medical plugins are described in this section. Themes for medical businesses are listed in Part 3.
Ways Of Improving Website Traffic
Your web traffic is vital to your online business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic.
Optimize Your Site For Search Engines Using WordPress
There are many ways that WordPress helps improve your medical-related website’s SEO:
- URLs – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your article pages (called posts).
- Post Tags – WordPress lets you choose the keywords that you want your article pages to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Create SEO-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Post Excerpts – Set descriptions for your posts that will display in search results.
- Images – title images used in your content with keywords for better search 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 (ping) other search directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your site.
Improving Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation With Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are also a number of plugins that improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your site.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO)
Other things you can do to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing features. Here are a few powerful plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – Set up your own online social network on your website, with member profiles, user groups, messaging, activity streams, and more.
- bbPress – This plugin allows you to run your own forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard.
- Disqus – Power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your site.
- Monarch – This plugin lets you add powerful social sharing features on your website.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site using free or inexpensive plugins)
Ways To Generate New Leads & Enquiries
Let’s take a look now at how to improve sales and generate more leads and enquiries.
Adding An Email Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is an excellent way to build a subscriber list. It provides several benefits and advantages, 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
- It’s a way to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for improving engaging with users
- Provides other ways for your content to be shared with other potential customers
A proven strategy for attracting subscribers is to provide high value information and give users free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their details. This could be a guide, checklists for improving health, fitness and diet, access to fitness calculators, coupons, membership access to videos, contests, etc.
Provide A Contact Form
A contact form makes it easy and simple for prospective clients to contact you. Contact forms also allow users to report issues, contact specific departments, request a quote, and more.
A contact form provides many benefits, like:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Gives 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
- Convenient for site visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WP Plugin)
This free plugin allows you to create and manage multiple contact forms into any page on your site, customize the forms and the email contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Something else to consider if you plan to set up a website for a clinic or medical center is to segment your contact form so prospective clients can select which practitioner they want to contact. This ensures that contact form requests reach the right department.
Maps
Adding a map to your site helps your visitors and clients find you.
Maps are useful tools for several reasons:
- A map helps to increase local SEO
- Allows clients to better plan their meeting or appointments
- Display location of events
(Adding maps to your website helps your visitors and clients find you)
Here are just some 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
WordPress Plugins & Themes That Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
WordPress Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your website that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for users. Here are some of these:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar WP Plugin)
The Booking Calendar plugin lets you add online bookings to your site. It is well supported, provides an intuitive and user-friendly interface and flexible functionality. It is suitable for a wide range of health-related businesses, such as dental practitioners, physicians, chiropractors, booking yoga classes, etc.
(Booking Calendar WordPress Plugin – Overview)
This booking reservations plugin works out of the box. Website visitors can check availability of services and make online bookings easily. Administrators and visitors receive 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 and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager & Ticket Registration Software
(Manage Event Bookings Automatically Using Event Espresso For WP)
If your business involves running medical events, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration WordPress plugin lets you easily create an event and begin receiving online registrations in just a few minutes
(Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich plugin that gives you complete control of your event registration management process.
We have written a detailed article about Event Espresso. For more info, see this article:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators WordPress Plugin)
This is a free collection of 400+ calculators that you can provide to users on your website. The plugin also supports internationalization
Most of the calculators aren’t specifically designed for medical or health usage, but there are several you can use, including the following:
- Body Statistics – e.g. Body Surface Area Calculator, FENa Calculator, GFR (Glomerular Filtration Rate) 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. Astrand Test Calculator, Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. One Rep Max Weight Lifting Calculator, Cigarette Savings Calculator, Ovulation Calculator, Target Heart Rate Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Carbohydrate Calculator, Creatine Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. BMI Calculator, Weight Loss Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form 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 many more
A premium plugin version is also available and includes many more features.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin For WordPress)
Weight Loss Tracker lets logged-in users record their weight on given dates. This data is then displayed in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker – WordPress Plugin – Graph)
The plugin allows users to input target weights and provides support for various weight formats: Metric (Kg), Imperial – Stones & Pounds, Imperial – Pounds only.
For more details, go here}:
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator Widget
(Simple BMI Calculator)
Simple BMI Calculator is a free plugin that 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 other plugins you can look at to perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A responsive BMI 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 to show users their 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)
Drug Interaction Data Plugin for WordPress will retrieve and display drug information, including what the drug is used to treat and what other medications the drug is known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data Plugin For WordPress – Database Results)
Drug information can be displayed as a widget or inside your posts and pages. 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.
For more details, go here}:
PubMed Posts
(PubMed Posts WP Plugin)
PubMed Posts adds a dashboard widget that lets you publish content to your site from PubMed articles, and a search widget that locates posts with specific data. A simple editor that changes the layout of data in the post content is also included with the plugin.
PubMed comprises more than 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)
MJM Clinic was designed for clinic and health care related websites. You can add service pages with booking forms, provide related health conditions, assign case studies, link indication tags to services and conditions, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Treato
(Treato – WordPress Plugin)
Treato WordPress plugin lets you display information about drugs on your site and see what read what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato collects and analyzes experiences sourced directly from patients from medical forums and blog posts, then aggregates the posts to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users receive valuable insight about the side effects of 26,600+ medications, drug comparisons across over 14,700 medical conditions, which drugs people feel work, and more, from over 2.2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap
(HealthTap Concierge WordPress Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows users to consult with real doctors, clinical psychologists, etc. via HD video or text chat from any mobile device, computer, or smartwatch.
With HealthTap Concierge installed on your site, 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 using video or text, or send questions and get answers using the HealthTap service, which has a database of over 70,000 doctors.
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 grow their readership and revenue by allowing people to discover, cite or read 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 WordPress plugin lets you insert a nutrition facts table into your posts and pages, allowing your site visitors to make better decisions about the food products they purchase.
(WP Nutrition Facts – Creating Labels)
This plugin uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labelling regulations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Ultimate Recipe
(WP Ultimate Recipe – WordPress Plugin)
If you own a health or fitness-related business that provides diet and nutrition or healthy eating recommendations, a great source of content that will engage your readers is to publish healthy recipes.
Plugins like WP Ultimate Recipe let you add healthy and delicious recipes on your site.
Other recipe plugins for WordPress include:
- Recipe Card – Create recipes with nutrition facts that your site visitors can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – EasyRecipe makes publishing recipes on your site easy with features like cut and paste, plain text recipe auto conversion, Google Recipe View formatting and preview button, live custom formatting, automatic ratings and conversion from other recipe plugins.
- ZipList Recipes – Lets you 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 Plugin)
The Awesome Fitness Testimonials plugin lets you showcase fitness and wellness testimonials, case studies and reviews, before and after photos, etc. on your site.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images
(Exercise Images Plugin For WordPress)
The Exercise Images plugin lets you display a database of exercise illustrations on your site.
(Exercise Images Plugin – Catalog)
For more details, go here}:
In the next section of this guide, we will be discussing 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 grow your medical-related web presence.
Click here to continue:
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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