In Part 1 of this article on ways to build your health-related web presence, we covered the following areas:
- Online Challenges For Medical Practitioners
- Online Opportunities For Health-Related Businesses In The Digital Realm
- Basic Pages
- How To Improve Your Web Content
In Parts Two and Three, we discuss more ways to grow your health or medical-related services online.
Topics covered include:
- Ways Of Improving Web Traffic With WordPress
- How To Generate New Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins That Can Help Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
Note: Plugins are listed in this section. Medical and health-related themes are listed in Part Three.
Ways Of Improving Website Traffic Using WordPress
Web traffic is vital to your business growth. This section explores ways to improve your health website with WordPress themes and plugins.
Optimizing Your Site For SEO
There are many ways WordPress can help to optimize your website for search engines:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – Set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your content posts.
- Post Tags – WordPress lets you select the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages for.
- Post Categories – Add SEO-friendly categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Post Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose the description for your posts that search engines will show.
- Images – title your images with keywords for improved search results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily link internal content
- Post Notification – WordPress can be set up to automatically notify other search directories as soon as a new post is published on your site.
WordPress Plugins That Can Help To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are also a number of plugins for WordPress that will improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your website.
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
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO)
Other things you can do to improve your site’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing features. Here are some more fantastic plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – This free plugin can be used to run a social community on your site, with member profiles, user groups, activity streams, messaging, and more.
- bbPress – bbPress can be used to set up a forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – This plugin lets you send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard, without requiring a 3rd party subscription.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your site.
- Social Media Feather – This plugin lets you add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your posts and pages.
(You can easily add social sharing features to your website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Generating New Leads & Enquiries
This section explains how to improve sales and generate more leads and enquiries for your health or medical-related business.
Add An Email Newsletter
Adding a newsletter is a great way to build a list of subscribers. It provides a number of benefits and advantages including:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides practical tips and advice
- Provides a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Increases engagement with users
- Provides you with another way for readers to share your content
A proven way to attract newsletter subscribers is to provide high value information and offer users additional items of value for free in exchange for their personal details. This can be a special report, tips for improving health, fitness and diet, access to fitness apps, discount coupons, access to subscriber-only content, podcasts, etc.
Add Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for prospective customers to get in touch with you. A contact form also lets visitors raise problems, contact specific departments, ask for a quote, send suggestions for improvements and more.
A contact form provides a number of benefits, like:
- Reducing spam
- Set up automated responses
- Giving you control over what gets sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Can be added to any post or page
- Improves the professional look of your website
- Is convenient for users
A popular contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7)
This plugin is easy to install and configure and lets you add multiple contact forms into any page on your site, customize the forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is also supported.
Something to consider if you plan to set up a website for a health center or medical clinic is to segment your contact form so prospective clients can select which section of the center they are contacting your business about. This ensures that contact form requests reach the correct destination.
Adding Maps
A map helps your visitors and customers find you.
Adding maps, such as Google Maps to your website also provides users with many benefits, such as:
- A map improves local SEO
- Visitors can find you easily and customers can plan their visits better
- Displays location of events
(Adding a map to your website helps your visitors and customers find you)
Below are some 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, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using WordPress Plugins & Themes
WordPress Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your medical or health-related website that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for visitors. Here are some of these:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar WP Plugin)
The Booking Calendar plugin lets you add online bookings to your site. This plugin is well supported, provides an intuitive and user-friendly interface and flexible functionality. It is suitable for a wide range medical and health consulting businesses, such as dental practices, physicians, alternative therapists, booking sessions with personal trainers, etc.
(Booking Calendar Plugin – Overview)
Booking Calendar works right out of the box. Website visitors can check the availability of services you offer and book appointments online quickly and easily. Site administrators and visitors receive notifications. Booking Calendar is also widget-ready, and offers multi-language support. A premium version with extra features is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso
(Manage Event Bookings Automatically With Event Espresso WordPress Plugin)
If you plan to run medical seminars, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration software enables you to easily schedule an event and begin accepting online registrations literally in minutes
(Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management And Ticketing Registration System)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich software that gives you full control over your event registration management process.
We have written a comprehensive article on Event Espresso. To learn more about this go here:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
Calculator Pro Calculators provides a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed these into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of the calculators aren’t specifically designed for medical-related usage, but there are many you can include in your site, including:
- Body Statistics – e.g. Body Surface Area Calculator, Durnin/Womersley Skinfold Body Fat Calculator, GFR (Glomerular Filtration Rate) Calculator, Metric BMR Calculator, Stride Length Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, Daily Energy Expenditure Calculator, Calories Burned Swimming Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Push-Up Test Calculator, Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Bike Size Calculator, Cigarette Savings Calculator, Ovulation Calculator, Target Heart Rate Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, Macronutrient Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. BAI (Body Adiposity Index) Calculator, Weight Loss Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form WP Plugin)
Calculated Fields Form lets you create dynamically calculated field forms, such as:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculators
- And lots more
A premium version is also available and includes a ton of additional features.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker)
This simple plugin lets logged-in users record their weight periodically. The results are then displayed in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker – User Graph)
The plugin allows users to enter 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 Body Mass Index Calculator – WordPress Plugin)
Simple BMI Calculator is a simple WordPress plugin that installs a widget on your sidebar that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
As well as Simple Body Mass Index Calculator, there are a number of plugins you can look at that perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A mobile-friendly Body Mass Index and Basal Metabolic Rate calculator that saves calculation data for logged-in users and gives an overview to the site administrator.
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator to show your users their 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)
This plugin retrieves and displays 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 Plugin For WordPress – Database Results)
Information about drugs can be displayed as a widget or inside your web content. The plugin loads the drug and pharmaceutical data from the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the U.S. National Institutes of Health and converts common names of drugs to their standardized RxNorm name as defined by the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
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 feature that lets your visitors search posts with specific data. A simple content editor 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 Plugin)
This versatile plugin can be used to add functionality to clinic and health care related websites, such as service pages with booking forms, organising your services into hierarchical categories, multiple clinic locations, create staff member pages for therapists/doctors and more.
For more details, go here}:
Treato
(Treato WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you display information about drugs on your site and see what read what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato gathers 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 gain valuable insight about over 14,500 medical conditions from over 2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap Concierge
(HealthTap WordPress Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows visitors to consult with doctors who specialize in a given health topic via HD video or text chat from any mobile device, personal computer, or smartwatch.
With the widget installed, users 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 using text or video, or send questions and get answers using the service, which has a database of over 73,000 doctors.
For more details, go here}:
TrendMD
(TrendMD Plugin For WordPress)
The TrendMD plugin lets you add the TrendMD recommendations widget to your WP 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 Plugin For WordPress)
WP Nutrition Facts lets you add a nutrition facts table into your posts, pages and custom post types, allowing your site visitors to make more informed decisions about the food products they purchase.
(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin For WordPress – Nutritional Facts 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 business that provides diet and nutrition or healthy eating suggestions, a great source of content that will engage your readers is to add recipes.
A plugin like WP Ultimate Recipe lets you easily add delicious and healthy on your site.
Other WordPress recipe plugins include:
- Recipe Card – Create recipes that readers can print, save and review.
- 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, live custom formatting, 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 Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin allows you to add fitness & wellness testimonials, reviews and case studies to your website.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic Plugin)
This plugin lets you display a database of exercise images on your fitness-related website.
(Exercise Images Plugin For WordPress – Catalog)
For more details, go here}:
In part 3 of this guide, we look at WordPress themes for health and medical businesses.
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This is the end of part 2.
Click here to continue:
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)