In Part 1 of this article on ways to improve your medical or health-related business presence online, we covered the following topics:
- Online Challenges For Medical Professionals
- Online Opportunities For Medical Businesses
- Your Web Pages
- Ways To Improve The Content On Your Website
In Parts 2 & 3, we explore more ways to grow your medical or health business online.
Topics covered in this (and the next section) include:
- Ways To Improve Web Traffic With WordPress
- Ways To Generate Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
- WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Creating Better User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
- WordPress Plugins To Enhance Your Blog’s Functionality
- WordPress For Beginners – An Overview Of Themes
Note: Plugins are covered in this section. WordPress themes for medical businesses are listed in Part 3.
Grow Your Medical And Health Clinic Services Website – WordPress Plugins And Themes For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increasing User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
Your web traffic is an integral part of your business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic.
Optimizing Your Site For SEO Using WordPress
There are lots of ways that WordPress helps optimize your website for search engines:
- URLs – Set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized web addresses for your article pages.
- Tags – WordPress lets you choose the keywords that you want your article pages to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Categories – Add search engine-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Post Excerpts – Set 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 results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily link your content to other posts and pages
- Pinging – WordPress can be configured to automatically notify (ping) other search directories as soon as a new post is published on your site.
Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using WordPress Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are many WordPress plugins that improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your website.
Here are some plugins you can use to improve your SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO)
Other things you can do to improve your health website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing. Here are some more plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – This free plugin helps you run a social networking community on your website, with member profiles, messaging, activity streams, user groups, and more.
- bbPress – This free WordPress plugin can be used to run a forum on your WordPress site.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter lets you send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard, without a 3rd party subscription.
- Disqus – This plugin lets you power discussions and increases engagement on your website or blog.
- Floating Social – This WordPress plugin lets you add social sharing features and buttons to your site.
(You can add social features to your site easily with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Generate More Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
Let’s take a look now at ways to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries online.
Provide An Email Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is a great way to build a list of subscribers. Adding an email newsletter provides several benefits and advantages including:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates
- Provides you with a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for user engagement
- Provides another way for your content to be shared with others
An effective strategy for getting visitors to become subscribers is to provide users with valuable information and give them a free gift in exchange for their details. This could be a handy guide, tips for improving health, fitness and nutrition, access to health calculators, discount coupons, access to videos, podcasts, etc.
Contact Forms
A contact form makes it easy and simple for readers to get in touch with you. A contact form also allows users to provide feedback, ask questions to specific departments, request a quote, and more.
A contact form provides several benefits and advantages, like:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Gives you control over what is sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Different forms can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- Is convenient for visitors
A popular WordPress contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that lets you add and manage multiple contact forms, 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 feature you may want to consider if you plan to set up a website for a health center or medical clinic is adding sections to your contact form so prospective clients can choose which section of the clinic they are contacting you about. This ensures that contact form requests reach the right recipient.
Adding A Map
Adding maps helps your visitors and customers find you.
Maps are great tools for several reasons:
- A map helps to increase local SEO
- Helps visitors find you easily
- Shows location of events
(Adding maps to your website helps your visitors and clients find you)
Popular Google Maps plugins for WordPress include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins & Themes For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Better User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
WordPress Plugins
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your medical or health website that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for your site visitors. Here are just some of the plugins you can choose from:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar WordPress Plugin)
Booking Calendar lets you add appointment bookings to your site. Booking Calendar is well supported and has an intuitive and user-friendly interface. It is suitable for a range of uses, e.g. dental practitioners, physicians, massage therapists, booking sessions with personal trainers, etc.
(Booking Calendar WP Plugin – Overview)
This plugin works out of the box. Website visitors can check availability of services you offer and make bookings easily. Site administrators and visitors receive booking confirmations. The plugin also lets you add a calendar or booking form to your site’s sidebar, 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
(Manage Bookings And Registrations Automatically Using Event Espresso Plugin For WordPress)
If you run health events, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin enables you to easily schedule your event and start receiving registrations in minutes
(Event Espresso – Event Management And Ticket Registration Software For WordPress)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed plugin that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
We have written an in-depth article on Event Espresso here:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin For WordPress)
Calculator Pro Calculators provides a free collection of 400+ calculators that you can provide to users on your website. The plugin also supports internationalization
Most of them aren’t specifically designed for medical-related applications, but there are quite a few you can include in your website, including:
- Body Statistics – e.g. Blood Alcohol Calculator, Frame Size Calculator, Katch-Mcardle BMR Calculator, Metric Body Fat Calculator, Stride Length Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Calorie to kJ Calculator, kJ to Calorie Calculator, Calories Burned Walking Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Astrand Test Calculator, Rockport Walk Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Bike Size Calculator, Blood Donation Calculator, Ovulation Calculator, Target Heart Rate Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. BMR Calorie Calculator, Water Intake Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. Ideal Weight Calculator (kg), Weight Loss Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin is useful for creating forms that perform single and complex calculations, including:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculators
- And many more
The plugin is also available in a premium version with many additional features.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin For WordPress)
Weight Loss Tracker is a simple plugin for WordPress that lets users record their weight on given dates. The results are then displayed in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker – WordPress Plugin – Graph)
The plugin allows users to enter target weights and supports the following weight formats: Metric (Kg), Imperial – Stones & Pounds, Imperial – Pounds only.
For more details, go here}:
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator Widget
(Simple BMI Calculator – WordPress Plugin)
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator is a simple WordPress plugin that lets you add a widget to your sidebar that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
As well as Simple Body Mass Index Calculator, there are other plugins you can check out to perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A 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 Body Mass Index
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors figure out their basal metabolic rate, by entering 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 drug information, including what the drug is used for and what other medications the drug is known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data WP Plugin – Database Results)
Drug information can be displayed inside your posts and pages, or as a widget on your sidebar menu. The plugin loads the drug and pharmaceutical data from 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)
PubMed Posts adds a dashboard widget that lets you add content from PubMed articles, as well as a search feature that finds posts with specific data. An editor that lets you change the layout of data in the post content is also included with the plugin.
PubMed includes over 25 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books.
For more details, go here}:
MJM Clinic
(MJM Clinic WP Plugin)
This versatile plugin can be used to add functionality to medical and health care related websites, such as adding service pages with booking forms, organising your services into hierarchical categories, locations, create staff member pages for therapists/doctors and more.
For more details, go here}:
Treato WordPress Plugin
(Treato – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you embed the Treato healthcare search engine into your WordPress sidebar so you and your site visitors can search a vast drug database and see what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato collects and analyzes experiences sourced directly from patients from related forums and blog posts, then aggregates the posts to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users gain valuable insight about side effects, drug comparisons, which drugs people feel are working, and more from over 2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap Concierge
(HealthTap Concierge – WordPress Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows consumers 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 installed, users 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 choose a doctor, chat over text or video, or send the doctor a question and get answers with the HealthTap service.
For more details, go here}:
Trend MD
(Trend MD – WordPress Plugin)
The TrendMD plugin adds the TrendMD recommendations widget to your website. The TrendMD recommendations widget is used by scholarly publishers to increase their readership and revenue by allowing people to discover, cite or read scholarly content from your journals or websites through personalized recommendations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Nutrition Facts
(WP Nutrition Facts WordPress Plugin)
This free plugin lets you add a nutrition facts table into your pages, posts and custom post types, allowing your site visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food.
(WP Nutrition Facts WP Plugin – Creating Nutritional Facts Labels)
WP Nutrition Facts 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 run a health or fitness-related business that provides diet or healthy eating recommendations, 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 WordPress recipe plugins include:
- Recipe Card – Create search optimized recipes with nutrition facts that readers can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – Lets you easily publish recipes on your site with features like cut and paste, auto conversion of your plain text recipe posts, Google Recipe View formatting, automatic ratings and conversion from other recipe plugins.
- ZipList Recipes – Easily format recipe text and add images. Includes additional Google Recipe View formatting and SEO features.
- And many more.
For more details, go here}:
Awesome Fitness Testimonials
(Awesome Fitness Testimonials Plugin)
Awesome Fitness Testimonials lets you display fitness and wellness testimonials, case studies and reviews on your site.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images by Everkinetic
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic)
This plugin lets you display a database of exercise illustrations on your fitness site.
(Exercise Images – WordPress Plugin – Image Database)
For more details, go here}:
In the next section, we will be discussing medical and health themes for WordPress.
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This is the end of part two of this guide on ways to improve your medical business web presence.
To continue, click here:
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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)