In Part One of this step-by-step guide on ways to grow your medical web presence, we provided many practical tips and suggestions on the following areas:
- Challenges Medical Professionals Face Online
- Opportunities For Health Services Practitioners In The Online Economy
- Basic Pages
- Improving Your Content
In Parts 2 and 3, we explore more ways to grow your medical services online.
Areas covered include:
- Ways To Improve Traffic
- Tips For Generating Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
- WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increasing User Engagement And Generating More Web Traffic
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
Note: WordPress health and medical plugins are described in this section. Health and medical themes are listed in Part Three.
Online Business Tips For Medical Practitioners – How To Improve Your Business Online With WordPress Plugins and Themes
Your web traffic is an important part of your online business growth. This section explores ways of improving your health or medical business online with WordPress themes and plugins.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines
There are so many ways WordPress can help to improve SEO:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – configure the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Tags – WordPress lets you select the keywords that you want your articles to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Create search engine-friendly categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose the description for your posts that will show in search results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for improved search engine results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that allows you to easily link your content to other posts and pages on your site
- Pinging – WordPress can be set up to automatically notify (ping) other search directories immediately upon publishing new content on your site.
Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic To Your Business Generation With WordPress Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are many plugins for WordPress that will improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your website.
For example, you can install the plugins below to improve your website’s search engine optimization:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (for search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO)
Other ways to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing. Here are a few more WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below are also free):
- BuddyPress – This free WordPress plugin lets you run your own social network on your website, with member profiles, user groups, messaging, activity streams, and more.
- bbPress – This free WordPress plugin helps you set up a forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – Use E-Newsletter to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress site.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and increases user engagement on your website.
- Social Media Feather – This WordPress plugin lets you add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your website.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their site with free or inexpensive plugins)
Ways To Generate New Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
Let’s discuss now how to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries.
Provide A Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is an excellent way to build a list of subscribers. Adding email newsletters] provides a number of benefits and advantages including:
- Sends targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides updates that could save businesses time and money
- 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 user engagement
- Provides additional opportunities for your content to be shared online with other prospective customers
A proven strategy for getting visitors to become subscribers is to provide them with high value content and offer them something for free in exchange for their personal details. This can be a handy guide, checklists for improving health, fitness and diet, access to fitness applications, free trials, access to courses, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
Contact forms make it easy and simple for prospective clients to get in touch. Visitors can provide feedback, contact specific departments, request quotes, give suggestions for new services or products and more.
Contact forms provide a number of benefits and advantages including:
- Reduces spam
- Set up automated responses
- Giving you control over what is sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Different forms can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- Convenience for site visitors
A very popular contact form plugin for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin is easy to install and set up and allows you to create multiple contact forms to your pages and posts, customize the forms and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering is also supported.
Another feature to consider if you are setting up a website for a clinic or medical center is adding sections to your contact form so users can choose which practitioner they want to contact. This ensures that visitors’ enquiries reach the correct destination.
Add Maps
Adding maps helps your visitors and customers find you.
A map is a great tool for several reasons:
- A map improves local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Display location of events
(Adding maps to your site helps your visitors and customers find you)
Some of the more popular map plugins include:
- 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 Traffic Generation
Health – 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 site visitors. Here are some of these:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin allows you to add online bookings to your site. This flexible plugin has an intuitive interface. It is highly suitable for a range medical and health consulting businesses, e.g. medical practices, physicians, chiropractors, booking yoga classes, etc.
(Booking Calendar WP Plugin – Overview)
The plugin works right out of the box. Your website visitors can check the availability of services you offer and make online bookings quickly and easily. Administrators and visitors receive email notifications. The plugin is also widget-ready, and supports multiple languages. A premium version is also available and includes many extra features.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager & Ticket Registration Plugin
(Manage Event Registrations Automatically With Event Espresso Plugin For WP)
If you plan to run medical or health seminars, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration WP plugin lets you easily set up your event and begin processing online bookings in just minutes
(Event Espresso – Event Management And Ticket Registration System For WordPress)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed application that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.
We have written a comprehensive article on Event Espresso here:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin)
Calculator Pro provides a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed these into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t designed for medical applications, but there are quite a number you can include in your site, including:
- Body Statistics – e.g. ANC Calculator, FENa Calculator, Katch-Mcardle BMR Calculator, Metric Body Fat Calculator, WHtR Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Calorie to kJ Calculator, RMR Calculator, Calories Burned Swimming Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Push-Up Test Calculator, Rockport Walk Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Advanced One Rep Max Weight Lifting Calculator, Blood Donation Calculator, Due Date Calculator, Target Heart Rate Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. BMR Calorie Calculator, Creatine Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. Ideal Weight Calculator, Weight Loss Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form – WordPress Plugin)
With Calculated Fields Form you can create dynamically calculated field forms, including:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculators
- And many more
A premium plugin version is also available and includes a ton of extra features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker – WordPress Plugin)
Weight Loss Tracker is a free plugin that lets users record their weight on given dates. The data is then shown in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin – 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 Body Mass Index Calculator Widget
(Simple Body Mass Index Calculator WordPress Plugin)
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator is a simple 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 to perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A mobile-friendly BMI and BMR calculator that saves calculation data for logged-in users and gives an overview to the trainer (admin).
- 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 WP Plugin)
Drug Interaction Data 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 – Data Results)
Information about drugs can be displayed as a widget or inside your pages and posts. 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 add posts from PubMed articles, as well as a search widget that helps visitors find posts with specific article data. A content editor is also included with the plugin.
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)
MJM Clinic can be used for clinic and health care related websites. It lets you add service pages with booking forms, provide related health conditions, assign case studies, link indication tags to services, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Treato WordPress Plugin
(Treato – WordPress Plugin)
Treato WordPress plugin lets you add a sidebar widget that allows you and your users to search a vast drug database and 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 content to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users receive insight about over 14,700 conditions and over 26,500 medications from over 2.2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap Concierge
(HealthTap Plugin For WordPress)
HealthTap Concierge allows consumers to locate and book a virtual consult with real doctors who specialize in a given health topic via text chat or HD video from any mobile device, personal computer, or smartwatch.
With the widget installed, your site visitors 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 particular topic. They can then choose a doctor, chat over video or text, or send questions and get answers with the service.
For more details, go here}:
Trend MD
(Trend MD Plugin)
The TrendMD plugin will add the TrendMD recommendations widget to your WP website. The TrendMD recommendations widget is used by scholarly publishers to grow 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)
WP Nutrition Facts lets you insert 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 – 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)
If you run a health or fitness website that provides diet and nutrition or healthy eating recommendations, a great way to add content that will engage your readers is to add recipes.
A plugin like WP Ultimate Recipe lets you easily publish healthy recipes on your site.
Other WordPress recipe plugins include:
- Recipe Card – Publish beautiful recipes with nutrition facts that your readers can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – EasyRecipe makes entering 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 – 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)
The Awesome Fitness Testimonials plugin lets you add fitness & wellness testimonials, reviews and case studies to your website.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you display a database of exercise diagrams on your fitness site.
(Exercise Images – WordPress Plugin – Image Database)
For more details, go here}:
In part 3, we will be discussing WordPress themes that are suitable for health and medical businesses.
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This is the end of section 2.
To view the rest of this article, click this link:
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum