In Part 1 of this article on ways to build your medical-related web presence, we covered the following topics:
- Challenges Health And Medical Services Professionals Face Online
- Online Opportunities For Medical Providers
- Ways To Improve Your Web Pages
- How To Improve The Content On Your Site
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your health-related business online.
Topics covered in this (and the next section) include:
- How To Improve Web Traffic
- Generating More Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Tools
- WordPress Plugins & Themes That Improve Search Engine Optimization, Create Better User Engagement And Drive More Visitors
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
- Using WordPress Plugins To Enhance Your Blog’s Features
- WordPress For Newbies – An Overview Of WP Themes
Note: Plugins are listed in this section. Medical and health-related themes are listed in Part 3.
Improve Web Traffic With WordPress
Web traffic is vital to your business growth. In this section, we discuss ways of improving your health or medical business online using WordPress.
Optimizing Your Website For Search Engines Using WordPress
There are loads of ways WordPress can help to improve SEO:
- URLs – Set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your article pages.
- Post Tags – WordPress lets you specify the keywords that you want your article pages to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Categories – Add categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Post Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose an excerpt that search engines will display.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for better search results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links
- Post Notification – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify (ping) other search directories the moment a new post is published on your website.
Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Traffic With Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are various WordPress plugins that will improve your medical-related website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your site.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your site’s search engine optimization:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO)
Other things you can do to improve your website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing. Here are some more WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – Run an online social network on WordPress, with member profiles, messaging, activity streams, user groups, and more.
- bbPress – This free WordPress plugin helps you set up a discussion forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – This plugin lets you send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP site.
- Disqus – use this WordPress plugin to power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your site.
- Monarch – Use this WordPress plugin to add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your posts and pages.
(You can easily add social sharing to your site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Generate More Leads & Enquiries
In this section we will discuss how to improve your sales and generate new leads and enquiries for your health or medical-related business.
Provide A Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is an excellent way to retain and grow your readership. Adding an email newsletter provides several benefits, like:
- Drives targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides updates
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for user interaction
- Provides another way for readers to share your content
One of the things you can do to get visitors to subscribe to your newsletter is to provide high value content and offer users a free gift in exchange for their personal details. This could be a handy guide, checklists for improving fitness and nutrition, access to fitness tools, discount vouchers, access to subscriber-only content, podcasts, etc.
Contact Forms
Contact forms make it easy and simple for readers to contact you. A contact form also lets readers report concerns, contact specific departments, ask for quotes, send suggestions for improvements and more.
Contact forms provide many benefits and advantages, like:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Can be added to any page or post
- Improves the professional look of your website
- 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 free contact form plugin lets you insert multiple contact forms on your posts and pages, customize your forms and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is supported.
Something else to consider if you plan to set up a website for a medical practice is adding sections to your contact form so visitors can select the section of the center they want to reach. This ensures that visitors’ requests reach the right destination.
Add Maps
Adding a map to your website helps your visitors and clients find you.
Inserting maps, such as Google Maps, into your site also provides a number of benefits, such as:
- A map helps to increase local SEO
- Clients can better plan their visits and appointments
- Show location of events
(A map helps your visitors and customers find you)
Here are some 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 Web Traffic Generation
WordPress Plugins
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your site that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for users. Here are some of the plugins you can choose from:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar WP Plugin)
Booking Calendar lets you add online bookings to your site. Booking Calendar is well supported, has an intuitive and user-friendly interface with flexible functionality. It is highly suitable for a range medical, health, fitness & sports uses, e.g. medical practitioners, specialists, massage therapists, booking yoga classes, etc.
(Booking Calendar – WordPress Plugin – Overview)
This plugin works right out of the box. Website visitors can check availability of services you offer and book appointments quickly and easily. Site administrators and visitors receive email notifications. Booking Calendar is also widget-ready, and offers multi-language support. A premium version of this plugin is also available with a ton of extra features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso
(Manage Your Events Automatically With 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 WP software lets you easily set up an event and begin accepting online bookings literally in minutes
(Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed plugin that gives you full control of your event registration management process.
If you want to learn more about Event Espresso, refer to this article:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin)
Calculator Pro provides a free collection of 400+ calculators that you can display on your website and embed into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of them aren’t designed for health or medical-related use, but there are quite a few you can add to your site, including the following:
- Body Statistics – e.g. Body Surface Area Calculator, Durnin/Womersley Skinfold Body Fat Calculator, Katch-Mcardle BMR Calculator, Max Heart Rate Calculator, US Navy Body Fat Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Daily Calorie Calculator, kJ to Calorie Calculator, Calories Burned By Heart Rate Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Push-Up Test Calculator, Balke Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Advanced One Rep Max Weight Lifting Calculator, Blood Sugar Converter Calculator, Pregnancy Calculator, Running Pace Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Carbohydrate Calculator, Protein Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. Ideal Weight Calculator, Weight Loss Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form)
The Calculated Fields Form plugin lets you create dynamically calculated field forms, such as:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculator
- And lots more
The plugin is also available in a premium version with many more features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin For WordPress)
Weight Loss Tracker is a free plugin that lets users record their weight periodically. The results are then displayed in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker – WordPress Plugin – User 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 BMI Calculator Widget
(Simple BMI Calculator WordPress Plugin)
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator is a free WordPress plugin that installs a widget on your sidebar that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
As well as Simple BMI Calculator, there are additional WordPress plugins you can use to perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A Body Mass Index and Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) calculator that saves calculation data for logged-in users and gives an overview to the administrator.
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator to show your users their 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 retrieves and displays 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 – Data Results)
Information about drugs can be displayed on your site. 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 WP Plugin)
This plugin adds a dashboard widget that creates posts from PubMed articles, as well as a search function that locates posts with specific article data. A simple content editor is also included.
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 – WordPress 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, related health conditions, multiple service locations, feedback entries and more.
For more details, go here}:
Treato
(Treato Plugin)
Treato WordPress plugin lets you add a sidebar widget that allows your site visitors to search a vast drug database and see what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato collects 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 insight about the side effects of 26,600+ medications, drug comparisons across 14,500+ medical conditions, which drugs people feel are working, and more, from over 2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap Concierge
(HealthTap – WordPress Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows users to locate and book a virtual consult with real doctors, clinical psychologists, etc. via text chat or HD video from any mobile device, 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 choose a doctor, chat over text or video, or send the doctor their question.
For more details, go here}:
TrendMD
(TrendMD WordPress Plugin)
TrendMD lets you 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 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 free plugin lets you insert a nutrition facts table into your posts, pages and custom post types, allowing your site visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food.
(WP Nutrition Facts – WordPress Plugin – Creating Labels)
WP Nutrition Facts uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labelling regulations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Ultimate Recipe
(WP Ultimate Recipe)
If you own a health or fitness-related business that provides diet or healthy eating information, a great source of content that will engage your readers is to add great recipes.
A plugin like WP Ultimate Recipe lets you add healthy recipes on your site.
Other WordPress recipe plugins include:
- Recipe Card – Create and publish recipes with nutrition facts that site visitors can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – EasyRecipe makes entering recipes on your site easy with features like cut and paste, auto conversion of your plain text recipe posts, Google Recipe View formatting and preview button, automatic ratings and conversion from other recipe plugins.
- ZipList Recipes – Easily format recipe text and add images. Additional features like SEO and Google Recipe View formatting are included.
- And many more.
For more details, go here}:
Awesome Fitness Testimonials
(Awesome Fitness Testimonials Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin lets you display fitness & wellness testimonials, case studies and reviews on your fitness site.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images by Everkinetic
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic Plugin For WordPress)
Exercise Images by Everkinetic lets you insert a database of exercise drawings into your web content.
(Exercise Images WordPress Plugin – Database)
For more details, go here}:
In part 3, we look at medical and health themes for WordPress.
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This is the end of section two.
Click here to keep reading:
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