In Part 1 of this step-by-step guide on ways to build your medical business web presence, we covered the following areas:
- Challenges Professional Medical Providers Face Online
- Opportunities For The Health & Medical Profession In The Online Economy
- Essential Pages
- Tips For Improving The Content On Your Website
In Parts Two & Three, we continue looking at more ways to grow your medical-related services online.
Areas covered in this (and the next section) include:
- Ways Of Improving Web Traffic With WordPress
- Generating New Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Applications
- WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Creating Better User Engagement And Generating More Traffic
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
- Adding New Features And Functionality To Your Website With WordPress Plugins
- WP For Beginners – An Introduction To Themes
Note: Medical and health plugins are covered in this section. Health and medical themes are listed in Part 3.
Tips For Improving Web Traffic
Web traffic is vital to your online business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic.
Optimizing Your Site For Search Engines (SEO) With WordPress
There are so many ways that WordPress helps improve SEO:
- SEO-Friendly – configure the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your article pages (called posts).
- Tags – Specify the keywords that you want search engines to index your posts for.
- Post Categories – Add SEO-friendly categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Post Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose descriptions for your posts that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – title images with keywords for better search results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that allows you to easily create internal links for better indexing of pages
- Post Notification – WordPress can be set up to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories as soon as a new post is published on your site.
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Increasing User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are various WordPress plugins that will improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.
Here are some plugins you can use to improve your website’s SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin (for search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO)
Other WordPress tools you can add to improve your health-related site’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing features. Here are a few more fantastic WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – Use the BuddyPress plugin to run an online social community on your website.
- bbPress – This plugin allows you to set up and manage a community forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – Use E-Newsletter to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard, without a third party subscription.
- Disqus – Power discussions and increases engagement on your website.
- Floating Social – Use this WordPress plugin to add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your pages and posts.
(You can easily add social sharing features to your site using WordPress plugins)
Generate More Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Applications
Let’s now take a look at how to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries.
Providing An Email Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is a great way to build a subscriber list. It] provides many benefits including:
- Drives targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides a highly targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for user engagement
- Provides additional ways for readers to share your content
A proven way to attract subscribers is to provide high value content and give users free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their details. This could be an exclusive report, tips for improving fitness and nutrition, access to medical apps, discount vouchers, membership access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Provide A Contact Form
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for prospective customers to get in touch with you. Readers can report issues, ask questions to specific departments, ask for a quote, give suggestions and more.
Contact forms provide several benefits and advantages, like:
- Reduces 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 website
- More convenient for visitors
A very popular contact form plugin for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7)
This plugin is easy to install and configure and allows you to add and manage multiple contact forms to your posts and pages, customize your forms and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering is supported.
Something to consider if you plan to set up a website for a medical practice is to segment your contact form so prospective clients can choose which practitioner they want to contact. This will help get their message to the correct department.
Provide A Map
Adding maps helps your visitors and customers find you.
Maps are very useful tools for several reasons:
- A map improves local SEO
- Helps visitors find your office easily
- Display location of events
(Adding maps helps your visitors and clients find you)
Below are some 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
Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With Plugins & Themes
Plugins For WordPress
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your website to immediately add a range of functional tools for site visitors. Here are some of these plugins:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar Plugin)
This free bookings reservations plugin lets you add appointment booking services to your site. Booking Calendar is well supported, has an intuitive and user-friendly interface with flexible functionality. It is highly suitable for a wide range of medical, health and beauty-related uses, e.g. medical practitioners, specialists, health spas, booking yoga classes, etc.
(Booking Calendar Plugin – Overview)
This booking reservations plugin works out of the box. Your website visitors can check availability of services you offer and book appointments online quickly and easily. Administrators and visitors receive email notifications. The plugin is also widget-ready, and supports multiple languages. A premium plugin version is also available with additional features.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticket Management Software
(Manage Event Bookings Via The Web With Event Espresso Plugin For WP)
If you run health events, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WP allows you to easily set up multiple events and start accepting registrations in minutes
(Event Espresso – Event Management And Registration System For WordPress)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed application that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.
We have written a detailed article about Event Espresso. To learn more, go here:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
This plugin provides a free collection of over 400 calculators that you can display on your website and embed into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of them aren’t specifically designed for health-related use, but there are quite a number you can add to your site, including the following:
- Body Statistics – e.g. Body Surface Area Calculator, Carbohydrate Calculator, Katch-Mcardle BMR Calculator, Max Heart Rate Calculator, Waist to Hip Ratio Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Calorie to kJ Calculator, RMR Calculator, Calories Burned Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. BAI (Body Adiposity Index) Calculator, Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Bike Size Calculator, Blood Donation Calculator, Ovulation Calculator, Running Pace Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, Macronutrient Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. Ideal Weight Calculator, Weight Loss Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form Plugin)
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 more
A premium plugin version is also available and includes many extra features.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker)
Weight Loss Tracker lets logged-in users record their weight on given dates. The results are then shown in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin For WordPress – User Graph)
The plugin allows users to enter target weights and supports various weight formats: Metric (Kg), Imperial – Stones & Pounds, Imperial – Pounds only.
For more details, go here}:
Simple BMI Calculator Widget
(Simple Body Mass Index Calculator Widget Plugin)
Simple BMI Calculator installs a widget on your website that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
As well as Simple Body Mass Index Calculator, there are a number of other plugins you can look at to perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A responsive BMI and BMR calculator that saves calculation data for logged-in users and gives an overview to the trainer (site admin).
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator that displays Body Mass Index
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors figure out 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 Plugin For WordPress)
Drug Interaction Data Plugin for WordPress retrieves and displays drug information, including what the drugs are used for and what other medications the drugs are known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data Plugin – Database Results)
Information about drugs can be displayed inside your pages and posts, 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 and converts common names of drugs to the standardized RxNorm name.
For more details, go here}:
PubMed Posts
(PubMed Posts Plugin For WordPress)
PubMed Posts adds a dashboard widget that lets you add content from PubMed articles, plus a search feature that finds posts with specific data. It also includes a simple editor that lets you change the layout of your post content data.
PubMed includes over 25 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, online books and life science journals.
For more details, go here}:
MJM Clinic
(MJM Clinic)
MJM Clinic was designed to add functionality to medical and health care related websites that provide information to site visitors about symptoms and health conditions.
For more details, go here}:
Treato WordPress Plugin
(Treato – WordPress Plugin)
Treato WordPress plugin lets you add a sidebar widget that allows your site visitors to search drugs and read what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato gathers and analyzes experiences sourced directly from patients from related forums and blog posts, then aggregates the content to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users gain insight about the side effects of 26,000+ medications, drug comparisons across over 14,500 medical conditions, which drugs people feel work, and more, from over 2.2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap Concierge
(HealthTap Concierge WordPress Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows visitors to consult with real doctors via HD video or text chat from any mobile device, personal computer, even smartwatch.
With the widget installed, 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 particular topic. They can then select a doctor, chat using video or text, or send questions.
For more details, go here}:
Trend MD
(Trend MD – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin 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 scholarly content from your journals or websites through personalized recommendations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Nutrition Facts
(WP Nutrition Facts)
This simple WordPress plugin lets you add a nutrition facts table into your posts, pages and custom post types, allowing your site visitors to make more informed food choices towards healthy eating goals.
(WP Nutrition Facts – Creating Labels)
This plugin uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labeling regulations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Ultimate Recipe
(WP Ultimate Recipe – WP Plugin)
If you own a health or fitness business that provides diet and nutrition or healthy eating information, a great way to add content that will engage your readers is to add healthy recipes.
A plugin like WP Ultimate Recipe lets you add recipes on your site.
Other WordPress recipe plugins include:
- Recipe Card – Publish recipes that site users can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – Makes publishing recipes on your site easy with features like cut & paste, plain text recipe auto conversion, live custom formatting, Google Recipe View formatting, automatic ratings and conversion from other recipe plugins.
- ZipList Recipes – 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)
Awesome Fitness Testimonials lets you add fitness and wellness testimonials, reviews and case studies, before and after photos, etc. to your website.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images by Everkinetic
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic Plugin)
The Exercise Images plugin lets you display a database of exercise images on your site.
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic Plugin – Catalog)
For more details, go here}:
In the next section of this detailed guide, we take a look at WordPress themes that are suitable for medical clinics and health businesses.
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This is the end of section two.
To continue, click here:
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