In Part One of this article on ways to grow your health or medical web presence, we provided in-depth tips and suggestions on the following topics:
- Challenges Health And Medical Services Face Online
- Opportunities For Medical Providers In The Online Economy
- Basic Pages
- Tips On How To Improve The Content On Your Site
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your health or medical business online.
Areas covered in this (and the following section) include:
- Improve Traffic With WordPress
- Ways To Generate New Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Applications
- WordPress Plugins & Themes That Can Help To Improve SEO, Create Better User Engagement And Generate More Traffic
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
- Add New Features And Functionality To Your WordPress Website With Plugins
- WP Themes – An Introduction
Note: Plugins are covered in this section. Medical and health-related themes are covered in Part Three.
Ways To Improve Web Traffic
Web traffic is an important part of your online business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic.
Optimizing Your Website For Search Engines (SEO)
There are lots of ways that WordPress helps optimize your website for search engines:
- SEO-Friendly – configure the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Tags – Choose the keywords that you want your articles to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Categories – Add categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Post Excerpts – Set the description for your posts that search engines will show in their search result pages.
- Images – title images used in your content with keywords for improved search results.
- Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that allows you to easily create internal links for better indexing of your web content
- Post Notification – Set up your site to automatically notify (ping) other search directories immediately upon publishing new content on your site.
Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Web Traffic Using WordPress Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress developer community makes available a number of plugins that will improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your site.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your site’s search engine optimization:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (for search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO)
Other WordPress plugins you can use to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social features. Here are a few powerful plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below are also free):
- BuddyPress – Set up your own social network on your website.
- bbPress – Use the bbPress WordPress plugin to set up your own online community forum on your WordPress website.
- E-Newsletter – Use E-Newsletter to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard.
- Disqus – use this WordPress plugin to power discussions and increases user engagement on your website.
- Monarch – Use this WordPress plugin to add powerful social sharing features on your website or blog.
(You can easily add social sharing features to your website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
How To Generate Leads & Enquiries
Let’s discuss now ways to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries.
Add An Email Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is a great way to build a list of subscribers. It] provides a number of benefits and advantages including:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Increases interaction
- Provides you with additional ways for readers to share your content
One of the best ways to get visitors to subscribe is to provide high value information and offer users free gifts in exchange for their details. This could be a handy guide, tips for improving general health and fitness, access to health calculators, coupons, access to subscriber-only content, podcasts, etc.
Add Contact Forms
Contact forms make it easy and simple for prospective clients to contact you. Users can report problems, contact specific departments, ask for a quote, and more.
Contact forms provide a number of benefits, like:
- Reducing spam
- Set up automated responses
- Gives you control over what is sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Contact forms can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- Is convenient for site visitors
One of the most popular WordPress contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that is easy to install and set up and lets you insert multiple contact forms on your posts and pages, customize your form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
The plugin also supports international languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Another option you may want to consider if you are setting up a website for a health center or medical clinic is to add sections to your contact form so prospective clients can select which section of the clinic they are contacting you about. This helps get their message to the correct recipient.
Provide Maps
Adding a map to your site helps your visitors and clients find you.
Integrating maps, such as Google Maps, with your site also provides many benefits, such as:
- They help to increase local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Displays location of events
(A map helps your visitors and clients find you)
Some of the most popular map plugins for WordPress include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
Improving Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Traffic To Your Health Services Website Generation With Plugins
WordPress Plugins
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your medical or health site that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for visitors. Here are some of the plugins you can choose from:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar WordPress Plugin)
This free bookings plugin lets you add appointment bookings to your site. It is well supported, has an intuitive interface with flexible functionality. It is highly suitable for a range health and medical consulting uses, such as medical practitioners, specialists, health spas, booking sessions with personal trainers, etc.
(Booking Calendar Plugin – Overview)
This booking reservations plugin works right out of the box. Your website visitors can check the availability of services and book appointments easily. Administrators and visitors receive booking confirmations. Booking Calendar also lets you add a calendar or booking form to your website’s sidebar, and offers multi-language support. A premium version of this plugin with many extra features is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticketing Manager Software
(Manage Event Bookings Online Using Event Espresso Plugin For WordPress)
If your business involves running health or medical seminars, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration software lets you easily schedule an event and begin processing online registrations literally in a few minutes
(Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich plugin that gives you full control of the event registration management process.
We have written a detailed article about Event Espresso. Go here to learn more:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
Calculator Pro Calculators is a free collection of 400+ calculators that you can provide to users on your website and embed into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of the calculators aren’t designed for health or medical-related use, but there are many you can add to your website, including:
- Body Statistics – e.g. BMI Calculator, Fat Calculator, Goal Weight Calculator, Ponderal Index Calculator, Stride Length Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, kJ to Calorie Calculator, Calories Burned Swimming Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Astrand Test Calculator, Bruce Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Advanced One Rep Max Weight Lifting Calculator, Blood Sugar Converter Calculator, Due Date Calculator, Smoking Cost Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Carbohydrate Calculator, Protein Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. BAI (Body Adiposity Index) Calculator, Weight Loss Percentage Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form WP Plugin)
This free plugin is great for creating forms that perform single and complex calculations, such as:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculator
- And more
A premium plugin version is also available with additional features.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker WordPress Plugin)
Weight Loss Tracker lets logged-in users record their weight on given dates. This data is then displayed in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker – WordPress Plugin – Graph)
The plugin allows users to input target weights and supports various weight formats: Metric (Kg), Imperial – Stones & Pounds, Imperial – Pounds only.
For more details, go here}:
Simple BMI Calculator
(Simple Body Mass Index Calculator)
Simple BMI Calculator is a free WordPress plugin that lets you add a widget to your website that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
In addition to Simple BMI Calculator, there are a number of plugins you can look at that perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A Body Mass Index and Basal Metabolic Rate calculator that saves calculation data for logged-in users and gives an overview to the trainer (site administrator).
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator that displays Body Mass Index
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors calculate their basal metabolic rate, by inputting their age, sex and weight.
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data WordPress Plugin)
Drug Interaction Data 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 Plugin – Data Results)
Drug information can be displayed as a widget or inside your web content. 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 WordPress Plugin)
PubMed Posts adds a dashboard widget that lets you publish content to your site from PubMed articles, and a search feature that locates posts with specific article data. The plugin also includes a simple editor that changes the layout of your post content data.
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)
This plugin can be used to add functionality to medical and health care related websites, such as inserting service pages with booking forms, related health conditions, locations, create service listings 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 your site visitors can search a vast drug database 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 posts to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users receive insight about the side effects of 26,500+ medications, drug comparisons across 14,500+ medical conditions, which drugs people feel work, and more, from over 2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap Concierge
(HealthTap Concierge WP Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows consumers to consult with real doctors 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 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 over video or text, or send the doctor their question.
For more details, go here}:
TrendMD
(TrendMD WordPress Plugin)
TrendMD will add the TrendMD recommendations widget to your WP site. The TrendMD recommendations widget is used by scholarly publishers to increase their readership and revenue by allowing people to discover, read or cite scholarly content from your journals or websites through personalized recommendations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Nutrition Facts
(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin)
WP Nutrition Facts lets you insert a nutrition facts table into your pages and posts, allowing your visitors to make informed food choices towards healthy eating goals.
(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin – Create 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-related business that provides nutritional or healthy eating suggestions, a great way to add content that will engage your readers is to publish recipes.
Plugins like WP Ultimate Recipe let you easily publish delicious and healthy on your site.
Other recipe plugins for WordPress include:
- Recipe Card – Create and publish beautiful recipes with nutrition facts that site users can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – EasyRecipe lets you easily publish recipes on your site 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 – You can easily format recipe text and add images. Additional features like Google Recipe View formatting and SEO are included.
- And many more.
For more details, go here}:
Awesome Fitness Testimonials
(Awesome Fitness Testimonials WordPress Plugin)
Awesome Fitness Testimonials lets you showcase fitness & wellness testimonials, reviews and case studies, before and after photos, etc. on your website.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic)
Exercise Images by Everkinetic lets you insert a database of exercise drawings into your pages and posts.
(Exercise Images – WordPress Plugin – Image Catalog)
For more details, go here}:
In the next section of this detailed guide, we take a look at medical and health themes for WordPress.
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This is the end of section two.
To continue, click this link:
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum