In Part One of this comprehensive guide on ways to build your medical-related web presence, we covered the following areas:
- Challenges Medical Services Professionals Face Online
- Opportunities For Health Professionals In The Digital Economy
- Basic Web Pages
- Improve The Content On Your Website
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your medical or health-related business online.
Topics covered include:
- Ways To Improve Traffic
- Ways To Generate New Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
- WordPress Plugins That Can Help To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Create Better User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
Note: Plugins are listed in this section. Health and medical themes are covered in Part Three.
Tips For Improving Traffic
Web traffic is an important part of your online business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic.
Optimizing Your Site For SEO Using WordPress
There are so many ways WordPress can help to optimize your health-related website for search engines:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – Set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized web addresses for your article pages (called posts).
- Post Tags – WordPress lets you choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages (posts) for.
- Post Categories – Create SEO-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Excerpts – Create an excerpt that will display to search engine users.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for better search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links for faster page indexing
- Post Notification – Configure your site to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories as soon as a new post is published on your site.
How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation With WordPress Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress developer community makes available also a number of plugins that improve your health-related website’s 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 (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO)
Other WordPress plugins you can use to improve your website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing. Here are a few more powerful plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below are also free):
- BuddyPress – This free WordPress plugin helps you set up and run a social networking community on WordPress, with member profiles, activity streams, user groups, messaging, and more.
- bbPress – Run an online discussion forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress site.
- Disqus – Power discussions and increases user engagement on your site.
- Monarch – Use this plugin to add social sharing features to your posts and pages.
(You can add social sharing to your site easily using WordPress plugins)
Tips For Generating More Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Tools
Let’s now discuss ways to improve sales and generate more leads and enquiries online.
Adding A Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is an excellent way to build a subscriber list. Adding newsletters] provides many benefits, like:
- Sends targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates that could save businesses time and money
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special products or services to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for engagement with your users
- Provides another way for your content to be shared around with others
An effective strategy for enticing visitors to subscribe to your email newsletter is to provide high value information and offer users free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their details. This could be a time-saving guide, checklists for improving fitness and well-being, access to health calculators, coupons, membership access to courses, podcasts, etc.
Adding Contact Forms
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for prospective customers to get in touch. Visitors can report issues, contact specific departments, ask for quotes, and more.
A contact form provides a number of benefits and advantages, like:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Can be added to any page or post
- Improves the professional look of your website
- More convenient for visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7)
This plugin is easy to install and configure and allows you to insert multiple contact forms into any page on your site, customize the forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is supported.
Another option you may want to consider if you plan to set up a website for a clinic or medical center is to add sections to your contact form so users can select the section of the center they are contacting your business about. This helps visitors get their comment to the right person.
Adding Maps
Adding maps helps your visitors and customers find you.
A map is a great tool for several reasons:
- Maps help to improve local SEO
- Visitors can find you more easily
- Shows location of events
(Adding maps to your site helps your visitors and customers find you)
Here are some of the more popular plugins that let you embed, customize and display maps on your website:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using WordPress Plugins
WordPress Plugins
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your health or medical site that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for site visitors. Here are just some of these:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar Plugin)
This free bookings plugin allows you to add appointment bookings to your site. Booking Calendar is well supported and provides users with an intuitive interface. It is suitable for a range of businesses, e.g. medical practices, specialists, health spas, booking yoga classes, etc.
(Booking Calendar Plugin – Overview)
This booking reservations plugin works right out of the box. Your website visitors can check availability of services and book appointments online quickly and easily. Administrators and visitors receive booking confirmations. Booking Calendar also lets you add a calendar or booking form to your website’s sidebar, and supports multiple languages. A premium version of this plugin with additional features and functionalities is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – Event Manager And Registration Software For WordPress
(Manage Your Events Via The Web With Event Espresso Plugin For WP)
If your business involves running health seminars, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WordPress lets you easily schedule multiple events and start accepting registrations in a few minutes
(Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Management)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed plugin that gives you full control of your event registration management process.
We have written a comprehensive article on the benefits and features of using Event Espresso. Go here to learn more:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin For WordPress)
Calculator Pro Calculators is a free collection of over 400 calculators that you can provide to users on your website and embed into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. It supports internationalization
Note: Most of them aren’t designed for medical-related usage, but there are several you can add to your site, including:
- Body Statistics – e.g. BAI (Body Adiposity Index) Calculator, Fat Calculator, Lean Body Mass Calculator, Modification of Diet in Renal Disease (MDRD) GFR Calculator, Skinfold Body Fat Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, RMR Calculator, Calories Burned By Heart Rate Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Coopers 12 Minute Run Test Calculator, Rockport Walk Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. One Rep Max Weight Lifting Calculator, Blood Donation Calculator, Due Date Calculator, Sobriety Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, Protein Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. BMI Calculator, 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, such as:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculator
- And more
A premium version is also available with additional features.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker)
Weight Loss Tracker is a simple plugin for WordPress that lets users record their weight on given dates. The results are then shown in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin For WordPress – Graph)
The plugin allows users to input target weights and provides support for the following weight formats: Metric (Kg), Imperial – Stones & Pounds, Imperial – Pounds only.
For more details, go here}:
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator
(Simple Body Mass Index Calculator Plugin For WordPress)
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator is a free plugin for WordPress that 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 check out to perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A mobile-friendly BMI and Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) calculator that saves calculation data for logged-in users and gives an overview to the trainer (admin).
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator to show users their Body Mass Index
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors calculate their basal metabolic rate, based on age, sex and weight.
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data – WordPress Plugin)
Drug Interaction Data Plugin for WordPress will retrieve and display drug information, including what the drugs are used for and what other medications the drugs are known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data WP Plugin – Information Screen)
Information about drugs can be displayed as a widget or inside your pages and posts. 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 creates posts from PubMed articles, as well as a search function that locates posts with specific article data. An editor that lets you change the layout of data in the post content is also included.
PubMed contains over 25 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books.
For more details, go here}:
MJM Clinic
(MJM Clinic)
This versatile plugin can be used for medical and health care related websites. It lets you add service pages with booking forms, clinic locations, provide information to site visitors about health conditions and symptoms, assign case studies, link indication tags to services, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Treato
(Treato Plugin For WordPress)
This 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 patient experiences from medical 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
(HealthTap Concierge Plugin For WordPress)
HealthTap Concierge allows users to locate and book a virtual consult with doctors, clinical psychologists, etc. via HD video or text chat from any mobile device, personal computer, or smartwatch.
With the widget installed, your site visitors 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 video or text, or send the doctor their question.
For more details, go here}:
TrendMD
(Trend MD WordPress Plugin)
TrendMD will add the TrendMD recommendations widget to your 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 pages and posts, allowing your site visitors to make more informed decisions about the food they eat.
(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin – Label Creation)
This plugin uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labeling regulations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Ultimate Recipe
(WP Ultimate Recipe – WordPress Plugin)
If you own a health-related business that provides diet and nutrition or healthy eating recommendations, a great way to add engaging content to your site is to publish great recipes.
A plugin like WP Ultimate Recipe lets you add healthy recipes on your site.
Other WordPress recipe plugins include:
- Recipe Card – Publish recipes that your readers can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – Lets you easily add recipes to your site with features like cut & paste, auto conversion of your plain text recipe posts, Google Recipe View formatting, live custom formatting, automatic ratings and conversion from other recipe plugins.
- ZipList Recipes – Easily format recipe text and add images. Includes additional SEO and Google Recipe View formatting features.
- And many more.
For more details, go here}:
Awesome Fitness Testimonials
(Awesome Fitness Testimonials)
Awesome Fitness Testimonials allows you to showcase fitness & wellness testimonials, case studies and reviews, before and after photos, videos, etc. on your fitness website.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic Plugin For WordPress)
Exercise Images lets you insert exercise diagrams into your content.
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic Plugin For WordPress – Catalog)
For more details, go here}:
In the next section of this detailed guide, we look at health and medical themes for WordPress.
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This is the end of section 2 of this step-by-step guide on ways to build your medical or health business online.
Click here to keep reading:
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)