In Part 1 of this comprehensive guide on ways to build your medical-related web presence, we provided many practical tips and suggestions on the following topics:
- Online Challenges For Medical Services Providers
- Opportunities For Medical And Health Services Professionals In The Web Economy
- Your Web Pages
- Tips For Improving Your Web Content
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your medical business online.
Topics covered include:
- How To Improve Web Traffic
- Tips For Generating New Leads & Enquiries
- Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Traffic With WordPress Plugins
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
- WP Plugins – Enhance Your Website’s Capability
- WordPress For Newbies – An Overview Of WordPress Themes
Note: Plugins are described in this section. Themes for medical businesses are listed in Part Three.
Ways To Improve Traffic Using WordPress
Web traffic is vital to your online business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic.
Optimizing Your Website For Search Engines With WordPress
There are many ways WordPress can help to optimize your medical or health-related website for search engines:
- URLs – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Tags – Choose the keywords that you want your article pages (posts) to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Categories – Create search engine-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose the description for your posts that will display to search engine users.
- Images – title images used in your content with keywords for better search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that allows you to easily create internal links for faster page indexing
- Post Notification – WordPress can be configured to automatically notify (ping) other search directories as soon as a new post is published on your site.
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Better User Engagement And Driving More Traffic
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are various plugins that will improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your site.
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
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO)
Other WordPress tools you can use to improve your health or medical website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing features. Here are a few plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – BuddyPress helps you set up and run a social network on your website, with member profiles, user groups, messaging, activity streams, and more.
- bbPress – This free WordPress plugin can be used to set up and run a discussion forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – Use E-Newsletter to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard.
- Disqus – This WordPress plugin lets you power discussions and increases engagement on your website.
- Floating Social – Easily add powerful social sharing features and buttons to your posts and pages.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website with WordPress plugins)
Ways To Generate More Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Applications
In this section, we’ll look at how to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries.
Providing An Email Newsletter
Adding a newsletter is an excellent way to grow and retain your readership. Adding newsletters] provides a number of benefits including:
- Sends targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides useful updates
- Provides you with a highly targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for improving interaction
- Provides you with additional opportunities for subscribers to share your content
A proven way to entice visitors to subscribe to your newsletter is to provide high value information and give users free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their details. This could be a time-saving guide, tips for improving health, fitness and nutrition, access to fitness calculators, free trials, membership access to videos, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
A contact form makes it easy and simple for prospective customers to contact you. Readers can report problems, contact specific departments, request quotes, give suggestions for new services or products and more.
A contact form provides a number of benefits, like:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- Convenience for users
A popular contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7)
Contact Form 7 lets you create multiple contact forms into any post or page, customize the form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering is supported.
Something to consider if you plan to set up a website for a medical practice is to add sections to your contact form so visitors can choose the practitioner they want to contact. This ensures that contact form requests reach the right department.
Map Integration
Maps help your visitors and customers find you.
Integrating maps, such as Google Maps, with your website also provides visitors with a number of benefits, such as:
- A map improves local SEO
- Helps visitors find you easily
- Display location of events
(Adding a map helps your visitors and customers find you)
Some of the most popular Google Maps plugins include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation Using Plugins
WordPress Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your website that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for visitors. Here are just some of these plugins:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar Plugin)
The Booking Calendar plugin allows you to add online booking services to your site. It is well supported and has an intuitive and user-friendly interface. It is highly suitable for a wide range health and medical consulting businesses, e.g. dental practitioners, specialists, chiropractors, booking sessions with personal trainers, etc.
(Booking Calendar WordPress Plugin – Overview)
This bookings plugin works out of the box. Your website visitors can check the availability of services you offer and book appointments easily. Administrators and visitors receive email notifications. Booking Calendar also lets you add a calendar or booking form to your website’s sidebar, and supports multiple languages. The plugin is also available in a premium version with many extra features.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management And Ticket Registration Plugin
(Manage Bookings And Registrations Via The Web Using Event Espresso For WP)
If you run medical events like seminars or workshops, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin enables you to easily set up multiple events and begin accepting registrations literally in a few minutes
(Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager & Ticket Registration System)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich software that gives you complete control of your event registration management process.
We have written a comprehensive article on Event Espresso. Go here to learn more about this:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators – WordPress Plugin)
Calculator Pro provides a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed these into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t specifically designed for health-related uses, but there are a number you can add to your website, including:
- Body Statistics – e.g. ANC Calculator, Carbohydrate Calculator, GFR (Glomerular Filtration Rate) Calculator, Metric BMR Calculator, VO2 Max Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Calorie to kJ Calculator, RMR Calculator, Calories Burned Running Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Push-Up Test Calculator, Rockport Walk Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Beats and Breaths Calculator, Blood Sugar Converter Calculator, Pace Calculator, Sobriety Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. BMR Calorie Calculator, Protein Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. Ideal Weight Calculator (kg), Weight Loss Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form WP Plugin)
The Calculated Fields Form plugin lets you create dynamically calculated field forms, including:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculator
- And many more
The plugin is also available in a premium version with extra features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker)
Weight Loss Tracker is a free plugin for WordPress that 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 – Graph)
The plugin allows users to insert 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 Widget WordPress Plugin)
Simple BMI Calculator is a simple plugin for WordPress that lets you add a widget to your website that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
As well as Simple BMI Calculator, there are additional plugins you can check out 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 administrator.
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator that displays BMI
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors figure out 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 Plugin For WordPress)
Drug Interaction Data will retrieve and display information about drugs, including what the drug is used to treat and what other medications the drug is known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data – WordPress Plugin – Results)
Drug information can be displayed inside your pages and posts, or as a widget on your blog sidebar. 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 Plugin For WordPress)
PubMed Posts adds a dashboard widget that creates posts from PubMed articles, plus a search function that finds posts with specific article data. It also includes an editor that lets you change the layout of your post content.
PubMed comprises more than 25 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, online books and life science journals.
For more details, go here}:
MJM Clinic
(MJM Clinic Plugin)
This plugin was designed to add functionality to medical and health care related websites, such as inserting service pages with booking forms, related health conditions, locations, feedback entries and more.
For more details, go here}:
Treato
(Treato Plugin For WordPress)
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 see what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato collects and analyzes patient experiences from related forums and blog posts, then aggregates the content to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users can access valuable insight about the side effects of 26,000+ medications, drug comparisons across 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)
HealthTap Concierge allows users to consult with doctors, clinical psychologists, etc. via text chat or HD video from any mobile device, personal computer, even smartwatch.
With the plugin installed, your visitors can type in a health question and receive a list of doctors in their geographic area who specialize in that particular topic. They can then select a doctor, chat over text or video, or send the doctor their question.
For more details, go here}:
TrendMD
(Trend MD)
TrendMD adds the TrendMD recommendations widget to your site. The TrendMD recommendations widget is used by scholarly publishers to increase 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 and pages, allowing your site visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food and make better decisions about the food products they consume.
(WP Nutrition Facts – WordPress Plugin – Label Creation)
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 own a health or fitness website that provides nutrition or healthy eating advice, a great way to add content that will engage your readers is to publish recipes.
Plugins like WP Ultimate Recipe let you easily publish healthy and delicious recipes on your site.
Other recipe plugins for WordPress include:
- Recipe Card – Publish search optimized recipes with nutrition facts that site users can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – Lets you easily publish recipes on your site with features like cut and paste, plain text recipe auto conversion, Google Recipe View formatting, automatic ratings and conversion from other recipe plugins.
- ZipList Recipes – Lets you 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)
Awesome Fitness Testimonials lets you add fitness and wellness testimonials, case studies and reviews, before and after pics, videos, etc. to your health & fitness websites.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images
(Exercise Images WordPress Plugin)
Exercise Images lets you display exercise drawings in your posts and pages.
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic Plugin For WordPress – Database)
For more details, go here}:
In part three of this guide, we take a look at WordPress themes that are suitable for health and medical businesses.
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This is the end of section two of this comprehensive guide on ways to improve your health business web presence.
Click on this link to view Part 3:
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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