In Part 1 of this comprehensive guide on ways to grow your health or medical-related business web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Challenges Medical Services Face Online
- Opportunities For Medical Services Providers In The Digital Economy
- Your Web Pages
- Improve The Content On Your Site
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your health-related services online.
Areas covered include:
- Improving Web Traffic Using WordPress
- Tips For Generating New Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
- Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Traffic With Plugins & Themes
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
- Adding New Features And Functionality To Your Website With Plugins
- WordPress For Business – An Introduction To WP Themes
Note: Plugins are described in this section. Medical and health-related themes are listed in Part 3.
Your Health Website – Improve Your Business Online With WordPress
Your web traffic is a vital part of your online business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimizing Your Site For Search Engines
There are loads of ways that WordPress helps optimize your website for search engines:
- SEO-Friendly – Set the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the web address of your pages.
- Tags – Specify the keywords that you want your posts to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Create search engine-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose the description for your posts that search engines will display.
- Images – title images used in your content with keywords for improved search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily link your content to other posts and pages
- Pinging – Set up your site to automatically notify other sites and directories the moment a new post is published on your site.
Improving SEO, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Traffic Using Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress community makes available quite a number of plugins that will improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your business.
For example, you can install the plugins below 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 health or medical site’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing. Here are a few WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – This plugin helps you set up your own social community on your WordPress website.
- bbPress – This plugin can be used to set up and manage your own forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – Send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and increases user 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.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Ways To Generate New Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Tools
In this section we will show you ways to improve sales and generate new leads and enquiries online.
Providing A Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is a great way to build a subscriber list. It provides a number of benefits including:
- Drives targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Increases user interaction
- Provides you with an additional way for your content to be shared online with other potential clients
A proven strategy for attracting newsletter subscribers is to provide users with high value content and offer them free gifts in exchange for their details. This can be an exclusive report, tips for improving health, fitness and diet, access to medical apps, free trials, membership access to videos, podcasts, etc.
Provide A Contact Form
A contact form makes it easy and simple for readers to get in touch with you. Visitors can raise problems, contact specific departments, request quotes, give suggestions and more.
A contact form provides a number of benefits, like:
- Reduces spam
- Set up automated responses
- Giving you control over what is sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- Convenient for site visitors
A popular contact form plugin for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 – WordPress Plugin)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that is easy to install and configure and lets you create and manage multiple contact forms on your site, customize the forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Something to consider if you plan to set up a website for a health clinic or medical center is adding sections to your contact form so prospective clients can choose the section of the center they want to reach. This helps get their comment to the correct area.
Add A Map
Adding a map helps your visitors and clients find you.
Inserting maps (e.g. Google Maps), into your WordPress site also provides visitors with many benefits, such as:
- They help to improve local SEO
- Visitors can find your office easily
- Shows location of events
(Adding a map to your website helps your visitors and clients find you)
Popular Google Maps plugins include:
- 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
Medical Services – WordPress Plugins
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your site that will immediately add a range of functional tools for your site visitors. Here are some of these plugins:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar – WordPress Plugin)
This free bookings reservations plugin allows you to add online bookings to your site. Booking Calendar provides visitors with an intuitive and user-friendly interface. It is suitable for a range medical and health consulting uses, e.g. medical practitioners, specialists, alternative therapists, booking yoga classes, etc.
(Booking Calendar Plugin – Overview)
This bookings plugin works right out of the box. Your website visitors can check availability of services you offer and book appointments easily. Administrators and visitors receive booking confirmations. The plugin also lets you add a calendar or booking form to your site’s sidebar, and offers multi-language support. A premium plugin version is also available with many additional features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso
(Manage Event Registrations Online With Event Espresso For WP)
If you plan to run health or medical events like seminars or workshops, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin lets you easily schedule your event and begin processing registrations literally in a few minutes
(Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich plugin that gives you complete control of your event registration management process.
We have written a comprehensive article on the benefits and features of using Event Espresso. For more details:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
Calculator Pro provides a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed these into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of the calculators aren’t designed for health or medical-related applications, but there are several you can use, including:
- Body Statistics – e.g. Body Composition Calculator, Fat Calculator, Goal Weight Calculator, Modification of Diet in Renal Disease (MDRD) GFR Calculator, Stride Length Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, kJ to Calorie Calculator, Calories Burned 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, Ovulation Calculator, Smoking Cost Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Alcohol Calorie 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 forms that perform single and complex calculations, such as:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculators
- And lots more
A premium version with additional features is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker)
Weight Loss Tracker is a simple WordPress plugin that lets logged-in users record their weight periodically. The results are then displayed in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin For WordPress – Graph)
The plugin allows users to enter target weights and provides support for various weight formats: Metric (Kg), Imperial – Stones & Pounds, Imperial – Pounds only.
For more details, go here}:
Simple BMI Calculator
(Simple BMI Calculator Widget Plugin)
Simple BMI Calculator installs a widget on your sidebar that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
In addition to Simple BMI Calculator, there are a number of other plugins you can use to perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A BMI and Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) calculator that saves calculation data for logged-in users and gives an overview to the trainer.
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator to show users their Body Mass Index
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors calculate their basal metabolic rate, by entering 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 Plugin 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 WordPress Plugin – Data Results)
Drug information can be displayed inside your web content, or as a widget on your sidebar. 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 as defined by the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
For more details, go here}:
PubMed Posts
(PubMed Posts Plugin)
This plugin adds a dashboard widget that lets you crate posts from PubMed articles, as well as a search function that helps visitors find posts with specific article data. A content editor is also included with the plugin.
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 – WordPress Plugin)
The MJM Clinic Plugin was designed for medical and health care related websites. You can add service pages with booking forms, multiple clinic locations, provide information on health conditions and symptoms, assign case studies, link indication tags to services and conditions, etc.
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 see what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato collects and analyzes patient experiences written in medical forums and blog posts, then aggregates the posts to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users gain insight about over 14,000 medical conditions from over 2.2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap Concierge
(HealthTap – WordPress Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows users to consult with doctors via text chat or HD video from any mobile device, computer, even smartwatch.
With the widget installed, your 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 select a doctor, chat over text or video, or send the doctor a question and get answers via the HealthTap service, which has a database of over 70,000 doctors.
For more details, go here}:
Trend MD
(Trend MD Plugin For WordPress)
The TrendMD plugin will add the TrendMD recommendations widget to your site. The TrendMD recommendations widget is used by scholarly publishers to grow their readership and revenue by allowing people to discover, read or cite interesting scholarly content from your journals or websites through personalized recommendations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Nutrition Facts
(WP Nutrition Facts)
This plugin lets you add a nutrition facts table into your pages, posts and custom post types, allowing your visitors to make more informed decisions about the food products they consume.
(WP Nutrition Facts – Label Creation)
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 run a health-related business that provides diet or healthy eating information, a great way to add engaging content to your site is to publish healthy recipes.
Plugins like WP Ultimate Recipe let you easily add delicious and healthy on your site.
Other WordPress recipe plugins include:
- Recipe Card – Create and publish search optimized recipes that your site users can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – EasyRecipe lets you easily add recipes to your site with features like cut and 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 – Lets you 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 – WordPress Plugin)
The Awesome Fitness Testimonials plugin lets you display fitness & wellness testimonials, case studies and reviews on your website.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images by Everkinetic
(Exercise Images Plugin For WordPress)
Exercise Images lets you add exercise diagrams to your health & fitness sites.
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic WordPress Plugin – Image Database)
For more details, go here}:
In part three, we take a look at health and medical WordPress themes.
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This is the end of section 2.
To view the rest of this guide, click this link:
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now