In Part 1 of this step-by-step guide on ways to improve your medical-related web presence, we provided many practical tips and suggestions on the following areas:
- Challenges Medical And Health Professionals Face Online
- Opportunities For The Medical Profession In The Online Economy
- Ways To Improve Your Website Pages
- Ways To Improve Your Web Content
In Parts 2 & 3, we discuss more ways to grow your medical or health-related business online.
Areas covered in this (and the following section) include:
- Tips For Improving Traffic Using WordPress
- Generate New Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Tools
- WordPress Plugins And Themes That Can Help Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Site
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
Note: Medical and health plugins are listed in this section. WordPress themes for medical businesses are covered in Part Three.
Your Health Practice Website – Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using WordPress Plugins
Web traffic is an integral part of your business growth. This section discusses how to improve your medical or health website with WordPress.
Optimizing Your Site For Search Engines (SEO) With WordPress
There are so many ways that WordPress helps improve SEO:
- SEO-Friendly – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized web addresses for your article pages.
- Post Tags – WordPress lets you select the keywords that you want search engines to index your posts for.
- Post Categories – Create categories for your posts and products.
- Post Excerpts – Set the description for your posts that will appear in search results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for better search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily link your content to other posts and pages on your site
- Pinging – Configure your site to automatically notify other sites and directories the moment a new post is published on your website.
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Better User Engagement And Generating More Visitors
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress community makes available various plugins that will improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your website.
Here are some plugins you can use to improve your site’s search engine optimization:
- 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 known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your site’s search engine optimization)
Other ways to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing. Here are some more plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – Run your own social community on WordPress, with member profiles, user groups, messaging, activity streams, and more.
- bbPress – This free WordPress plugin helps you run a forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP site.
- Disqus – use this plugin to power discussions and increases engagement on your website or blog.
- Floating Social – This WordPress plugin lets you add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your posts and pages.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their website using free or inexpensive plugins)
How To Generate More Leads & Enquiries
In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve your sales and generate new leads and enquiries for your medical or health business.
Providing An Email Newsletter
Adding a newsletter is an excellent way to build a list of subscribers. It] provides a number of benefits, like:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates
- Provides you with a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special products or services to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for user interaction
- Provides you with another way for subscribers to share your content
One of the things you can do to get visitors to subscribe is to provide high value information and give users a free gift in exchange for their details. This can be a time-saving guide, tips for improving health, fitness and nutrition, access to fitness applications, discount coupons, access to videos, podcasts, etc.
Provide A Contact Form
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for prospective clients to get in touch. A contact form also lets visitors raise problems, contact specific departments, request quotes, and more.
Contact forms provide a number of benefits, like:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- Giving 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 visitors
A very popular contact form plugin for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin For WordPress)
This free plugin is easy to install and set up and allows you to add and manage multiple contact forms into any page or post, customize the form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is supported.
Something to consider if you are setting up a website for a health center or medical clinic is adding sections to your contact form so users can choose the section of the practice they want to reach. This helps get their message to the correct area.
Adding A Map
Adding maps to your site helps your visitors and customers find you.
A map is a very useful tool for several reasons:
- They help to increase local SEO
- Helps visitors find your office easily
- Display location of events
(Adding maps helps your visitors and clients find you)
Some of the more popular map plugins 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 Web Traffic Generation Using WordPress Plugins And Themes
Health Or 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 site visitors. Here are some of these plugins:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar Plugin For WordPress)
The Booking Calendar plugin lets you add appointment booking services to your site. This flexible plugin is well supported and has an intuitive and user-friendly interface. It is suitable for a range health and medical consulting uses, e.g. dental practices, surgeons, massage therapists, booking yoga classes, etc.
(Booking Calendar – Overview)
This plugin works right out of the box. Your website visitors can check availability of services you offer and book appointments easily. Site administrators and visitors receive email notifications. The plugin is also widget-ready, and supports multiple languages. A premium version of this plugin with many extra features and functionalities is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso
(Manage Event Bookings Automatically Using Event Espresso Plugin For WP)
If you plan to run medical or health events like seminars or workshops, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration software enables you to easily set up an event and start processing registrations in a few minutes
(Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed software that gives you complete control of your event registration management process.
We have written a detailed article on the benefits and features of using Event Espresso. Go here to learn more:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators – WordPress Plugin)
Calculator Pro Calculators is a free collection of 400+ calculators that you can display on your website. It also supports internationalization
Most of them aren’t designed for health-related uses, but there are several you can include in your website, including:
- Body Statistics – e.g. Blood Volume Calculator, Durnin/Womersley Skinfold Body Fat Calculator, Katch-Mcardle BMR Calculator, Modification of Diet in Renal Disease (MDRD) GFR Calculator, Waist to Hip Ratio Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Calorie to kJ Calculator, kJ to Calorie Calculator, Calories Burned Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Astrand Test Calculator, Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Bike Size Calculator, Blood Sugar Converter Calculator, Pregnancy Calculator, Running Pace Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. BMR Calorie Calculator, Water Intake 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)
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 lots more
A premium plugin version is also available and includes many more features.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker WP Plugin)
This simple plugin lets logged-in users record their weight on given dates. The results are then displayed in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin For WordPress – User 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 Body Mass Index Calculator Widget
(Simple Body Mass Index Calculator Plugin)
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator installs a widget on your sidebar that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
As well as Simple Body Mass Index Calculator, there are other plugins you can check out to perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A 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 calculate 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)
This plugin will retrieve and 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 WP Plugin – Data Results)
Information about drugs 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.
For more details, go here}:
PubMed Posts
(PubMed Posts Plugin)
PubMed Posts adds a dashboard widget that lets you add posts from PubMed articles, as well as a search function that lets your visitors find posts with specific article data. A basic editor that changes the layout of data in your post content is also included with the plugin.
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)
This plugin can be used for clinic and health care related websites. It lets you add service pages with booking forms, provide related health conditions, assign case studies, link indication tags to services, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Treato WordPress Plugin
(Treato)
Treato WordPress plugin lets you display information about drugs on your site and see what read what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato gathers and analyzes experiences sourced directly from patients written in forums and blog posts, then aggregates the content to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users receive insight about the side effects of 26,000+ medications, drug comparisons across 14,700+ medical conditions, which drugs people feel are working, and more, from over 2.2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap
(HealthTap Plugin For WordPress)
HealthTap Concierge allows users to consult with doctors who specialize in a given health topic via text chat or HD video from any mobile device, computer, even smartwatch.
With the widget installed, users 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 questions and get answers using the HealthTap service, which has a database of over 70,000 doctors.
For more details, go here}:
Trend MD
(Trend MD – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin adds 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 Plugin For WordPress)
This simple plugin for WordPress lets you add a nutrition facts table into your pages, posts and custom post types, allowing your visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food and make more informed food choices towards healthy eating goals.
(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin For WordPress – Label Creation)
This plugin uses the Canadian Food Inspection (CFIA) nutrition labeling regulations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Ultimate Recipe
(WP Ultimate Recipe)
If you run a health or fitness business that provides nutrition or healthy eating advice, a great way to add content that will engage your readers is to publish recipes.
A plugin like WP Ultimate Recipe lets you publish delicious and healthy on your site.
Other recipe plugins for WordPress include:
- Recipe Card – Create and publish beautiful recipes that your site visitors can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – Lets you easily publish recipes on your site with features like cut & paste, auto conversion of your plain text recipe posts, Google Recipe View formatting and preview button, automatic ratings and conversion from other recipe plugins.
- ZipList Recipes – Lets you 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, reviews and case studies on your website.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images by Everkinetic
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic WP Plugin)
Exercise Images by Everkinetic lets you display exercise diagrams on your health & fitness-related websites.
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic Plugin For WordPress – Image Catalog)
For more details, go here}:
In the next section, we will look at health and medical themes for WordPress.
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This is the end of part 2.
Click here to continue:
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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