In Part One of this guide on ways to grow your health or medical web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following topics:
- Challenges Health And Medical Services Professionals Face Online
- Opportunities For Health Providers In The Web Economy
- Essential Web Pages
- Improving The Content On Your Website
In this section, we continue exploring more ways to grow your medical or health business online.
Areas covered in this (and the following section) include:
- Ways To Improve Traffic
- How To Generate Leads & Enquiries
- Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic To Your Website Generation With Plugins
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
Note: Plugins are described in this section. Health and medical themes are listed in Part Three.
Grow Your Medical Website – Improve Your Business Online With WordPress
Your web traffic is an important part of your online business growth. In this section, you will learn WordPress plugins and themes for improving search engine optimization, increasing user engagement and web traffic generation.
Optimizing Your Site For Search Engines Using WordPress
There are many ways that WordPress helps improve your website’s SEO:
- SEO-Friendly – configure the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the URL of your pages.
- Tags – Specify the keywords that you want your article pages (posts) to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Categories – Create categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Post Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose the description for your posts that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for improved search engine results.
- Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that allows you to easily link internal content
- Pinging – Configure your site to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your website.
How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Website With WordPress Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are a number of plugins that improve your website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your site.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your site’s SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO)
Other ways to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social features. Here are a few plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below are also free):
- BuddyPress – BuddyPress helps you run your own social community on your WordPress website.
- bbPress – This free WordPress plugin helps you run your own discussion forum on your WordPress website.
- E-Newsletter – Send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard, without third-party subscriptions.
- Disqus – This WordPress plugin lets you power discussions and helps to increase engagement on your website.
- Floating Social – This WordPress plugin lets you add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your website.
(You can easily add social sharing features to your website using WordPress plugins)
Generate New Leads & Enquiries
This section covers how to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries.
Provide An Email Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is an excellent way to build a subscriber list. Adding an email newsletter provides a number of benefits including:
- Sends targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special products or services to a select audience
- Increases interaction
- Provides you with another way for your content to be shared online with others
An effective strategy for attracting subscribers to your email newsletter is to provide high value content and offer users something valuable for free in exchange for their personal details. This could be a time-saving guide, checklists for improving diet and well-being, access to medical calculators, coupons, membership access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Adding Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch. Users can report issues, contact specific departments, request quotes, give suggestions for improvements and more.
Contact forms provide many benefits and advantages, like:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Contact forms can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- Convenient for users
One of the most popular contact form plugins for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin For WordPress)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that is easy to install and configure and allows you to insert multiple contact forms into any page on your site, customize your forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is also supported.
Another feature to consider if you plan to set up a website for a medical practice is to segment your contact form so users can choose which section of the clinic they are contacting you about. This will help make sure that visitors get their comment to the right recipient.
Maps
Maps help your visitors and clients find you.
Adding maps, such as Google Maps to your website also provides a number of benefits, such as:
- Maps increase local SEO
- Allows clients to better plan their visits and appointments
- Shows location of events
(Adding a map helps your visitors and clients find you)
Popular Google Maps plugins for WordPress include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Better User Engagement And Driving More Visitors To Your Site
WordPress Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your health website that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for visitors. Here are just some of these plugins:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar)
Booking Calendar allows you to add appointment booking services to your site. This flexible plugin is well supported and has an intuitive and user-friendly interface. It is highly suitable for a wide range of uses, e.g. medical practitioners, surgeons, massage therapists, booking yoga classes, etc.
(Booking Calendar – Overview)
The plugin works out of the box. Website visitors can check the availability of services and book appointments online easily. Site administrators and visitors receive notifications. The plugin is also widget-ready, and offers multi-language support. The plugin developers also offer a premium version with many more features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager & Ticket Registration Software
(Manage Event Bookings Online With Event Espresso For WP)
If you plan to run health or medical seminars, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WP lets you easily schedule an event and begin receiving online bookings in a few minutes
(Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager & Ticket Registration System)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich software that gives you full control over the event registration management process.
We have written a comprehensive article on Event Espresso here:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
Calculator Pro Calculators provides a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed them into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of them aren’t specifically designed for health applications, but there are several you can use, including the following:
- Body Statistics – e.g. BMR Calculator, FENa Calculator, Lean Body Mass Calculator, Modification of Diet in Renal Disease (MDRD) GFR Calculator, US Navy Body Fat Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Daily Calorie Calculator, RMR Calculator, Calories Burned Walking Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Push-Up Test Calculator, Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Bike Size Calculator, Blood Sugar Converter Calculator, Ovulation Calculator, Running Pace Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, Macronutrient Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. BMI Calculator, Weight Loss Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form)
This plugin lets you create forms that perform single and complex calculations, such as:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculators
- And many more
A premium version is also available and includes many additional features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker WP Plugin)
Weight Loss Tracker is a free plugin 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 – User Graph)
The plugin allows users to enter target weights and provides support for the following weight formats: Metric (Kg), Imperial – Stones & Pounds, Imperial – Pounds only.
For more details, go here}:
Simple BMI Calculator Widget
(Simple Body Mass Index Calculator WordPress Plugin)
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator lets you add a widget to your sidebar that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
As well as Simple BMI Calculator, there are additional WordPress plugins you can look at to perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A BMI and Basal Metabolic Rate calculator that saves calculation data for logged-in users and gives an overview to the trainer.
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator that displays your site user’s BMI
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors calculate their basal metabolic rate, based on age, sex and weight.
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data WP Plugin)
This plugin can be used to display drug information, including what the drugs are used to treat and what other medications the drugs are known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data – Information Screen)
Drug information can be displayed on your site. The data is provided by the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the U.S. National Institutes of Health and drug names are converted to the standardized RxNorm name.
For more details, go here}:
PubMed Posts
(PubMed Posts WP Plugin)
PubMed Posts adds a dashboard widget that lets you add content from PubMed articles, and a search feature that locates posts with specific data. An editor that lets you change the layout of data in the post content is also included with the plugin.
PubMed comprises more than 25 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books.
For more details, go here}:
MJM Clinic
(MJM Clinic WP Plugin)
This plugin can be used for medical and health care related websites. You can add service pages with booking forms, provide related health conditions, assign case studies, link indication tags to services and conditions, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Treato WordPress Plugin
(Treato Plugin)
Treato WordPress plugin lets you display information about drugs on your site and see what read what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato collects and analyzes patient experiences written in online forums and blog posts, then aggregates the posts to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users receive valuable insight about 14,500+ conditions and 26,000+ medications from over 2.2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap Concierge
(HealthTap Concierge Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows users to locate and book a virtual consult with doctors via HD video or text chat from any mobile device, personal computer, even smartwatch.
With the plugin installed, your site visitors 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 health topic. They can then choose a doctor, chat over video or text, or send the doctor a question.
For more details, go here}:
Trend MD
(Trend MD)
This plugin lets you add the TrendMD recommendations widget to your WordPress site. The TrendMD recommendations widget is used by scholarly publishers to increase 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)
WP Nutrition Facts lets you insert a nutrition facts table into your pages, posts and custom post types, allowing your site visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food in a standardized format.
(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin For WordPress – Custom Post Type 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-related website that provides diet and nutrition or healthy eating advice, a great source of engaging content to your site is to publish recipes.
Plugins like WP Ultimate Recipe let you easily add recipes on your site.
Other WordPress recipe plugins include:
- Recipe Card – Create search optimized recipes that your site visitors can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – EasyRecipe makes entering recipes on your site easy with features like cut & paste, plain text recipe auto conversion, 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 – WordPress Plugin)
The Awesome Fitness Testimonials plugin allows you to add fitness and wellness testimonials, case studies and reviews, before and after photos, videos, etc. to your website.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images by Everkinetic
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic Plugin)
Exercise Images lets you insert exercise drawings into your posts and pages.
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic Plugin – Image Database)
For more details, go here}:
In the next section, we discuss themes that are suitable for medical and health businesses.
***
This is the end of section 2.
To continue reading, click here:
***
***
"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum