In Part 1 of this step-by-step article on ways to improve your medical-related business web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Challenges Professional Medical Practitioners Face Online
- Opportunities For Health-Related Businesses In The Digital Realm
- Your Website Pages
- Improving The Content On Your Site
In Parts Two and Three, we discuss more ways to grow your medical or health business online.
Topics covered in this (and the following section) include:
- Improve Web Traffic
- Tips For Generating More Leads & Enquiries
- How To Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation Using Plugins And Themes
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
Note: WordPress health and medical plugins are listed in this section. Medical and health-related themes are listed in Part 3.
Grow Your Health Website – Improving Your Business Online With WordPress Themes And Plugins
Your web traffic is vital to your business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimize Your Website For SEO
There are lots of ways that WordPress helps optimize your website for search engines:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – configure the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your article pages (called posts).
- Tags – WordPress lets you specify the keywords that you want your posts to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Categories – Add categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Excerpts – Set the description for your posts that will appear in search results.
- Images – title your images with keywords for improved search results.
- Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links
- Pinging – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify other search directories as soon as a new post is published on your website.
WordPress Plugins That Improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Increase User Engagement And Generate More Web Traffic
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are a number of plugins for WordPress that improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your business.
Here are some plugins you can use to improve your website’s SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your website’s search engine optimization)
Other WordPress tools you can use to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social features. Here are a few WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – This plugin helps you set up a social community on your site, with member profiles, activity streams, user groups, messaging, and more.
- bbPress – Use the bbPress WordPress plugin to set up an online community forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress site.
- Disqus – This WordPress plugin lets you power discussions and helps to increase engagement on your site.
- Social Media Feather – This WordPress plugin lets you add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your site.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their website using WordPress plugins)
Generating More Leads & Enquiries
Let’s discuss now ways to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries for your business.
Add An Email Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is a great way to build a subscriber list. Adding newsletters] provides many benefits including:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides updates that could save businesses time and money
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Increases user interaction
- Provides you with an additional way for your content to be shared with others
An effective way to attract subscribers is to provide high value content and offer users something valuable for free in exchange for their personal details. This can be a special report, checklists for improving diet and well-being, access to health apps, discount coupons, membership access to videos, contests, etc.
Add A Contact Form
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch with you. Contact forms also allow readers to raise problems, contact specific departments, request a quote, send suggestions and more.
Contact forms provide a number of benefits, like:
- Reducing spam
- Set up automated responses
- Gives you control over what is sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Contact forms can be added to any page or post
- Improves the professional look of your site
- Is convenient for users
One of the most popular WordPress contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7)
This free plugin lets you add and manage multiple contact forms into any post or page, customize your 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 center is adding sections to your contact form so prospective clients can choose which section of the center they are contacting your business about. This ensures that contact form requests reach the correct recipient.
Maps
Adding maps helps your visitors and customers find you.
A map is a great tool for several reasons:
- Maps help to increase local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Shows location of events
(A map helps your visitors and clients find you)
Below are some of the more popular plugins that let you embed, customize and display maps on your site:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins That Can Help To Improve Your Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
WordPress Health Or Medical Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your health site that will immediately add a range of practical tools for your site visitors. Here are just some of the plugins you can choose from:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar Plugin)
The Booking Calendar plugin allows you to add appointment bookings to your site. Booking Calendar is well supported and has an intuitive and user-friendly interface. It is highly suitable for a range of uses, e.g. medical practices, specialists, alternative therapists, booking sessions with personal trainers, etc.
(Booking Calendar Plugin For WordPress – Overview)
This booking reservations plugin works right out of the box. Website visitors can check availability of services and book appointments online quickly and easily. Administrators and visitors receive notifications. The plugin also lets you add a calendar or booking form to your site’s sidebar, and supports multiple languages. A premium version with extra features is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management And Registration Plugin
(Manage Bookings & Registrations Automatically Using Event Espresso Plugin For WP)
If your business involves running medical or health events like seminars or workshops, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration software allows you to easily schedule an event and begin receiving registrations in just minutes
(Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticket Management Software)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed application that gives you full control of the event registration management process.
Go here if you want to learn more managing events with Event Espresso:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators WP Plugin)
Calculator Pro Calculators is a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed these into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. It supports internationalization
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t specifically designed for health or medical-related applications, but there are many you can include in your website, including the following:
- Body Statistics – e.g. Body Surface Area Calculator, FENa Calculator, Goal Weight Calculator, Metric BMR Calculator, US Navy Body Fat Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Alcohol Calorie Calculator, RMR Calculator, Calories Burned Swimming Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. BAI (Body Adiposity Index) Calculator, Balke Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Beats and Breaths Calculator, Blood Donation Calculator, Due Date Calculator, Running Pace Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Calcium Calculator, Macronutrient Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. Ideal Weight Calculator, Weight Loss Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form WordPress Plugin)
Calculated Fields Form is useful for creating forms with dynamically calculated fields to display the calculated values, such as:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculator
- And many more
A premium plugin version with many additional features and functionalities is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin)
Weight Loss Tracker is a free plugin that lets users record their weight on given dates. The data is then shown in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin For WordPress – User Graph)
The plugin allows users to insert 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 Widget
(Simple Body Mass Index Calculator Widget)
Simple BMI Calculator is a simple plugin that 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 a number of other WordPress plugins you can check out that perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A responsive BMI and Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) calculator that saves calculation data for logged-in users and gives an overview to the site administrator.
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator that displays BMI
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors figure out their basal metabolic rate, based on their age, sex and weight.
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Drug Interaction Data Plugin
(Drug Interaction Data Plugin)
Drug Interaction Data retrieves and displays drug information, including what the drug is used for and what other medications the drug is known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data WP Plugin – Information Screen)
Drug information can be displayed inside your posts and pages, or as a widget on your sidebar. 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 as defined by the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
For more details, go here}:
PubMed Posts
(PubMed Posts – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin adds a dashboard widget that lets you crate posts from PubMed articles, and a search feature that lets your visitors search posts with specific data. A simple content editor is also included.
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 For WordPress)
MJM Clinic was designed to add functionality to clinic and health care related websites that provide information to site visitors on symptoms and health conditions.
For more details, go here}:
Treato WordPress Plugin
(Treato)
This 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 from forums and blog posts, then aggregates the content to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users receive valuable insight about the side effects of over 26,500 medications, drug comparisons across over 14,000 medical conditions, which drugs people feel are working, and more, from over 2.2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap Concierge
(HealthTap WP Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows visitors to consult with doctors, clinical psychologists, etc. who specialize in a given health topic via HD video or text chat from any mobile device, computer, or smartwatch.
With HealthTap Concierge installed on your WordPress site, users 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 using video or text, or send the doctor a question.
For more details, go here}:
Trend MD
(Trend MD – WordPress Plugin)
The TrendMD plugin adds the TrendMD recommendations widget to your website. 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)
WP Nutrition Facts is a free plugin that lets you add a nutrition facts table into your posts, pages and custom post types, allowing your visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food in a standardized format.
(WP Nutrition Facts WP Plugin – Creating Labels)
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 run a health or fitness business that provides nutrition or healthy eating suggestions, a great source of content that will engage your readers is to add recipes.
Plugins like WP Ultimate Recipe let you publish recipes on your site.
Other WordPress recipe plugins include:
- Recipe Card – Publish search engine optimized recipes with nutrition facts that your site visitors can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – Makes entering recipes on your site easy with features like cut & paste, auto conversion of your plain text recipe posts, Google Recipe View 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)
Awesome Fitness Testimonials lets you showcase fitness and wellness testimonials, case studies and reviews on your website.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images
(Exercise Images Plugin)
Exercise Images lets you display a database of exercise drawings in your pages and posts.
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic WP Plugin – Image Database)
For more details, go here}:
In the next section, we will be discussing WordPress themes that are suitable for medical businesses.
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This is the end of part 2.
Click on this link to read the rest of this guide:
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