In Part One of this article on ways to improve your health-related web presence, we provided many practical tips and suggestions on the following topics:
- Challenges Health Professionals Face Online
- Opportunities For The Health Profession In The Digital Economy
- Essential Web Pages
- Ways To Improve Your Web Content
In Parts 2 & 3, we discuss more ways to grow your medical services online.
Areas covered in this (and the next section) include:
- Improve Traffic
- How To Generate New Leads & Enquiries
- How To Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Visitors Using WordPress Plugins And Themes
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
Note: WordPress medical and health plugins are listed in this section. Medical and health-related themes are covered in Part 3.
Grow Your Medical Website – How To Improve Your Business Online With WordPress
Web traffic is vital to your online business growth. This section discusses ways of improving SEO, improve user engagement and increase web traffic generation using WordPress plugins.
Optimize Your Website For SEO Using WordPress
There are loads of ways WordPress can help to optimize your website for search engines:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – configure the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Tags – Specify the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages for.
- Post Categories – Add search engine-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Post Excerpts – Create the description for your posts that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – title your images with keywords for improved search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that allows you to easily link internal content
- Pinging – Configure your site to automatically notify other search directories as soon as a new post is published on your site.
How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Visitors Using WordPress Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WP community makes available dozens of plugins that will improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your business.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (for search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO)
Other things you can do to improve your health or medical site’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social features. Here are some more WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below are also free):
- BuddyPress – Run your own social networking community on your website, with member profiles, messaging, user groups, activity streams, and more.
- bbPress – This free WordPress plugin lets you run your own forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – This plugin lets you send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your website or blog.
- Social Media Feather – Use this plugin to add social sharing features to your pages and posts.
(You can easily add social sharing buttons to your site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Generate More Leads & Enquiries
In this section we will discuss how to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries online.
Providing An Email Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is a great way to build a subscriber list. It] provides a number of benefits, like:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates that can save businesses time and money
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for user interaction
- Provides an additional way for your content to be shared around with other potential clients
An effective strategy for attracting newsletter subscribers is to provide users with high value information and offer them free gifts in exchange for their personal details. This can be a handy guide, tips for improving health and nutrition, access to medical tools, free trials, membership access to courses, podcasts, etc.
Provide Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for prospective customers to get in touch with you. A contact form also allows readers to raise problems, contact specific departments, ask for quotes, and more.
Contact forms provide a number of benefits and advantages including:
- Reduces spam
- Set up automated responses
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- They can be added to any page or post
- Improves the professional look of your website
- Convenience for users
One of the most popular WordPress contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin)
This free contact form plugin is easy to install and configure and allows you to add multiple contact forms into any post or page, customize the forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
The plugin also supports international languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Something to consider if you are setting up a website for a medical center is adding sections to your contact form so prospective clients can select the practitioner they want to contact. This will make sure that visitors get their message to the correct recipient.
Add A Map
A map helps your visitors and customers find you.
A map is a very useful tool for several reasons:
- A map increases local SEO
- Clients can better plan their visits or appointments
- Display 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 Google maps on your WordPress site:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins And Themes For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increasing User Engagement And Driving More Web Traffic
Health WordPress Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your site that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for site visitors. Here are just some of the plugins you can choose from:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar Plugin For WordPress)
The Booking Calendar plugin lets you add online bookings to your site. This flexible plugin has an intuitive interface. It is suitable for a wide range health and medical consulting uses, such as medical practitioners, surgeons, health spas, booking patient appointments, etc.
(Booking Calendar Plugin For WordPress – Overview)
This bookings plugin works out of the box. Website visitors can check availability of services and make a booking quickly and easily. Site administrators and visitors receive email notifications. The plugin also lets you add a calendar or booking form to your site’s sidebar, and supports multiple languages. A premium version of this plugin with many extra features is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – Event Manager And Ticket Registration Software For WordPress
(Manage Your Events Online Using Event Espresso For WP)
If your business involves running health seminars, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin lets you easily schedule your event and start accepting registrations in minutes
(Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed application that gives you full control of your event registration management process.
Go here to learn more about Event Espresso:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
This is a free collection of over 400 calculators that you can provide to users on your website and embed into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of them aren’t designed for medical-related usage, but there are quite a number you can use, including:
- Body Statistics – e.g. Body Composition Calculator, Frame Size Calculator, Goal Weight Calculator, Max Heart Rate Calculator, Waist to Hip Ratio Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Calorie to kJ Calculator, RMR Calculator, Calories Burned Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Astrand Test Calculator, Balke Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Beats and Breaths Calculator, Cigarette Savings Calculator, Ovulation Calculator, Target Heart Rate Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. BMR 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 Plugin)
Calculated Fields Form is great for creating dynamically calculated field forms, such as:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculators
- And more
A premium version of this plugin is also available with extra features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker Plugin For WordPress)
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 – User 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 – WordPress Plugin)
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator lets you add a widget to your website that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
In addition to Simple BMI Calculator, there are other WordPress plugins you can check out that 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 administrator.
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator to show your users their BMI
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors calculate their basal metabolic rate, by inputting 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 for WordPress 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 WordPress Plugin – 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 – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin adds a dashboard widget that lets you publish content to your site from PubMed articles, as well as a search feature that finds posts with specific article data. A simple content editor is also included with the plugin.
PubMed includes over 25 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books.
For more details, go here}:
MJM Clinic
(MJM Clinic Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin can be used for clinic and health care related websites. It lets you add service pages with booking forms, multiple clinic locations, provide related health conditions, create case studies, link indication tags to conditions, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Treato WordPress Plugin
(Treato)
Treato WordPress plugin lets you add a sidebar widget that allows your site visitors to search a vast drug database and see what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato gathers and analyzes patient experiences from related forums and blog posts, then aggregates the posts to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users gain insight about side effects, drug comparisons, which drugs people feel work, and more from over 2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap Concierge
(HealthTap Concierge Plugin For WordPress)
HealthTap Concierge allows users to consult with real doctors via text chat or HD video from any mobile device, personal computer, even smartwatch.
With the plugin installed, 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 text or video, or send the doctor a question and get answers with the HealthTap service.
For more details, go here}:
TrendMD
(Trend MD Plugin For WordPress)
The TrendMD plugin will add the TrendMD recommendations widget to your WordPress site. The TrendMD recommendations widget is used by scholarly publishers to grow 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)
WP Nutrition Facts is a free plugin for WordPress that lets you insert a nutrition facts table into your pages, posts and custom post types, allowing your site visitors to make better food choices towards healthy eating goals.
(WP Nutrition Facts WordPress Plugin – Create Nutritional Facts Labels)
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-related business that provides dietary or healthy eating recommendations, a great source of engaging content to your site is to publish recipes.
Plugins like WP Ultimate Recipe let you publish recipes on your site.
Other WordPress recipe plugins include:
- Recipe Card – Publish recipes that your readers can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – Makes entering recipes on your site easy with features like cut and 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. Additional features like SEO and Google Recipe View formatting are included.
- And many more.
For more details, go here}:
Awesome Fitness Testimonials
(Awesome Fitness Testimonials Plugin For WordPress)
Awesome Fitness Testimonials lets you showcase fitness & wellness testimonials, reviews and case studies, before and after photos, etc. on your website.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images by Everkinetic
(Exercise Images Plugin)
The Exercise Images plugin lets you display exercise diagrams inside your pages and posts.
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic WordPress Plugin – Catalog)
For more details, go here}:
In part three of this guide, we will be discussing health and medical themes.
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This is the end of part two.
To continue, click this link:
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)