In Part 1 of this article on ways to improve your health or medical-related web presence, we provided in-depth tips and suggestions on the following topics:
- Challenges Health And Medical Firms Face Online
- Opportunities For The Health Profession In The Online Economy
- Improve Your Web Pages
- Improving Your Content
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your medical or health-related business online.
Areas covered include:
- Ways To Improve Web Traffic With WordPress
- Tips For Generating More Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins And Themes For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Creating Better User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
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 3.
Improve Website Traffic
Web traffic is vital to your business growth. This section discusses ways to improve your business online using WordPress.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines (SEO) With WordPress
There are loads of ways that WordPress helps improve your medical-related website’s SEO:
- URLs – Set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Tags – WordPress lets you select the keywords that you want your posts to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Categories – Add SEO-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose an excerpt that search engines will display in their search result pages.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for better search engine results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily link internal content
- Pinging – WordPress can be configured to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories the moment a new post is published on your website.
Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Traffic Using WordPress Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WP developer community makes available a number of plugins that improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your website.
For example, here are some plugins you can use 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 ways to improve your health or medical site’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more 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 allows you to run a social network on your WordPress website, with member profiles, activity streams, messaging, user groups, and more.
- bbPress – This plugin allows you to set up a forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – Use this plugin to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard, without a third party subscription.
- Disqus – use this WordPress plugin to power discussions and increases user engagement on your website or blog.
- Monarch – Easily add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your website.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their website using WordPress plugins)
Ways To Generate More Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
In this section we’ll show you how to improve your sales and generate more leads and enquiries.
Adding A Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is a great way to build a subscriber list. It] provides many benefits including:
- Drives targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates that could save businesses time and money
- Provides you with a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for engagement with your users
- Provides additional ways for readers to share your content
An effective way to attract subscribers to your email newsletter is to provide users with high value content and offer them a free gift in exchange for their details. This could be a time-saving guide, tips for improving health, fitness and diet, access to health calculators, discount coupons, membership access to courses, podcasts, etc.
Provide Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch. A contact form also allows users to provide feedback, contact specific departments, request quotes, and more.
A contact form provides several benefits and advantages including:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- They can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- More convenient for site visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WP Plugin)
This plugin is easy to install and set up and allows you to create multiple contact forms, customize the form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering is supported.
Something else to consider if you plan to set up a website for a health center or medical clinic is to add sections to your contact form so users can select the section of the clinic they are contacting you about. This will make sure that visitors get their message to the correct area.
Map Integration
Adding a map helps your visitors and customers find you.
Inserting maps, such as Google Maps, into your site also provides visitors with many benefits, such as:
- They increase local SEO
- Clients can better plan their meeting or appointments
- Show location of events
(Adding a map to your site helps your visitors and clients find you)
Some of the most popular Google Maps plugins include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins & Themes For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increasing User Engagement And Generating More Web Traffic
WordPress Plugins - Medical Providers
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your health-related site that will immediately add a range of functional tools for users. Here are some of these:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar)
The Booking Calendar plugin lets you add online booking services to your site. It provides visitors with an intuitive interface. It is highly suitable for a range medical, health, fitness & sports businesses, such as dental practices, physicians, massage therapists, booking sessions with personal trainers, etc.
(Booking Calendar – WordPress Plugin – Overview)
This booking reservations plugin works out of the box. Website visitors can check availability of services and book appointments quickly and easily. Administrators and visitors receive email notifications. Booking Calendar is also widget-ready, and offers multi-language support. A premium version is also available with many extra features and functionalities.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – Event Manager & Ticketing Registration Software For WordPress
(Manage Event Bookings Via The Web With Event Espresso For WordPress)
If your business involves running medical events, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration WP plugin allows you to easily create an event and start processing online registrations in minutes
(Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed plugin that gives you complete control of your event registration management process.
We have written a detailed article on 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 provide to users on your website and embed into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. It supports internationalization
Most of them aren’t designed for medical usage, but there are several you can add to your site, including the following:
- Body Statistics – e.g. Body Fat Calculator, Fat Calculator, Katch-Mcardle BMR Calculator, Max Heart Rate Calculator, Skinfold Body Fat Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Daily Calorie Calculator, RMR Calculator, Calories Burned Running Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. BAI (Body Adiposity Index) Calculator, Bruce Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Beats and Breaths Calculator, Blood Sugar Converter Calculator, Due Date Calculator, Smoking Cost Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Calcium Calculator, Water Intake Calculator, etc.
- Weight – e.g. BMI Calculator, Weight Loss Percentage Calculator, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Calculated Fields Form
(Calculated Fields Form Plugin For WordPress)
Calculated Fields Form lets you create dynamically calculated field forms, such as:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculators
- And lots more
A premium version of this plugin with additional features and functionalities is also available.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker)
This simple plugin lets logged-in users record their weight periodically. The results are then displayed in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker WP Plugin – Graph)
The plugin allows users to enter target weights and supports the following weight formats: Metric (Kg), Imperial – Stones & Pounds, Imperial – Pounds only.
For more details, go here}:
Simple BMI Calculator
(Simple BMI Calculator)
Simple BMI Calculator is a simple WordPress 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 other plugins you can look at to perform similar functions:
- BMI BMR Calculator – A Body Mass Index and BMR calculator that saves calculation data for logged-in users and gives an overview to the trainer.
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator that displays BMI
- Calotor Calorie Counter – Lets visitors figure out 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 – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin will retrieve and display information about drugs, including what the drug is used to treat and what other medications the drug is known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data WP Plugin – Results)
Drug information can be displayed as a widget or inside your web content. The data is provided by 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 For WordPress)
This plugin adds a dashboard widget that lets you crate posts from PubMed articles, plus a search function that locates posts with specific data. The plugin also includes a simple editor that changes the layout of data in the post content.
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 Plugin)
MJM Clinic was designed to add functionality to medical and health care related websites that provide information to site visitors on health conditions and symptoms.
For more details, go here}:
Treato
(Treato – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you add a sidebar widget that allows you and your site visitors to search a vast drug database and see what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato collects and analyzes patient experiences from online forums and blog posts, then aggregates the posts to generate useful insights about users’ medications, diseases and symptoms. Users receive insight about side effects, drug comparisons, which drugs people feel are working, and more from over 2.2 billion collected posts.
For more details, go here}:
HealthTap Concierge
(HealthTap Concierge WP Plugin)
HealthTap Concierge allows visitors to consult with doctors via HD video or text chat from any mobile device, personal computer, or 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 choose a doctor, chat over video or text, or send questions.
For more details, go here}:
TrendMD
(TrendMD WordPress Plugin)
TrendMD will add 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 Plugin For WordPress)
WP Nutrition Facts lets you insert a nutrition facts table into your posts and pages, allowing your site visitors to learn about the nutrient content of food in a standardized format.
(WP Nutrition Facts – WordPress 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)
If you own a health or fitness-related website that provides nutrition or healthy eating advice, a great source of content that will engage your readers is to add great recipes.
A plugin like WP Ultimate Recipe lets you easily add delicious and healthy on your site.
Other recipe plugins for WordPress include:
- Recipe Card – Create and publish search engine optimized recipes with nutrition facts that readers can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – EasyRecipe makes publishing recipes on your site easy 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. Additional features like Google Recipe View formatting and SEO are included.
- And many more.
For more details, go here}:
Awesome Fitness Testimonials
(Awesome Fitness Testimonials)
The Awesome Fitness Testimonials plugin allows you to add fitness and wellness testimonials, reviews and case studies, before and after photos, etc. to your website.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images
(Exercise Images WP Plugin)
This plugin lets you display a database of exercise drawings inside your posts and pages.
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic – Catalog)
For more details, go here}:
In part three of this guide, we look at health and medical themes.
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This is the end of part two.
To view the rest of this article, click here:
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"I was absolutely amazed at the scope and breadth of these tutorials! The most in-depth training I have ever received on any subject!" - Myke O'Neill, DailyGreenPost.com