In Part One of this article on ways to grow your medical or health-related web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Online Challenges For The Medical Profession
- Opportunities For Health & Medical Services
- Your Web Pages
- Tips On How To Improve Your Content
In this section, we continue exploring more ways to grow your medical-related services online.
Areas covered include:
- Ways To Improve Web Traffic Using WordPress
- Ways To Generate More Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
- WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increasing User Engagement And Driving More Web Traffic
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
Note: Medical and health plugins are described in this section. WordPress themes for medical businesses are listed in Part Three.
Ways Of Improving Website Traffic
Your web traffic is vital to your online business growth. In this section, you will learn WordPress plugins that improve search engine optimization, improve user engagement and increase traffic generation.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines Using WordPress
There are so many ways that WordPress helps optimize your website for search engines:
- SEO-Friendly – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Tags – WordPress lets you select the keywords that you want search engines to index your articles for.
- Post Categories – Add search engine-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose the description for your posts that will display to search engine users.
- Images – title images used in your content with keywords for better search results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that allows you to easily link your content to other posts and pages on your site
- Post Notification – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify other search directories as soon as a new post is published on your website.
Improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With WordPress Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress development community makes available a number of plugins that will improve your health or medical-related website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your site.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your site’s search engine optimization:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin (lists all of your pages for indexing by search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO)
Other things you can do to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social features. Here are some more powerful WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – Set up your own online social network on your website, with member profiles, messaging, user groups, activity streams, and more.
- bbPress – This plugin lets you set up your own forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – This plugin lets you send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard.
- Disqus – use this plugin to power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your website or blog.
- Monarch – Easily add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your posts and pages.
(You can add social sharing features to your website easily using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Generate New Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Applications
Let’s now take a look at ways to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries.
Add A Newsletter
Adding a newsletter is an excellent way to build a subscriber list. It] provides a number of benefits including:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Increases user engagement
- Provides additional ways for your content to be shared online with others
A proven way to entice your visitors to subscribe to your newsletter is to provide high value content and offer users free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their personal details. This could be a guide, checklists for improving health and nutrition, access to fitness applications, vouchers, access to courses, podcasts, etc.
Contact Forms
A contact form makes it easy and simple for readers to get in touch. Users can provide feedback, contact specific departments, ask for quotes, and more.
A contact form provides many benefits and advantages including:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what gets sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Contact forms can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- Convenience for site visitors
A very popular contact form plugin for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that allows you to insert and manage multiple contact forms into any post or page, customize your forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering is also supported.
Another option you may want to consider if you are setting up a website for a medical center is to segment your contact form so visitors can select which practitioner they want to contact. This will help make sure that visitors get their comment to the right area.
Adding Maps
Maps help your visitors and customers find you.
A map is a very useful tool for several reasons:
- They improve local SEO
- Allows customers to better plan their meeting or appointments
- Displays location of events
(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
How To Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using Plugins
WordPress Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your website that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for your site visitors. Here are some of these plugins:
Booking Calendar
(Booking Calendar WP Plugin)
The Booking Calendar plugin allows you to add appointment booking services to your site. This flexible plugin has an intuitive interface. It is suitable for a wide range of uses, such as medical practitioners, surgeons, massage therapists, booking patient appointments, etc.
(Booking Calendar Plugin For WordPress – Overview)
This plugin works out of the box. Website visitors can check the availability of services you offer and book appointments online easily. Site administrators and visitors receive email notifications. The plugin is also widget-ready, and offers multi-language support. A premium version of this plugin is also available and includes a ton of additional features.
For more details, go here}:
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management And Ticketing Registration Plugin
(Manage Event Bookings Online Using Event Espresso For WordPress)
If you plan to run medical or health seminars, then you need a plugin like Event Espresso.
The Event Espresso online event registration WordPress plugin lets you easily create your event and start receiving online bookings in minutes
(Event Espresso – Event Manager & Ticketing Registration Software For WordPress)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed application that gives you full control of your event registration management process.
If you want to learn more about the benefits and features of using Event Espresso, refer to this article:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators WordPress Plugin)
Calculator Pro provides a free collection of over 400 calculators that you can display on your website. Internationalization is supported.
Most of them aren’t designed for health or medical-related use, but there are quite a few you can include in your site, including:
- Body Statistics – e.g. BMI Calculator, Child Height Calculator, Lean Body Mass Calculator, Modification of Diet in Renal Disease (MDRD) GFR Calculator, Skinfold Body Fat Calculator, etc.
- Calorie – e.g. Calorie to kJ Calculator, RMR Calculator, Calories Burned Running Calculator, etc.
- Fitness Tests – e.g. Coopers 12 Minute Run Test Calculator, Balke Treadmill Test Calculator, etc.
- Miscellaneous – e.g. Beats and Breaths Calculator, Blood Donation Calculator, Pregnancy Calculator, Running Pace Calculator, etc.
- Nutrition – e.g. Calcium Calculator, Macronutrient 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 Plugin)
The Calculated Fields Form plugin lets you create dynamically calculated field forms, such as:
- Health & Fitness Calculators
- Ideal Weight Calculator
- Pregnancy Calculator
- Calorie Calculator
- And lots more
A premium version is also available and includes extra features.
For more details, go here}:
Weight Loss Tracker
(Weight Loss Tracker)
This free plugin lets users record their weight periodically. The results are then displayed in a graph and table.
(Weight Loss Tracker – User Graph)
The plugin allows users to input target weights and provides support for the following weight formats: Metric (Kg), Imperial – Stones & Pounds, Imperial – Pounds only.
For more details, go here}:
Simple Body Mass Index Calculator Widget
(Simple BMI Calculator WordPress Plugin)
This simple WordPress plugin installs a widget on your sidebar that can be configured and customized to match your theme.
As well as Simple BMI Calculator, there are other plugins you can use that 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 trainer (site administrator).
- BMI / IMC Calculator – A simple calculator that displays a user’s Body Mass Index
- 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)
Drug Interaction Data Plugin retrieves and displays information about drugs, including what the drug is used for and what other medications the drug is known to interact with.
(Drug Interaction Data – Information Screen)
Drug information can be displayed inside your posts and pages, or as a widget on your sidebar menu. 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 WordPress Plugin)
PubMed Posts adds a dashboard widget that lets you crate posts from PubMed articles, as well as a search feature that lets your visitors search posts with specific article data. A basic editor that lets you change the layout of data in your post content is also included with the plugin.
PubMed includes over 25 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, online books and life science journals.
For more details, go here}:
MJM Clinic
(MJM Clinic – WordPress Plugin)
The MJM Clinic Plugin was designed to add functionality to clinic and health care related websites that provide information on symptoms and health conditions.
For more details, go here}:
Treato WordPress Plugin
(Treato – WordPress Plugin)
Treato lets you embed the Treato healthcare search engine into your WordPress sidebar so your site visitors can search a vast drug database and read what patients are saying about different drugs.
Treato collects and analyzes patient experiences from related 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 26,500+ 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 Concierge
(HealthTap Concierge)
HealthTap Concierge allows consumers to consult with doctors, clinical psychologists, etc. via HD video or text chat from any mobile device, personal computer, even smartwatch.
With the widget 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, connect in real time over video or text chat, or send the doctor a question and get answers via the HealthTap service, which has a database of over 73,000 doctors.
For more details, go here}:
Trend MD
(Trend MD Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin lets you add the TrendMD recommendations widget to your website. The TrendMD recommendations widget is used by scholarly publishers to grow their readership and revenue by allowing people to discover, read or cite scholarly content from your journals or websites through personalized recommendations.
For more details, go here}:
WP Nutrition Facts
(WP Nutrition Facts Plugin)
WP Nutrition Facts is a simple WordPress plugin that lets you add a nutrition facts table into your posts, pages and custom post types, allowing your visitors to make more informed decisions about the food products they consume.
(WP Nutrition Facts 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 run a health or fitness business that provides nutrition or healthy eating information, a great way to add engaging content to your site is to add healthy recipes.
Plugins like WP Ultimate Recipe let you publish delicious and healthy on your site.
Other recipe plugins for WordPress include:
- Recipe Card – Create and publish recipes that site visitors can print, save and review.
- EasyRecipe – EasyRecipe lets you easily publish recipes on your site with features like cut and paste, auto conversion of your plain text recipe posts, Google Recipe View formatting, live custom formatting, automatic ratings and conversion from other recipe plugins.
- ZipList Recipes – You can 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 Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin allows you to add fitness and wellness testimonials, case studies and reviews, before and after photos, videos, etc. to your site.
For more details, go here}:
Exercise Images
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic WordPress Plugin)
Exercise Images lets you display a database of exercise images on your website.
(Exercise Images by Everkinetic WP Plugin – Image Catalog)
For more details, go here}:
In the next section of this guide, we discuss WordPress themes that are suitable for medical businesses.
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This is the end of part 2.
Click on this link to access the rest of this article:
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