Blogging is an effective medical online marketing tool and an important part of a medical practice website. Blog posts will not only expand your online presence and promote your practice, but they can also raise your placement in organic search rankings.
If done properly, effective blogs will get your healthcare website noticed by propelling your content to the top of search results – and in bright display for those who are searching for your medical services. When viewers click on your blog link, you then have the opportunity to make an impression and convert them to new patients.
In addition to helping your website achieve outstanding search rankings, blogs also help doctors and healthcare practices build relationships with prospective and existing patients by showcasing positive conversation. They can establish the doctor or the practice as an authority within their field and can even generate online reviews for doctors – all of which help connect with potential patients.
How is this accomplished? Follow these 4 main steps to make your blog posts more effective:
- Write headlines that grab the reader’s attention
- Post regularly – at a frequency that makes sense for your practice
- Provide engaging, original, quality content
- Optimize your content for SEO
Write Effective Headlines That Grab Attention
You only have a few seconds to grab the viewer’s attention, but the first step is getting them to click on the link to your blog post on your medical practice website. Toward this goal, the headlines must be engaging and must grab the reader’s attention – which means knowing your target audience and creating curiosity on the topic. Including an emotional component also helps draw readers in. Incorporating surprising statistics or a provocative question can also drive interest and curiosity.
The most important factor of your headline is the inclusion of keywords that you’d like to rank for in organic medical SEO. This will ensure that your blog post continues to rank long-term and pulls additional traffic to your article.
Publish Blog Posts Frequently
In order to stay relevant and effective, at least one to two blogs should be published per month on websites for doctors. This will help keep your practice relevant in the eyes of the search engines, which are constantly scanning for new, updated, and interesting content. Patients who visit websites for doctors and look at blogs will also expect to see fresh content, at least monthly. If content is too much older, they may stop following the blog posts.
Even monthly posts can be hard to keep up with, especially for a busy doctor. This is ideally done by professionals who know how to incorporate the SEO terms that are appropriate and popular for your specialty and your practice.
Provide Engaging, Quality Content
Keep readers engaged by addressing topics they can relate to. Answer questions or educate the audience on conditions and new treatments that are specific to your specialty. Showcase your knowledge, and let the users get to know you as a physician by writing about your personal experiences – which will build credibility.
Doctors may also blog about health headlines in the news, and share updates about your practice in general. Perhaps you offer a new service, such as telehealth, given the current pandemic.
Be sure that the content is easy to read. Avoid using too much jargon or medical terminology, as readers may lose interest quickly if they don’t understand or enjoy what they are reading. Make sure it is free of any formatting and spelling issues as well.
The internet is also very sensitive to plagiarism. Many people are surprised to find out that they cannot re-publish content on their website for which they have received permission – because in the eyes of the search engines, it’s simply duplicate and plagiarized content, and your website will likely receive lower rankings. Even citing long quotes that are published elsewhere can bring down your ranking.
Optimize for Medical SEO
Popular search engines look at several criteria to determine your rankings – such as keywords, frequency, and readability – which should all be taken into consideration in a blogging strategy, not just the headline! It’s important to incorporate medical search engine optimization into your blog if you’d like it to rank well in search engine results. This will ensure that your blog shows up toward the top of results when users search for the keywords you target.
Select keywords or phrases that you’d like your blog to show up for when users search for them. Incorporate several instances of these keywords throughout the blog article, as well as in the headline. Include proper meta titles and meta descriptions, which tell the user what page they are on and what the page is about. These are shown in the search results and influence click-through rates.
Other factors that aid in search rankings that should be considered include alt-text on images. This text displays if images are turned off within a user’s web browser. Also in the blog, include embedded internal links to other pages on your website where readers can continue to learn about your practice. Readability of the content is also important and can be improved by using subheadings, shorter paragraphs, and images or bullet points to break up the content.
Optimize Your Medical Practice Website
Including a blog feature in every website for doctors is a great way to engage with patients and give them a reason to frequent the site. However, it will take time to develop and manage with a minimum of monthly posts.
Here at iHealthSpot Interactive, we have a team of writers, editors, and managers who are ready to take on this task for you! Our experts work hard to make sure your blog includes content that is relevant, engaging to your patients, and optimized to show up high in search rankings. We do it all, from topic creating and scheduling to writing and publishing.
Call (877) 709-0999 for more information, and add a blog to your medical marketing strategy!
