Are you taking advantage of content marketing to increase visits to your health care practice website? Or are your competitors leaving you in the dust?
Recently I’ve been comparing the quality and quantity of content on the websites of different naturopaths. The more I looked the more I found very few independent health care clinics with robust content or copy.
Many of the clinics I compared were naturopathic or functional medicine clinics. Most of them said the very same things about who they were and how they practiced. While a few took the time to explain in more detail the kinds of services they offer and conditions they treat, most of them only had lists of these items.
In addition, several of the clinics who had little content on their sites were running expensive Google ads. While there’s nothing wrong with using Google ads as part of a larger marketing strategy, they shouldn’t be the only strategy.
If those doctors were my clients, I’d recommend they add more content to their website.
Why?
Robust content that meets people’s needs is much more likely to be found when potential patients do a Google search. When your content answers their burning questions, they’ll be more likely to see you as an expert and make an appointment.
In this article you’ll learn how to:
- Develop Content Goals
- When to Use Different Types of Content
- Use SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Like A Pro
It’s fine to rally your staff to write more blogs for your website, however, make sure you have specific goals. Writing blogs just to add copy to your website won’t help you–in fact it can hurt your ability to be found online.
Develop Content Goals
When I was new to writing blogs and clueless about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) I wrote a ton of blogs, many on the same subjects. At that time, I was told to write at least three blogs a week. No goals, no nothing. I just wrote about whatever I wanted to, had the doctor review it, and we were off to the races.
Without a goal in mind and a strategy behind it, your energy is wasted. First, writing too many blogs on the same subject will cause confusion for Google. Instead of helping you these multiple blogs will make it harder for folks to find you.
Second, with no goal and what I call free-for-all copy you won’t be pulling in the people you really want to see.
Instead, think about the types of people who have the conditions you most want to treat. We call these Buyer Personas in the business. While I can’t go into this topic in depth right here, Buyer Personas typically include the buyers age, sex, occupation, hobbies, and the health care concerns keeping them up at night.
Once you have a list of those people and conditions, then you can review your website. Decide if your current content is suitable or whether you need to change the tone, voice, and copy to meet the needs of those patients.
6 Types of Content and When to Use Them
You have a lot of choices when it comes to developing content for your website. Here are main types of content for a health care practice website: articles, blogs, landing pages, case studies, how-to guides, eBooks, and video. Each of these content types has their purpose. Let’s look at each of them here.
Articles
Articles should be the heart of your content strategy. Articles are what we call “evergreen content” or content that stays the same for the life of your website. These are articles that should describe in great detail what types of services you offer and what types of conditions you treat. These should be the first pieces of content you produce.
Articles by their nature are usually more serious and professional in tone. They should also cover a broad range of information about the topic. When I write an article on a new condition, I almost always use they sub-heads: introduction, description of the condition, causes and risk factors, symptoms, treatments, and prevention. This helps break up copy into bitesize chunks and make it’s easier to read and skim.
All the rest of your content should flow out from your main articles. Your blogs and sub-articles are all pieces of content that should feed back to your main articles. This will help make your individual pieces stronger and make your website more likely to be found.
When you launch a new service or start to treat a new condition, write a new article to feature that service and condition. For example, when a podiatrist I was working with started treating warts using a new microwave therapy, all I found on his website was a very short article on plantar warts. To improve his chances of being found online for this new therapy, I created two articles. A new page on plantar warts that was more in depth than the old one and a new page on the microwave treatment. I made sure these two articles linked back to each other.
Blogs
Blogs are by their nature the opposite of “evergreen”. They tie the topic to the season, a holiday about to be celebrated, a recent event, sports and sports players in the news, celebrities in the news, and can be also be very personal. For example, if you’re a dentist and it’s Halloween you’ll probably catch some views by talking about the types of candy that are really bad for your teeth. You might also mention that you have a candy buy-back program for people who have left over trick-or-treat candy. Or you might even talk about your own children and how hard it’s been to get them to eat healthier and take care of their teeth.
Landing Pages
Landing pages are web pages written specifically as part of a marketing campaign. It’s where a visitor lands after they click on a link in an email, a Facebook ad, or a Google ad, for example. The copy and visuals on the landing page need to match whatever copy or visuals are used in the ad. Landing pages always have a call to action. Often that is the completion of a contact form to receive a special download (eBook) or a discount for a product or service.
Case Studies
Case studies are actual examples of cases you’ve seen in your clinic or a fictitious case you’ve written to illustrate how you’d approach a person with certain symptoms and how you’d treat them. All health identifiers need to be removed before posting an actual case.
How-To Guides
Many people search the internet for how to guides for their health problems. They want to know not only what condition they have but how to treat it at home. Providing that information will be another way to attract potential patients to your website.
Ebooks
An eBook is a much lengthier treatise on a condition or subject, often with graphics to help improve understanding. Ebooks are usually written to be downloaded in exchange for a potential patient’s email address. Say you’re a naturopath and you want to treat more women with hormone therapy, you could write a book called “All You Need to Know About How to Relieve Hot Flashes Naturally.” Of course, you are competing with a lot of free information out there, so it’s important to make your book stand out.
Videos
Videos have become a very popular way to communicate health information to patients. If you’re a physical therapist. they can be essential in helping patients remember how to do specific exercises. As the provider, they showcase you as an expert in your field. You can talk about the same things you’d write about in article.
Videos uploaded to YouTube can also help your website be found, because Google owns YouTube. YouTube videos should be optimized just like copy in the description area and key words should be listed.
5 Ways to Use SEO Like A Pro
Use SEO strategies to help your content get discovered by the people who need it. While whole books and articles are devoted to this subject, I’ll teach you five ways to use SEO like a pro to increase the likelihood of patients finding your content.
Keyword Research
Every time I write a new article or blog I start out by researching the best key words to use when writing my content. Two tools I’ve found to be the most useful are Google Keyword Planner and Ubersuggest. Once I’ve chosen my keywords I’ll use them in my article in the following locations: title, subheads, in first few sentences of my article, in the body of the copy, and in the alt tags for my photos. While it’s important to use these keywords for SEO purposes it’s also important not to overuse keywords. Too much what is called “keyword stuffing”, and Google with rank your article lower. The best advice I’ve heard is to sound natural when using keywords and then you’re probably doing it right.
Break Up Copy and Use Headers
Break up your copy into bite-size chunks. Use headers at the top of each of those chunks to help the reader navigate it more easily. Use subheads under those if it helps the reader. This will also give you the opportunity to use your keywords in headers, also called H2 (headers) or H3 (sub-headers) tags in the SEO world.
Use Active Voice and A Conversational Tone
No one wants to read copy that sounds like a textbook. Instead of saying, “It’s best practice to write blogs written in the active voice“ instead say, “Use active voice to write your blogs.”
You can also talk into a voice recorder and write from that recording to get more natural sounding content.
Keep Sentences Short and Simple
Keeping your sentences short and simple will improve sentence readability and understanding. As a former health educator, I had to write a lot of copy at a 5th grade reading level. While that can be challenging, the lower the reading the level the better for your audience. Several tools can help you determine the readability of your copy. One tool I use is the Flesch-Kincaid Calculator. Try aiming for at least an 8th grade reading level.
Make Your Content Long Enough
While your sentences should be short, your content needs to be long. The length of your article or blog should be long enough to do a thorough job of covered the topic. In 2021, Hubspot said that blog posts should be 2,100-2,400 words in length. They found that was the ideal length for blogs they wrote that converted readers to customers. While this is ideal not every topic will lend itself to a longer post. Other authorities say that blog posts should be at least 1000 words.
While no one knows for certain what is best, these days writing content that’s too short won’t help that content be found. So strive to make your posts at least 1000 words or longer.
Lynn Chapman specializes in helping health care providers attract and retain their ideal patients. You can find her at Sound Medical Marketing.