When we bring in a new client, they’re all on board with building a new, engaging website. They understand the value of well-written, interesting content. They like the idea of adding video and lots of photos. They like our focus on beautiful design, and they understand the need for the site to be mobile friendly from the start of the design process.
But when it comes to adding a blog, some clients, new and old, don’t see the value.
In this May blog, let’s get into why we feel having a blog is so valuable for your practice website.
Not your personal travel log kind of thing
Some of our clients misunderstand the role of a blog on their website. That’s because they think of blogs in the way they originally came to be. The first blogs, and blogs written by individuals today, tend to be very personal. One that comes to mind is the blog written as the main storyline in the film Julie & Julia about a woman who cooks every recipe in the book “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” by Julia Child. Her blog is a personal, foodie kind of blog. It’s full of the trials and tribulations of executing recipes from the book.
There are tons of blogs out there like that. Blogs from runners, makeup artists, cat people, and anything else you can think of. Those are different from the blogs we’re interested in for our client websites. Those blogs are sort of like a personal conversation with the writer; they aren’t intended to do anything more than tell others what the person is thinking about at the time he or she sat down to write the day’s blog.
Blogs on your practice website are different. These blogs are informational. They cover areas your practice/business wants to be known for. If you’re a medical practice and you want to be known for hand surgery, your blog should cover that. It’s not about what you ate for breakfast and what color you’re thinking of painting your practice waiting area.
Here’s how blogs help your site.
Search loves blogs
Let’s say you’re one of our dental practices, and you specialize in dental implants and temporomandibular joint disorder treatment. We advise you to write blogs about those areas of specialization, or we have our writers do that for you.
It’s easy to misunderstand what happens from there. You could be thinking, “Wait, if I write about dental implants all the time, won’t my readers get bored?” That could be true, but we’re not really concerned about actual readers…except for one reader.
That would be the webcrawlers from the search algorithms. They are continually crawling your site reading the content. Well, not actually reading, but looking for terms and keywords that match what your site is all about. They keep coming across references to dental implants and TMJ and this helps the bots consider your practice to be an expert in these areas of dentistry. And for that, your site gets a boost in organic search.
Obviously, that is a completely different goal than having more people read your blog every day. A personal blog like that has little in common with the blogs you should post on your website. In our view at Advice, we’d rather see you spend your time posting those kinds of personal details on your practice’s Facebook page.
So, while it pains our writers to know that few people, if any, are reading the blogs they write for our client websites, at least they know the bots are reading them.
New content
Blogs also count as new content in the Google/Bing world. Each blog posted adds new pages to your website. Search algorithms love new content; it’s a sign your practice or business is attending to your site and is constantly updating it. This is a big boosting factor in search.
When bots find new content, this is added to the index of your practice website. It provides both new content and expands the existing content you already have on your site about the topic of each blog. For the above example, your webpages on dental implants may remain relatively static over the months, even years. But as long as you have new blogs about dental implants, your site is perceived to have new content, and this is rewarded in search rankings.
Keywords
While we’re not one of those digital marketing firms that touts overloading keywords onto the back end of your website, blogs can provide keywords for the webcrawlers to hit. That doesn’t mean we advocate artificially loading copy with clunky keywords and long-term search phrases. But simply having content talking about procedures or areas you want to be known for naturally provides keywords within the blog itself.
Expertise
While we’re not overly concerned about whether your site visitors actually read your blog (as long as the bots do), there will be times when a visitor to your site may be a little hesitant about potentially moving forward with a procedure or treatment. They’re looking for more information about this procedure or that treatment. When they look at the topic list of your past blogs, they can find various blog posts to provide them that extra information. That could be all they need to then move on and fill out a contact form or call your office to schedule an appointment.
Now you know why we’re so big on blogs for our practice websites at MyAdvice. We know running a medical or dental practice or law firm takes all of your time, and you can’t see having the time (or the desire) to write your blog. That’s why we provide practices with one or two blog posts every month if they sign up for that level of service. If you want specific areas of focus for your blogs, you simply give us your list of desired topics. Or, if you want our writers to look through your site and generate their own blog posts, that’s fine, too.
The point is a blog on your practice website is a necessity. Now you know why. If you have any questions or need any help with your blog, please get a hold of your MyAdvice representative or, if you’re not yet a client, give us a call and let’s talk, (435) 575-7470.
