Posted on November 2, 2015

Blogs: Your Secret Weapon to SEO Success

You don’t have a blog on your website. Or maybe you do, but your practice just isn’t utilizing it- no big deal, right? Wrong.

Let me back-track. We talk about Google a lot here at Glacial Multimedia. You’ve probably heard us say, “Google likes this”, or “Google doesn’t like that”. Maybe you’ve even heard one of my co-worker’s favorites: “it’s Google’s sandbox, and we’re all just playing in it.” We spend a lot of time discussing and monitoring how Google works because it far outranks any other search tool, and chances are, your patients and prospects are searching for their medical needs using this behemoth of a search engine.

We’ve learned a lot, and there’s one thing we know for sure: Google loves blogs.

If you aren’t using a blog, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity not only to personify your practice, but to boost your rankings and online visibility.

Here are five reasons why a blog is the secret weapon your practice needs to boost rankings and push past that pesky competitor:

Reason #1: Your Content Just Might Be Going Stale.

Your website is just how you want it. You’ve outlined the ins-and-outs of cataracts, the pesky signs of dry eye, perfected your doctor bios and the verbiage of your laser technology page is just wonderful. As good as it feels to have your web content just how you want it, now that you aren’t updating your pages Google may just see this as you not caring about your site.

We know you care, and that’s where a blog comes in. Google loves to see fresh content on websites, and blogs are an easy way to show Google that you are making updates. By posting the occasional blog to your site (we recommend about two per month) search engines see that you are maintaining your website and keeping it current, just through one blog page! Content is king in search engines, and this can help online rankings and just could be the small factor that your competitors aren’t paying mind to.

Reason #2: That Keyword That Just Isn’t Ranking Well.

Rankings change all the time. Did a term you care about just drop a few spots? Blogs to the rescue.

Rankings change based off of a combination of things. For example, search engine algorithm changes, what your competitors are doing, and what you are doing are just some of them. So if your competitor starts pushing LASIK, that term may go up for them… and down for you. This is where blogs come in.

If you want to push this ranking back up, blogs are a great resource to write keyword rich content that can begin to increase (or further solidify) your website’s ranking position. A few articles about LASIK technology, LASIK benefits, or a testimonial from a patient whose life changed thanks to LASIK surgery, and you just may see blogs making a difference in your website’s visibility.

Really. Blogs are the keyword tool you’ve been hoping for.

Reason #3: You’ve Got Personality, and Patients Like That.

Your practice is quirky, your employees are friendly, and what’s more- you have lives. You are members of the community. You did that huge charity, and people loved it. Why not share it? Don’t be a Bruce Wayne; let the world know what you and your co-workers are up to beyond your surgical prowess.

Blogs are a method of communication that give you control over how you are perceived. If you are able to keep readers engaged, even this helps your rankings by increasing the amount of time that people are navigating your website. Individuals will stay on your blog pages to read articles, and page view duration is another factor that search engines take very seriously.

Everyone loves a business with personality, a story, a likeable staff and community involvement. A blog is a perfect way to brand your practice and show the community that it’s not just “business as usual” at your location. Post pictures of a baby shower, share your involvement with charity, celebrate your victories in the community- and where better to do it than your blog?

Reason #4: Social Media is Trending.

Another thing Google loves? Social media. The more social signals coming to your website from sites like Facebook or Twitter, the better your ranking potential. With our social media packages, you can automatically feed your blog articles to Facebook or Twitter, vastly increasing the visibility of your posts, catching more readers, and bringing increased traffic to your website (and of course, traffic to your website is great for rankings).

If you have a well-designed website, a funny thing happens once people are directed to your site: they start looking around. Someone may see an interesting blog article on Facebook, and next thing they know they’re reading about your services and maybe even thinking about booking an appointment! The capacity to feed your blogs to social media vastly increase your chances of getting prospective patients right where you want them: on your website.

Reason #5: We Can Do the Work for You.

It’s what we do. Our coders will make your blog custom, coding and designing it to match and fit in with the look and feel of your website, and our blog system even provides tools to ensure that you’re tagging the correct terms that you want the article to help rank for.

Once the blog module is live on the site, we give you options. It’s your property, so of course we can show you how to use the system and post your own blog articles at your discretion. We also understand that at a lot of medical practices it’s far too busy to even think about your blog, let alone write a full-fletched blog article. Thankfully, we have Social Media experts that can do the work for you. Our social media plans allow you to decide; we can do scheduled postings twice a month (or more) in some packages, or we can post “per diem” articles at your discretion.

In Conclusion…

There’s no silver bullet solidifying your practice at the top of ranking results, but we’ve found that getting to the top takes a holistic approach. Blogs can’t do everything, but in our experience at Glacial Multimedia we’ve found them to be a no-brainer as an SEO tool and method of boosting engagement.

My advice? Call us. It’s time to talk about blogging.