With nearly 24,000 dental professionals in the United Kingdom alone, you need to do whatever you can to make sure yours stays at least two steps ahead of the competition.
One of the most effective ways to do that?
Developing a strategic and comprehensive digital marketing plan. Where’s a good place to start? By creating a dental blog for your practice.
Looking for ideas on what to write about? Need advice on creating blog content that’s geared toward Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)? Want to know the best steps you can take to promote your dental blog?
If so, this guide is for you. In it, we’re telling you everything you need to know about how to create the kind of blog that gets you more hits, more customers, and bigger and brighter smiles for both you and your patients.
Any way you slice it, blogging has an enormous impact on your practice – both in terms of your online/local reputation and in earning potential.
In fact, businesses that blog get close to 70% more leads than those that do not.
We know those are the kinds of numbers you want to have.
But especially if you’re not much of a creative thinker, it can be daunting to have to come up with topics for your dental blog.
If you’re stuck on what to write about on your dental blog, one of the best places to start is on your employees themselves! The relationships between dentists, assistants, and everyone else who works in your office and the patients you see is incredibly important.
You probably have a few clients that you’ve seen for almost all of their lives!
Start by posting about the people that work at your practice. What drew them to dentistry? Where did they train? What’s the funniest thing that happened to them during a root canal?
People want to work with dentists they feel really care for their patients. Putting yourself and your team out there is a great place to start.
That new toothbrush everyone is talking about? The latest whitening kit to hit the market?
As a dental professional, your opinion is valuable – and people want to hear it!
Leave product reviews online for people to read, and you’ll see a serious increase in the number of visitors flocking to your blog.
Remember that this is a blog, not a college entrance essay. The information you put on your blog needs to be short, to the point, and accessible to everyone.
Also, avoid longs blocks of text that will likely cause readers to click away from your blog without reading any of it. This gives you a great opportunity to include lots of pictures in your text to break it up!
We also suggest including short videos, which are fun to watch and great to share on social media to promote your blog.
Of course, writing engaging and unique content isn’t all that you have to do to promote your blog and increase your patient list.
You also need to take into consideration your overall SEO strategy.
In other words, what are you doing to make your blog more attractive to search engines?
You can start by peppering your content with appropriate keywords. Keywords are the words and phrases that potential patients type into search engines when they’re looking for the services you offer.
For a dental practice, that might be something like, “best dentist near me” or “dentist London.” More often than not, these keywords will include some kind of a location word.
This is why it’s so important to include keywords that mention the cities that your practice serves. It’s not going to help you or the people searching if all of your hits are coming from people that are five cities away.
Also, be sure to list your website on Google My Business. Not only will this help local searchers find, learn more about, and read reviews of your practice, but it will also help local searchers find your blog.
Finally, make sure that you avoid keyword stuffing – essentially, cramming your blog content full of keywords in an attempt to “hack” your way into a higher search engine ranking.
Not only is it incredibly painful to read, it also makes you look completely unprofessional. Trust us when we tell you – everyone is going to know what you’re trying to do.
And, that includes search engines like Google.
They can sniff out practices that are engaging in keyword stuffing, and it’s likely that your blog will fall in the search engine rankings as a result.
Instead, focus on creating original content that includes a reasonable, sane number of keywords.
There are lots of different methods and tactics you can use to promote your content. While writing creative content and using SEO in that content is crucial, there are additional methods you can use to promote it!
This is probably the most important way to promote your blog – and your practice in general!
First of all, social media allows you to promote your blog posts on countless different platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn…the list goes on.
Each platform has a slightly different user base – which means that you’ll be able to broaden your target market and reach more people. This is why it’s so crucial that you remember to share your posts across all the social media platforms you use.
Social media allows you to interact with potential patients directly! If they leave a comment on your page or reply to a tweet, always take the time to respond. Even thank those that share your posts – since they just gave you the chance to reach whole new sets of eyes!
Keep in mind that around 80% of the time people spend on social media happens on a mobile device. As a result, always check and make sure that your blog and social media content displays quickly and clearly on smartphones and tablets.
Always share your blog posts on social media!
We’ve found that a lot of people think link building is way more complicated than it actually is. All you need to do is include both internal and external (your site, and then someone else’s) link in the blog content you write.
First of all, doing this will help you to rise in the search engine rankings. But also, it will generate more hits to your site and help you to find more potential patients.
Don’t be afraid to ask a popular industry blog or website to put a link to your site in their content! Also, whenever you leave a comment on another website or blog, be sure to include a link to your site in the comment itself.
People that read dental blogs will likely be interested in your site, too!
Our final suggestion on how to promote your dental blog?
Make sure you’re posting throughout the day! You don’t need to spam your followers, but you do need to tell search engines (and future patients!) that you frequently update your blog and social media platforms.
We suggest aiming for three social media posts a day. You can, of course, vary the platform you use, and even just share “fast facts” from past blog posts.
Try to update your blog at least once every couple of days. If you need help, there are plenty of incredible dental blogging services that can help you get there!
We get it: just because you’ve finished reading this guide, doesn’t mean you understand everything about blogging, SEO, link building, and social media marketing.
It also doesn’t mean you automatically have the time to do it.
The good news?
We understand how to implement everything, and we also have the time to do it.
Have you noticed a plateau in the number of new patients at your practice? Are you feeling a bit threatened by a newer dentist’s office that’s opened in the area of your business? Do you just feel like your current website and blog are failing to promote your business best?
If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, then its’ time to get a professional to update, refine, and implement your digital marketing strategy.
We want to be the professional digital marketing agency you trust.
We believe in our services because we have years of experience writing for dental practices. So, even if we’re not dentists ourselves, we know the terminology, popular questions, and things you need to include on your site.
We run a seamless and integrated SEO and digital marketing strategy that’s effective across multiple platforms.
Get in touch with us today, and let’s grow your patient list together.