In 2015 pretty much everyone has a blog. However, there’s a huge difference between your nephew’s tumblr account or your friend’s stream of uninteresting filtered food photos, and a professional business blog. Becoming a thought leader, and a source of reliable, interesting content should be the goal of every business blog. However, a blog that is regularly updated on your practice’s website benefits you no matter what – even if no one’s reading! That may seem to make very little sense, until you know a little bit about how Google operates.
Above all, Google values fresh, original content. Long gone are the days that a few exact-match strong links and keyword density would propel you to the top of page 1 on Google. What comes off as frustrating and tiresome to some of the old school internet marketers and business owners who don’t understand why their site is no longer ranking, is actually an attempt by Google to provide it’s users with the most quality, relevant content at their fingertips. The best way to do that is by rewarding websites that are consistently providing new, up-to-date content. This demonstrates that your website is actively being maintained, improved upon, and is becoming a trusted source of new content and keywords for potential searchers.
So we know why you should be blogging, now you may be wondering how to go about it. Let’s put all the cards on the table. This very blog you’re reading right now, on top of being a reliable resource for our current and potential clients, is helping our website rank for certain key terms like “internet marketing phoenix“, “blogging for dentists in Gilbert” and “blogging for doctors in phoenix“. How is this blog helping us rank for those terms? Well, simply by placing them in the content as we just did (sneaky, right?), along with the title tag, meta description, and tags! Although, generally you’ll want to include those terms more eloquently in your content to provide a better reader experience. You will also notice that some of the terms are linked. Exact match linking to certain pages on your website from your blog will encourage Googlebots to follow those links and associate that keyword text with the linked page, helping your rankings (Though you’ll want to take it easy with the exact match links from external URLs).
The principles of blogging are fairly straightforward, but the commitment of researching, planning, and writing a blog weekly or bi-weekly (as we generally recommend for medical and dental practices due to the stiff competition) can be a lot of work. Contact New Wine Web Design today if you want us to shoulder that workload and handle your blogging and general internet marketing in Phoenix, Gilbert, Mesa, or anywhere in the great Grand Canyon State.
Images used under creative commons license – commercial use (11/4/2015) Drew Coffman (Flickr)