Ask Alex

Clinic digital marketing specialist Alex Bugg answers your questions

Q: HOW DO I WRITE A READABLE BLOG THAT’S STILL GOOGLE FRIENDLY?

A: So you’ve set up your clinic website, and when you google your treatments, products and conditions you treat, you’re still coming underneath your competitors (or even clinics which are much further away from you).

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a practically free way of boosting this ranking and the traffic that visits your site. AM has had some great introduction to SEO articles -it’s worth diving into the archive to learn more.

One small but significant tool we use to boost the ranking of your website is a clinic blog, where regular posts can show Google that your website is active and informative. One of the problems with SEO is if you prioritise it heavily, your writing can become illegible.

You’ll get some keyword and phrase research (the numbers of people who search for that specific term in a search engine each month) done and get excited at the potential goldmine of ranking boosts and traffic to your website. Then, you shove that keyword all over your website, including your blog. Google’s AI is smarter than ever. Old hat SEO tactics such as forcing keywords+location still work to an extent, but remember, you’re writing for people.

“Old hat SEO tactics such as forcing keywords+location still work to an extent, but remember, you’re writing for people”

People get turned off by reading lousy content, and Google sees people coming into your page and bouncing off as a bad thing (despite it being ranked highly on the local search engine results page).

We’re also in an industry where the wrong information can impact someone’s health, wealth or happiness; Google takes an even closer look at content from medical sites, so we have to make sure that we’re serving up high-quality, trustworthy content. Look up Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) to learn more on this.

Instead of writing copy with your “dermal fillers in Leicester” keyword stuffed in wherever you can squeeze it, write for people first, algorithms second, and reap the benefits of SEO without the unintended consequences of not putting the reader first.

HERE ARE MY STEPS:

1. Think like a patient -what do they want to know? How can you address the search queries they’re making.

2. Focus on one or two keywords – and nail the content for that post, rather than trying to make a jumbled mess of a blog targeting multiple keywords. Save most for another post (and link back!).

3. Write succinctly -waffle might bump your word count (over 700 words is recommended per blog), but it doesn’t deliver value to the reader.

4. Make it easy to read -use headings and subheadings, sneaking your keywords in here organically, e.g. “where can I get advice on dermal fillers in Leicester”. People skim read web pages and then dive in deeper to content they think is relevant to them.

5. Use visual aids -as well as headings, using imagery or graphics (not saved from Google without credit!) can make a blog easier to read for humans. If it’s your imagery, popping your keywords into the image’s description will help tell Google what it’s showing!

6. Apply links -internally linking to pages on your website (treatments, conditions, contact page, other blogs) is vital to help navigate your site and help readers take the next steps from your post. Externally linking to credible sources such as journal articles shows Google that your post is considered and researched, which can help.

WHERE SHOULD YOU USE YOUR KEYWORD:

• Sparingly in full sentences and in the headline/subheadings if it makes grammatical sense

• In the meta description of the blog for the website: this tells searchers and search engines what the post is about before they click

• In the alt text of any images, you insert into the blog post

• Early in the title tag of your post and early in the post itself: aim for the first 75 characters to include your keyword/phrase somewhere.

So all in all, if you think like a patient, use your keyword research as inspiration rather than the #1 focus, and use your keywords smartly, Google will love it but won’t read like spam to your audience. The result: you’ll write well for search engines and your target patients too. This will hopefully lead to more web traffic, enquiries and bookings!

ALEX BUGG

Alex Bugg works for Web Marketing Clinic, a familyrun digital agency, which specialises in medical aesthetics. They build websites and deliver marketing campaigns for doctors, nurses, dentists, distributors and brands. Contact her: alex@ webmarketingclinic. co.uk or follow her on Instagram: @webmarketingclinic