Having a chiropractic blog is a good thing. But you probably aren't blogging for your health or because you enjoy typing, right? You created (or are thinking about creating) your chiropractic blog to achieve a specific purpose in your practice. For most chiropractors, the underlying purpose seems to be search engine marketing. If this sounds like you, you've probably been told that:
1. Regular, original content on your website will bring in free, commercially relevant traffic from search engines.
2. Visitors to your website will read the blog and be impressed with your knowledge and dedication to patient education.
3. They will call to set appointments with you.
4. The whole scheme is free except for the time you spending actually blogging.
All of these statements are true PROVIDED THAT you do things the right way and don't sabotage your own efforts through stinginess, shortcuts or inattention to detail. In particular, notice that the whole sequence depends on succeeding with part 1. If you set up the blog incorrectly or write without a search engine plan in mind, then you won't reap the benefits of having a chiropractic blog.
In our experience this is where blogs of chiropractors go wrong:
You Must Place the Chiropractic Blog on Your Website, Not a Free Blogging Site
Blogging is a content-driven strategy for bringing in search engine traffic. But for this strategy to work, you must make sure that your website (not some free blogging site) gets 'credit' from search engines as the original source of the content. If your chiropractic blog is on your own site and you have original content there, then it will help attract traffic to a place where you can try to do something with it.
This sounds so obvious, but it is amazing how many chiropractors get lured into using a free blogging platform like Blogger or Blogspot for their blog. When you place original content that you produced on Blogspot.com, you are only helping to build the authority and traffic of Blogspot.com. Period. Full Stop. While it's true that visitors can click to your chiropractic website from Blogspot, it's equally true that they can click on a competitor's ad or someone else's article and never arrive at your website. So blogging on Blogspot when you're trying to attract visitors to your own site is like putting an addition on your neighbor's house and expecting the value of your own house to rise...
The right set-up is to self-host a WordPress-based chiropractic blog on your own domain. This set-up places the chiropractic blog on your own domain and all content you create is credited to you. NOTE: This is different from WordPress.com which has the same issues as Blogger.
Your Chiropractic Blog Must Use the Phrases that People Actually Search For
I see a lot of chiropractor blog posts that contain great content, but don't reflect the words that patients use when they have a health problem. This works against your seo goals for two reasons. First, search engines take their primary cue from the words on the page. If the words on the page don't match the words typed into the search box, then your post won't show. Second, patients need to recognize themselves in the text. Don't use 'hypertension' if most of your patients use the phrase 'high blood pressure'. Don't use 'neural impingement' if your patients would say 'pinched nerve'. Keep your intended audience in mind. They may not recognize the more technically correct synonyms and you'll lose a potential phone call.
A related issue is that many chiropractor blog posts are about two or more topics. This makes it hard for a search engine to figure out when to show the post as a search result. Is it about Topic A or Topic B? You want your chiropractor blog post to fit into precisely one category. Ask yourself, "What is this post about?" The answer should be short and succinct. If you find yourself saying 'and' that means you need to break the content into two separate posts.
The way to solve this issue is by researching commonly searched phrases ahead of time and then deliberately including those phrases in your chiropractic blog content. A great way to research local searches is to type "CITY AILMENT" into a search engine and see what longer phrases are suggested. For example, when you type "Chicago Headache" or "Chicago Migraine" into Google, the top five suggestions are:
1. Chicago headache...clinic, specialist, and pain center, treatment, clinic little village
2. Chicago migraine...clinic, relief, headache clinic, treatment, headaches
You should pick one and only one of these as the main keyword for your next chiropractic blog post. If you pick "Chicago migraine relief" you would want to use "migraine relief" in the blog post title and three to five times in the body. Make sure you also fill in the meta data for the post and include migraine relief in the description and keywords.
Warning: You Must Own Your Own Domain Name
Generating traffic makes your chiropractic blog a more valuable business asset-it creates a kind of equity that gets measured by web analytics packages. So to continue with the housing analogy we used earlier, investing a lot of time and energy to attract visitors to a website you don't actually own would be like remodeling an apartment you rent.
Lesser Concerns
The three issues above are the most important to get right on your chiropractic blog. Once you've got those nailed, you can look into advanced topics such as:
1. Blog syndication through RSS and social media sites
2. Good internal linking between blog posts
3. Building backlinks to your chiropractic blog pages
Chiropractic Blog Bonuses
The great thing about having a content-rich chiropractic blog is that you can use the same content to create an e-book, a newsletter or an email auto responder series. Invest in good content the first time and you'll have many future uses for it.
Now learn a ton of Article Marketing Tips and Techniques
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