The Power of Blogging by Mark Oborn

Discover the biggest communication mistake dentists make, which costs them thousands of pounds in lost income

A dental practice website should essentially do two primary things:

1. Attract traffic/potential new patients.
2. Convert those visitors into patients.

Quality content is king here, so the first thing we need to do is to identify two places that content can go:

1. On the main website itself.
2. On your blog.

Why separate the content on the main website onto a blog?
One of the things we want to do with your website is to pull in as much traffic as possible from Google. The best way to do this is to write content that people want to read; if people read that content and like it, they are more likely to share it and take action.

Take clear correctors as an example: If patients are researching Invisalign, they may visit your website and read some excellent content you’ve written about living day-to-day with Invisalign aligners.

That patient may also be discussing or researching clear correctors on other places around the internet, such as Mumsnet. Whilst engaged in the online discussions, they might place a link back to your website where they had read your excellent content.

This is what is known as “offsite search optimisation,” and it is brilliant for your website. Google notices these links to your site—the more links you have, and the higher quality links (from highly valued websites), the higher your website will begin to rank.

We now get a ‘snowball effect’ from writing good quality content:

What’s different about a blog from your main website?
People are far less likely to share content if it talks about ‘you’ all of the time. In conjunction with this, Google is far less likely to rank this self-promotional content.

Keeping clear correctors as an example, typical content on the website would be written thus:

‘Our dentists in <town> can help straighten crooked teeth with Invisalign. We offer a free initial consultation and can then provide a tailored treatment plan with payment options starting at just 25p per day.’

Now, let’s rewrite that content for a blog to make it more shareable and likeable:

‘What is Invisalign?

‘Invisalign utilises modern CAD/CAM techniques to produce an almost invisible aligner. Each aligner is worn for approximately 2 weeks and a typical Invisalign treatment will have up to 26 aligners. Invisalign also utilises computer generated graphics to create a 3-D simulation of how you will look once your teeth have been straightened’.

The first example makes perfect sense—it includes your local area, so Google knows where you’re located and can rank you for that, and it also talks about the treatment process and makes the treatment more accessible from a cost point of view.

Do a Google search for ‘what is Invisalign’. Google will show a section marked ‘people also ask’; scroll through some of the answers and see how they’re written. Any of these websites listed (which will get a lot of traffic from this) will almost certainly not be self-promoting for the pages which rank here.

When someone does a Google search, Google wants to send them to the most relevant answer. This will almost certainly not include your sales process! For this reason, Google is far more likely to send traffic to your website if you exclude yourself from the content.

Excluding yourself from the content and making your content purely about the reader and answering their questions is far easier on a blog than it is on the main website pages. After all, on the main website pages, you absolutely want to be promoting yourself, don’t you?

Why writing a blog is so powerful

• It can be very targeted and specific about its content. The more focused on the subject, the more likely it is for that individual page to rank.
  Think individual blog posts about:
• What is Invisalign?
• Invisalign problems
• Eating with Invisalign
• Looking after aligners
• It’s a way of you writing about your specific treatments without the sales talk. This type of content will rank higher and be shared more often, which is good for search engine optimisation.
• Blogs are regularly updated. Google loves regularly updated content.
• Blogs often have an RSS feed. This makes syndicating to email and social media very simple.

Writing in this way will increase your overall domain authority, meaning you will rank higher for all of your search phrases, including the specific ones that drive traffic to your ‘sales’ treatment pages.

Top tips to get your blog found in the search results

• Phrase your blog title as a question. People search Google with questions, and if the question your blog post answers is relevant, you’ll get more traffic.
• Link from your blog to high-authority websites. This demonstrates that your blog is a useful resource to readers. Google will thank you for being a useful resource and rank you higher in search results.
• Link to other internal pages of your website. This helps visitors find exactly what they’re looking for, and also helps you because you can link to more sales-focused internal pages about the treatment.
• Ensure that the metadata (title, description and image tags) are relevant on each blog post.
• Share each blog post on social media, and via your opt-in and consenting email list. (Watch out for GDPR which goes into effect in May 2018!)

So, what will your next blog post be about?

Mark Oborn MBA worked for 25 years as a dental technician in the high-quality sector of the private market. After 15 years of running his own laboratory, Oborn also earned a master’s degree in business administration, majoring in marketing, innovation and creativity. He also is a practitioner of neurolinguistic programming and hypnosis. Oborn now consults with dental practices to improve their online marketing, website conversions and social media marketing, attracting the right patients to their practice.
Information: www.markoborn.com, info@markoborn.com or 0845 259 1232.