Medical Practice Marketing: How to Write a Medical Blog

There are several successful tactics for marketing a medical practice. These include search engine marketing, social media, blogs, direct mail, and more. At D Media, our small medical practice clients often rely on us for keyword-rich blogs. Medical blogs are an excellent tool to bring a niche target audience to your website. We implement blogs infused with the keywords patients most often use in Google searches. Blogs help increase traffic to your medical practice website, ideally converting prospects into patients. As a bonus, these blog readers learn more about their searched topic, resulting in less time needed for patient education.

When people search the web about a certain topic, would you like to appear in search results if it relates to your practice? For example, a person suffering from hand pain may search “best treatment for hand pain” or “doctor for hand pain treatment” or “how to stop hand pain”.  If you are a nearby orthopedist or surgeon with a medical blog about hand pain, and it has been written with the proper SEO (search engine optimization) criteria and keywords, your blog has an opportunity to appear in search results. Blogs increase your website visibility to potential patients.

Traffic Is Essential for Marketing a Medical Practice

Medical Blogs Bring Traffic to Your Website

To write blogs for marketing a medical practice, first decide on a subject that can be used with the most searched on keywords and keyword phrases by your target niche. The blog topics we write for clients generally fall into one of three categories.

Medical Practice Blog Topic Categories

• Patient Education – Informative articles about a symptom, condition and/or treatment.
• Patient Stories – Sharing patient journeys as a way for other patients to identify their own issues/pains/symptoms and have a better understanding of what happens: Problem, Process, Treatment, and End Result.
• Practice News – Press releases/news to announce a new offering, facility, doctor joining, milestone, staff news, etc.

Next, draft your medical blog using SEO criteria.

8 Secrets for Marketing a Medical Practice with Blogs

1. Word Count – We recommend medical blogs include at least 500-700 words. More is better, but definitely not less.
2. Keywords – The main subject/topic keyword should appear in the blog title, in the first headline, in the first paragraph, and be mentioned with a 3-5% keyword density throughout the article. So if “hand pain treatments” is that keyword phrase, it needs to appear in all those places.
3. Links – We recommend at least two links: 1) One outbound link to a reputable source. If you are quoting a research study or statistics to support your content, link to that website. It is best not to link to a competing local practice. 2) One cross link to content elsewhere in your website or medical blog section.
4. Images – Your medical blog should contain at least one image. Even more is better for the user experience. When we post blogs for clients, D Media uses meta with the image for improved SEO, as Google does read images with alt tags. We also place the main keyword(s) in the image name, separated by dashes or underscores so it can be easily read by Google indexing. If clients don’t have an image, we can provide a stock photo from our in-house library.
5. CTA – Include a CTA (call to action) at the end and possibly 1-2 additional places depending on article length. In terms of marketing a medical practice, CTA is the action you want prospective patients to take as a result of reading the article. Examples include: call your office for an appointment, complete a contact form, request inclusion on your newsletter distribution list, ask your doctor at the next visit, and so on.
6. Tone – The tone of your medical blog should be approachable, warm and friendly, as if you are speaking to the patient directly. Even if your blog article is educational and informative, add a personal touch to avoid sounding cold and detached.
7. Relevancy – Integrate your medical practice into the blog topic. Add content that mentions your practice, how your medical practice would handle that diagnosis or treatment, versus just general information.
8. User Friendly – A medical blog should be easy to read. Medical topics can be difficult because of the technical terms involved. However, blogs need to be conversational and easy for the target audience to understand. Here are resources that further expand on readability: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch%E2%80%93Kincaid_readability_tests and https://yoast.com/flesch-reading-ease-score/

The Team at D Media Are Experts in Marketing a Medical Practice

We Help Medical Practice Clients with Blog and SEO Services

If you want to include blogs on your medical practice website, but it’s more than you want take on yourself, D Media offers medical blog writing as one of our SEO services. We research keywords that are relevant to your practice’s specialty. We provide thorough, well-researched articles that reflect your practice’s image. Or, if you enjoy the writing process, but need expert help in optimizing your medical blog, we can handle the SEO and posting.  We apply the best SEO practices to maximize your website’s search engine exposure. Contact D Media for more information.