Blog like a pro
You may have heard that blogging is great for SEO, and you’re absolutely right. Expanding your website’s content shows Google that your website is active, and expanding its content to provide searchers with relevant information. You may find that the more blogs you post over the time, the better your rankings for your other search terms such as ‘Dentists in Bournemouth’ will be, but what about the good ol’ “hitting two birds with one stone” tactic?
Introducing Content Marketing…
Content Marketing is a great way to bring in large amounts of search traffic to your blog, and if done correctly, relevant search traffic. It’s a way of subtly putting your service, in front of searchers eyes without pushing it in their face.
Let’s look at an example using Root Canal. As a dentist you may find that you’re repeatedly asked ‘Does Root Canal Hurt?’ – well Google gets asked thousands of times!
Statistics show that Page 1 on Google brings in 33% of the total search traffic, so ranking at the top for this search term (and its variants) we could imagine would generate an additional 300-500 month visits. Purely running off the data SEMRUSH has provided us displayed above.
So let’s take a look into the search results:
An additional 300-500 visitors per month, sure seems valuable! After all, anyone wondering whether Root Canal will hurt is probably looking into Root Canal options themselves.
So why are companies like Crest and Colgate writing content to serve these sorts of users?
Content Marketing. The aim of the game is to increase sales and revenue.
By featuring on Page 1 for this search results, and probably many, many more search results, Colgate and Crest are making you more aware of their brand. On top of that, if you click onto the website you’re shown multiple call to actions:
More often than not, the visitors will ignore the call to actions, so let’s just say that only 1% of visitors actually follow through with a purchase for each blog ranking on page 1. It doesn’t sound like much, but what if I showed you a small amount of the page 1 rankings that Colgate appears for:
Just to put this in perspective a bit, that’s only 18 of the 100’s of results that Colgate ranks on page 1 for. Going off the 1% conversion figure, this is how these 18 results may equate.
Total Search Volume = 150,800
(Remember first place brings in 33% of traffic)
158,800 * 0.3 = 47,640
47,640 * 0.01 (our 1% conversion rate) = 476 sales and potentially life time customers.
Now what is worth knowing here, is that these figures are based on worst case scenarios. Factors that haven’t been taken into account are:
- Increased traffic % through Rich Snippets in the search results where the site also ranks 1st (The big block of text seen on the first screenshot)
- The real conversion rate, which we would expect to be higher than 1% – according to marketers from Quora, if it’s less than 2% you’re doing something wrong, this is specific for SaaS businesses though, not e-commerce sites, but we can expect a similar result.
(Source: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-average-conversion-rate-of-content-marketing-blog-in-SaaS)
Hopefully, now you get the picture of how content marketing works, and how valuable it can be.
How do I start?
Follow these 7 steps, and you’ll get there!
- First I’d need to work out what service I’d want to push. In dental terms, I may already know what service I want to push but if not, I’d go through each service I offer and follow the next steps until I find my ‘Window of Opportunity’.
- Following from our example earlier, let’s say I wanted to push Root Canal Treatment. As a relatively small dental practice, I’m no doubt going to find it difficult to out-rank a large national company such as Colgate or Crest, so this is where I’d look into what marketers like to call Opportunity by finding and focusing on Long Tail Keywords.
To find these keywords I’ll need to use a Keyword Analysis tools. The HOTH use some great free tools that you can find here.
Keyword Research
It may come as no surprise that search terms around Endodontics are bringing in less than Root Canal (In fact Root Canal brings in over 30000% more search terms than Endodontics) and as a result, Endodontics is less competitive. This doesn’t mean that there are no searches for it. It’s still bringing in a worthwhile amount of searches.
Let me know show you how I found the search traffic around Endodontics:
After using SEMRUSH’s keyword research tool on Endodontic Treatment I pulled this list.
A few of these search terms caught my eye, such as ‘Success Rate of Endodontic Treatment’ but when conducting the search I was challenged by these two large sites:
The highlighted data (pulled via the SEOQUAKE Chrome Extension) indicates a high Trust Score (the higher it is, the more likely Google will rank you up top – Look into Link Building to find out more about this). Regardless of whether you understand how link juice, SEO Equity, Domain Authority or link building works, first off, learn, second off – take it from me, those stats are quite high to compete with; content marketing is baby steps, so I need to start at something a little less competitive.
So I tried again with a different keyword. ‘Endodontic Treatment Steps’, the competition was still quite high but a lot better than the ‘success rate’ search term:
So I stuck with this one and decided to use Ubersuggest to find more search terms based around this one. 652 keywords came up and only a few were relevant for my content strategy. To find those that were relevant I exported the data into a spreadsheet and used the following formula:
=IF(ISNUMBER(SEARCH(“endodontic”,A638)),”yes”,”no”)
This tells Excel that I want it to display ‘Yes’ whenever the word ‘Endodontic(s)’ appears in any of the columns under ‘A’ on the spreadsheet. Once the data was congregated I used a simple filter to filter the list into a much smaller targeted sheet.
From here, I could add additional filters to filter down through search traffic or competition but on this occasion, I did it manually as the list is small enough.
What I’m looking for here are search terms based around the Endodontic Treatment steps so I can consolidate all of the targeted search terms into a content strategy later on. After having a look through the ones I have consolidated it lead to an approximate search volume of 1860 searches (including a ‘Root Canal Retreatment’ search term which had relatively low search competition). I figured I could put retreatment search terms into the blog as I could include it in my content strategy as part of the root canal treatment process (or an after process, as people making these searches would no doubt be interested in any retreatment). I separated these search terms from the rest of the search terms found, giving me my search phrases to target in my Blog. I’ve pasted them below:
So now I have found my search phrases that I should be targeting it is worth noting that these are keywords bringing in a good amount of traffic but without a lot of online competition. I now need to move onto my next step, which is step 3.
- Now, I am no Root Canal expert, so I couldn’t realistically tell you exactly what you write without doing some research into the service. For example’s sake let’s just assume that I know it all. From a copywriting perspective there are a couple of things I need to ensure I do when writing the content:
- The content needs to be keyword rich (but not spammy)
- It needs to be easy to read (and score well with the Flesch Reading Ease grading for SEO purposes)
- Statistically, most blogs that show on page 1 have over 5000 words – so I’d try to be as detailed as possible without waffling or repeating myself. Although, 5000 words, in this case, may be a bit extreme!
- I’d also do a content analysis on the competing websites especially those that are ranking 1st, I’d want to look at roughly how many times they used the keywords and how long their copy is to gauge the sort of length my blog should be to compete.
My content analysis of the 1st ranking website for ‘Endodontic Treatment Steps’ shows that the word ‘Endodontic’ only appears four times in their content.
Where as ‘Root Canal’ – 48 times.
I then ran it through a hidden gem website I’ve found called Word Counter and it showed me that the website’s content contain 2678 words with a 11th – 12th grade reading level and the most common keywords being:
With Root Canal as the most common phrase:
This blog is clearly more optimised for the Root Canal search terms, giving me some opportunity to build a blog more targeted at the Endodontic search terms.
NOTE: The website also has some Affiliate Amazon links at the bottom (If users click on these links and make a purchase, the website gets a commission). This is obviously included in their content marketing strategy.
- Now that my planning is done, I can get to work and write my blog whilst sticking to the content strategy that I put together. When writing this blog, I have to remember that the aim of the game is to generate money. So I work in Calls to Actions, whether it’s ‘Follow Us on Facebook’ or a special offer on my Root Canal Surgery in the form of banners or text.
Writing With User In Mind
It’s really important when I write my blog to ensure that I write with my target audience in mind. If I were to write ‘This is a blog about Endodontic Treatment Steps detailing all of the Endodontic Treatment Steps that occur when taking out Endodontic Treatment’ for the purpose of trying to rank it highly on Google, it will have an adverse effect. This tactic used to work years ago, but Google has smartened up since then, and realises that this doesn’t flow well to a user.
When writing I will want to write great-quality content with the exact information my user will want to see, use plenty of pictures and other visual cues such as a video, and even perhaps link to other helpful resources!
- Once my blog is up and running I now have to keep track of it on Google’s Rankings. Pro Rank Tracker offer a free rank tracking service (less limited when you pay), so I’d add the site to this and monitor its rankings for the search terms I’ve been targeting.
- Once I’ve set up the tracking, I now have to look at ways to increase the ranking. I can make the obvious adjustments to the overall website health, making sure it is a responsive website, with an SSL certificate, relevant Meta Data focused on the targeted keywords etc, but the main SEO aspect I would want to focus on is the backlinking profile. Backlink profiles are what are allowing the larger companies like Crest or Colgate ranking for those high traffic search terms. Check out my previous (and quite brief) blog about Link Building to find out more. I’d also start using social signals by sharing and getting my social media community engaging with my post. As well as driving direct traffic to it by sending it out in my newsletter and giving it to any patients interested or going ahead with Root Canal treatment.
How to build links to the site?
I’d start with some ‘Quick Win’s’ – Firstly, I’d use Quora. Quora is a question and answer website, which does exactly as it says on the tin. You ask a question, and then other members will answer it! After a simple search for ‘Root Canal,’ the third question down would be a good one to start with.
I’d write a thorough and detailed answer, one that would receive many Up-Votes as this makes my answer more prominent and then include a link saying “If you’d like to find out more information I’d recommend checking out this post https://www.awesomerootcanalblog.co.uk”.
I wouldn’t go onto other similar questions and keep posting the link though, I wouldn’t want to dilute the link equity that the link from Quora is passing my site.
I’d then go to Medium, this is one of the only times I’d ever repost a blog, word for word onto another site (Google hates duplicate content). The reason I’m okay with reposting on Medium is because they can include a special tag that looks like this – <rel=”canonical” href=”https://www.awesomerootcanalblog.co.uk “> – this tag is a canonical tag and it tells Google that this is just a copy of the content and that the original content is here: https://www.awesomerootcanalblog.co.uk – so Google doesn’t penalise it. I’d also look at potentially adding a link back and referring to it as the original content from Medium.
From there I would begin some manual outreach. I’d compile a list of Dental Practices out of my area but in the UK (That’s where I am based) and tell them, they can reference my blog if they like, by either sharing it on social media or in blogs of their own. Chances are that most of the practices won’t do this, but even if one or two links back came out of it then it would be worth it! The ones that do, I can build relationships with which may help me with further content down the line!
I don’t want to go into too much detail about link building as the tactics can go on and on and this is after all a blog highlighting more about how to optimise your own blog. Here is a link to a case study by Moz into how to build links back to your blog. The blog is really in depth and lays out the tactics in simple terms (once you’ve worked out all of the acronyms), so I’d recommend using this to go into more depth on the tactics to use when link building.
- Repeat steps 5 and 6.
What next?
As I said earlier, the content marketing approach is baby steps. All of this is just for one blog, but if done correctly it can provide a high LTV and provide a very good ROI. So, I’d keep making more and more blogs ranking for as many search phrases as possible. This will increase overall SEO, targeted search traffic and my brand awareness, all of which result in more revenue to expand my business.
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