9 Ways to Maximize Your Chiropractic Blog Potential

February 03, 2012

There's no better way to help your search-engine optimization than regularly updating your site and blog with quality content. Blogging can be a powerful tool in your online-marketing toolbox, but like any tool, to unlock its power you need to pick it up and use it. Having a blog sitting on your site collecting digital dust isn't going to boost your SEO but writing frequently and well works wonders. Here's nine ways to maximize your chiropractic blog potential from our Content Director, Marissa Luck.

  1. Real content is more than just announcements or advertisements. That means taking time to create well-written or interesting pieces that include information people genuinely have a desire to know. People searching the web for "Sciatica relief+your city" are hoping to understand more about their condition and find ways to relieve their pain. You can explain how chiropractic and natural health can help them achieve that, all while creating a personal connection, demonstrating your expertise, and boosting your SEO. If you produce quality posts, people will naturally want to share the information with their friends and family. (This will create some back links to your site and further help your SEO).
  2. Include options for people to share posts via email or social media site. The other half of tip #1 is making it easy for readers to share articles or videos with their friends by including share and "Like" buttons for Facebook, Twitter, and Google +1. Try searching the plug-in options on the Word Press admin page or ask the ChiroHosting team for more help.
  3. Stay focused and brief.  Blog posts don't have to be full-length articles. When people are surfing the web, there's a million things pulling their minds in different directions. Getting to the point quickly and making your post easy to scan can help you capture their attention. Longer posts aren't necessarily bad, but there's more of a chance that people won't make it to the end of your piece unless it's particularly well-written, fills a specific need they have, or is captivatingly unique. If you have a long post, try breaking it up into smaller parts. You can also keep your post brief by focusing on one topic per a post, instead of trying to cover multiple topics.
  4. Include key words like city and condition names. To ensure your blog posts are visible in local Google searches, sprinkle your city name and key words like condition names or "chiropractic" throughout your posts. Don't over do it though as that will come off as fake or pushy.
  5. Make use of categories.Word Press allows you to create categories for your posts. Every time you make a post, make sure to check off applicable categories. That way someone can quickly find all your posts about "Auto Injuries" within seconds of visiting your blog instead of scrolling through months of old posts to find a specific topic, which they're unlikely to do. To create a category, just go to the "Categories" section on your Word Press admin page. To place these categories on your menu bar of your blog, go to "Appearance" and "Menus" section to click, drag, and rearrange categories into your blog menu.
  6. Avoid duplicate content. If you see an article you love somewhere in the Internet universe, don't just copy and paste it onto your blog. Copying the exact words of another web article will have dire consequences for your SEO because Google sees that as plagiarism and will penalize your website's SEO. A better way to go about sharing the ideas of another author is to paraphrase what the author said, cite your source, and/or provide a link to the article.  If you've written an article or blog post that is already published somewhere else on the Internet, Google still won't be able to tell you're the original author and will penalize your site just the same. Instead, you could write a short paragraph describing what you wrote about in the other article, and then link to the original article.
  7. Use your email newsletter to link to your blog. If you happen to send out monthly newsletters, considering linking to a specific blog post about a relevant idea.
  8.  Link back to an article or video on your site. If you find an article or video you like on the ChiroHosting data base, you can always write a post about the topic and link back to the article on your site. (Even if you're not a ChiroHosting customer, the basic idea of linking to other articles still stands). Once you've found the article or video you like, just insert the link into your post using the menu options on Word Press. Just ask us if you have any questions on how to do this.
  9. Consider following other similar blogs on chiropractic or wellness. Comment on these posts when you honestly have something to add to the conversation, and this may gradually draw more public attention to your blog's web presence. Don't link to your blog on other people's blog just for the purpose of getting back links though; there's bloggers detest more than spam comments.

Most of all, have fun and write about what interests you! You can always check out our blogs on Chiropractic Wellness and Back Pain Natural for more ideas. Also, check out our accompanying article on 10 Chiropractic Blog Post Ideas.