Last Updated: May 1, 2019
Almost every day I speak to a chiropractor that is concerned about blogging. They believe that adding blogs to their chiropractic website will help them rank better and it will help them educate the public. They also believe that they might generate new patients by adding this blog content.
It certainly sounds good and you don’t have to look far online to find some apparent expert saying that it’s the key to success, but is this true? Is blogging helpful, and is it something you should be investing time into? Let’s break this topic down so you can see if you should participate or not.
Where it all Started
Many years ago, Google wanted to encourage people to add fresh content to their website. They leaked to the public that there was a new “Freshness Update”. The idea was that adding fresh content would help your website rank better in the search results. Once the SEO’s (Search Engine Optimization Specialists) heard this we were off to the races.
Professionals like myself started adding content to all our websites. We quickly figured out ways to automate this task and the internet began filling with terrible content. Content that was created for the sole purpose of rank improvement.
It Worked Like Crazy
For years adding silly blogs into chiropractic websites was an easy way to achieve a top rank. All you had to do was keep a steady schedule and you could outrank your fellow competitors. Many chiropractors hired outside companies to write blogs for them as they read articles about how important this task was. And by adding these blogs, many chiropractors were able to improve their rank.
Google Made a Change
About two years ago something changed. There was no announcement and very few people noticed, but those silly blogs stopped helping. We stopped seeing the effect that we had seen for so many years. Google had obviously changed something, but what did they do?
Our SEO mastermind group was seeing the same thing with their clients that we were seeing with our chiropractic website clients. Blogging seemed to be dead, but the reality was a bit more complicated.
How Google is Cleaning Up the Mess
This part of the article is our best guess, but it seems to be correct. Google’s main goal is to make sure that the search results are as good as possible. They had to figure out a way to separate the good blogs from the junk, so they did something interesting. They seem to have put a two-step process in place.
Today it seems that a blog, or any piece of content, must show that people are reading or using it before Google will give it much attention. In other words, you can post a ton of content, but if no one reads or looks at it Google will give it little to no value.
The Problem Chiropractors Face
The problem most chiropractors face is that the public is not excited to read your blogs. We prove this everyday by looking at the actions taken on the 1200 chiropractic websites we manage. Almost none of the traffic goes to the blog which means the blog posts carry little to no value.
The answer to this problem comes in two parts:
- You must find a way to send traffic to your blog posts.
- The content needs to be great when people arrive to read it.
Many of our clients at Inception are overcoming this issue by emailing their list of clients each time a blog is posted. They are able to show Google the traffic they need to see by sending their own patients to the blog. Doctors that do this effectively can educate their patients and improve their overall SEO signals at the same time.
I have to say that I approve of this secret change Google made. If you’re going to bother blogging, then it’s a good idea to put some effort into it. Write something that your patients would want to read and then email your list to bring the readers to your website that you need.
I hope this article gave you a better understanding about Blogging for chiropractors and websites for chiropractors. If you have any questions, feel free to give us a call, we are happy to help. The number you can reach us at is (920) 857-1106.
