Have you ever wondered why there are so many business blogs out there?
It’s because blogging can drive sales leads on a long-term basis. But how do blogs work for dental businesses when you’re not selling a product but a specialised healthcare service?
Let’s find out…
Blogs play a major role in the dental marketing process by steering online traffic to your practice’s website. Many of these visitors will be people needing dental services you provide. This means prospects are highly likely to become paying patients if they have greater confidence in you.
While the ultimate goal of many business blogs is to sell more products to increase profits, dental blogs are much more about building trust in your ability to keep patients in optimum dental health with a sparkling smile.
Dental blogging helps you to stay engaged with existing patients and make a strong connection with potential patients. In both cases, this can establish and maintain patient trust and loyalty – a critical factor in retaining patients and attracting new business.
Each blog post you create is one more opportunity for your practice to appear in search engines and drive patients to your door. And, unlike paid-for online advertising, ranking in these organic search results costs you nothing.
Dental blogs with quality content allow you to project a powerful brand image for your practice, reflecting your commitment to patients. They also give you a solid base to grow your practice in a highly competitive marketplace.
How Do Blogs Work to Gain Patient Trust?
Let’s face it – no one likes going to the dentist, and patients can be particularly apprehensive about putting their faith in a new practice.
Dental blogs can help to overcome the challenge of establishing and maintaining a bond of trust with your patients. They can be used to inspire patient confidence by demonstrating your dental expertise and experience.
Moreover, blogging opens up the door to expanding your practice website and providing valuable, in-depth information on the types of dental services you offer.
For instance, you can:
- Answer frequently asked questions that people have about dentistry. This is why you’ll find many dental blogs with titles such as “Are There Different Types of Dental Implants?”, “What Causes Gum Disease?”, “What are Dental Veneers?”.
- Offer oral health advice. E.g. “Importance of Regular Dental Check-Ups”, “Tips to Prevent Gum Disease”, and “How to Brush and Floss Properly”.
- Explain dental procedures. “Dental Implants Vs Bridges”, “Types of Gum Tissue Grafts”, “Types of Dental Sedation”.
- Highlight the benefits of your dental services. “Advantages of Invisalign”, “Benefits of Combining Dentures with Dental Implants”, and “How Cosmetic Dentistry Can Transform Your Smile”.
Other Benefits of Dental Blogs
Besides consolidating patient confidence and establishing authority, understanding the answer to the question ‘how do blogs work?’ can help in other ways too. They provide several other advantages for dental clinics looking to grow their business.
These benefits include:
- Increasing the volume of your dental website with quality content. Google looks favourably on sites where informative, relevant pages are continually being added.
- The opportunity to include internal and external links. Linking to other pages on your website, especially the home page, appeals to major search engines. So does linking to other authoritative sites.
- Expanding your reach. You can share your blog posts on social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest – maybe introducing yourself to a new audience. And why not occasionally pitch your post as a feature article for your local newspaper?
- Ranking for more dental keywords. Focusing on a single main keyword for each post will increase your online visibility through search engine optimisation (SEO).
A Commanding Marketing Strategy
A blog can be a powerful marketing tool for small businesses such as dental clinics – an effective way to bring in a steady stream of patients to grow your practice and generate more revenue.
Each dental blog you publish becomes its own web page. This enhances your online presence. It gives search engines more content to provide to internet searchers wanting to know about the types of dental services you offer.
This means more people – including potential new patients – will become aware of your practice and discover how you can help them. Quality blog content persuades prospective patients that they can trust you – the first critical step in getting them to book an appointment or consultation.
The bottom line is that if you don’t have good blog content, you’re missing out on major marketing opportunities, and there’s a strong body of evidence to support this.
On average, a dental blog with 30 to 50 posts or more almost doubles patient leads, and other research indicates that businesses who blog get 67 per cent more leads and attract 97 per cent more backlinks to their website.
Problems of Maintaining a Quality Dental Blog
Blogging is one of the most cost-effective investments a business can make on its website. Dentistry is no exception, especially when used as a tool to gain trust.
Consistent blogging with solid dental content connects with both current and prospective patients on an emotional level. In addition, it strengthens your online presence and heightens awareness of your brand.
However, producing something truly worthwhile for your audience can be a daunting, time-consuming prospect. You can take a shortcut by coming up with less lengthy posts of a couple of hundred words – a brief overview about a topic or quick tips that don’t need much explanation.
The problem with this is that these types of posts aren’t great for getting good Google rankings or attracting valuable backlinks. Readers may also regard you as less of an authority on the subject – a blog with thin content that provides little or no value can be worse than no blog at all by reflecting badly on your practice.
How Do Blogs Work? – Overcoming Dental Blog Challenges
The basis of quality dental blogging is thorough research and a methodical approach – a process that many practices don’t have the resources, time or skills to achieve without help. That’s why many practices hire professional writers.
Whether you want to strengthen your existing blog or start a new blog, Dental Writers can provide unique, compelling content focused on growing your practice for years to come with articles that act like a patient magnet.
Many blogs – dental and otherwise – miss the mark because the content creators don’t appreciate the importance of search intent. We understand and leverage this concept – the reason people enter a specific term into a search engine. Google places a lot of importance on this when deciding what to put at the top of its search results pages.
To find out more about how we do this, or if you need more answers to the question “How do blogs work for dentists?”, contact the team at Dental Writers today. We make the impossible possible!
We specialise in superior, well-researched, authoritative dental blog content that will impress search engines and your target audience alike.
