Dental Blog Posts And How They Can Boost Your Online Presence

If you have a dental website then writing a series of dental blog posts are an absolute must for your business. Fact!

The issue is that while there’s no shortage of online content detailing why you need to blog, there isn’t a great deal of information explaining how it actually helps grow your online presence.

With this in mind, it’s about time we put this straight. So without further ado let’s dive right in.

Dental Blog Posts Drive Traffic

It’s all well and good having a great-looking dental website, but the question remains … How are you going to get people to visit it?

Well, you could of course use social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook to connect with people and drive them back to your site. While you definitely should be doing this, you’ll need a constant supply of quality, unique content in order to achieve it. This is where dental blog posts come in.

Every time you write a new blog post you’re creating content that you can share on social media platforms. All of which can be utilised to expose your practice to people that may not even know you exist.

Dental blog posts act as the fuel to keep your social media campaigns rolling along. So rather than giving your marketing company the seemingly hard task of coming up with original content, your ongoing blog acts as the resource library for a plethora of ongoing tweets or posts going forwards.

But that’s not all…

Studies show that the more web pages that are indexed by Google, the greater the chance of leads. The problem for dental websites in particular is that while the Home, About Us, and Treatment pages are absolutely necessary, there isn’t much scope to add new content.

On the contrary, every time you add a dental blog post to your site, it’s another opportunity for you to have more pages indexed by the search engines. The more pages indexed, the more Google will see that your website is active. As a result (and provided the content is informative) you will rank higher in the search engines than those sites that operate a static (non-updated) website.  That’s the theory anyway!

So to sum up –

Every time you write a new dental blog post, not only are you helping to strengthen your social reach, you’re also increasing your chances of ranking above your competition as the various pages are gradually being added to your own site.

Dental blogging Turns Leads Into Patients

Now you have a steady stream of traffic visiting your site, you need something that turns those readers into bona fide patients. Again, this is where your dental blog posts come in.

You see, just as every new post you write is another indexed page, each new blog post is also another opportunity for you to turn leads into sales (in this case, readers who happen to find your site, into patients).

So how do you do this?

By including a call to action!

Okay so for those not overly familiar with marketing speak, the term ‘call to action‘ may sound like the final rousing bugle call at Custer’s last stand. In actual fact, it’s far less dramatic than that and let’s face it, more effective too!

A call to action is simply a short piece of text located at the end of a post that persuades the reader to take some type of action. In the dental world, this might be something as simple as asking readers to contact you for further information, make an appointment, or book a consultation. Here’s a post that explains it in greater detail  

While you won’t be able to persuade 100% of your readers into taking action (even the top marketers aren’t that good) it pays to remember that any type of marketing is a numbers game. Therefore, by making sure a call to action is placed at the end of each and every post you write, you will start to see results over time.

Dental Blog Posts Helps To Establish Trust

Picture the scenario… a person has recently had the misfortune to suffer a missing tooth and is now weighing up the pros and cons of various types of replacements. As a result, they’re searching online for help.

During their search, they come across a dental blog post detailing the benefits and advantages of dental implants over other forms of missing teeth replacement. It’s informative and what’s more, it answers many of the questions the person wanted to know.

Now, because the reader feels that the writer (read dentist) has helped them by supplying them with the information they need, an element of trust has already been built, for this reason, the reader may feel more comfortable about booking a consultation to find out more. In other words, the blog post has done the job of building trust, long before that patient has even set foot in the practice.

Of course, you could argue that building trust is a woolly metric that isn’t as concrete as say… turning leads into patients or driving traffic. However, a helpful informative post can go a long way towards moving them quickly through the transformation process of curious readers to bona fide patients. Because of this, a series of information-led, dental blog posts are incredibly powerful.

Dental Blog Posts Drive Long-Term Results

Perhaps the best thing about dental blogging is that it helps to drive long-term results.

Here’s an insight into what happens when you post a new blog…

Let’s say that you wrote a post and published it yesterday. This morning you look and notice that it’s generated 50 views and 5 enquiries. Tomorrow you may get a further 25 views and 3 enquiries as a few more people come across it via your social media channels. However, after a few days, the buzz from your post dies down. Altogether you’ve netted 75 views and 8 enquiries. That’s not bad for a few hours of work, right?

But wait… Here’s the fantastic bit.

That’s not the end of it, because your post is now ranking in the search engines. This means for weeks, months, and years to come, your post is likely to generate ongoing views and (hopefully) leads.

So while it feels like a quick fix or bust solution, the truth is that any dental blog post you write could generate lead after lead for many years to come.

In fact, it’s thought that around 70% of online patient enquiries driven via dental blog posts come from posts that weren’t even published in the current month.

In effect you could be laying on a tropical beach somewhere and be garnering interest from potential patients via a blog post you wrote several months ago. How cool is that?

Hopefully, this demonstrates the scale-ability of dental blogging and the reasons why it’s a real must for any dental practice looking to increase its presence online.

While at first you might only see limited results, the truth is that given time you’ll be able to count on a reliable stream of traffic without needing any additional investment. Why? Because the work required to generate those leads has already been carried out. Blogging really is a cost-effective form of marketing that delivers proven results.

And now for my ‘call to action’…..

If you’d like to find out more about how dental blogging can help your practice in 2017 and beyond, feel free to contact me at dale@dentalwriters.com or Whatsapp me on +34 605 45 73 42. So go on, what are you waiting for? Do something different and kick-start your online marketing today!