Latest / The Clinic Marketing Podcast | Local SEO & Healthcare Online Marketing Tips for Clinic Owners & Wellness Providers / Before You Write Another Blog Post, Fix This First

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Before You Write Another Blog Post, Fix This First · The Clinic Marketing Podcast | Local SEO & Healthcare Online Marketing Tips for Clinic Owners & Wellness Providers

• 0:25
  Every week I talk to clinic owners who tell me they're blogging, they're publishing new articles.
• 0:31
  Usually, they're using AI to help them create more content.
• 0:35
  They're trying to stay consistent because that's what they've been told, that Google likes fresh content, and the more content can help them show up in AI search.
• 0:46
  And none of this is necessarily wrong.
• 0:49
  But here's the question I want you to ask: Is another blog post really the best thing you could be working on right now?
• 0:57
  Because if you only have a few hours a month to work on SEO, creating something new may not be your biggest opportunity.
• 1:07
  Sometimes the better move is to improve what's already there.
• 1:11
  Hello and welcome to The Clinic Marketing Podcast.
• 1:15
  I'm your host, Darcy Sullivan from Propel Marketing and Design.
• 1:19
  Today, we're gonna talk about how to figure out where your SEO time is actually best spent, why publishing more isn't always the answer, and how to identify the content on your website that deserves your attention first.
• 1:35
  For years, one of the most common pieces of SEO advice has been blog consistently, answer questions, publish fresh content, and now that AI can help you create content faster, it's easier than ever to do exactly just that.
• 1:54
  You can sit down with ChatGPT and come up with fifty blog post topics in a few minutes.
• 2:02
  You can create outlines, you can draft articles, you can suddenly publish much more content than you could five years ago.
• 2:11
  But just because you can create more doesn't necessarily mean you should.
• 2:17
  Because here's what can happen.
• 2:20
  A clinic publishes a blog post every week.
• 2:24
  Meanwhile, the pages for one of its most profitable services or modalities hasn't been updated in four years, or worse, doesn't even exist.
• 2:37
  But let's just say it does exist, and it hasn't been updated in a long time.
• 2:41
  It might barely even explain the treatment.
• 2:44
  It doesn't go into answering questions about what patients actually ask around that topic.
• 2:49
  It doesn't include much information about who provides the service, how it's provided, who it's for.
• 2:56
  There aren't any relevant reviews or patient stories.
• 2:59
  Maybe the photos are even generic, and the only call to action is a little Contact Us button at the bottom.
• 3:07
  If you gave me the choice between you spending your time writing a clinic's fifty-third blog post or spending time improving a service page that directly correlates to your revenue, there's a very good chance I'm choosing the service page.
• 3:26
  And that's the distinction I want to make today.
• 3:29
  This isn't about whether blogging is good or bad, it's about making priorities Here's an exercise I want you to try.
• 3:35
  Instead of starting with,"What should we blog about this month?" Start with,"What do we actually want more patients to find us for?" Maybe you're a chiropractor, and you want more decompression patients.
• 3:51
  Maybe you're a physical therapist, and you want more post-surgical rehabilitation patients.
• 3:58
  Maybe you just invested in a shockwave therapy machine, and you want to grow that part of your practice.
• 4:05
  Maybe there's a particular type of patient your clinic is really good at helping, but you're barely showing up when those people search.
• 4:16
  I want you to start there because your SEO opportunities should connect to your business priorities.
• 4:26
  Once you know what you want to grow, go look at your website.
• 4:32
  What happens when someone interested in that service lands on your website?
• 4:39
  Do you have a strong page about it?
• 4:41
  Is it current?
• 4:42
  Would someone reading it understand who the service is for?
• 4:47
  Would they understand how your clinic specifically approaches it?
• 4:53
  Does the page answer questions your patients regularly ask?
• 4:58
  Does it explain why someone should choose your clinic?
• 5:03
  Does it make the next steps obvious?
• 5:06
  If not, you've probably just found an important content project that would be much better for you and your team than your next blog post.
• 5:16
  Now, I really do wanna make sure everybody understands, some of those questions we just asked, those aren't questions that an AI solution can ask on your behalf or come up with the answers about.
• 5:32
  We love using AI to help speed up your process when it's used in the right way, but don't confuse AI as the solution when you need a human touch Also, don't confuse we have a page with we have a good page.
• 5:53
  This is something I see all the time during website and SEO reviews.
• 5:58
  I'll ask whether a clinic has a p- page for a particular service, or we'll look at that page together, and technically, yeah, they have a page.
• 6:07
  It's there, but when I open it, there's not much there.
• 6:10
  Honestly, it might even only be a few paragraphs, if that, a stock photo, a couple bullet points, and a button, or just content that was written directly from AI.
• 6:25
  It's sad.
• 6:27
  And that's not necessarily a bad starting point, but checking the box of saying,"Oh, yes, we have a page dedicated to all of our high-revenue offerings," isn't the same thing as getting the job done the right way.
• 6:45
  Think about someone who's seriously considering that treatment.
• 6:49
  They may want to know,"What is it exactly?
• 6:52
  Could it help with what I'm dealing with?
• 6:55
  Am I a good candidate for it?
• 6:58
  What happens during an appointment?" What does an appointment for it look like?
• 7:01
  Does it hurt?
• 7:02
  How many visits will I need?
• 7:04
  Who's going to perform the treatment?
• 7:07
  Is the treatment covered by insurance?
• 7:10
  What expertise does this clinic have with this type of treatment?
• 7:15
  What makes this clinic different from the three to four other clinics that offer the same service?
• 7:22
  And of course, how do I get started?
• 7:26
  You don't necessarily need to answer every possible question on every page, but you should be answering enough of them that someone doesn't finish reading your page and simply have more questions than they did prior to landing on the page.
• 7:43
  I want you to think about the job of every single page on your website independently.
• 7:52
  This is where I think content planning becomes much easier.
• 7:57
  Instead of thinking,"We need more content," ask,"What job does this piece of content need to do?" Different content has different jobs.
• 8:11
  A blog post might introduce someone to your clinic while they're researching a problem.
• 8:19
  Another piece of content might answer a very specific question.
• 8:24
  Maybe you have a blog post about specifically how shockwave works for shoulder pain.
• 8:34
  That's very different than a standard shockwave page.
• 8:38
  A service page may need to help someone understand a treatment and decide whether your clinic is worth contacting, while your About page may need to establish credibility and help someone feel comfortable with the people they'll be seeing.
• 8:56
  Your location information needs to make it obvious where you are and how someone can get there.
• 9:06
  So before you create something new, ask whether the content that's already responsible for moving someone towards becoming a patient is actually doing its job.
• 9:19
  Because you may not have a content quantity problem, you may have a content quality problem, or clarity problem, or trust problem, or conversion problem.
• 9:34
  Writing blogs doesn't automatically solve any of those There's another reason that I think this deserves more attention right now.
• 9:45
  People aren't finding clinics through traditional Google search results anymore.
• 9:50
  Yes, they are still using traditional Google searches, but they are also using Google Maps, they're using AI Overviews, they're asking ChatGPT, they're asking Perplexity, they're asking Grok, they're asking AI-powered search tools as well.
• 10:09
  And those systems are trying to make sense of your clinic.
• 10:14
  Think about the questions they need enough information to answer.
• 10:19
  Does this clinic provide this service?
• 10:22
  Where do they provide it?
• 10:24
  Who provides the care?
• 10:26
  What conditions do they commonly work with when it comes to this service?
• 10:32
  What expertise does the clinic have?
• 10:35
  What does the treatment involve?
• 10:37
  Is the clinic relevant to the person that's asking?
• 10:42
  If important information is missing, vague, outdated, scattered across dozens of unrelated blog posts, you're making that harder.
• 10:53
  That doesn't mean there's one magical page you create, and suddenly ChatGPT starts to recommend you to everyone.
• 11:04
  AI search does not work that way.
• 11:06
  But the clearer, more consistent your online presence is about what you do, who you help, where you're located, and why you're a credible option, the easier it is for both people and search platforms to understand your clinic.
• 11:27
  And your website is a major part of that picture Now let's get back to blogging, because I don't want the takeaway from this episode to be stop blogging forever.
• 11:39
  That's definitely not what I'm saying.
• 11:42
  Blogging can still be incredibly useful.
• 11:46
  But instead of treating your blog like it's a separate marketing activity, connect it to what you're actually trying to grow.
• 11:57
  Let's say dry needling is an important service for your clinic.
• 12:02
  Make sure your dry needling page is strong.
• 12:06
  Then you can create supporting content around the questions people have about dry needling.
• 12:13
  For example, can dry needling help with migraines?
• 12:17
  What's the difference between dry needling and acupuncture?
• 12:20
  Does dry needling hurt?
• 12:22
  How long are you sore after dry needling?
• 12:25
  How many dry needling sessions might you need?
• 12:28
  Now, those could help you create blog posts that have purpose.
• 12:35
  They're answering more specific questions people may be searching for.
• 12:39
  Now, don't get this confused with the content that should be on your dry needling page, because we don't want to just duplicate that content.
• 12:51
  Your blog posts should be standalone information and supportive of your service page and link to that service page.
• 13:00
  That's very different from opening your content calendar and saying,"Well, it's Tuesday, I guess we need another blog post." Your business priorities, again, should help drive your SEO priorities.
• 13:16
  And your SEO priorities should help drive your content calendar, not the other way around So if you're sitting there thinking,"Okay, what should I actually do instead of writing another blog post?" Here's how I'd approach it.
• 13:36
  First, choose one service or type of patient you'd like more of.
• 13:42
  Not ten, one.
• 13:45
  Then search your website to see how and where a potential patient would find information that would interest them about that service.
• 13:59
  Find that page that's supposed to convince that person that they're a good fit.
• 14:05
  Now look at it very critically.
• 14:07
  One, is the page easy to find?
• 14:10
  Two, is the information accurate and current?
• 14:14
  Then continue to ask,"Does it use the language your patients actually use?
• 14:21
  Does it clearly explain what you offer?
• 14:24
  Does it answer important questions?
• 14:27
  Does it show expertise rather than simply claiming it?
• 14:33
  Does it include real photos, examples, reviews, or other trust signals where it's appropriate?
• 14:42
  Does it include real photos, use examples, reviews, or other trust signals?
• 14:48
  Does it connect visitors to related information they might need?
• 14:53
  Does it give them exact direction on what you want them to take as the next action?
• 15:01
  You may discover that page doesn't exist, you may discover that page exists but needs significant work, or you might discover that page is actually really pretty strong.
• 15:14
  If it's great, fantastic.
• 15:17
  Now you can work on supporting content that would make it even stronger.
• 15:21
  That's where your next blog post can make perfect sense.
• 15:27
  I'm intentionally not going deep today into whether you need a service page, conditions page, or general services page, or a combination of all of those.
• 15:40
  In the past, there have been a few other episodes where we go into those topics deeply, service versus conditions pages, pages that make Google send you the right patients, et cetera.
• 15:55
  I'll include some of those resources in the show notes and the blog post that's associated with this episode.
• 16:02
  Those will help you determine which pages you need.
• 16:04
  Today's episode is about what happens next.
• 16:09
  Once those pages exist, how do you decide whether they deserve your attention before you keep adding more content?
• 16:18
  Because creating the page is only step one.
• 16:23
  So here's your challenge this week if you decide to accept it.
• 16:27
  Before you write another blog post, choose one service you want to grow.
• 16:31
  Then find the most important page on your website that's related to that service.
• 16:37
  Read it from the perspective of someone who's never heard of your clinic.
• 16:42
  Ask yourself,"If I were considering this treatment, would this page give me enough information and confidence to take the next step?" And then ask,"Is improving this page more important than publishing something new?" If the answer is yes, there's your next SEO project.
• 17:02
  Improve the page first, then use your future contents to, pieces to support it.
• 17:11
  One of the biggest shifts I want clinic owners to make with SEO is moving away from what else should we create and towards what deserves our attention most right now.
• 17:26
  Sometimes the answer will absolutely be a new blog post.
• 17:29
  Sometimes it will be a new page.
• 17:32
  But sometimes your biggest opportunities are sitting right on your website right now.
• 17:37
  It's a page that's already getting seen.
• 17:40
  It's connected to a service you want to grow.
• 17:43
  It's just isn't doing a very good job yet.
• 17:48
  And improving that page could make a much better use of your time or your team's time than adding yet another piece of content to your website.
• 18:00
  So before you add more, make sure the content that matters most is actually pulling its weight.
• 18:07
  And if you'd like help figuring out what your clinic should be working on next, you can book a discovery call with us.
• 18:15
  We'll look at your website, your Google Business Profile listing, your current search visibility, where we see the biggest opportunities for you to improve your visibility across Google and AI-powered searches.
• 18:28
  I'll include that link along with the additional episodes I mentioned today in the show notes.
• 18:34
  Thanks for listening to this episode