Why Medical Websites Need Blog or Resource Pages

Making Google your friend

Writing effective content for your blog or resources section is good for the patient, providing quality information from a trustworthy source. It’s also good for you and your marketing efforts on the internet. While advertisements and other direct marketing methods can see immediate results, building an online brand needs a long-term strategy. Search engine optimization is a huge part of that strategy. Search engines love well-written, well-sourced content. The more your site has, with appropriate links to other trustworthy sources, the more likely you are to rank higher in Google searches.

You can even use a broader range of keywords to make your site easier to find on the end of more searches. One page dedicated to a specific symptom will make it more likely to appear when patients near you search for that symptom. A page on treating a condition will make it more likely to appear to people looking to do just that.

Driving referrals

The more your site grows, the more widely known the brand becomes, the more use that blog or resources page becomes, too. Content marketing has been shown not only to drive traffic and establish a brand. The people who read that content are a lot more likely to share it and to refer the practice who published it. This is true even if they’re not patients themselves, but know you mostly through that content. If you’re on social media, then writing informative, trustworthy content also gives you more to share through your own channels as another marketing method.

Who uses them?

You might think that your resources are of most benefit to your business and your patients. Indeed, the majority of searches for medical information comes from everyday people looking to find out what exactly might be wrong with them or what options they have. Those resources and blogs are widely used by medical students, too. Studies show that nearly half of students use online resources to get quicker access to answers for their questions, allowing them to study no matter where they are. Your site can help build the next generation of doctors and gain a reputation as an educational source, too.

Building trust, providing accurate information, growing traffic and referrals. There’s a lot that a blog or resources page can do not just for your site, but for the practice. At this stage, you would be missing out to neglect it.

From patients to medical students; more people turn to medical websites and Google for information before textbooks. Whether you’re a doctor running a practice, a manufacturer of medical equipment, or any other business in the world of healthcare, your website matters. It needs to demonstrate the same kind of expertise and authority that customers can expect in the business. At the same time, it has to be a marketing tool, helping you spread the brand far and wide. Content has become one of the most powerful tools on the internet for its ability to serve both purposes at once. If you don’t have a blog or a resources page, you could be missing out.

Building the brand

Healthcare might very well be a need for most consumers, but that doesn’t mean that they need to go to you. When it comes to a patient looking to choose a practice, it’s often the brand recognition that can be the deciding factor.

Beyond great site design, having a blog or a Resource section helps you build that brand. It gives you the place to produce and publish content that’s informative, detailed, and helpful. For instance, you can produce content tackling treatment options and further details on specific conditions. You can also produce content that gives information on specific symptoms and what they might mean for a patient.  This is your opportunity to display the knowledge and expertise on offer, showing that you run a practice that can be trusted to know what they’re doing.

Providing responsible information

As a healthcare professional, you’re already a lot more qualified than most to give reasonable, trustworthy healthcare information, as well. The fact that people can simply search for information on any symptom or condition online offers a great deal more understanding to patients. But bad advice and misleading content is a real problem.

Studies show that less than half of all website providing medical information can be trusted as accurate. At the same time, nearly 80% of people go online to diagnose themselves. Your site can be another of the more trustworthy ones helping to dispel the fake expertise commonly pedaled around. What’s more, it can be a tool to convince them to actually see a professional, rather than relying solely on what they read.