Why Your Small Business Needs A Blog
Business tips for physical therapists, strength coaches, & more
“Writing a blog sucks” I say as I’m sitting here writing a blog. If you run a business, you tend to want to actually run the business and the thought of writing a blog is not at the top of your priority list. But I’m going to convince you why you need a blog by discussing 3 things: SEO, Mike Reinold, and Cloward Sign.
How Blogs Boost Your Website’s SEO
The purpose of your site is probably to get people to schedule an evaluation or book a training session with you. You want to be the site that pops up when people search “physical therapy services near me” or “personal training for new moms”. If you’re good at SEO, you’ll be on that first page of search results. How do you get good at SEO? That’s a longer blog post but for now I’ll tell you how a blog can help you.
The best type of traffic to your site is organic traffic, meaning someone found your website through a Google search, not from a link on your instagram or from directly typing in your clinic name. The more organic traffic you receive, the more Google recognizes your website as a quality site. And if Google recognizes your website as a quality site, it’s more likely to push you up in the search engine results when they search for something like “physical therapy services near me” or “personal training for new moms”.
Not only that, but people tend to stay on your site a bit longer to read the blog. Another metric that Google really values? Something called “Time Spent On Page”. So if you can get organic traffic and you can increase the amount of time that someone spends on your site, you’ve just done more for your SEO than investing in an SEO expert. By creating an engaging blog, you’ve now increased the chances that your website will pop up in the search engine results.
All Traffic Is Good Traffic
If your next question is “why the hell are we talking about Mike Reinold?” then let’s get right to it. Mike is a pretty well known PT that works with baseball athletes. Now I’m going to show you the list of things that people searched for to find his website.
As you can see, of the top 10 keywords that brought people to his website, only 3 really had to do with Mike Reinold himself. It’s pretty normal to have someone use a variation of your name or business name to find you, and you’d be surprised how many variations people might come up with to find you. But these results show you that people are finding his site mostly through his blog posts.
The number of people searching for pec minor stretches or ankle dorsiflexion exercises is probably greater than the number of people searching for sports or baseball physical therapy in the Boston area. By writing engaging blogs that people are inclined to click on and read, he’s boosting his SEO and is now more likely to be the first one that pops when people do search for services in his area. Mike’s ability to become the top click for stretch of the pec minor does amazing things for his SEO. His website copywriting, not so much, but that’s for a later blog.
Find Competitive Keywords
Now you’re really wondering how I’m going to get to Cloward Sign. To do that we need to talk about Keyword Difficulty. This is essentially a ranking from 0 to 100 of how difficult it is to show up on the first page of Google’s results with 100 being the most difficult.
Let’s look at an example: the keyword difficulty for “ACL recovery” is 62%, meaning you’d be competing with a ton of different websites to get the attention of your reader. A lot of people are posting about ACL recovery so the chances of yours being seen isn’t so great. Now the keyword difficulty for “pec minor stretch” is only 19%, so when Mike writes a blog on stretches for the pectoralis minor he’s got much less competition. In fact, if you Google “stretch of pectoralis minor” he’s the first to pop up.
Side note: another important concept here is keyword variation. He’s the fifth to pop up for “stretch for pectoralis minor” and “stretch for pec minor” so finding all possible variations of your keyword is an important way to garner all traffic related to your keyword.
At Rehab Code we wrote a handful of blogs that ranged from mentorship advice to updates on evidence for shoulder impingement. At one point, we made a conscious decision to write a blog on Cloward Sign because there are very few resources out there on it. Now the website isn’t super active right now, but the top search result for Rehab Code is still “cloward sign”. In fact, that blog post brings in 5 of the top 10 keywords. Other than the name of the company and an SCS blog, it’s the biggest draw for organic traffic.
When you search for Cloward Sign, this blog post is on the first page of the results because the keyword difficulty is pretty easy. So what does this mean for you?
How To Come Up With Blog Posts
First and foremost, write a blog for your audience. If there’s a common question that you find yourself answering with your patients or clients you should write about that first. But if you’re stuck on what to write next, consider doing some keyword research on something that doesn’t have a lot of content. My primary suggestion is to use the resource all of these images have been from: Semrush. With a free trial, you can get 10 searches a day to plug in some keywords and see how difficult it is to rank on Google. It will also show you common variations of the keywords that you’ll want to include. Place these keywords in your blog title and primary headers to make sure Google knows what you’re writing about. How you’re answering those questions when your patient or client asks in a session is how you should be writing about them, meaning keep it simple. You’re not writing this blog for fellow colleagues, you’re writing this blog for the patient who has a very limited understanding of the subject matter.
What Next?
Hopefully this has convinced you that if you don’t already have a blog, you should get one. Especially if you’re a smaller clinic and you need any technique to show up higher on Google. If we bring it full circle, I’ll reiterate my first thought: writing a blog sucks. So I’ve made it a bit easier for you. If you’re not sure where to start, I’ve created some templates for writing blogs to make your experience a little easier. You can download them below and make sure to leave any questions you want answered!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: ERIN KELLY-SULLIVAN
If you’re new here and wondering “what does this girl know about Cloward sign” the answer is more than you think. After getting my DPT I realized I wasn’t cut out for patient care. So I pivoted and now utilize my clinical experience to help other practitioners elevate their business through branding and design. If you’re a PT, strength coach, personal trainer, dietitian, or anyone in the realm of health and performance, I’ll help you boost your business by formulating your brand.
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