You may have been excited to turn in your last writing project in school, thinking you’ll never have to pen one of those again! Then you opened a dental practice. Now, not only do you get to handle every aspect of your office, attend ongoing education, and care for patients, but you also get to write articles to promote your dental practice online.
Don’t worry–there’s a solid alternative. You don’t have to write anything!
Do You Have Time to Write an Article?
Composing a well-written article takes time to research, draft, polish, proofread, and complete. If you dislike writing, as many dentists do, creating content to market your practice probably takes a backseat to quick alternatives, like Google Ads. However, creating blogs or a library of educational articles on your website will boost organic SEO, and in the long run, you’ll save quite a lot of money.
In today’s blog, you’ll learn about:
- Organic vs Paid SEO
- On-Page vs Off-Page SEO
- Using AI to Write an Article
- Hiring a Quality Copywriter
- Ordering a Custom Article
Organic vs Paid SEO
Your website company may have asked you to submit copy for the site’s pages, along with regularly scheduled blog posts, or use their library of content. Library articles are used across many websites, so the SEO benefit is minimal. Written content on a dental website should be original for optimal SEO results, and great SEO means the site should get a steady flow of visits from potential patients.
The content on your website and blogs remains online forever or until you remove them. Even then, archives may be fetched from records. This is key to what we call organic SEO. The more original (not copied from elsewhere) content on your site, the higher it will rank and the more keywords and keyword phrases it will rank for. As your site’s library of original articles is beefed up, the size of your site expands, and Google’s robots index all the content. Every page is indexed, creating another long-term access portal to your website from Google Search results.
In contrast, paid SEO refers to advertisements that are pay-per-click. When you build a Google Ad and set parameters for keywords and audience, the ad shows up in certain Google results. Every time someone clicks on your ad, your prepaid account is debited a set amount. Costs range from under $1 per click to $110 per click (for “online business degree programs”). Google generates the cost per click, but you’ll know how much you will pay before the ad goes live. Once you end the ad, no trace of it is left online and it stops working for you.
The best use of pay-per-click ads, in my experienced opinion, is to use them for a brand-new practice or brand-new website domain. I sometimes suggest that patients in highly competitive markets go this route, in combination with writing articles and other content. Once the organic SEO is bringing in sufficient traffic, you can opt to end pay-per-click ads if you choose.
Key Takeaways
- Organic SEO relies heavily on original content/text
- Organic SEO will keep working when you aren’t publishing content
- Organic SEO builds on itself
- Organic SEO is an investment that yields continual. long-term results
- Paid SEO is pay-per-click
- When you stop a paid SEO plan, visitors stop
- Paid and organic SEO can work together
On-Page vs Off-Page SEO
You may hear the term “on-page SEO” when working with a website or online marketing agency like Identiwrite Creative. In short, on-page SEO refers to a strategy built within a webpage. Off–page SEO refers to incoming backlinks and other tactics that point potential patients to a dentist’s website. Things like NAP listings (name, address, phone) in local directories, publishing articles or blogs on websites other than your own, and being listed on big sites, like as an Invisalign provider, are also off-page SEO.
There is value in both on- and off-page SEO strategies.
Using AI to Write an Article
Now that you know why you need articles and blogs on your dental website, let’s talk about the elephant in the room: AI. ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence writing program, and it’s free! You can certainly use ChatGPT or another AI writing service to compose articles and blogs for your website. I want to say quite bluntly, if you do nothing else for on-page SEO, do this.
I published a blog about using AI for copywriting, and you can read it here. In short, ChatGPT can create a great outline from which you can start writing an article. I’ve used it myself. AI articles need to be personalized and fact-checked. You see, AI pulls information from all over the web to create articles. Some of the information it pulls may be incorrect, so fact-checking is important.
AI-generated articles are also surface-level articles. If you choose to use ChatGPT, be sure to expand and enhance the content with your own words. Google tells us that 500+ words per page, blog, or article are preferred for SEO. Also, Google warns against using duplicate copy; all content on your site should be original. I suggest running ChatGPT articles through a service like Copyscape to ensure the content is original. (We do this to all of our articles.)
Hiring a Quality Copywriter
The best use of your time and money is to hire a professional dental copywriter to compose your blogs and write your articles. Identiwrite Creative specializes in composing SEO content for dentists and dental industry professionals, from consultants to product manufacturers.
All of our writers are US-based, experienced, and trained to write about clinical dentistry in a way that potential patients appreciate. We hold our writers to high standards and regularly hear rave reviews from clients.
If you plan to hire a copywriter, be sure that he or she knows:
- Clinical dentistry
- Dental materials
- Dental technology
- Marketing writing
- SEO copywriting
- How to post on your website
Ordering a Custom Article
If you’re considering hiring someone to write an article or blog for your practice, Identiwrite Creative should be your first stop. You can place an order for an article from our homepage; there’s an Order Now button at the top of the site. Or, you can contact [email protected] or call 972-679-6889 to speak with him directly about your project. We look forward to serving you!
