If you're a clinic owner looking to get more traffic to your website and improve your online presence, then you're in the right place. On the Propel Your Practice Podcast, we provide chiropractors, physical therapists, and other clinic owners with actionable digital marketing strategies, including local SEO and effective website best practices. You'll learn simple and actionable solutions to help your clinic rank on Google and beat your competition. Together, let's propel your practice.
Hello and welcome to this episode of the Propel Your Practice Podcast. I'm your host, Darcy Sullivan, with Propel Marketing & Design. In this episode, we are answering some of the most frequently asked questions about blogs and blogging.
The title of this was inspired by watching way too much Bravo with the tell-alls that they have on some of those shows, and so I thought it would be fun to call this one the bloggers' tell-all, where we're answering all of the most common questions asked about blogs.
And most people, when they start to ask some of these questions, do use phrases like, “I'm embarrassed to ask this,” or, “I can't believe I have to ask you this,” so if you are new to blogging if you have never blogged before, if you have questions about blogging, this episode is for you, or if you just wanna simply improve your blogging capabilities as a company.
Propel Marketing and Design deals mainly with clinic owners, so you will see us using examples throughout and providing additional resources throughout this episode directly driven from the key audience.
As I'm recording this, this episode is going to be released the week before Thanksgiving in the US in 2023. So, following this episode, the following week, which would be the week of Thanksgiving, we're gonna do two replays from two of the most popular older episodes relating to blogging, and if you ever hear me talking about creating evergreen content, these two episodes are by far great examples of that.
Back in 2022, we did a series on creating blogs and blog posts. Two of the episodes from that series are truly evergreen content that will, in fact, be part of those two episodes that will be released on the week of Thanksgiving. Those will be an episode about Blogging 101 and one of my most favorite episodes ever, The Anatomy of an Effective Blog Post.
Very cool stuff. Well, hey, before we dive in, if you are following us on Instagram, please do @propelyourcompany. If you have any questions about blogging, SEO, website content, marketing, or more, please give us a shout-out on there and let us know. Your questions truly do drive the content that we provide on the episodes here.
So, okay, let's dive in. First question that I know some people hate to even ask is, do you even really need a blog? Well, yes, but no. Listen, you can have a website without a blog. You truly can. But having a blog strengthens your website's SEO, search engine optimization, which means you're more likely to appear relevant on Google in the search engine query results, and helps you connect with your target audience.
I think most people truly do understand the benefits of blogging. Now, as I mentioned before, the episode that will be re-released next week: Blogging 101, will go into more detail about the importance of a blog.
But yes, blogging is really important, and what you can do is you can look at what your competition is doing, what others in your industry are doing; do they have blog posts on their website? Most likely, I'm gonna assume that they do.
Next question that often comes up (this next question can be a little confusing, especially if you're just starting out blogging), this question is: should content be a blog post or a page on your website? How do you determine where the content should go?
For this one, I am going to suggest that you reference one of our materials called Should It Be a Blog Post or a Page on Your Website? But to answer the question, users come to website pages for information about a company, product, or service. They go to blog posts for information about a specific topic.
So you can see how that can be a little bit different there.
Next question people ask is, what should I blog about? With this, I suggest that you get started with your most frequently asked questions. Remember, users come to web pages for information about a company, product, service, et cetera. They go to blog pages or blog posts for information about topics. You can do this by creating a top-five list or how-to posts, weekly tricks and tips, frequently asked questions, you can do interviews, and more.
We have a great blog post called What Should Chiropractors Blog About? with samples included. Some of these samples include creating a list. Like I mentioned before, this could be the top five reasons to see a chiropractor while pregnant.
You can create how-to articles like How-To Safely and Secretly Stretch Your Back While at Work. You can create FAQs like Poor Posture: All Your Questions Answered, and more.
Again, you can check out that article for some simple suggestions on topics to help you get started. Even if you're not a chiropractor, you will probably find that article very helpful.
Another question people ask all the time is how often should you blog and how long should your blog post be? We created a blog post dedicated to diving into this question. You can grab that in the resources section or by visiting our website, propyleyourcompany.com. That blog post is called How Often Should You Blog? How Long Should Your Blog Post Be? and the truth is it's gonna really truly vary by industry.
I suggest that you look and see what your competition is doing, not just your competition but your top-ranking competition. What are they doing? Are they blogging monthly? Are they blogging weekly? Look at that and help that gauge how often you should blog.
You wanna make sure that the content you're creating on your blog post isn't too short, that it's long enough for Google to consider it a real page and have enough content on it. Again, we dive deep into that specific question in the blog post how often should you blog? How long should your blog post be?
Now, after you've been blogging for a while, which a lot of our listeners have been, you start to accumulate tons of content, and then the question comes up: what do we do with these old blog posts? Do you rewrite the content? And if you rewrite the content, do you publish it by overriding the old content? Do you publish it as new content? You don't wanna create content that's competing with previous blog posts, all the things.
Well, we've got resources for you if you've got old blog posts and you're wondering what to do with them. So one question this often adds is: how do you know when to rewrite a blog post or when to replace it?
We've got a great podcast that we did that breaks this down. You can find that by visiting the website or looking through our podcast. It's called Rethink or Republish: Choosing the Best Blogging Strategy.
Now, once you've decided what your strategy is going to be, what are you gonna do with all these old blog posts? You can update them, and if you're gonna update them, I suggest that you check out our blog post called 7 Ways to Update Old Blog Posts and Boost SEO. That's a great resource that will walk you through how and what you can do to those old blog posts to make them new again.
Other questions that come in about blogging have to do with tools. Are there any tools that you can use to make blogging easier? There's tons of tools out there. I think a lot of us are familiar right now, as I'm recording this, with new AI tools, and while we would not say that you should rely solely on them and just use them, they can be a great additional resource.
So can Google Docs, the simple ability to jump into a Google Doc and type out and organize your blog posts before uploading them to your blog, or using Grammarly, which we love, to help with your grammar.
And we'll be talking about some resources for images here in a little bit. But we had a great episode when we did our 2022 blog series on the Propel Your Practice Podcast, and that episode: 10 Fierce Blogging Tools to Make the Process More Efficient & Effective, would be the resource you would want to turn to for that one.
Other people always want to know, give me shortcuts, make it easy. What do I do when it comes to blogging to make it easy? If it was easy, I would do it more often. Well, I don't know about more often.
Well, if that is you, next week's replay is going to help you out tremendously: The Anatomy of an Effective Blog Post, which again was one of the Propel Your Practice blog series that we did back in 2022, where I walk you through the exact suggested structure for creating your blog posts. That is an amazing resource that will help you with creating the structure.
Once you've created the structure a couple of times, you can understand the flow of a blog. Then I suggest you dive into another amazing resource that we have for blogging, which was an episode on the Propel Your Practice Podcast called Creating Quick & Effective Blog Posts: The Template Approach.
So once you have a process in place, once you've got the anatomy down, and then I suggest that you create a couple different templates, and once you've created these different templates for your blog posts, blogging is gonna be a million times easier.
Another question that comes up is about writing a title because people are like, “Oh, well, what do I title a blog post once I've got my blog post written?” You know, this is one resource where I think that currently, ChatGPT comes in very handy is if you drop in your blog post to ChatGPT and if you say, “Hey, ChatGPT, I wrote a blog post about–and you give it an example, or you even paste the whole thing in– but before pasting the whole thing in, say, “Please provide me 10 suggested titles for the following blog post, and then just paste it in.
I would not suggest just asking for one. I would suggest that you ask for a ton more, but that's a good place to start. We also have this awesome blog post that we wrote about How to Write SEO Blog Headlines That Rank, and in there, you will find tips and templates as well. You can find that by visiting the resources associated with this episode or by visiting propelyourcompany.com.
Now, once you've created your blog post, you've gotta add images right, and people always ask, “Well, what about images? Do I just have to cite the source? Can I just pull them from Google?” Don't just pull your images from Google. There are certain ways that are better to include images, and you wanna make sure that you're avoiding any copyright issues by giving credit where credit is due for images and, ideally, using your own images.
So we created a blog post on DIY Blog Images: Tips & Tools to Create Impact, and in there, we go into using your own images, which you can create in Canva or other places. There's also stock photography that you can purchase and own the rights to. Using services like depositstock.com, and again in that blog post, we go into how you can create images affordably and effectively that will be your own.
Next up, we have the question about canned content. Now, canned content, for those that aren't familiar, is when you purchase content from a company and that company has sold the exact same content to other people.
Maybe you purchased a blog bundle, or somebody was blogging for you, but they were also using that exact same word-for-word content on other sites, and the question always is: what do I do with it? Should I use it?
If you do have canned content on your website, I suggest that you check out an episode of the Propel Your Practice Podcast that we did called Canned Content: Should You Use It and If So, How?
In that episode, we break down how you can restructure that content to really make it your own. And, of course, one of the more popular questions that comes in all the time is: can I use AI to create my blog post?
Here's the answer: you can use AI to help you create your blog post, but please, please, please, do not just simply go to ChatGPT and say, “Hey, ChatGPT, please write a blog post for me about fill-in-the-blank.” You need to give it way more direction.
And again, we have a resource for you. If you’re leaning towards using ChatGPT, please check out the Propel Your Practice Podcast about the 3 ChatGPT Mistakes That Can Hurt Your Clinic’s Marketing & SEO.
All right, well, this was totally an episode that was jam-packed with the questions that come in all the time and giving you resources to help you dive deep into the answers that are associated with them. So happy blogging.
Well, hey, before we head out, I want to invite you to join in on a free masterclass I put together on the Five SEO Secrets to Owning the First Page of Google Without Buying Ads. You can find a link to sign up for this free masterclass in the Show Notes for this episode or by visiting PropelYourCompany.com/learn.
During this workshop, we do a deep dive into strategies to help you improve your online presence. Including your Google Business Profile, that's what used to be called the Google My Business listing and what controls the Google Maps section, along with how voice SEO plays a big role in today's search and where you should be focusing your efforts online for the biggest impact.
All right. Well, that's it for today. Again, you can join the masterclass by visiting PropelYourCompany.com/learn. And if you have a topic that you would like to hear on an upcoming episode of Propel Your Practice, please send it in by visiting PropelYourCompany.com/podcast-topics or looking for the link in the Show Notes.
Thanks so much for your time. I'll talk to you soon.
We'll see you next time.
