A quick search on the internet for any term related to addiction treatment will offer some surprising results. Most likely you are going to find a facility near you that has a blog on the topic you searched for. Sure, SAMHSA and the NIDA might be at the top, but just below them are a litany of addiction rehab centers.
How did they get there? Rehab blogs.
Double Function of the Rehab Blog
If you have been told (or have the suspicion) that a blog is important for your website, you are on the right track.
There are two specific reasons for this: the obvious and the not-so-obvious.
Why Have a Rehab Blog: Obvious Help and Authority
Helping Your Rehab Website Visitors
When people come to your page, they want to see information that makes a difference to them. They will click around and when they get to your blog section (or news or articles) they will come across more of a personal nature of your addiction treatment center than they do on your home page.
A rehab website may have 10-25 pages describing their program and their offerings, but most addiction treatment centers have so much more to say about what it takes to find recovery and why their program is unique.
The blog is the place to give vital detailed information about your program that your clients need to see to decide your program is the right fit.
Authority
Blogs help to build your addiction treatment center’s reputation as an industry leader. They give you a platform to show off your knowledge and skills, not only to search engines but also to prospective clients.
As your reputation in the industry grows, your website traffic will start growing and you will get more repeat visitors. That, in turn, will boost your reputation and credibility with search engines. Gradually this process affects the algorithms and improves your ranking in search results.
Why Have a Rehab Blog: Not-So-Obvious SEO
Blogs Boost Organic Search Volume
Organic traffic refers to links that have been determined by the search engine’s algorithm to be a good match to what a Google searcher is looking for. Every time you post a new blog, it creates another URL for Google and other search engines to show in their results. And another opportunity for visitors to click it.
Of course, it’s important to choose the right topics for your blog and to use the right keywords to improve how well your new blog will rank in search results.
Search Engines Love Fresh Content
Search engines don’t like rehashing the same old content day after day. They adore fresh content. The more blogs you upload, the more fresh content they will have to show. If this content is interesting and relevant to searches, it will attract an increasing number of readers. And with that comes the opportunity to convert those readers to clients.
Blogs Give You an Opportunity to Target Popular Keywords and Phrases
If you do proper keyword research, you will soon have a good idea of the phrases and terms people use when they search for a rehab facility or addiction treatment center.
This information gives you the opportunity to create a content strategy that will help Google and Bing understand what your website is about and what traffic to direct there. When you target keywords, your blogs are the most important piece of the puzzle in ranking for terms that will help people find your treatment facility.
Blogs for drug rehab SEO is essential. The help it offers your website visitors is crucial, but just as important is the ability to reach the people who are searching for you.
The Commitment of a Rehab Blog
So what’s the catch? There are two catches to consider.
Rehab Blogs Take Time
A solid addiction treatment blog strategy takes time. You have probably heard it before, but SEO takes at least 6 months to begin making a noticeable in website traffic. But that is assuming you are writing and posting 4-6 articles or blogs a month. As well, the amount of competition in your geographical location will affect the speed with which you are able to find higher positions in the search results.
You probably don’t want to spend three-to-four hours researching and writing a blog one day, then three more hours prepping it and posting it with good SEO practices.
And even if your therapist has sworn they will do “a bit of writing for you,” … we mostly know where that leads us. With two blogs the first month, then none for the rest of the year.
Rehab Bogs Take SEO Experience
Even if your therapist does come through with a couple of blogs per month, there is a slight problem. Where is the strategy? Do they know how to name the blog and how to tag it with the correct “h-tags”? Have they done the keyword research to see if this topic is something that has ever been searched for? Or do they know how to tell Google what this article is about?
When talking about rehab blogs and SEO, the writing is only part of the equation.
A Couple of Hints for Effective Rehab Blogs
Oaky so, yes. You believe it. Blogs are important. Here are a couple of tips to make sure you are getting all you can out of your efforts.
- Research the keywords. Put some effort into checking the monthly volume of searches for your blog topic. Ubersuggset is a good (free) place to start to begin learning about what people search for.
- Google reads websites like a 5-year-old. Big words and pictures are most important. If you want to help Google understand what your article is about, make your keywords the biggest on the page (i.e., the title and the paragraph headings).
- Mix it up. Just because a keyword has low search volume, doesn’t mean to scrap the idea. Those volume counters can be tricky and even if a single keyword doesn’t show up on the counters, multiple versions of that keyword phrase could, when joined together, have a glut of traffic.
- Go long. In the rehab blog space, you are going up against some pretty hefty competitors. Some of them are posting multiple articles a day. That means it’s going to be tough to rank for the word “rehab.” But that’s okay. When that is the case, you can mix it up. Try, “rehabs that take pets near me.” That’s a lot more specific, and you might have less competition for it. Also, the person who typed that in is way more likely to call you up (assuming you allow dogs at your facility).
- Go Local. Lastly, local rehab SEO is fundamental to addiction treatment marketing efforts. The person you are most likely to help is the one that lives in your general area. So, with that in mind, make sure you are up-to-date on local SEO practices and get your Google Business profile up and running!
Might Recovery Marketing is an addiction treatment marketing agency specializing in rehab SEO, addiction treatment google ads management, and general addiction treatment digital marketing. If you want to chat about how we can help with your blog or anything else, book a hangout below.
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