There are countless components to consider when building your brand. You know that your treatment program’s website is important, but maybe your site’s blog has been an afterthought (or not thought of much at all)… Well, it’s time to think again.
A quality blog with steady content is the foundation of your web presence, and the key to drawing in relevant traffic. In recent months, more people than ever are searching for addiction treatment and rehabs online. Both individuals struggling with substance abuse and their loved ones are seeking out help and treatment through search engines.
The hope is that your treatment program will be visible in those search results and attract that relevant traffic. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has to be a priority if you want your rehab to rank high for those keywords and search terms. So how do you make that happen? Provide valuable content through your treatment center’s blog.
Valuable Content is Everything
The internet is a giant, searchable resource. People turn to the internet looking for information and answers to questions. Logically, internet search engines are constantly adapting their design, to provide the best and most relevant answers to those searches. Just like a person would search through a library looking for quality resources, internet search engines prioritize quality resources that can provide the best possible answers to people’s questions.
Your treatment program needs to have a blog that produces quality content regularly. That content keeps your website growing, and you establish your brand as a reputable resource for addiction and recovery information. It’s likely that you have alumni who may visit your site, and posting blogs regularly keeps that audience engaged. As you continue to post valuable content, that online audience can widen.
How? Because a steady flow of quality content also increases your searchability. You have the opportunity to rank for new keywords, and improve your ranking for high-value keywords. Each blog that you post keeps the search engine bots crawling your site—helping you to become more and more visible online. Valuable content will build your site’s credibility with your audience and with search engines, so you begin to rank higher in search results.
Target and Expand Your Audience
With the right SEO strategy, those blogs can build and build your position in search rankings over time. Yes, online advertising campaigns like pay-per-click ads (PPC) can increase your website’s visibility in search results, and they may be worth your investment. But, you don’t want to rely on paid search traffic alone. Paid search results account for around 5% of online traffic. Organic search results—those that appear because of their quality content, SEO, and search ranking—receive almost 95% of online user’s clicks.
You do want to give some focus to the common, high-value keywords like “addiction treatment,” “rehab near me,” or “drug rehab,” but your blog can also build long-tail search traffic. Search terms like “where can I find a drug rehab that uses equine therapy,” are longer and will have a lower search volume, but they are specific. That means you have less competition, and greater likelihood of attracting relevant traffic. To do this, you need to post valuable content regularly, with a specific topic and purpose—not just generalized words for the sake of having a post. As you build that library of topics, you widen the net of your searchability.
Quality content is worth sharing, and free distribution of your content through social media can be extremely valuable. What information about addiction, the treatment process, or recovery do you have to offer? What unique approaches does your treatment program embrace? Substance abuse is an issue that touches so many people’s lives, and they are seeking out information—about specific substances of abuse, how to help a loved one who’s struggling, what the treatment experience is like. Content like this can be both high-quality and shareable. You become more visible (to both a wider audience and the internet bots), and you establish yourself as a trusted brand in the field.
Continuing Relationships with Your Alumni Community
To maintain your online presence in the first place, you need to maintain contact with your existing audience. Whatever audience or community you’ve already cultivated—whether they’re on social media or an alumni email list—warrants interaction. What will you say or share with them if you have no content to offer? The bulk of that existing audience is likely your program’s alumni, who can benefit significantly from your consistent, informative blog posts.
Your treatment center’s alumni program is an important aspect of continuing care. Even after they finish treatment, an alumni program offers them support and connection. Recovery is a life-long process, and it can be detrimental to have treatment services abruptly stop after leaving a program. It’s important to keep alumni engaged with their treatment experience, and that they continue to be involved in the recovery community. There are many different ways to run your alumni program, but your blog can be an integral piece of it.
There’s so much to learn—especially in the earliest stages of recovery—and your treatment program’s blog can offer them valuable information. It’s likely those alumni will want to read content coming from your treatment program specifically. They are the start of your loyal audience, and they’re most likely to share your posts. You can cultivate that alumni community through your social media pages or through an alumni email list—but you’ve got to have something of value (like your latest blog post) to share with them.
Invest in a Good Writer
Posting blogs regularly is important, but the key to making that blog successful is providing valuable content. We can’t emphasize this enough. You want to offer content that’s unique, purposeful, and useful to the people reading it. This can expand your audience, promote link building with other sites, and improve your search ranking. The key is to invest in a quality writer.
Excellent writers are hard to come by. You need someone who is committed to representing your brand, representing it well, and can produce valuable content for your readers. Search engines are scouring the internet for useful content, and that’s how search rankings improve. And, with a quality writer, you ensure that basic elements like spelling and grammar are pristine. This may seem small, but misspelled words, confusing syntax, or improper grammar can reflect poorly on your brand and you won’t be taken seriously.
If you can afford a full-time staff writer for your treatment program’s blog, it will quickly pay for itself. If not, your best bet is to outsource your content development. At Stodzy, we have a highly-experienced team of writers who can create custom content for your brand. We understand the addiction treatment industry. Among our diverse group of writers, we have individuals living in recovery, some with professional treatment experience, and some who have loved ones who have battled addiction. Call us today and we can talk about the right content marketing strategy for your treatment program: 800-761-1426
We Repeat: Content is Everything
The digital sphere is constantly changing. It can be overwhelming trying to keep up with the latest search engine algorithms or SEO tactics. But, valuable content will always be essential, and beneficial to your brand. Remember, the internet is a giant, searchable resource, and people will always need media to be engaged with online. Mediums, platforms, and trends keep changing, but content will always be at the center of it all.
