Dental Websites and Long-Form Content
Does long-form content on a dental website provide better user engagement, education, and a rewarding experience? Or is it a waste of time? Boring? Does it take up prime real estate?
The stats are in and long-form content is the winner!
In this blog you will learn:
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- What is long-form content?
- Why does long-form content work for a dental website?
- How to get the most from long-form content?
What is Long-Form Content?
Search engines love content because it is a critical piece of their business model. You provide the content in blogs, articles, and throughout your website. The search engine presents the content to interested users through Google/Bing search, using keyword identification. The more content the search engine has to provide from your blogs and website content, the better the experience for the end user. This means more people will use that search engine (Google is the king of the space, followed by Bing). For that reason, great content gets ranked higher in search engines. Long-form content is full of rich information that consists of 800 words or more. Kevin Delaney (former editor-in-chief of the news site Quartz) developed a model (known as the Quartz Curve) based on article length. It forms the basis of the publication’s approach to content.
The quartz curve states that you will experience less success with 500 to 800-word articles and that your aim should be to create content that is above 800 words in length.
How is long-form content applied to a dental website?
Your website content will engage new prospects who visit your website. As a community-focused business and to be competitive, your dental practice must prove its authority and expert status. Through the development of long-form content specifically around your practice About Us page and articles that describe your services, your website will rank better and engage new patients day after day.
Patient NEWS understands the importance of long-form content and as a result we add service articles to our clients’ websites that not only include longer format writing but also use HD videos to support the content.
These articles will significantly help your website rank for the services and keywords you want, bringing your website up the list on Google search. This expanded content will help patients, their family members, and your prospects learn more about the procedures they’re interested in. This content will position you as an expert and make a great first impression for new patients. This educational content will also build and strengthen patient trust and improve acceptance when treatments are presented in-office!
Why long-form, rich, keyword-focused content will help engage prospects/patients and help your dental website rank higher on search engines:
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- Long-form content earns higher authority and increases the likelihood that others will refer to you as an expert.
- Longer content gets more social shares.
- Google doesn’t just interpret queries and send people to a relevant SERP (search engine results page), it also determines whether or not a page’s users find content that satisfies them when they click on it.
- Dwell time (time on page) is something that Google takes into consideration because the longer a patient spends on your site, the more engaged they are. If Google can get proof that your site gets more engagement, your site is more likely to rank higher.
- Patients and prospects react more favorably to impressive content that exudes value and stops them from ever needing to seek out a similar resource.Long-form articles generate 9X more leads than short-form content.
- Only 18% of articles or blogs are above 750 words! That means your content will stand out!
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Again, you are the authority and expert in dentistry for your community. Patients and prospects trust your opinion and long-form content further establishes you as a thought leader.
How to get the most from long-form content?
Long-form content gives your practice an opportunity to educate your community in ways your competitors are not. There are a few ways you can leverage long-form content. Once the content is written and designed on your website, you can share that content across different channels. Two specific formats are social media and eNewsletters.
Social Media
Once you have long-form, educational, engaging content on your website, you can now begin to share these pages on your social channels. Copy the link and insert it into a Facebook post. Make sure the status line is engaging to the channel and present the article as a learning opportunity. Positioning the long-form content as a learning opportunity will help convert the reader to visit your website.
eNewsletters
At Patient NEWS, we are patient education advocates and we know you are as well. An eNewsletter is a great way to provide ongoing education to your patients – even when they’re not in your practice. With long-form content on your website, you can link out from your Practice ZEBRA Email Anything Anytime service to these pages to help further your patients’ education.
Support your long-form content with video!
Another consideration around long-form content is the addition of videos. Patient News has added with Optio videos to provide HD service videos with many of our service articles. There are multiple benefits to having video on your website to further educate your patients and prospects.
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- With video on your services pages, people are more likely to refer traffic to you as the expert.
- Users will spend more time on your website watching video, giving Google the signal that your website is being engaged with. Google will then rank you higher.
- Quality is important, and that’s why the videos we are providing for your website are HD animations that are of the highest quality available in dentistry today.
- Case acceptance, as an important conversion goal for your practice, will be elevated using these service-specific HD videos.
- Many of your competitors don’t have these high-quality videos, which means that you will stand out as expert in your community!
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In conclusion:
If you are looking to get your website off the ground with a tactic that supports search engine optimization and user engagement, long-form content is definitely the way to go. You will likely see that over time you reach a wider audience, establish community authority, and become the expert against the competition – especially if you couple the content with HD video and share on the appropriate social channels!
Here is the great news! Patient NEWS can assist you with all of this.