7 Tips for Creating Effective Blog Content for Health and Wellness Brands
Are you a consumer health or wellness brand looking to gain more traffic through content marketing and SEO blogging? Blog articles are the perfect way for healthcare and wellness brands to inform consumers while establishing your brand’s authority. Like with any strong content marketing strategy, you’ll want to pull off several objectives with every blog you create. Those goals should include:
- The strategic use of well-researched keywords for search engine optimization.
- Developing trust within your target consumer-base.
- Nurturing a brand voice and brand aesthetic through the use of words, images and other media.
- Establishing your brand as a trusted source of information.
- Optimizing content to meet the current, most accurate recommendations to appeal to Google and other search engines content criteria.
Yes, that’s a lot of boxes to check within a 750-word article. However, there’s a simple process for pulling it all off at once. Here’s seven of our favorite ways to hit all of these goals in every one of your blog posts:
7 Ways to Optimize Your Health and Wellness Blog Content
Do your keyword research.
Before writing any SEO blog content, it’s important to do your keyword research to find the most popular keywords and phrases, as well as the low competition keywords, which can be easier to rank for.
Ask the questions your audience wants to know.
There are two ways you can boost your content by asking the exact questions your audience is searching for answers to. One way is to structure your content based on a series of questions about a specific topic. The other is to include a simple Frequently Asked Questions section at the end of your article.
Be Choosy with Your External Linking
Sometimes brands are wary about including external links in their content. “Why should I send people away from our site?” is the rationale. But external linking is an essential part of any solid SEO blog content. However, it’s important to be selective with the sites you cite in your content. For health and wellness brands, trustworthiness is paramount. That’s why you want to be sure to only include links to the most respected and well-researched sites. We like to use links to clinical studies and government websites such as the CDC, FDA and NHS.
Consider Writing a Long-Form Guide on Your Key Topics
How many words should an SEO blog article be? That’s a VERY common question. Across industries, we always suggest no less than 750 words for every blog you write. A 500 word blog here and there is not terrible either (it’s definitely preferred over not blogging). However, if you are really looking to gain traffic and authority, don’t shy away from long-form blog content. We consider long-form content as any blog content over 2,000 words. Now you may say, “People don’t want to read that much.” Yes, attention spans are shorter than ever, but remember you’re writing for two audiences at the same time: readers and Google. And Google loves long-form content. It makes sense why. Fewer sites are going to put the time and energy into greeting such comprehensive content. And that signals your window of opportunity in this super-competitive and crowded industry.
Become an Authority on a Specific Subject
Search engines favor sites that dig into topics and provide a wealth of information on one subject matter. This strategy can improve your authority status. For example, let’s say your site sells an anti-itch cream, so you write a blog on eczema. You can give this article a SEO boost by writing other articles on eczema that take a deep dive into different aspects of the condition. This creates a content pillar. Here’s an example of how that can look:
Main Article – Pillar Content
Living with Eczema Guide
Sub-topics
Foods that Can Improve Eczema
Common Households Items to Avoid if You Have Eczema
Do these Home Remedies Help Eczema
Eczema and Makeup: Everything You Need to Know
Eczema: What Does it Look Like?
Once all of these articles are completed, then you will go back in and edit each article to include internal links to all of the other articles you’ve written on the subject. The goal is to then make certain every article links to every other article in this subject matter.
Be Careful with Your Product Promotion
It’s easy to want to highlight all of the benefits of a product that you sell, but be careful. Audiences can quickly get turned off by content that reads more like an advertorial or landing page than good, solid research and information. If your product relates directly to the topic your writing about, it can be helpful to readers to explain (in non-salesy jargon) why this product addresses the topic at hand. However, refrain from including more than two product plugs in each article. You can however use this as an opportunity to add internal links to products and add a product suggestion section to the end of your piece.
Watch Your Language When Making Claims or Promises
Developing trust and maintaining it is an integral part of any health or wellness brand’s content strategy. Make certain that you always use the most transparent and accurate language. Don’t make claims that can’t be proven. Don’t use hyperbolic phrasing or exaggerate claims. Words like “may help” “can support” are much more acceptable that direct claims or promises. Unless you have specific studies and concrete medical evidence to prove a claim, keep your promises vague and realistic. This is important for nurturing your credibility with your audience and can help you stand out while other brands pander to audiences with exaggerated promises that can erode a brand’s trustworthiness over time.
We hope these tips are helpful to your health or wellness brand as you create content that will generate more traffic to your site. If you’d like a dedicated team to handle all parts of your content marketing, from keywords research to writing to uploading and optimizing, CAT creative is here to help! We can create any quantity of health articles for your brand every month.