Short answer: there is no perfect length. If you Google around to find the “perfect length” blog or your ask other agencies you’ll see that there are many different claims. I think Moz, who has one of the best blogs about SEO, does a great job of summarizing what they’ve found to be the “perfect” blog length.
The article length is almost meaningless. I say almost because it would be difficult for even a excellently-written article that’s 200 words to have much of an impact. Then again, can something that’s only 200 words really be an excellent piece of content?
Ultimately, if you’ve prioritized content marketing, and blogging specifically, start by focusing on unique topics. One of the biggest mistakes aesthetic practices make with their blog is their articles simply regurgitate what’s on their procedure pages. They appear “cookie cutter” in style and format. These topics are boring and of little value.
Instead, focus on topics that interest patients. The easiest way to determine what interests patients is to take note of questions they’re asking when they call in or during their consultation. These FAQs often reflect what patient’s are searching for, which is why you should create content around them.
When coming up with topics and writing blog articles, it helps to take a step back and look at the big picture. What’s your goal with this article? Here’s a breakdown of what your practice should be trying to achieve by posting blog articles:
- Generate search engine visibility
- Drive clicks with strong titles and meta descriptions
- Provide interesting and educational copy
- Showcase social proof and other media
- Incorporate a call to action to encourage the patient to contact your practice
If you follow the steps above, your have the makings of a strong – and effective – blog article. As you accumulate effective blog articles your blog as a whole becomes stronger. This means being consistent with your content publication schedule. Remember that all blog articles have content that can be re-purposed and syndicated. Your articles should be going up on your social networks and they should be going out in your email newsletters. This will naturally create demand for more articles among your patients, assuming your content is good.
As the primary contributor to this blog, I know first hand that blogging can take a back seat at times. After all, your job likely isn’t to blog (and neither is mine). That said, building up your blog can provide tremendous ROI to your practice. How? By continuously adding new and engaging content to your website you exponentially increase the avenues for driving traffic to your website. That’s half the battle right there. Once you have them on your website it’s all about engaging content, social proof, and calls to action to get them to convert.
Consider this breakdown of one of our clients’ top landing pages from Google Analytics. You’ll see the #2 landing page on their website is a blog article, and this is a client that spends thousands of dollars on advertising, so you’d think those pages would be ranking higher than this blog…
It’s not that this blog is in and of itself amazing, it’s that the client’s blog has steadily, and consistently, grown over the years, building up credibility (and visibility). This blog happened to jump into the top 10 a year or so ago, which we noticed in Google Analytics, so we worked on improving it further, by freshening up the copy, adding social proof (before & afters), and adding a video. Then it jumped to the #2 spot among all landing pages on the site! As you can see, it generated 1,855 unique visits and 11 leads, and this was during only a three month period. All from this one blog!
Every instance where you see a blog article show up in your landing page report in Google Analytics is an added opportunity for traffic. If you maintain a solid conversion rate on your website then simply growing your traffic will grow the number of web leads you’re generating. It’s simple math, and it’s why blogging is so crucial.
If you have any questions about blogging or SEO, or you’d like to connect with us about anything marketing related, you can reach us by phone at 877-673-7096 x2. You can also leave us a note here.
