Writing online content for your health and medical website or blog is similar to writing content for any niche. The basic guidelines should always be followed. However not all of the points below may be pertinet for your website or blog.
So what makes health or medical content so unique. Well, there is a number of points, a few of which we will touch upon in this post.
Writing for your target group
Firstly, it is important to understand why the reader has searched for specific keywords or phrases. He/she may be suffering with a specific condition, has a loved one with the medical condition in question or needs more information for some other reason. If your website or blog generates an income from pay per click adverts, ebooks, signups or other forms of conversion then it is the reader who is suffering with the condition or has a loved one with the condition that is of greater interest to you. They may already know the basic information relating to the condition and are now searching for more in-depth knowledge about their ailment. They are less likely to read yet another uninformative article on their condition that is not well written in a professional manner and only aiming to sell them a ‘natural health’ product or ebook.
Also consider your style of writing. Are you attempting to identify with the reader or just inform the reader? Here is a link to an interesting article on the difference between formal and informal content writing which may be helpful.
Less competitive keywords
Secondly, consider your keywords and phrases. A person suffering with rheumatoid arthritis may not always know that they are suffering with this condition. They may be looking for more information to explain their symptoms before they consult with a practitioner. For this reason, writing medical content and focussing on symptoms as keywords is so essential. Instead of stuffing your content with the keyword ‘rheumatoid arthritis’ and having a difficult time competing with the ‘big boys’ in online medical content (like Mayoclinic.com and Emedicine.net) for search engine rankings, rather consider symptoms as your keywords.
With regards to rheumatoid arthritis, you may find that you would get better rankings with keywords/phrases like ‘joint pain’ and ‘morning stiffness’. This brings us to short tail versus long tail keywords. We will cover long tail keywords in greater detail on a later post but for illustrative purposes, let’s take a quick look at long tail keywords in terms of rheumatoid arthritis. If you have decided that joint pain is your keyword of choice, you may once again find it difficult to compete for this term on search engine rankings.
By optimizing your content for a long tail approach to ‘joint pain’, you may find that you will rank higher. ‘Causes of joint pain’ is one approach to long tail keywords for relevant content. Yes, it does have smaller search volume which means less traffic. But remember that this may be lower quantity of traffic yet it is usually high quality traffic. High quality traffic translates into more conversions.
Spelling errors of keywords
Thirdly, incorrect spelling of medical conditions during a search query is fairly prevalent. Medical terms are based on Latin. Lay persons searching for medical information may often misspell medical terms. Use Wordtracker or your keyword tool of choice to search for ‘rhumatoid arthritis’ and you may be surprised by what you find.
Most reputable medical websites will not incorrectly spell medical terms but it may be useful for the smaller blog or website. Of course, it is not advisable to stuff your content with incorrectly spelt keywords but making the odd ‘error’ in spelling can be useful for rankings.
Concise yet informative content
Lastly, remember the what, when, where, why, who and how of the topic of your content. The five W’s and one H is the basic approach to information gathering in journalism. It is also the formula for writing a complete article on a given topic. This can be very useful in writing an individual article or a series of articles.
It also helps with natural search queries. Just a few years back, most search engine users entered only two to three keywords per query. But more recently this has increased to four or five keywords. Using the what, when, where, why, who and how approach also allows you to optimize your content for more natural search queries. A reader may very likely type in ‘what is rheumatoid arthritis’. This is a typical example of a combination of a long tail keyword and natural search query. More importantly, it may be easier to compete for this key phrase for search engine rankings.
Reader Orientated Writing with SEO Techniques
If you are new to content writing, you may decide to stuff your content with your keyword/phrase of choice. Keyword spamming is often difficult to achieve with long tail keywords. Remember that we want content that is easy for the reader to follow and not solely for the search engines. After all, a reader who stumbles upon poorly written content will quickly close their browser window or click away.
In order to combine well written content with long tail keywords, rather opt for other important on-page and off-page factors in search engine optimization. Heading tags (H1, H2 …), title and anchor text in backlinks can be useful for long tail keywords which do not often allow for a natural writing style.