Keeping your dental website up to date with fresh, engaging content is important for any dentist who wants their website to rank highly and have a steady flow of new patients. However, coming up with new blogs on a regular basis can be tricky for some, and it can prevent new blogs from being written and posted at all.
We recommend that dental professionals keep a content calendar with blog ideas that are ready to go, so you don’t have to keep coming up with new ideas—just write and post! Below are some tips for building out a dental blog calendar for your practice.
Topical and seasonal blog topic ideas
This is one of the easiest questions you can ask to get started: What’s going on right now? If it’s spring or summer, you may want to post about cosmetic dental services to encourage patients to get a “smile refresh” for the season. If it’s close to the end of the year, you may want to post about annual dental benefits expiring soon. Searching for dental-related days, weeks, and months is also a great source of inspiration. For example, February is Children’s Dental Health Month, the second week of May is Root Canal Awareness Week, and August 22nd is Tooth Fairy Day—all ideas to springboard off of for your blog.
Discover what patients are searching for
One of the best things you can do with your dental blog is meet patients where they’re at—in the search results for the questions that they are already searching for. Our team does this by using tools like Google Search Console and Semrush to uncover keywords and queries that websites are already showing up for and what they could be showing up for. Your results may be as simple as short keywords like “wisdom teeth removal” or “veneers near me.” However, you may get long-tail search queries such as “Are fluoride treatments really necessary?” Voilà—that’s the title of your next post!
Research what others are writing
Now we’re not saying to blindly copy what your competitors are doing, but it never hurts to review what others have been posting about to seek inspiration for your own blog. You can start by reviewing the blogs of nearby competitors, or you can Google specific services or ideas you might be interested in writing about and see what comes up in the search results. Some blog posts will be very specific to that practice, but many others will be broad topics that you can jot down on your idea list.
Think about your own expertise and services
Every dental professional has their own areas of interest, anecdotes, and opinions that are just waiting to be shared with an audience. Search engines and artificial intelligence platforms greatly value information that comes straight from individuals with high authority, such as dentists providing information directly on their websites. While specific patient information can’t be shared, dentists can use their blogs to speak broadly about dental trends or topics that interest them and that they believe patients and other dental professionals would find interesting as well.
Outsource to dental marketing professionals
If you’ve reached the end of this post and still feel overwhelmed by the idea of maintaining a consistent blog presence—that’s okay! Blogging may not be your cup of tea; after all, dentistry comes first and foremost for most practitioners. If this is the case, you may want to consider outsourcing your blogs or other digital marketing services to a full-service dental marketing agency like Practice Cafe. Our SEO services include quarterly blogs, and we offer enhanced blogging services to clients who want monthly or weekly blog posts as well.
Happy blogging!
