The dream is to work remotely on a beach somewhere, laptop at the ready, cash pouring in, right? Unfortunately, this happens to so few who start their own business. However, even without the beach and fruity drink with that little umbrella, starting your own business is rewarding. There’s no doubt it’s hard work. You have to wear many hats and learn many new skills including marketing yourself, finding clients, and bookkeeping to name a few. 

With every task you take up, priorities shift and it can be difficult to focus on your web presence through blogging and content. This is such a shame because your web presence can help you find even more business. In fact, you might be amazed at what adding a consistent blog to your website can do. Today, I’m going to talk about why it’s so important for a private practice business, or any business really, to have a blog.

Connect with Clients through Content

So let’s say you’re a mental health therapist and your site is ready to go. Clients can find you, click on your site, and learn more about you. By adding a blog to your site, this allows potential clients to go one step further and discover more about you. Through content, you can show clients a little bit more about who you are and what you do, even giving them tips and skills that they can use in their daily lives.

If you write a blog about a common issue a client may face, when they read your blog about it, they understand you have the knowledge and can help them with that specific problem. A good example of this would be if a client was suffering from a specific phobia and was seeking help. If you choose to write a blog about phobias, you create a connection with the client and this encourages the client to seek you out.

Establish Expertise in Your Field

A blog allows you to establish your authority in the field. Because I write mainly for mental health businesses, I’m going to keep using the counselor example, but it would do well with any private practice. 

Of course, any counselor needs to have the right credentials to become licensed and ready for practice. However, therapists can specialize in different practices from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to Multicultural Therapy to Positive Psychology. Many therapists may combine techniques from different types of therapy making themselves unique. This is good! Write about it! 

By writing and sharing your knowledge, you’re showing potential clients that you are an expert in your field. Really, you’re showing the world you’re an expert in your field and there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, it can help you better develop your brand. 

Gain Authority on Google

If you plan on using your website in any way to have clients find you, gaining authority on Google is a great way to go. To gain authority, you need to have reputable websites link to your site. These are called backlinks. By creating informative and original content in your field and making this content shareable, you’ll more easily get these backlinks. 

Make sure to share your blog posts on social media so that more clients and colleagues are able to connect with you. Getting backlinks doesn’t happen overnight and it’s not something you have to put too much time into if you don’t want to. However, it is a great way for your website to gain authority and page rank with Google. 

Be Noticed By Search Engines

There’s a bit more to this one than just writing blogs. It also requires that you know a bit about SEO or Search Engine Optimization. I won’t go into everything about SEO with this blog, but I’ll sum it up as best as I can. With the proper SEO practices, you can use your blogs to increase your ranking on Google. This is a must if you plan to use digital marketing and have clients find you online. 

The bare-bones idea is to sprinkle in enough keyword and key phrases in your blog that Google picks it up. When a person types a question or phrase into the Google search bar, Google bots crawl all over the internet to find relevant content with that question or phrase in the content. And voila! They pull out all the relevant content in a handy search page. 

To find keywords, you think about what your target client would search for on Google and BAM! That’s how you start. Then you sprinkle keywords naturally throughout the article. I can’t stress this enough. If you stuff in a ton of keywords and key phrases into your sentences, Google will judge your content poorly. By naturally sprinkling them in, I’d say one or two per paragraph at most, you can start ranking for that keyword you’re wanting. 

As I said, there’s more to it than this, but I just want to give a general idea. I’ll cover SEO in a bit more detail in another blog. 

Keep Your Website Fresh

Google favors websites that are more active meaning websites that say up-to-date and provide new content. Those crawler bots we talked about before, they favor fresher content to older content which is why it can be important to keep your blog current. 

Now, this doesn’t mean you need to be dishing out content every day. There’s always been a bit of debate as to how much content you should write for a website, what the word count should be, etc. At the end of the day, choose a schedule that’s manageable for you. And if you’re struggling to get content out on your therapy website, that’s what you call me in for! Because sometimes, you just want someone who knows what they’re doing to take a task off of your plate. 

Writing Blogs Pays Off For Your Business

No matter the private practice you’ve chosen, there’s a good chance you’ll need to get into digital marketing. Writing blogs for your website can enhance your business and bring in new clients. They don’t have to be fancy or take a ton of time. So long as you have information about your industry to share with your clients, that’s all you need.