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Orthodontic Blogging on WordPress

When you create your orthodontic website, you’ll have the choice of either starting from scratch or using a website publishing platform, such as WordPress. If your orthodontic website is already up and running, there’s a good chance you’re already using their platform. It’s a smart go-to CMS for plenty of reasons. One feature you may not have even tapped into is its blogging function.

Blogging on WordPress

To dive into your new content marketing strategy by getting a blog up and running, you’ll want to go to your dashboard. By now, you’ve no doubt been on this page before to start and manage your website. To get started with your blog, simply click on the “add page” button, where you’ll be able to title your new page. After adding a title, you will click “publish” to make your new page live.

You’ll then want to go back to your pages section to manage how your new blog page works. Be sure your homepage is still set to “static” and that your blog page is where your new posts will be published in chronological order.

You’ll also want to customize other settings, such as how many posts are displayed on one page and where your blog section will appear on your orthodontic website.

Posting on Your New Blog

Since your blog page is categorized as your “post page” on WordPress, you’ll visit the “posts” section and click “add new” anytime you want to publish a blog. Whether you’ve written your content on another platform or want to author your blog directly in your new post, you’ll want to take care of some important formatting.

Of course, your title will go into the “title” section. Ideally, you’ll want to keep this under 60 characters. An important element of your SEO is including links, both to other pages on your site and to other sites. You’ll want to set any external links (links to other websites) to open in new tabs to keep the reader from leaving your site permanently when they click them. You can do this by using a little settings button after you’ve added hypertext.

You’ll also want your blog to be neatly broken up into small sections, making the content easier to read. Click the “paragraph” dropdown in the toolbar to see a list of heading options. Most blogs will only need to use H1 to H3 to adequately break up the content and increase readability. Generally H1 is reserved for the main title, so the section headers should be H2s or H3s.

Categories, Tags, and Featured Image

Another important practice is to include categories and tags. You can make different categories to organize your content on the backend and to make it easier for users to find related content on your blog. Even more specific are tags, which allow your readers to instantly find other posts on your website with the same tag to explore more useful information.

Adding a featured image to every post not only adds interest to your blog, it also provides another place to include your keyword phrase and location. Be sure to use images that are either your own or you have permission to use, and keep the size to a minimum to avoid slowing down your site.

Adding SEO to Your Posts

Search engine optimization, or SEO, will help you blog get found both by search engines and by readers. An easy way to include SEO in your posts is to add a plug-in such as Yoast. This plug-in will add another section of fields for you to fill in under the text field, including “keyword phrase,” “SEO title” and “meta description.” Fill in these fields using best SEO practices, then check your SEO rank in the “SEO analysis” dropdown. Changing or adding a few words can make a big difference in how your post performs.

To get the most out of your content marketing strategy, you’ll want to ensure your blog stays active. Once your content is written and includes all of the links, tags, and metadata you need, you can hit “save draft” instead of “publish” if you don’t want it to appear on your site right away Then, you can set a specific time and date for your content to be published so your blog stays active and keeps bringing you new web traffic.

 

Blogging can be done on a variety of website platforms, but WordPress makes it very easy to share quality content with your visitors, once you have it written, of course.

Ortho Sales Engine specializes in marketing solutions for orthodontists, combines more than 20 in-house services to create customized, repeatable marketing systems, and serves as a trusted partner to doctors and their teams. To learn more or schedule a free consultation, visit orthosalesengine.com.