Did you know that 61% of US online consumers made a purchase decision based on a recommendation in a blog? This statistic should give you an idea of just how important it is for your pharmacy to keep a blog.
If you follow a consistent content marketing strategy, a blog will not only help you get new customers but also nurture your relationship with existing customers.
However, setting up a blog is only the beginning. The next step is to increase your blog traffic, otherwise, it’s not much different from writing a diary.
But be careful about how you present yourself. Always remember that you are a pharmacy and customers expect a certain level of professionalism and etiquette.
In this article, we will tell you about the most important steps you can take to increase blog traffic on your pharmacy website while setting a professional tone.
Consistency Is the Key Increasing Blog Traffic
If you want to get more traffic to your pharmacy blog, one of the keywords is consistency. You need to display the same kind of service on your website that people receive when they visit your pharmacy in real life.
Customers will view your website and blog as a direct representation of your pharmacy, so you want to make sure you keep a level of service that is consistent with what you offer in your brick and mortar business.
Make sure your website is clean and professional. Choose the appropriate color themes. White, grey or light blue are usually the go-to colors for pharmacies, doctors, and other medical service providers.
The next thing is to make sure your web content is clear and concise. Don’t clutter your website with the whole backstory on how you became a pharmacist back in 1978. It’s not to be crude, but customers don’t care.
You need to skim your website down to the bare minimum. Include only the most important menus such as your “About”-page, “Services”, “Blog” and “Contact Info”. This will ensure that your website is easy to navigate, which will help increase blog traffic.
Use Tried and True SEO Techniques
SEO is the practice of optimizing your site to increase its visibility in the search engines. The more visible you are, the more blog traffic you will get.
A few helpful SEO tips that you can use on your blog today are:
- Place relevant keywords throughout your website
- Place internal and external links in your web copy
- Make your website easy to navigate
Basically, search engines such as Google and Bing determine your SEO ranking based on the user-friendliness and quality of your site. If your website is easy to navigate, fast to load and updated regularly with valuable content, then you will get a good SEO ranking.
On the other hand, if you neglect to do any of that, the search engines will punish your website and leave you far down on the search results page. This lack of visibility will cost you plenty of business in the long run, as your potential customers flock to your competitor’s site instead of you.
One of the best ways to improve your SEO ranking is to…
Write Helpful Blog Posts Regularly
When you are done setting up your blog and optimizing it for SEO, you are ready to start posting content on your blog. The keyword here is to provide value. You do that by focusing on content that is helpful to the people who are visiting your pharmacy page.
This could include topics such as “How to know if you are suffering from a migraine” or “5 tips to help you choose the right contraception”.
These are topics that your visitors will find helpful, which will ensure that they keep coming back for more in the future.
It also helps to establish your reputation as an authority on pharmaceutics. If people see you as an authority, they are more likely to trust you and buy from you in the future.
The most important thing is that you write content in a professional tone. Let the readers know that they are dealing with a real pharmacist. It needs to feel like the same level of service they would get if they were standing in front of you, asking about a certain pill or prescription.
If you write content that draws on your experience as a pharmacist, your readers will feel that they are getting a lot of value. They will take the article as a factual resource, and maybe even share it on social media. Once people start sharing your content, you are guaranteed to see more blog traffic on your site.
Write Guest Posts
Writing guests posts is a great way to get some exposure to your new pharmacy blog as well. In addition, guest posting also helps with your SEO ranking (backlinks are regarded by search engines as a sign of trust).
So how do you get someone to accept a guest post from you?
If you were to accept a guest post on your blog from another page, they might be inclined to let you write a post on their blog in return.
For example, if you wrote a guest post on your blog for Canadian Pharmacy King, you would link back to their page like that.
For a lot of people starting out, this might sound challenging. Maybe you have a tendency to think: “Who would want to accept my guest posts? I’m just starting out as a blogger and I have no experience!” Well, get rid of that mindset right now.
You are an expert. You know all the ins and outs of the pharmaceutical industry, and you are more than qualified to write articles on the subject.
You could write an incredibly informative article about any subject on pharma and send it out to 5 or 10 different pharmaceutical journals. If just one of those journals decided to post your article, they would link back to your blog, and you would benefit from potentially thousands of new readers coming to your blog.
Get the Word Out
Getting blog traffic is absolutely essential if you want to grow the visibility and reach of your pharmacy website in our day and age. Following the steps outlined in this article will be a good way to get your blog off the ground.
If you are ready to learn more, head over to our blog for more interesting articles.