It’s no secret that the internet is literally crawling with automated bots that do everything from categorize your site content to collect information about flights and hotel rates, which means they’re an important factor in your SEO strategy. And bots don’t “read” websites the way real people do, which means creating content that works well for them probably isn’t what comes naturally to most content creators.

If you want your medical practice’s site to perform well, it needs to be optimized for both humans and bots, which we’ll explain in this post.

How to Write for Robots

Bots scan web pages through the back end, meaning they see parts of the code that people rarely look at, including things like structured content, which is code that tells a robot crawler that something specific is here that it should use in a certain way. All this is to say your site needs to be technically optimized first before thinking about how to write content that also makes things easy for bots to understand.

Primarily what you’ll need to think about is the purpose of each page and what you want, for example, Google to know about. This largely is done through using specific keywords several times per page. If your practice performs a specific procedure, it’s important to use the procedure name and other terms people use for it, such as “rhinoplasty” and “nose job.”

Both bots and humans understand that headers are used to introduce new sections of content, and different levels of header (heading 1, 2, 3, etc.) go further to say which topics are sub-topics that relate to the main idea. This enables bots to display paragraphs of text immediately at the top of a Google search page, such as for “Botox in Sacramento, CA,” when the header matches the search term closely.

Finally, keeping things interesting by having multiple types of media on your pages signals to bots that there’s valuable information on your page as opposed to a solid block of plain text. This is also beneficial for people, as having visuals like photos or infographics engages readers and makes it more likely they’ll stick around on your site for longer.

How to Write for People

This may seem like a no-brainer, but there are common things people get wrong when writing content that makes it harder to read, and therefore less likely to drive new patients to the practice.

The average person isn’t searching for academic text when browsing the web, so keeping your language simple and readable is key to drawing people in. Our writers are able to check what level of complexity their language is and optimize it for the average person looking for aesthetics or other procedures.

Making things readable also means making your writing clear and to the point. Using active voice, colorful verbs, and avoiding cliches are three ways to tighten up your writing and make it easier for people to digest.

Finally, many people will spot spelling mistakes and grammatical errors from a mile away, which can do irreparable damage of your practice’s reputation in their minds. Go beyond spell check and really read through content before posting it to make sure it makes sense and doesn’t contain typos.

Content Developers for Medical Practices

If you want to optimize your site, you’ve got to consider both the bots and the real people coming to your site every day. Our writing staff at DLM can take care of your regular content updates to help your site attract and retain visitors and drive new leads to your practice. Call or contact DLM online today to learn more about our services and your website’s potential.