Blog writing for SEO and the 1993 midwest flood
I grew up in Paducah, Kentucky, a small town on the Ohio River directly across from Southern Illinois, where my family still farms corn and soybeans. A
nd in the summer of 1993, the Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri rivers rose to levels higher than anyone had ever experienced.
Every time I sit down to write a blog, I think of that summer; blog writing for SEO as a small business owner is strangely similar to preparing for a flood.
The Great USA Flood of 1993
Thankfully, by 1949, Paducah had completed the construction of a flood wall protecting vulnerable areas of the river town from high water.
But no such floodwall existed on my family’s farm. My dad, uncle, and cousins built a levee and sourced a tractor-powered pump that would remove (and this is not an exaggeration) 12,000 gallons of seep water per minute, gushing it from the farm side of the levee back to the river.
And we filled sandbags. LOTS of sandbags. Even though I was only 10 years old, I remember shoveling sand and tying up the sacks, wondering how one tiny sandbag could ever make a difference against such an enormous amount of water.
One sandbag didn’t. But hundreds did.
With the levee, the pump, and the sandbags, we saved our farm.
Sandbags and blog writing for SEO
The sandbags are what come to mind when I sit down to write a blog.
How can one blog make a difference in helping your practice get found or support you in obtaining new patients?
The honest answer is…it can’t.
But just like we needed many sandbags to keep the water at bay, many blogs absolutely can make a difference.
Blog writing for SEO isn’t about one blog. It’s not even about 10. It’s about a large body of blogs, all focused on the same topic—answering your niche’s questions and solving their problems—that establish you as the expert in your field while building trust with potential patients.
It’s multiple blogs working together that accomplish your business goals and, specifically, make Google take notice and increase your site’s ranking—you’ve got the answers people need to see when they search online.
And similar to the questions I had about sandbags, you might be doubtful in the beginning…is this really going to work?
There is ample evidence that blog writing for SEO is highly effective. Using a tool like Google Analytics allows you to track the increase in traffic to your site and visitor actions.
Check out DIY SEO, a practical SEO course for busy wellness pros, if you need help with Google Analytics or other SEO specifics.
But that doesn’t mean blogging (and, let’s be real, owning a practice) isn’t scary. The positive results of writing a blog, not to mention blogging itself, take time. Just like with sandbagging, you have to trust the process.

Blog writing for SEO: My top 3 tips
1. Write every day. Just get in the habit of sitting down and doing it. The trick is to time yourself—set a timer for 5 minutes (yep, just 5 minutes!), and write about a topic that will be exceptionally helpful to your ideal client avatar.
If you write for only 5 minutes per day, you’ll have approximately one blog per month…a fantastic start! But chances are, once the timer goes off, you’ll be on a roll and keep writing.
Shoot for 2,000 words per blog, the optimal word count for the health and wellness industry. But don’t not publish your blog if you have fewer words—a published blog will help your SEO efforts. An unpublished blog will not.
2. Make sure your blogs are focused on helping your potential patients, using language they understand and providing tons of practical tips. Your patients probably don’t know what blood sugar regulation is or mugwort moxa or the PGC-1a biochemical pathway.
But they do know they get dizzy when they stand up, and they want solutions. You can show off your clinical expertise a little here and there, but keep it PRACTICAL.
Make a list of your patients’ biggest problems, and write one blog (or a series!) giving them great info on how to (safely) feel better.
3. Finally, include calls to action when blog writing for SEO. You’re going to be providing lots of valuable knowledge, and you want to give them a chance to easily get more of that great know-how inside the blog they’re reading. You can include links to same-subject freebies they can download by providing their name and email address, a link to a service that fits the blog topic, or an invitation to register for an upcoming webinar.
Ready to start blog writing for SEO?
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