How Often Should You Be Blogging As a Physical Therapy Private Practice Owner?

Aug 29

Table of Contents

If you are familiar with search engine optimization, otherwise known as SEO, you likely know that blogging is a recommended practice in order to help with your SEO.

Yes, absolutely. I want to confirm that that is the case. Blogging does help with SEO and your credibility on Google.

But you're likely wondering how often you should be blogging: if less is more, if more is more, how many times you need to publish new content per month, and how on earth you're supposed to do this on top of your current patient load.

That's exactly what we'll cover here.

And before we go any further, I know this is titled appropriately for physical therapists, but any health care provider can follow these same exact instructions.

Why Blogging Matters for Physical Therapy Private Practice SEO

Blogging serves a very important role for SEO. Blogs allow you to increase what we keyword density. Blogging also allows you to showcase your expertise, the way that you treat your personality, and more to potential patients and clients.

To be honest, that alone should give you the mental note: “Of course I need to be blogging.” Rather than questioning the “if”, if that’s where you are at.

So… why does blogging matter in regard to keyword density and Google trusting you/showing your website to your ideal clients in search?

I'll break it down for you here.

In order to come up on Google for anything, Google has to be able to trust you for that thing.

In order for Google to trust you, you have to remember that Google is just like your nervous system; It only knows the input that you give it. In this case, the input is the content that's on your website.

Content can mean website pages and blog posts. In order to feed Google more information, you can make more website service pages or general pages and/or you can write blog posts.

FWIW, you need to do both- but we’re focusing on blog posts here.

Blog posts are typically informational in nature. They answer questions that your ideal client has about the services that you provide. They are trust builders. Both for your ideal client and Google.

Blogging (intentional blogging) allows you to be known in Google's eyes as the “expert” of a specific thing. You want this because when you are the expert in Google's eyes, it means that you will have more credibility, which then feeds into where you are going to rank in search results. No credibility, you're likely not going to rank. Having credibility will help you rank higher.

Let's do an example.

Let's say that your practice focuses on ACL repair, rehab, and general sports performance. You have a bunch of content around sports performance rehab, physical therapy treatment and rehab specific questions around different sports injuries, and general orthopedic questions answered on your blog.

You then write one blog post about dizziness because you saw one concussion patient and you wanted to make sure you had something about dizziness on your website. And you thought- hey, I like to treat this! I need to talk about it.

Awesome. And also, you can imagine that having that one post about dizziness is not going to help you come up higher on Google for dizziness treatment or concussion treatment because you have one piece of content on it.

Blogging allows you to introduce more opportunities for Google to trust you for a specific thing because you are giving Google more “words”, in this case, we can call them keywords, to pull from to understand what you are the expert in.

Again, Google is operating just like your nervous system. It is living in the dark and only knows the information that you feed to it.

When you have twenty posts about ACL rehab, Google is going to trust that you are a person who does ACL rehab and you are able to answer questions about ACL rehab. You mentioned ACL, ACL Rehab, ACL Performance, Return to Sport, Sports Performance, Rehab, etc. in your blogs many, many times.

Google starts to make the connection that your domain is a place where people can learn about all those things. This is the goal if you want to come up for ACL rehab.

That one post about concussion management might help you a little bit, but when you only have one post, you can't expect Google to think that you are the guy to send people to for concussion management content.

So, that’s the job that blogging does. It allows you to build trust with Google but also… it allows you to build trust with your potential patients.

How Often You Should Actually Be Posting?

When I coach clients on how often they should be posting a new blog on their website, I base it on the fact that most people do not have a marketing team to be posting.

Most people want to write their own content because, again, if we are building trust for our ideal client, this should be our voice and reflect our treatment protocols and methods so that people can get an actual look at what working with them looks like.

So you're not going to hear me tell you that you need to be posting 10 blogs a month. We'll talk about why that will likely not be a good idea regardless in the next section of this blog. But you're not going to hear me tell you that you need to post 10 blogs a month because it is not realistic for the time that you have. My goal is always to have the maximum ROI for the time that you spend working, and also recognize that blogging is not patient care and it is likely not going to be the one thing that you opened your business for. I totally understand that.

The way that I prioritize posting and how often you should post comes from a place of understanding, as a previous clinic owner and clinician, that this is not something that you have time to do every single day. It also takes into consideration how to actually succeed with SEO, based on my years and years of experience with clients inside my done-for-you SEO service as well as students inside my SEO School course.

Here's exactly what I recommend: You should be posting two blogs per month.

Yes, that's it. Two.

Now these blogs need to be structured accordingly, and I'll go through that a little bit later, but if you are planning to start blogging, just know that you need to set aside time to write two blog posts per month.

I'm not going to tell you how long this takes because it's going to take different people a different amount of time. It will also take longer if you decide to do extensive research for one blog and then just answer a simple client question in another (keep reading for details on this).

Just recognize that the time that it takes is going to be different for everyone, and you just need to embrace it. It is what it is.

Quality vs. Quantity: What Google Prioritizes

Your blogs need to be high quality. Period.

What exactly does that mean? I'll give you a list of things to include below, but the biggest thing that I'm asked is: how long should your blogs be?

Typically, blogs need to be between 850 and 1,200 words.

If you're answering a post that is something like "Everything You Need to Know About XYZ," then that post likely needs to be around 2,000 words if you're actually talking about everything that someone needs to know about something.

In other words, don't name a post "Everything You Need to Know About ACL Rehab" and then have it be 500 words, because that is absolutely not everything someone needs to know.

At the end of the day, adding more words for filler content is not the answer. You want to make sure that what you're adding and what's inside the blogs is actually necessary to be in there and is helpful in contributing to the answer to the question that is being answered inside the blog.

Don't just add stuff to add stuff.

I mentioned that your blogs need to be high quality. What exactly does that mean?

The long and the short is that your blogs need to be actually helpful and provide a new outlook on a specific topic, as well as a comprehensive outlook on a specific topic. That can be incredibly subjective, so I'm going to give you some more ways to make them high quality below.

Here are some ways to make your blog “higher quality”:

Ensure that you are breaking up your content accordingly, like I have here. You should only have one to two sentences per paragraph. It really does make a difference. Have a beginning, middle, and an end or an intro, body, and conclusion.
Make your blog post actually helpful. Don't hide information because you feel like you're giving people answers inside the blog, and then they won't come to see you. This does not matter. Give them the information. That is the point.
Give people next steps. If you give them something to try, let them know that if this doesn't work, the next thing you can do is this, and so on.
Add photos into your blog posts. You can add diagrams, you can add anatomy photos, as long as they are open source or you pay for a resource to add them, or you can make your own photos/take your own photos with models.
Add videos to your blog post. An example of this would be if you discuss doing a specific exercise. Embedding a YouTube video of you doing that exercise can be really helpful.
Add in a patient or client experience and first-hand experience. Talk about a client case that you've had and the way in which you treated them. This obviously needs to be related to the title of the blog. If this is an ACL rehab blog and talking about what the best flexibility exercise might be, you might talk about a patient who came to you for ACL rehab and the difference that you made in their flexibility by doing specific things.
Do your research and link away to resources. If you are talking about stats or clinical evidence, etc. it's a-okay to link to the other experts or to research articles.
Give them more content to read afterward. This is where you would reference your own other blog posts that you've written about this topic. I usually recommend between three and four.
Write how you need to write. I actually prefer to use my voice to write my blog posts. I use this software (affiliate link) to write my blogs with my voice. If you need to speak your content in order to write it, speak it, if you need to write, then write. Write your first draft, then edit it. Don't edit in your head.
And I'm going to say it: Don't use AI to write your blog post. I think this one is pretty self-explanatory.

Remember: It takes however long it takes.

What to Write About When You Are Not a Writer

I get asked this question all the time, and my answer is always the same. Whether or not you think you are a writer, if you are a physical therapist and a practice owner, you should be an educator. That doesn't mean you have to teach courses, but you educate your patients every single day and answer their questions and alleviate their concerns every day.

Since you do this, you should have no problem writing a blog post when that is the intent anyway.

I'm not asking you to write a paper about scientific literature or random topics that you used to have to write about in undergrad. You're simply writing content about the things that you're doing every single day and talking to the people that you need to talk to.

Yes, this means your blog post content is written for your ideal client and patient, not for other physical therapists. You can go ahead and just toss the idea that your blog post needs to be absolutely perfect and include every single caveat because other physical therapists are going to read this.

This is not for other physical therapists. This is for your potential patients.

Give them the information that they need to know, distilled down and in a way that they can actually understand it and take it in. This will build trust with your ideal client. I promise, even if you think you are not a writer, or even if you are not a writer, you don't have to be a writer.

You just have to talk about the things that you're already doing every single day as a practitioner.

I suppose if you are not educating your patients, this may be a different story, but I'm assuming that you are. ;)

How Do I Know What to Blog About?

Honestly, this is a loaded question because there is math and science that go into exactly what topics to write about and what your blog post title should be. Here's the thing that's too much for a blog post, so I'm going to give you the easiest way to begin. There are two ways that you can begin right now:

Go write a blog post about a question that you're answering inside the clinic over and over and over again, and create a resource that you can then send to someone after they ask that question.
Go to answerthepublic.com. That website will give you options for questions that are actually asked by people every single day on Google. You can take any of those questions and answer them inside of a blog post, following the recommended ways to make your blog high quality above.

Where to Learn More About Blogging and SEO

If you're interested in learning more about blogging and SEO, I'm going to put some of my resources below. I offer both coaching calls as well as DIY courses where you can learn everything you need to know about SEO, or you can just learn what you need to know about blogging and start a little lighter.

If you're looking for a more direct approach, a coaching call is recommended because I can help you figure out what exactly to blog about, as well as audit or edit your existing blog posts and help you make them more efficient for SEO and trust purposes.

How to get started with SEO:

Take a look at my SEO Mini-Courses and Mastercourses.

Courses that I’d recommend: