Content creation is a cornerstone of digital marketing, and that includes in addiction treatment center content marketing. In fact, nine out of ten marketers have incorporated content marketing tactics into their digital marketing plans.1 For most, this means using social media, creating videos, and writing lots and lots … and lots … of articles.
Articles are an effective content marketing tool because they provide value to users while playing a key role in SEO. In fact, their value often far outweighs the effort required to create them. Properly optimized articles create opportunities to improve several top ranking factors like backlinks, user experience, and establishing expertise.
It’s no wonder that there are hundreds of millions of blogs!2
With so much emphasis on writing articles, many organizations find themselves sitting on a glut of content that grows less relevant and more outdated with each passing day. But with proper content maintenance, your addiction treatment center content marketing can continue generating value long after its initial publication date.
What is Content Maintenance?
But just because an article gets stale or old doesn’t mean you should throw the article out. Instead, do the opposite! Give those articles some extra love by updating statistics and reworking the clunky parts. The process of improving old articles is called content maintenance.
Thirty-eight percent of bloggers update their articles this way, and a third of all bloggers believe that content maintenance produces strong results.3 In the case of your addiction treatment center, you should take advantage of every opportunity to reach new clients, and that includes content maintenance.
Why Should You Update Your Addiction Treatment Center Content Marketing?
Your content reflects you, your brand, and your expertise. With that in mind, you don’t want to leave prospective patients thinking your treatment center is outdated just because your content is. Obviously, you want to include the latest facts and statistics in your articles, but here are a few more tips to consider.
1. Incorporate Current SEO Best Practices
We don’t have to remind you how frequently SEO best practices change. And if you have articles that you haven’t refreshed since the last major shift in the Google algorithm, there’s a good chance your addiction treatment center content marketing is using SEO that doesn’t work.
Go through your articles and make sure you aren’t keyword stuffing, overusing anchor text, or targeting exact match search queries. Although this was effective before, these aren’t ranking factors that will improve your position on the SERP today. Actually, they could hurt your rank.
2. Improve Article Quality
Even though you put your all into every piece of content, no one can crank out Pulitzer Prize-worthy articles all the time. Sometimes, you aren’t in the right mindset, you get interrupted, or you just couldn’t find the data you needed when you wrote an article. Maybe the article topic itself is completely irrelevant now.
Circling back to older articles with a fresh set of eyes gives you a chance to improve what you started. And this is important because Google has clearly stated their algorithm considers quality when determining where your article will rank on the SERP.
3. Correct Facts and Statistics
Statistics change about as often as SEO best practices do. And in terms of addiction treatment center content marketing, new data about substance use disorders comes out every year. So you need to update your content accordingly to include the latest SUD data.
Sharing accurate, up-to-date information on your website increases client trust. Four out of five people say they need to trust a brand before using their products or services, which is absolutely true for addiction treatment programs.4
4. Revise for Brand Identity
When was the last time your addiction treatment center rebranded? Was revising your old articles a part of that rebranding strategy? If not, it should have been.
Regardless of when you drafted your articles, each one needs to reflect your current brand, including the types of treatments and services you offer. Establishing consistency in presenting your center and services directly impacts your ability to attract patients. Studies show that brand consistency can increase revenues by as much as 33%.5
A Good Website Makes a Great First Impression
Concerned that your addiction treatment center content marketing strategy is outdated? Dreamscape Marketing can help. Learn more about how to refresh your articles and connect with more clients by scheduling a strategy session at 888.307.7304.
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