Good medical copywriting is an essential component of marketing your medical practice online…without it, hardly anyone will have the motivation to contact you about your services.

A big part of using medical copywriting to your advantage lies in identifying your “hungry market” – people looking for a solution to their problem who cannot find one. If your copy doesn’t appeal to this “hungry market,” it will hardly benefit you…no matter if you do it yourself or pay a professional.

How do you find this “hungry market” you ask?

Conventional methods involve keyword research, a necessary task indeed to find words you should use in your copy for SEO purposes. Some keyword research tools even teach you how to identify a market, find out who they are and what they want.

However, this alone misses a key point in identifying the “hungry market” for your practice.

More importantly than simply knowing the right market, your message has to include the right offer with the right message delivered the right way. Keyword research alone cannot address this challenge.

Copywriting veteran David Garfinkel suggests three questions you should ask and answer to ensure your medical copy is as effective as it can be.

1. Who is your market?
2. What is their problem?
3. How do they talk about it?

The third question is key – and the one most copywriters miss.

Think about this way…keywords are like ingredients in a recipe. But to make the dish taste great, the ingredients have to be mixed in a certain way. Leaving out an ingredient or using too much or too little means the dish, or copy, will not be very good.

Medical SEO keywords, as you know, are an important part of obtaining high search engine rankings. But you are limited in the number of keywords you can place in your copy without it looking repetitive.

Not only do an excessive number of keywords make your content look ridiculous to readers, it can get you in trouble with the search engines.

How can I get more medical keywords into my copy without destroying its flow?

Potential patients use certain keywords to search online for the services you offer – having a strong presence of these keywords is an important step in bringing quality traffic to your site.

Below are 11 ways you can get more keywords into your copy without your readers even noticing it. However, the search engines will see these medical SEO keywords and rank your site accordingly.

1. Break keywords into different sentences and paragraphs
2. Use quotes for “personal” key phrases
3. Harness medical keywords into bulleted lists
4. Break copy into sections
5. Include a “more information” link
6. Include “opposite” medical key phrases
7. Consider “stop” words for choppy keyword phrases
8. Create medical keyword specific pages
9. Combine medical keyword phrases
10. Add words
11. Use medical keyword phrases in testimonials

Check back with our SEO Medical knowledge center soon for a more expanded version of this article with examples, etc.

Creating unique content for your medical website is a necessary component to developing search engine rankings and a following.

Search engines look for and reward sites who generate informative and unique content – not because they want to make medical SEO copywriters miserable but because they want to provide their users with the most valuable information.

Search engines have the ability to identify useful content quite easily and differentiate it from content that is simply slapped together with a bunch of keywords to only build rankings.

Three types of unique content you can develop for marketing a medical practice online include:

1. 1. Editorial content

Pretty much anything written by a human can be considered editorial content. Examples include blogs, articles, landing pages, etc. Editorial content is ideal for medical websites trying to corner a certain niche like this example from Florida plastic surgeons at Accent Plastic Surgery & Aesthetics. Editorial content can be generated yourself or hire an expert SEO copywriter to research and prepare this type of content for you.

1. 2. Machine-built content

These are sites that pull data sources and produce automated content. Examples include Expedia and Bing travel – sites with unique data or reviews about products or services.  Medical Internet marketing professionals can make great use of this type of content to provide reviews and patient critiques about their practices.

1. 3. User-generated content

Means just what it says, content that’s developed by users and site visitors. If it’s done right, it can be extremely valuable but it’s difficult to harness. You need a community of followers first then an incentive for them to create the content. Ever heard of Wikipedia, YouTube or Digg? These are just a few quick examples of sites that rely on site users to develop content.

Before you begin generating unique medical web content, have a plan in place detailing what you need and where you want to go. It’s possible to have a combination of all three types of content – but you need to sit down and figure out which content type is best for the type of customers you’re trying to attract.

Learn more about this breakdown of types of content by watching this video from Rand Fish and SEOMoz.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – Generating Unique Content from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

And if you need a plan or help developing your content, contact Medical SEO copywriting experts at SEOMedical today for more information.