By: Melissa Mitri, MS, RD
Image credit: @Thought Catalog via Unsplash
Creating top-notch health content is essential for your wellness brand’s recognition. While you may know this, you may struggle to maintain a consistent content creation process. Maybe you don’t like creating content, don’t have the time to do it, or feel overwhelmed with creating a content plan in the first place.
Because of this, you may be considering AI-generated content to save you time and energy. While AI can be a useful tool to overcome writer’s block (I know, I’ve tried it myself), Google is still rewarding (and will continue to reward) original, personalized content with a human touch.
In this article, you’ll learn 10 key tips for creating amazing health content. I’ll also talk about how outsourcing to an expert SEO health content writer can take back your time and energy, especially if content creation is just not your thing.
Let’s dive into the exciting world of content creation!
How to Create Quality Health Content
1. Know your audience
The first step in any type of content creation is knowing your audience. Ask yourself the following questions:
- Who are you speaking to with your content?
- Who is it intended for, and what are their pain points?
- What are their dreams, goals, and desires?
- What type of language do they use when describing the problem they’re seeking a solution to?
- What is their current level of understanding related to the health topics you’ll write about?
All of these are critical questions to consider to know your audience in and out. Knowing your ideal audience on a deeper level will make for quality content that speaks to their needs and resonates, and also helps generate health content ideas.
This will lead to more page views, engagement, and ultimately, conversions.
2. Utilize SEO strategies
If you don’t build SEO into your content creation process, it doesn’t matter if your article is the most amazing piece of content ever created. Your article simply won’t be found. And if you’re putting your precious time and effort into creating content, you want a return on your investment.
Enter SEO.
As an SEO nutrition writer, I help brands create content with Google rankings in mind, helping you get the most eyeballs on your content as possible. This starts with keyword research and determining which keywords you can realistically rank for and that you have the authority to write about (more on this in a future blog topic).
But for starters – if you’re a Registered Dietitian, you will want to be writing about nutrition-related topics. This means you don’t want to write about mental health or medications if it doesn’t link back to the central theme you’re an expert in – nutrition.
Looking for a good keyword research tool? Keysearch and SEMrush are my two favorites (Keysearch is more budget-friendly if you’re just starting out).
3. Research competitors – and do better than them
As part of my content creation process, I analyze my client’s top competitors in order to help them move higher above the rest. SEO is not just about picking the best keyword – you also have to know and understand your competition.
Once you have a solid keyword, then you’ll want to comb through the top 3-5 articles on page 1 of Google with that keyword. Jot down the pros and cons of those articles, and then jot down how you can do better than them.
For example, if you’re writing a recipe post and all of the posts in the top 5 positions including nutrition facts, you’ll want to include that as well. Look for things you can add that they aren’t already doing. Some examples are adding some expert tips or personal stories to make it more relatable and helpful to the reader.
Image credit: @Glenn Carstens-Peters via Unsplash
4. Make it easy to understand
If you’re a B2C business, your content must be in layman’s terms. This is not always easy to do, especially if you are a health expert yourself. You may have read all the research studies on the topic you’re writing about or you have a research background such as in dietetics, nursing, or mental health. But you have to put this aside and speak in the easy-to-understand language that makes sense to your reader.
There are tools to help you do this – Grammarly and Hemingway Editor are two of my favorites. They not only help with grammar, but they help make your content more readable and provide tips to make it easier to understand. This is essential because if your audience doesn’t understand your content, you already lost them.
5. Write for skimmers
Pretend that all of your readers will simply skim through your article rather than read it word-for-word. Because according to recent polls, about 80% of readers just skim through content. This means your content has to be easy to follow so they can get the main idea from just skimming through. I am definitely a skimmer (I can be impatient by nature, I just want to get to the point!), but I’m definitely in good company.
To do this, keep paragraphs and sentences short, use lists when possible, and use H2 and H3 headers to break up the content. Depending on how long your article is, you may have multiple H2 and H3 headers – and that’s okay.
6. Incorporate storytelling
Nobody wants to read a standard, bland blog post. People want to hear personal stories – this makes the content more relevant to them and relatable (and also helps you stand out from the crowd).
As an RD, I have many stories to share from my clients and my own experience on a particular topic. Sharing stories not only make your content shine but also helps with Google rankings, as this is more powerful than just simply sharing the facts.
Gone are the days when anyone could start a blog and write about whatever they wanted, regardless of their experience. Nowadays, you need to prove your authority on a certain topic in order for Google to make it more visible to consumers.
People (and thus Google) want to get their information from experts, especially when it comes to content that can affect their health and well-being.
A Registered Dietitian can easily showcase your brand’s expertise and authority. An RD can write your content, support your brand, and include their byline on your blog posts. All of this adds more trustworthiness to your post and tells your audience that an expert is backing up your brand.
If you are a Registered Dietitian yourself but don’t like creating content, you can still show your authority by hiring a dietitian ghostwriter to write your copy and include your name and credentials in the byline.
Linking to valid research studies when relevant is another solid way to display your authority and expertise on a topic.
8. Include visuals when possible
Adding images, video, or infographics throughout your articles helps break up the text, clearly explains a concept, and is engaging to see. Especially for those who are visual learners, adding these visuals can help your content stand out longer in their minds or make it easier for them to understand.
Everyone consumes content differently, so it’s helpful to create written content incorporating visual elements. A good rule of thumb is to share some type of visual every 300-350 words.
Image credit: @Sixteen Miles Out via Unsplash
9. Source experts
If you’re not an expert in the topic you’re writing about, it’s best to find someone who is. Including expert quotes or adding that expert in your article byline as a reviewer adds more trustworthiness to that article.
So any time you want to write about a topic that is relevant to your audience but is not in your wheelhouse – consider seeking out expert sources to help provide a higher level of expertise.
I’ve used this for articles I’ve written on skin health for example. In this case I sought out skin expert quotes that I felt would improve the quality of the article. I do this for many of my writing clients as needed in order to ensure the topic at hand is reviewed by a subject matter expert.
10. Stay current
In terms of your overall health content strategy, you’ll want to both create new articles and update and improve past articles. A good goal is to create a content plan to update each article every 6-12 months. This article may include new keywords, research articles, and current information to keep it up-to-date.
Just spending an hour or two updating an article can lead to a significant SEO boost if you do it right – so don’t neglect your old copy!
For example, for one of my writing clients, I create 2 new articles per month and update 2 old articles as well. In this way, we’re focusing on consistently creating new copy, but optimizing the old copy as well so it continues to drive traffic to their website.
4 Elements of Health Content Writing
To pull this all together and simplify things, there are 4 key elements of health writing. These are expertise, authority, trustworthiness, and experience, or E-E-A-T. The second “E” for experience was just recently added to Google’s core algorithm values, which can really set you apart from the crowd.
Basic AI-created content simply won’t do to meet these criteria. Let me explain each element in a bit more detail.
Expertise
To reiterate this point, “Expertise” is the extent of knowledge that the writer has in a certain subject. In order to rate highly on this, your content has to be written, or at the very least reviewed by subject matter experts.
This means your content should either be written by an expert on that topic or should have a byline of an expert reviewer. This reviewer would be an expert on that topic, where they vet that article as containing factual and credible information.
This is necessary for creating trustworthy content that Google wants to display on page 1.
Authoritativeness
This refers to the extent to which the content creator is seen as an authority figure on a given topic. There are a few parts to this in order to build a high-authority website:
- Creating topic clusters or a wealth of information on a certain topic. This strategy covers every possible angle around a certain broad topic such as “What is a heart-healthy diet?” It then goes into more specific details in subsequent posts such as “low sodium diet,” “DASH diet” etc that all interlink to each other.
- Getting more backlinks from high authority websites. When you get backlinks to your website from high-authority health sides like Healthline or VeryWell, this tells Google your site is a credible source of information that is vetted by the bigger players in the SEO world.
- Highlighting your expertise on your homepage and about page. If you are a health professional utilizing ghostwriters to write your copy, you’ll want to highlight your expertise on these pages. If you are a brand using expert writers, you’ll want to highlight their bios and specialties on these pages to show Google you have the authority to speak on these topics.
Either way, showing your authority is vital.
Trustworthiness
Customer trust will come in time when you showcase your authority and expertise. Creating consistent content that is relevant, accurate, and relatable will help build reader trust over time.
Experience
This is when your firsthand experience comes into play in your copy. Readers don’t want to read boring, blah copy or generic reviews from people who didn’t actually try a product or service themselves. Instead, you’ll want to infuse any personal experiences you can into your articles. This shows your readers you have the real-world experience to speak about a topic.
You can do this either by taking pictures of products you’ve tried, writing about your personal experience, or sharing a relevant client story. This can make your copy more engaging, as your readers will think “If they could do it, I could do it too!”
Hiring a Dietitian Writer to Build Brand Authority
Hopefully, you feel in a better place now on how to create amazing health content and why creating a content plan is so important.
A registered dietitian can provide all of the four essentials of E-E-A-T for quality health content writing and add that personalized touch. A health expert who understands your audience and has SEO knowledge to boot is your solution. It can help you create content that not only wows your audience, but that ranks well on Google.
To learn more about my SEO nutrition writing services, contact me to schedule a discovery call. I design custom writing packages to fit your business needs, goals, and budget.
