A psychiatrist at a centre I write for in Dubai never says a person is ill. He says the person has an illness.
That line sits in a blog post I wrote for the centre this month, about people who keep telling their families they’re fine. It tells the reader how she’ll be spoken to before she has spoken to anyone, which does more for her than his credentials could.
Another post, from last week, opens at 10:15 at night. A 9 year old is at her bedroom door asking for water, and her first glass is still half full on the bedside table. A parent searching late at night sees her own daughter there, and she reads to the end, where the post asks her to book a first session and bring what she’s noticed since September, the two glasses of water included.
SEO gets a new name every few months. Once the technical setup is done and someone keeps checking it, most of what’s left is writing a page a person reads to the end.
Both posts link back to the service page they belong to, and so does every blog I write for the centre. Over time, Google sees that the centre has answered the questions around each service properly, and the service pages climb. Organic traffic grew 32% in three months. So the blogs don’t have to sell anything. Their job is to earn the reader’s trust, so that when she reaches the end, she picks up the phone.