Why Do Blogs Outperform Regular Pages?

Mariah Tang: Did I say that out loud? Welcome to “Did I Say that Out Loud?”, a podcast where Stu Eddins and Mariah Tang reflect on agency life and answer questions from our higher ed and healthcare clients about the latest in digital marketing, content and SEO.  

Mariah Tang: What’s wrong with my kid? Why is his poop weird? You know, things like that things you don’t want to ask anybody out loud. So you Google it? Did I say that out loud? 

Stu Eddins: We’re going to talk about something today. That’s kind of cool. Why do blogs outperform regular content? Now regular content can be in healthcare service line pages. It could be program pages for higher ed. It can be product description pages, if you’re selling things like services or product bundled with services online. In other words, we’re talking about your regular website content, or wanting a blog content. And often blog content is considered variable content. Because it changes a lot. It’s not that you know, you’re you’re you’re at the whim and fancy of whoever’s writing a blog, though, sometimes you are. That’s not why it’s variable. It’s at the same topic can be discussed from multiple angles. And that can be the variability to over the years, Mariah, you’ve noticed something that I’ve noticed, and I think anybody who pays attention has probably seen you see your blog articles coming out at the top of viewership over content, regular content pages time and time again. Yeah. Why do you think that is? 

Mariah: There’s a lot of reasons. Sometimes it’s a timeliness factor. So if there’s something trending in the news, or something that happened on the, you know, the TV show that’s sweeping the nation, we’ve seen this happen, too. I think it was the show, this is us. Several years ago, we were working with a hospital group out of Washington, DC, and there was a Widowmaker heart attack in one of the characters and nobody had really ever heard much about this. And so overnight, we wrote a blog about it, published it the next day, and it hit number one on Google from all the search markets. And I’ve stayed there for quite some time while the show was popular. And still, if you Google, you can, it’ll crop up. It’s because of the timeliness because there wasn’t a lot of content out there about it. And we just hit it at the moment where everybody was Googling, you know, what’s a Widowmaker heart attack? Or, you know, would somebody have lived if this was real life kind of questions. 

Stu: Yeah. And again, to return to healthcare, we saw the same thing. We were already I think, preparing a little bit of an outline or an article about fentanyl and opioids. And the day after Prince died, we were able to get something up. And it just roared to page one top of page quickly. Now, in some ways, Google does look for timeliness in content. And if it’s timely and news, and it’s getting signals all over the place, it will push it to the top. And, you know, we’ve had all sorts of assistance we’ve given clients to make sure that they’re right there for that lightning moment. Getting timely content, absolutely. They get noticed. And I have noticed some things that you’d have to I had a client who had a a an article, blog article on tabular constipation. The article was like seven years old, and it was always still the number one most viewed page on their website, or constipation. 

Mariah: Yeah, that brings us to point number two still looking at you. And number two, so we did that. 

Stu: Yeah, give me the $5. Bill. 

Mariah: It ‘s a relevant factor. It’s a it’s a question that is asked by just about every parent out there, you know, what’s, what’s wrong with my kid? Why is his poop weird? You know, things like that things. You don’t want to ask anybody out loud. So you Google it. And it’s those micro moments when you’re the ones able to provide that answer that it just reinforces, yes, there are other people wondering about this, too. Perhaps my kid is just fine. And I need to feed him some vegetables. And it also gives that brand reassurance that it’s coming from a Henry Ford or a UT Southwestern or another great big organization that clearly has the expertise to you know, answer these questions for you. So it’s a it’s a validation of the question you’re asking and then answering it and microfilm it. Yeah. 

Stu: And I’ve seen I see this on a lot of websites that have a somewhat active blog. I say somewhat active. It’s not like they’re posting every single day but they have some regularity to their posting. Frequency does draw attention to a blog more often, not just from Google, Bing and Yahoo, but from the people themselves. People are searching for stuff. The thing I’ve noticed is particularly with that type of a question or widowmaker heart attack somebody, there are these timely things that are out there but they have a they have a evergreen type of a presence. This is something that people have had asked about their kid from timeout of mind. This is something people were concerned about with heart conditions from timeout of mind. The best part about it is it develops traffic coming to your website. And it comes it comes from a number of different sources, a number of people groups, all sorts of things come together to lift that piece of content to the stratosphere as far as viewership. And let’s be careful here. There are also some things that are slightly more obscure topics, rare disease, or a highly specialized college programs, the search volume is not terribly high. That doesn’t mean you can’t learn it at the top by being I haven’t blogged content that’s worthy of attention. 

Mariah: My number three in my brain is always the shareability. And the relevance, if like you said, if you can own a slice of an audience or a niche topic, you can stay at the top all day long, and you’re gonna reach exactly the people that you’re trying to reach. And we work with the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center on their neurology blog. And we worked with them on a story that actually won a digital health award a few years ago, it was about a day in the life of one of their fellows training to be a very specialized form of neurologists. And there was no content out there about this, the only content that really existed that we could find, were those program type pages are about our fellowship, and really, you know, lauding the universities that were, you know, putting forth this fellowship, we took it the other way, we made this fun visual timeline, we spoke with an actual resident or fellow about what this day would actually be like starting at 400, and ending at, you know, whatever the equivalent is super late at night. And it was really interesting, because it only was a matter of a week, maybe two weeks that it was at the top of Google, it was outranking Johns Hopkins, it was outranking some of the other regional academic medical centers that also offered this fellowship. But the content on those sites was boring. And the content that we put together was fun, it was relevant, it was shareable. And to your point earlier, it’s variable. So if you know for whatever reason, they change up their program, swap in a new picture, swap in a new timestamp, that contents ready to go. And it offered lots and lots of interconnectivity with the other pages from their site that admittedly were a little bit more boring. But you can link out to the, you know, the about the curriculum, you can link out to check out stories from the residence, you can link out to the virtual tour of the labs, whatever it is, but it provides that kind of fun entry point, the entertaining entry point that is really shareable because of that role.  

Stu: That’s cool. That’s pretty good. Another thing that we need to talk about a little bit. When I’m doing reporting on website Behavior Survey analytics, when I when I’m asked to track down the behaviors within a particular segment of the website, it works across everything I’ve worked in legal I’ve worked in health care I’ve worked with in the higher ed. Because the it’s not the content I’m about to ask you about. It’s about the people. And what happens is that the blog articles outshine the regular content in organic search. I once had, let’s start with the healthcare example. I once had a cardiologist that was very upset that the blog articles were ranking higher and getting more traffic than his actual, he was the stakeholder for the department, the department pages in the website, we’re not getting that type of attention. The thing we were able to do is, is help that particular doctor understand something, she had a valid concern, first off, but secondly, it opened up an opportunity to have a discussion. If you think about the way the content is used, when people have a question about heart health, when they have a question about, you know, what I want to be when I grow up when I want to what programs don’t want to take in college, that’s like that. That is the research just that that middle decision phase that people go through, they spend a lot more time there than they do at the commitment, end of that of that particular process. They want to get more information. And the more often you are able to provide information points in that decision path. You increase the likelihood they’re going to choose you for the solution. So in a way, in a way, we really do want to have the blog content coming up higher in search for specific searches. Now if somebody searches for Best Business Program and 50 miles or cardiologist in Omaha, Nebraska or so, you don’t want the blog articles coming up for that very different type of search. In fact, the two I just mentioned about proximity and about in about location, they tend to be more transactional than informational. Yeah. And that does tend to get down to that pointy end of the funnel. Where I’m ready to make a decision. Let’s get these questions answered about who’s closest who’s nearest? Who’s cheapest? Who’s best? Who’s whatever? The middle part, that section about why is my kid constipated? What’s going on with this particular heart condition that I need to be aware of? Think about, think about this way. Sex in the City came back on TV, and Mitrovic died on a peloton. 

Mariah: Can you Oh, well started?  

Stu: Well, the thing is, they also prove two things. Not only did pills and sales drop a little bit, but searches for it went up right through the roof. It was not brought the product and home exercise influenced by heart health. So yeah, there’s a lot of stuff that goes on in the immediacy of the moment when the news is hot is coming at you. But there’s also the stuff that hangs around forever. And it’s at Evergreen middle section, where you want to have more data points, more content, pages, ranking higher perhaps for specific searches, when it comes to the transactional helped me decide who questions that’s where you want your regular content pages to step forward, perhaps  

Mariah: Yeah, like you build a you build that web of context around, you build the stories, you build the examples, the testimonials that this dispelling of myths about writing your peloton at home. From that point, you can then drive them all to the logical conclusion of we need care right now, do we need to sign up for this program right now? If not, here’s some more information that you might find useful in your life. Good luck, we’ll see you when you’re ready. And so it’s really just keeping that continual conversation happening. And you know, I have to I have to be a little snarky, because that’s my way. A few years ago, well, I will say like, about 10 years ago, I had an executive tell me to my face, content, marketing is never going to be a viable sales opportunity for you, you should kind of hang it up. And from that point, it just made me more angry and more passionate about what I do what my team does what we do as a whole. And if you fast forward to today, just about every campaign that we work on, for, for big clients, for small clients, for people in the middle are recommending some aspect of storytelling, whether it’s a lengthy, you know, content marketing experience, with social ads, with podcasts, with blogs, with blog, whatever it might be, or it’s just one or two stories to say, let’s, let’s explain this. And then you can drive your campaign for ice pages with integral I mean, it’s it’s super effective, it’s relevant. And it’s, it’s by far one of the easiest entry points, I think, for organizations to get into, everybody has stories, all of your stakeholders have stories, all of your patients or students have stories, it’s just a matter of capturing them and deciding how to strategically tell those stories, while also lifting up the rest of your pages. In. 

Stu: First off, remind me never to challenge you that way. But there’s also another aspect about the difference between what I what I would consider to be the regular blog, regular website content and the blog content. One is more human than the other. We’d have to have more of a corporate voice on regular content pages. I mean, if you want to put yourself to sleep at night, go to almost any higher ed website and start reading their program catalog. That’s some pretty dry stuff. How many different ways can you can you describe business accounting classes? Well, there’s some variety, otherwise, we wouldn’t have so many offerings. But really, when it comes down to it, what you have is a backup back of the package description of what’s inside and that’s it. Yeah, it is somewhat brief. It is to the point. There’s no There’s no human connection to it much. There’s a time and place for it. Believe me, people want to know this stuff. It’s that pointy end that you spoke about the right rate, but people make their decisions with data based on sentiment feeling in humanity. They don’t make a totally Mr. Spock decision totally our logic all the time. More often than not, it’s well you know, this looks pretty good to me. And everything I’ve read so far says these people are like me to is making the human connection, that community connection, however you care to think about it. And it’s kind of vital. I’ve found it I have absolutely no hard data to back it up. Just observationally that when we have a chunk of website content, and again, it could be service line of programming, whatever you want to think of it, the the product or offering, and it’s out there and it does pretty well you’ll get X number of signups you’ll get a wide number of phone calls, and so on. But there’s a network of related blog content, variable content, you can call it blog, you can call it news, you can you can call it this is what we think whatever the heck you call it. But there’s a variability out there that had connection in that middle part of my path for decision making. What I find is if you have that content, and it connects to your regular internal content, that descriptive page, what we find is that the the conversion rate and the number of forms and calls you get, whatever it is, goes up, you can have all sorts of blog content, news content, whatever you care to call it PR content, if you don’t connect it to your regular content, all you have is a readership, you don’t tend to have the development of a lead or a prospect. And so that’s the other part that’s kind of important. Take the take the humanity you’ve developed over here with the blog or the variable content, and now with a direction with the interior content of your website that says okay, now you notice now you know we do, here’s what it is. And here’s how we take care of it.  

Mariah: Yeah, the smart organizations are, are wrapping it all together. So your blog lives within your regular website. It lives, page to page through your service lines, through your programs, whatever it is as an embed, it’s, it’s that constant interaction of hey, you’re here at this point. But remember, we have all of this other context at this other point too. And, you know, we’ve seen organizations put RFI forms on blogs, we’ve seen them put, fly now all kinds of things, kind of calls to action in the middle, you know, as long as that’s relevant. And as long as it’s driving those blog pages can be really versatile for campaigns or, you know, even just ongoing education. 

Stu: In what we’re doing marketing, we get involved with things like digital marketing, and advertising, we get involved with pay per click, we get involved with impressions and reach, we get involved with all sorts of nice little metrics that describe eyeballs on content and fingers on mouse clicks. But I’ll bet you anything, that if you have a site that has a well-developed, supporting content in blog news, or PR, whatever, again, whatever you call it, and you have the same related content on the website, in the service line program, descriptive, this is what it is content. I would bet dollars to donuts that the one gets shared among people, the other one does not. Like don’t often see somebody who’s come to that Business Accounting page and been so blown over by but they click that share button and it’s out on X tomorrow. Look how boring I am. Yes. However, if somebody reads a testimonial in the form of a blog article about the experience of being in business accounting at this particular institution, about my interactions with these pediatricians at this hospital, that read those testimonials, that humanizing content that gets shared. And as much as it pains, my digital marketing heart to say it, word of mouth wins time and time again. It is the thought leadership it is that connection you make with people. And and that variable content section is where that really gets developed at a time. 

Mariah: You can’t buy from somebody if you don’t know they exist. Right. And you don’t know they exist. So you have a problem that requires you to find out.  

Stu: Yeah, you know, we were looking for some help some help us some house cleaning firm for my parents. And there’s more transactional intent with that. So yeah, we were going right to the content pages to see what people did. But we were also paying attention to reviews. We were paying attention to the websites, blog content in this case, because it described happy customers and what they were getting it described in depth, which means you know, we clean your kitchen. Great. What does that mean? And in the blog content, a couple of them actually talked about what they clean for food safety, and put it in that context, as opposed to we wiped out your counters and cupboards. They gave a little more insight into it. We chose the one that had more supporting content, because for one thing, they gave comfort with their answers for the other thing. They also gave us something as as far as a mark, we’d say, Hey, you said you do this. I’d like to see evidence that this is really going on. This is what I expect now. So it can be helpful in that regard as well. Anyway, so we’ve talked about why blogs outperform regular content. We’ve looked at why that came be a very good thing. We’ve also discussed only briefly, the need to interconnect all this stuff when we’ve talked about interconnecting your website content on other podcasts that talk about it all. Yeah. But it is critically important to create not just the content, but the internal web of your website that links all this stuff together. But connective tissue that says, You’ve read this now do that, or you read this, here’s some more supporting information, then go do that. All of that is tied together. And yes, that’s why often blog content will outrank regular content on the website for a given theme. 

Mariah Tang: Thanks for listening to “Did I Say That Out Loud?” with Stu Eddins and Mariah Tang. Check out the show notes for more information about today’s episode. And if you have any questions, concerns or comments, hit us up anytime at stamats.com.