10 tips to develop great health care marketing content

As more and more patients are searching online for health information and solutions, it's important to realize that quality content may be the best tool for search engine optimization.

Here's the list from Byron White, chief idea officer of ideaLaunch.

1. Develop a content marketing plan. Many digital marketers just dive in without any type of plan. This is always a mistake. Before going any further, you need to get organized and understand next steps

2. Use free and paid research tools to research terms. There are a slew of both free and paid research tools which can help you define keywords necessary to create a keyword glossary. Use tools in conjunction with your own creativity to create an inclusive list of terms.

3. Find the hot topics and keywords. By understanding the industry and leveraging tools, you can discover hot/trending topics and keywords to be a part of your mix in addition to the mainstay terms.

4. Develop customer profiles for testing/research the competition. Building customer profiles and competitive research allows you to draw upon a knowledge base when creating content to both stand out from competitors and connect with your audience.

5. Develop an SEO plan with "keyword silos." Made up of long tail and short tail keywords—in addition to building a keyword list, group it into like terms in order for your content team to leverage it in an effective manner during content creation.

6. Score content for SEO strength. Either via an automated tool or manually, score existing content for SEO strength in order to gauge what to optimize first.

7. Infuse your brand with great content. On the web, your content is your brand (and your brand is your content).

8. Create stories. People connect with stories more than just product pages and lists of features. Tell stories and connect with prospects at a much deeper level.

9. Define great content. Know what great content looks like before you develop it. You can't create something remarkable unless you have a vision in mind.

10. Document content publishing date. This is a frequently forgotten, but important tip. Only by documenting new content publishing date can you track/trend success of that content over time.

You can read more from Nicola Ziady here.