10 Types of Blog Posts For Your Therapy Website

Many people have a hard time blogging, and understandably so — blogging can be time consuming and frustrating if you don’t know how to do it. A lack of writing inspiration, not knowing what to write about, or not knowing how to structure a blog post (even if you were inspired to write something) can turn anyone off from blogging.

But, as I have shared with you many times before, blogging is vital for your website. Blogging not only adds content to your website, it also helps increase your ranking in Google (more pages of quality content = higher ranking on Google), increases the likelihood of engagement on your website, builds trust with your website visitors, increases a visitor’s site duration, and provides you with content to share with your list.

Because blogging is so important for your private practice website, we put together a handy-dandy guide of the 10 types of blog posts for a therapy website, as well as some quick blog guidelines, which you can refer to to get the job done quickly.

Blogging Guidelines

Should be 600 words, minimum: The optimal length of a blog post is often debated in the online marketing world. I shared an article by Social Media Today on our Google+ page, where they talk about the pros and cons of short and long blog posts. As a general rule of thumb, I recommend that a blog post should have 600 words minimum.
Have a Curiosity-Provoking Title: A good title can mean the difference between someone reading your article or clicking off to another website. Create a title that invokes a sense of curiosity. We have also found that using numbers in your blog titles works great – ‘5 Ways to Know Your Child Is Suffering from Anxiety,’ for example.

10 Types of Blog Posts for your Therapy Website

1. Instructional — Instructional posts tell people how to do something, including giving people tips. These posts are generally the ones that are among the popular both in the short term, but also in the longer term (ie: one of the reasons people search the web is to find out how to do things. If you can rank highly with your instructional post, then you can have traffic over a length of time).

Examples:
  • 5 Steps to Solving Your Child’s Sleep Problems
  • 3 Ways to Decrease Your Anxiety at Night
2. Informational – This is one of the more common blog post types, where you simply give information on a topic. It could be a definition post or a longer explanation of some aspect of the niche that you’re writing on. This is the crux of successful sites like Wikipedia. This form is also great for handling FAQs.

Examples:
  • What is ADHD, exactly?
  • Can ADHD be Treated in Psychotherapy Without Medication?
3. Reviews – Another highly searched for term on the web is ‘review’ – I know every time I’m considering buying a new product, I head to Google and search for a review of it first. Reviews come in all shapes and sizes and on virtually every product or service you can think of. Give your fair and insightful opinion and ask readers for their opinion – reviews can be highly powerful posts that have a great longevity.

Examples:
  • Reviews of Books (i.e. new books on parenting, managing mood, etc.)
  • Reviews of Movies – and why you think potential clients should see them or not
4. Lists – One of the easiest ways to write a post is to make a list. Posts with content like ‘The Top Ten ways to….’, ’7 Reasons why….’ ‘ 5 Favorite ….’, ’3 mistakes that parents make when….’ are not only easy to write but are usually very popular with readers and with getting links from other bloggers. If you start with a brief list (each point as a phrase or sentence) and then develop each one into a paragraph or two you might just end up with a series of posts that lasts you a few days.
5. Interviews – Sometimes when you’ve run out of insightful things to say it might be a good idea to let someone else do the talking in an interview. This is a great way to not only give your readers a relevant expert’s opinion, but also for you to perhaps learn something about the topic yourself. One tip if you’re approaching people for an interview –- don’t overwhelm them with questions. One or two good questions are more likely to get you a response than a long list of poorly thought out ones.
6. Case Studies – You can’t use real client stories, of course, but you can illustrate, via a case-study-like post, how a couple resolved an issue, or how a client can transition from problem to solution.
7. Profiles – Profile posts are similar to case studies but focus on a particular person. Pick an interesting personality – perhaps someone who suffered from bipolar disorder (see also our article on narcissism) or depression — and do a little research on them to present to your readers. Point out how they’ve reached a functional place in their lives. This can illustrate that working with issues is possible.
8. Link Posts – The good old ‘link post’ is a favorite of many bloggers and is simply a matter of finding a quality post on another site or blog and linking up to it either with an explanation of why you’re linking up, a comment on your take on the topic, and/or a quote from the post. Of course adding your own comments makes these posts more original and useful to your readers. The more original content the better, but don’t be afraid to bounce off others in this way.
9. Problem’ Posts – I can’t remember where I picked this statistic up, but another term that is often searched for in Google in conjunction with product names is the word ‘problems’. This is similar to a review post (above) but focuses more upon the negatives of something. Note: Don’t write these pieces just for the sake of them – but if you find a genuine problem with something, problem posts can work for you.

For our purposes, this could include:
  • The Problem with Seeing a Life Coach When You Really Need a Therapist
  • The Problem with Grounding Your Kids Every Time They Violate Your Rules
10. Contrasting two options – Life is full of decisions between two or more options. Write a post contrasting two approaches that outlines the positives and negatives of each choice. In a sense these are review posts but are a little wider in focus.

Examples:
  • The Differences Between EMDR and Brainspotting
  • The Differences Between Supporting and Enabling

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