How to write a SEO nutrition article: for dietitians

Many of us dietitians have added a blog to their website to share our evidence-based nutrition information. Whether these are simple tips & tricks for nutrition, article reviews or recipes, it is important that peeople are able to find our credible sources of information for two mains reasons:

1. People will find a credible expert in nutrition, potentially become a client.
2. People will learn the evidence-based science behind nutrition, which is ever increasingly important given the large amount of misinformation on the web.

But, when one Google search for “nutrition” turns up over 1.1 billion results, how can dietitians make sure that their nutrition blog articles stand out from the rest?

One way is through something called search engine optimization, otherwise known as SEO.

What is SEO?

SEO is a way to drive website traffic by strategically structuring website content (such as blog articles). The priority of search engines is to provide the user with the most relevant answer to their search query so that they will continue using the search engine.

To do so, search engines crawl through a website for relevant information to be ranked against all other results. This means the website or blog article with the “best answer” will automatically rank higher on search engines without paying for advertisements.

SEO can appear intimidating and can become complex when diving into the nitty-gritty, but the reality is that dietitians with basic knowledge of search engines and blog writing can easily start writing SEO blog articles by following the 4 steps discussed here!

Let’s start.

Step #1: Know what nutrition questions potential clients are searching for

It is important for us dietitians to ensure that our website is optimized for the type of clients they want to attract. To do so, we should have an idea as to what their potential clients are searching for in the first place.

To know what an ideal client is searching for, try brainstorming the search queries of an ideal client. For example, if a dietitian working in Calgary is specializing in digestive health, one ideal client could be:

1. A woman between the ages of 30-50
2. Struggling with irritable-bowel syndrome
3. Living in Calgary, Alberta

In addition to these characteristics, It is also important to consider the stage that potential clients may be in their path to seeking a dietitian.

For example, the search queries of someone who is new to a diagnosis or to their path in learning more about nutrition will be vastly different from those who have received nutrition education in the past, but both are potential clients. To illustrate this, let's use the same ideal client persona that we created above and brainstorm their potential search queries.

Ideal client A, is not actively seeking nutrition counselling but curious about nutrition/diagnosis may search:

1. Tips to decrease bloating
2. Low FODMAP recipes
3. What is irritable bowel syndrome

Ideal client B, is actively seeking nutrition counseling may search:

1. IBS nutritionists in Calgary
2. Best dietitians near me for women
3. Digestive health coaches online

Quick Tip #1: It’s also important to note that many people may not know yet that a dietitian is the answer to their nutrition answers, and may search up other terms such as “nutritionist”, “health coach” or “nutrition practitioner”. As a registered dietitian or registered dietitian-nutritionist, you are unlikely to have these other titles on your website. However, you can still integrate these keywords into meta-descriptions which will not show up on your blog post, but will still rank for the searchers query.

Quick Tip #2: Be careful with abbreviations, such as IBS which stands for irritable bowel syndrome. Those less familiar with the condition may search the entire term, and those more familiar may use the abbreviation. Be sure that your blog post is searchable for both terms and abbreviations.

Step #2: Structure titles with keywords

Unfortunately, it is not just as simple to answer the questions clients have to improve SEO. We also need to compete with all the other websites that the search engine brings-up. This is done through “ranking”, or where the search engine considers several factors to decide where the website will show up in the search results.

One of the ways we can increase the likelihood in ranking higher is selecting the proper keywords. Digital Marketing Consultant, Shammika Munugoda, suggests thinking of keywords as belonging to one of the following three categories:

Low-hanging fruit

These are keywords that have high search volume, but little competition. Using these keywords will make a nutrition blog articles the easiest to rank higher.

Medium-hanging fruit

These are keywords that have high/moderate search volume, but moderate competition. Dietitians using these keywords may have a harder time to rank higher, but it is still possible.

High-hanging fruit

These are keywords that have very high search volume and very high competition. Dietitians using these keywords are up against a lot of competition, and may not help unless their page already has very high-traffic

Knowing these three types, we can pretend that we want to create a blog article about Low FODMAP foods as we know that this may answer the search query of the ideal potential client identified above.

However, simply titling our blog post “Low FODMAP foods” will be difficult to compete against. A Google search for this thread of keywords produces over 6 million results, meaning that our blog article will be ranked against all the other 6 million results (high search volume, high competition).

This means that we need to narrow our search results by expanding our keywords to find low-hanging fruit, similar to conducting a literature search for high-quality research in a large journal.

With a bit of trial and error, a better title for our blog post could be “Low FODMAP foods to help bloating” which yields around 500,0000 search results. This lower, but still significant search volume means our article may have a better chance of ranking higher.

Step #3: Structure body and subheadings with keywords to improve SEO of nutrition blog posts

Keywords shouldn’t only be found in the title, but should be embedded throughout the entire article. This can be done by taking advantage of strategic subheadings to answer the queries potential clients may be asking.

For example, if we go ahead with the title “Low FODMAP foods to help bloating” then we can use a keyword suggestion platform to help determine low-hanging fruit keywords to structure our subheadings.

Here, I have identified some low-hanging fruit keywords that may help structure the blog post “Low FODMAP foods to help bloating”. I used a keyword finder called ubersuggest.

Quick Tip #3: The two main analytics to pay attention to are (1) Search Volume (VOL) and (2) SEO Difficulty (SD). Ideally, low-hanging fruit will have higher search volume (>1000), and lower SEO difficulty (usually <30). If you are running advertisements, you will also want to pay attention to Cost Per Click (CPC).

Now, we can see that people are searching for low fodmap desserts, diet plans and meaning of fodmap. Knowing this, the blog post may have the following formatting and SEO subheadings.

Low FODMAP foods to help reduce bloating

• What does FODMAP mean?
• What is the link between FODMAPS and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS?)
• Example of low FODMAP diet plan

Step #3: Make nutrition blog posts shareable to improve SEO

Besides selecting strategic keywords, another way search engines “rank” web pages is through back-linking. This can be thought of as how many other pages have “cited” the blog post, or how many times the link to the blog post shows up on other sites.

Dietitians can easily improve the back-linking of their websites by simply sharing them to their social media channels. This increases the search engines confidence that the blog post is credible and good quality, which will cause it to rank higher.

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In summary, the general framework to create an SEO nutrition article consists of the following steps:

1. Create an ideal client persona, and brainstorm their search queries
2. Structure your title with keywords with moderate-to-high search volume and varying SEO difficulty
3. Structure your subheadings with keywords with moderate search volume and low SEO difficulty
4. Make your blog posts shareable by linking to social media to increase back-linking

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