How to Earn More Clicks Without Resorting to Clickbait

How to get clicks without using clickbait

What actually gets patients to schedule a consultation will blow your mind! Enticing and ubiquitous, clickbait headlines are often big on emotion and meager on substance, leaving readers unsatisfied at best and furious at worst. As a result, there’s no shortage of critics of this practice, including the Internet users that can’t help clicking on those compelling links. And yet, these eye-catching titles seem to obtain millions of pageviews. So are they effective, or are clickbait articles just another black hat tactic to avoid? Click here to discover the answer…

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The truth is that the answer depends on what you consider to be a successful result. Do you want the biggest audience or the perfect audience? Do you want the most pageviews or to build a positive online reputation and to foster relationships with your patients? Mining data for clues on how to attract users to your website is an essential part of an effective dental and medical marketing strategy, but it’s easy to become dazzled by the wrong numbers. Some typically undervalued metrics include engaged reading time, bounce rate, average finish, longevity, and returning readers. Optimizing for these often overlooked stats might reduce the number of total hits, but some other important figures ($$$) may increase due to your astute approach.

How Do You Attract the Right Audience to Your Website?

Quality content carries weight, builds confidence, and educates the visitor on a topic in which they’re interested. Additionally, substantive material is more likely to boost your viewership over time. Facebook, Google, and other major media brands have recently taken a stand against sites using clickbait and switch tactics, which they measure by comparing pageviews to reading time, comments, and “likes.” Having said that, an exciting, curiosity-inducing headline can still pay dividends; you just have to make sure to deliver on the promise of the article’s title.

What Makes for an Exciting, Non-Clickbait Headline?

The field of web marketing is constantly changing, but some things have proven to be relative constants: while people respond best to substantive content, there is also a lot to be said for a catchy title. After all, clickbait exists for a reason. So how can the psychology behind clickbait headlines be applied to your authoritative and educational medical and dental content?

Rosemont Media Can Help

At Rosemont Media, we understand how important it is to craft content that’s informative, engaging, and persuasive from opener to conclusion. To learn more about how we can optimize your website to enhance the patient experience and help achieve a high pagerank on leading search engines, please contact us today.

Editor’s note: The original version of this post was published on May 12, 2015.

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