When TrustedHousesitters got in touch to talk to us about their database of articles, we were happy to help. As a large company, they’re well aware of the importance of content marketing and had built an excellent blog covering a range of common pet problems. However, they’d realised something was missing – the stamp of quality that a qualified vet could bring to their website. We dove right in, and have checked, edited, and improved over 150 articles for them to date.

How does the veterinary proofreading service work?

Our veterinary proofreading service is simple to use. You send us your already-written pet content on a document, and we’ll return the checked document to you – complete with comments, annotations, and suggestions. Our vets will make sure you haven’t said anything correct, that you haven’t missed an important symptom or cause, and that you have got the right level of seriousness when discussing a symptom or condition. Once you’ve uploaded the suggested changes, you can use the vet’s name alongside ‘checked by’ to show your readers that they can trust your article.

What are the benefits of medical proofreading?

Content marketing is all about creating a relationship, so it’s important to make sure your article is as trustworthy as possible. Articles written by veterinarians are great, but if you have already got lots of content then our veterinary proofreading service is another option.

The benefits of getting a vet to medically check your articles include:

• Greater trust from readers
• Less likely to get complaints
• Better SEO thanks to increased E-E-A-T

Conclusion

We’re confident that our vet writers have helped TrustedHousesitters improve their blog. If you’ve got content that needs medically proofreading, get in touch and see if we can help!

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Finding our content writing team

Often, small companies get in touch with us directly, asking for our help with writing their pet blog. But sometimes, they actually employ a digital marketing service, who do the planning and keyword research, then order the articles from us on their behalf. That was the case with Raised Right Pets, who used well-known pet agency Cliverse to design and create their content plan.

We’ve worked with Cliverse on several projects, and they immediately got in touch to see if we had a dog content writer available. After discussion with them about the project, we were able to assign a small team of vet writers with interests in nutrition. This not only means the company gets writers with extra nutritional knowledge, but it means our vets enjoy their work more. We love writing about our personal interests!

Long-tail keywords

Raised Right Pets’ content strategy heavily relies on writing pieces targeting long-tail keywords. As a small company, this makes sense – they’re easier to compete on than some of the less specific keywords. However, this presents a challenge for the pet content writer, as very specific knowledge is needed to write a good article. Luckily, our vet writers are not only experienced with using long-tail keywords, but they have the knowledge to write on very specific subjects, like the expected weight gain for a yorkie or what to feed a dog with acid reflux.

Keywords on a theme

The keywords chosen by Raised Right Pets weren’t random – they were all on or near the theme of dog food and nutrition. For instance, growth rates for certain dog breeds, what to feed a sick dog, or articles about bad skin or gastroenteritis, for whom a diet change may be the answer. Theming their keywords like this ensures that only those pet owners searching for answers about their pet’s diet would come to their website – it’s much more targeted than simply taking the ‘scattergun’ approach to dog blog keywords.

Experts on hand

Having expert vets on hand for advice as well as writing articles allowed Raised Right Pets to screen out unsuitable keywords or change the direction of the article to ensure the advice given was in line with veterinary recommendations and recent advances in animal nutrition. Rather than blindly writing the article suggested by keyword research, our vets were able to ensure that the articles were clinically correct, safe, and following the evidence to give readers the best experience.

The results

Raised Right Pets now have a well-stocked blog, with hundreds of articles written by qualified vets. They rank in the top 5 for lots of their long-tail keyword choices. All in all, a successful partnership!

Click below to see an example of an article written by one of our dog content writers for Raised Right Pets.

If you think your blog could benefit from a qualified dog content writer just like Raised Right Pets did, you can get in touch with us or read more about our services.

The post How a dog content writer helped this company reach their marketing goals appeared first on The Veterinary Content Company.

How we helped Your Paws

When Your Paws first approached us, they were looking for writers to help flesh out their pet food reviews. But as our relationship developed, Tom asked for help creating calculators for his website. First, he wanted a calorie requirements calculator – we were able to advise him the features that we, as vets, found useful in other calculators, and what we’d like to see. Once he’d created it, we sent it to vets who tested it for him, checking that it was working, and that the instructions were easy to understand.

Next, we helped with a puppy size calculator. Again, we were able to test the features, advise on the copy for the page, recommend an additional section for vets to make it more trustworthy, and even send it to vets outside of the company to get more feedback. Result? A calculator vets are thrilled to use – which means he’s getting direct hits, recommendations, and even backlinks when vets write about puppy growth.

Could you benefit from our pet product design consultancy service?

So if you have a pet product that is at the design or testing stage, and you want some industry insight into whether it will be useful, our qualified vets will be pleased to give their expert opinion. Get in touch and we’ll find you a vet (or team of vets!) to look at your product, research problems, and provide their professional opinion on your pet product to help you get the design perfect, first-time!

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SEO for Online Shops – the Basics

Pet owners, or any customers, searching for a pet product online are unlikely to move beyond the first 2-3 shops on Google results. They might move past a shop they’ve had a bad experience with, or one that has bad connotations, and they’re likely to compare costs across a couple of websites unless they have brand loyalty. So they’ll likely look at the top 2-3, maybe a little further if the top result isn’t a shop they like. To be in with a chance of making the sale, your website needs to be in the top five search results for the product. Remember, pet owners might search ‘pet shop online’ but they’re just as likely to search for the individual item they are after – ‘buy dog food online’ or even ‘buy Royal Canin dog food online’. That means you need to rank for the individual product, not just ‘pet shop’ – and that’s where pet product SEO comes in.

Product Category Texts

Product category texts are SEO heaven. They’re packed with keywords and information about the products to be found in that category. This area should be used to explain the types of pet products that can be found in the category, as well as when each might be useful. Our vets add an extra dimension to a category text, as it’s easy to tell the product category text is written by someone with real veterinary knowledge, not just SEO expertise. That’s not to say pet shop SEO isn’t at the fore of what we’ve done here for FirstVet. In fact, we followed careful instructions with long lists of keywords to be included, but still managed to make it readable, and useful for the pet owner.

You can find the pet shop category texts at the top of the page. As you can see, the client has ‘hidden’ most of the text – proving that this exercise is as much for pet product SEO and Google ranking as it is for the pet owners using the shop.

Brand Texts

A lot of people buy into a brand, not necessarily their product. Commonly searched-for brands include the big dog food companies (Royal Canin, Hills, Purina) or those with a major market share of treats or toys. By having a short description about each brand, you can increase your keywords around that brand whilst helping your customers understand who they’re buying from. We are currently helping FirstVet increase their SEO and rankings for major pet brands by writing their brand texts.

Buyer’s Guides

Buyer’s guides are another great way to help your customers work out exactly what to buy. Buyer’s guides can be lengthy and explain what features of a product pet owners should be on the lookout for. They’re something we’ve done a lot of here at The Veterinary Content Company, which just goes to show how valuable they are for pet product SEO and aiding customer decision making. After all, you want to solve your customer’s problems – not leave them confused by all the options available to them.

You can read more about writing buyer’s guides in our separate post.

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We don’t write XX best articles

If you’ve come looking for a vet writer to write your ‘XX best dog foods’ article, you’ve come to the wrong place. Most of our vets are registered in the UK, where the RCVS frowns upon endorsement. Since we feel that these articles would constitute endorsement, and we want to be brilliant vets as well as great writers, we don’t write this type of dog food articles. They can also feel a bit sleazy to us as vets – we don’t want to feel like we’ve ‘sold out’ or that we’re a paid mouthpiece for a company, no matter how good the food!

So how can we help?

Don’t worry, we can still help! We know how can you improve your pet product SEO by including expert opinions without us being unprofessional. There are two main ways to write dog food articles without providing an endorsement of the food itself. One is to write a dog food review article, which looks in detail at a food and lists the pros and cons, so the user can make their own judgement as to whether it is a good dog food.

The second approach is to write a buyer’s guide. For SEO reasons, most people writing an ‘XX best’ article will have a buyer’s guide section at the beginning or end of the article. This has two functions. First, it provides plenty of words for Google’s bots to work from. Second, it explains some of the considerations that should be taken into account when purchasing the product.

The art of writing a buyer’s guide

Next time you read a ‘XX best’ article, look at the buyer’s guide. They’re usually short, and split into even smaller sections, each covering an aspect of choosing the product the buyer should be aware of. When it comes to dog food, the sections are often about ingredients – completely ignoring that this is not a reliable way to assess dog food quality.

Our buyer’s guides are different. They may mention key ingredients, but they also mention other things to consider when choosing a pet food for your pet, like the quality of the brand or the size of the kibble. Our vet writers use science and their many hours of studying nutrition to determine what’s important and what isn’t when it comes to choosing a dog food. And the fact the buyer’s guide was written by a vet counts for a lot too. It’s these differences that will make your dog food articles stand out.

Scroll down a little in the article linked below, and you’ll see Sarah-Jane’s buyer’s guide. She used her knowledge to identify the most important factors to consider when buying a dog food for Boxers. Take note of how it’s clear where her part of the article starts – it’s very important that our vets aren’t accidentally muddled up with the endorsement side of the article.

If our commitment to our profession and reputation hasn’t put you off, and you want to chat about how we can help you with your dog food article, you can reach out any time through the contact page.

The post Dog Food Articles (Buyer’s Guides) appeared first on The Veterinary Content Company.

Perhaps your in-house writer is an expert in behaviour already, and they just want a vet to discuss some of the medical options for treating behaviour. That’s where we come in! Using one of our vet experts can add a lot of authority to your piece and help it rank on Google. Or maybe you have an article that was written last year, and you want to update it and add a bit of pizazz. Updating old articles is really important – Google will look at the date an article was last updated when ranking articles. Providing an update with a comment from a vet is hitting two Google ranking points in one – the use of an expert (to add authority and trust) and the update itself.

In the article below we were approached to help update 10 articles per month by adding expert comments. We were asked specific questions by the journalists, which we wrote answers to. They then chose key comments to include in their article.

If you think your article would benefit from adding a vet’s point of view, get in touch with our team. We have a variety of pricing options and are happy to work with you to take into account any deadlines you might have in mind.

If the comments you need aren’t for your own article, you might be better using our media enquiry response service. This can be used for HAROs and other PR requests. We provide a small team of vet experts to get you the fast turnaround you need.

The post Vet experts to improve your in-house articles appeared first on The Veterinary Content Company.

We don’t endorse products

As vets, we cannot endorse pet products. So, we don’t write ‘XX best dog foods’ articles, as they involve saying one product is the best – and that’s endorsement in our book. Besides, as any vet will tell you there’s a lot more to nutrition than rating a dog food, and even the most carefully-designed dog food isn’t going to be right for everyone.

But we can do a review or buyer’s guide

Instead, we offer two options. The first is a ‘buyer’s guide‘ type article, that highlights what owners should be on the look out for when buying a product. The second is an in-depth review of a product, looking at the pros and cons and making sure pet owners have all the information they need to make an informed decision.

The art of writing a dog food review article

These articles can be pretty heavy going in the wrong hands! To make them as useful as possible, our deep-dive vets look at all aspects of the product, from components or ingredients to the delivery packaging and everything in-between. Luckily, our vet writers have the skill to make the articles flow well and be easy to read, ensuring they don’t become a dirge.

The article linked below was one of the first dog food reviews we wrote for this client. We developed the structure by looking at the information available to us and determining what was useful information for the reader. And as you can see, we didn’t stop with the manufacturer’s website – reviews on online marketplaces and forums were taken into account, and in some cases we needed to contact the manufacturer to get the information we felt the readers should have.

This attention to detail – along with the vet’s nutritional knowledge – shines through in the article and helps this review be far more trustworthy than many of its competitors.

If you need articles writing about dog food or other pet products, but aren’t sure whether the deep-dive review is right for you, check out the buyer’s guides instead. And remember, you can always get in touch with us to discuss your needs and see how we can help.

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We are regular writers for The Vet Channel, a company providing video resources to veterinary practices in the UK. For this article, the task was to make vets aware of a new resource available to them. The resource is a video designed for waiting room TV, which introduces the topic of neutering and provides some pros and cons for pet owners to consider.

Because we’re all vets here at The Veterinary Content Company, our B2B marketing articles are much more authentic than they would be if written by a normal freelance writer. Not only do we know the veterinary lingo, we can also empathise with the day-to-day reality of being a vet in the UK. As clinicians ourselves, we know the pressures our colleagues are under, and our understanding and empathy are clear when we write. Also clear is our veterinary sense of humour – something all vets recognise and relate to! This means we can make sure these informational posts appeal to other vets, increasing the likelihood of a purchase.

If your business sells to vets, and you think you’d benefit from some insider vet knowledge, you’re in the right place. Whether you need to speak to a vet to get a feel for what the profession thinks of a topic, or whether you need our writing skills to speak directly to vet professionals, we can help. Pop an email over to Liz and she’ll pass you to the best person to help.

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This article was SEO-led. This means the topic was chosen for its high search volume. We were also given subheadings, keywords and FAQs to include, all of which were carefully chosen after SEO research. This approach is likely to result in a better result for web traffic, but it does have some disadvantages. It can make an article more difficult to write, and there’s a risk that inexperienced writers sound like robots while trying to utilise all the key words. There’s also a risk of writers missing out important information – or accidentally including incorrect information – because the subheadings and structure are too leading.

Luckily, using a veterinarian like Dr Hannah Godfrey means that they can use their clinical expertise to ensure a disease explainer article like this covers all the essential points, regardless of whether they were discovered during the SEO research. Our writers are experienced at utilising keywords and Hannah did an excellent job of ensuring the ‘explainer’ article covered the major points of the disease process and provided good value to readers.

Our team of qualified vets can write disease explainer articles for all pets while naturally using supplied SEO data such as keywords and subheadings. Misinformation quickly perpetuates on the internet, so using a vet writer is one of the best ways to ensure your blog articles are clinically correct and give safe advice. If you already have dog disease articles written, you may want to consider our clinical proofreading service to check that the advice given is up-to-date and safe.

The post Dog Strokes: An SEO-led dog disease explainer article appeared first on The Veterinary Content Company.

What is content marketing?

Just in case you’ve come here straight from Google and you aren’t really sure what content marketing is, it’s probably worth quickly giving you an overview. Content marketing involves writing articles that your readers will find useful, whether or not those articles sell your product. The idea is to create trust and to position yourselves as knowledgeable and empathetic. So, if you sell toothbrushes, you could write articles about tooth health or jaw pain – even if the article doesn’t directly recommend toothbrushing with your toothbrush as a solution.

And where does SEO come into this?

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is the practice of fine-tuning a website to come high up in search engine results pages (SERPs). In this context, it means getting people landing on your page who might be interested in your product, by using content marketing. If we go back to our toothbrush seller example, to improve their search ranking, they might want their blog to answer some commonly asked questions about toothbrushes and dental care, even if they aren’t sales pages. Designing your content marketing around keywords and search terms helps people to find your content – and therefore your website.

The client

The article was written for a pet product company that sell a product designed to help with anxiety. Their end goal, of course, was to increase sales. But they decided to go this by creating a database of information on dog behaviour. They came to us because our team of vet writers can lend authority to these articles and this level of expertise helps their brand image.

The article

“Anxiety is a common emotion in dogs that is described as a feeling of unease or stress.” In this dog behaviour article, Dr Gemma Cliffin MRCVS highlights the symptoms associated with anxiety and how to recognise them.

This article is a good example of how we naturally include SEO data within our writing. Our client sent a title, structure, subheadings, keywords and FAQs for this article. The task was to write an article for pet owners with the tone of ‘friendly, knowledgeable expert’, whilst sounding natural, and not like the keywords were inserted to manipulate Google. With all these instructions, it can make it difficult to write a nice article, but Gemma has done a wonderful job.

Conclusion

As vets, we cannot endorse pet products. However, dog behaviour articles like this can be used to explain the possible problems the pet product may solve, and are an important part of a content pyramid for marketing products such as pet beds, supplements, foods, and toys. If your pet business wants to talk content marketing, get in touch and we’ll talk you through the options. You might also be interested to read more about pet product SEO.

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