Do you want more dental patients? Investing in search engine optimization (SEO) and digital marketing can make a world of difference and help you get them! Like compound interest, gains can be exponential.
The keys to successful SEO for dentists are consistency, creativity, and patience. If you stick to a plan and pay attention to keyword blogging, Google My Business, web design, backlinking, and online reviews, you are guaranteed to improve your pool of prospective patients.
If you’re unsure about any of the jargon associated with SEO, don’t worry. We’ve explained all the key concepts that dentists need to know in order to create a successful digital marketing campaign that will attract patients. Good SEO companies will use these strategies. Keep reading this complete guide to dental seo to learn more.
Before We Start, Let’s Establish Some Definitions
On-Site and Off-Site SEO
There are two main types of online marketing techniques: on-site and off-site SEO. On-site SEO refers to things that can be done on your website, while off-site SEO involves the actions of other websites.
On-site SEO includes optimizing your website for search engines through techniques like internal linking, metadata maintenance, and blogging. Off-site SEO involves promoting your website through activities like guest posting, article syndication, and backlinking.
SERPs
SERPs are the lists of results that search engines return when someone types in a query. The goal of all SEO efforts is to get as close to the top of the SERPs as possible.
Keywords
Keywords are the words and phrases that people type into search engines. They help to establish what the person is looking for, or the intent of their search. Popular keywords for dentists include:
Dentist in [insert area]
Benefits of dental care
Can a dentist help with pain?
Teeth whitening
Dental practices near me
SEO for Dentists: Building an SEO-Friendly Website
A website is essential for any online marketing campaign. It provides a place to promote and link to your products or services. However, it’s important to consider what your website says, how many pages it has, and how it balances user experience with search engine rankings.
Must Be Responsive
An SEO-friendly website must be responsive, meaning it must look good on any size screen, from a small phone to a large wall tv screen.
Home and Landing Pages
At a minimum, dentists should have five core pages on their websites.
Homepage
About page
Services page
Blog homepage
Contact page
It’s crucial to have a separate landing page for each service, with at least 500 words (though 1,000 or 2,000 is even better). For example, if you offer dental cleaning, teeth-whitening, cosmetic, and dental implant services, make sure you have a landing page for each one.
In our experience, dental websites with over 20 pages and weekly blog posts perform the best.
Custom Design and WordPress Development
Custom WordPress websites are ideal since the platform is well-supported and easy to use. By using WordPress, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. And, after a bit of instruction, most people can publish blog posts without help.
Building a website on WordPress has increased security advantages. WordPress is a popular platform that is constantly updated to keep users safe from cyber attacks. There are also several trusted security plugins available.
Every dentist should claim their business on search engines, industry websites, and map directories when launching an online marketing campaign.
Claim Your Search Engine Business Accounts
Google My Business is the first account you should set up for your business. Google is the most-used search engine in the United States, processing an estimated 5.6 billion searches a day. By claiming your territory on the platform, you can ensure that your business is visible to potential customers.
There are many benefits to optimizing your website for local search, including appearing higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) for relevant keywords.
Remember, though, that while Google may be the biggest game in town, it’s not the only one. So claim your business accounts on other platforms like Bing and Yahoo!
Get Yourself on Directories
There are thousands of online directories, but not all of them are legitimate or helpful. Sign up for the ones that are relevant to your industry and will actually be beneficial for you.
You can use Yext and Synup to find good medical and dental directories, but both programs cost money to access fully. Harris & Ward is a professional online marketing team that maintains memberships with such services.
SEO for Dentists: Content Wins
Content creation is essential for any SEO campaign. The more articles, landing pages, and digital media you produce and publish, the more online visibility you will gain. This in turn will attract more links and traffic.
Service and Landing Pages
Your website should have a main landing page (homepage), a contact page, blog, and specific landing pages for each service offered. Each service page should be at least 500 words, but more is better, and well written.
Develop a Blogging Strategy
Blogging can help improve your website’s SEO. Fresh, weekly content is pleasing to search engine bots, and the more content you have, the more questions and issues you can address. In most cases, websites with more content tend to do better in search engine results, providing more opportunities to build your online presence.
Developing a blogging strategy can help you write relevant posts and publish them regularly. Most businesses with effective blogs use content calendars. Using one can help you save time.
As long as your writing relates to dental care or your practice, you should be fine. It can also be helpful to pick topics that conform to potential clients’ search intent. However, be sure to optimize your writing for conversions, or you’ll miss out on an opportunity.
When blogging, you should never:
Blog about religion or politics topics
Blog too often about terms unrelated to dental care
Write about your patients without gaining their permission
Badmouth other dentists or treatment methods
If you want to write your own dental blog posts, make sure you know how to use keywords and other SEO techniques like metadata, title tags, h1-h2 tags, and alt image text.
Article Syndication
Article syndication can help you get backlinks and name recognition, but be careful – if it’s not done correctly, it can harm your SERP ranking.
This is a process of publishing articles written by someone else under your name. Getting your name and practice out there online is great, but be careful of which websites you publish on. Algorithms may penalize you for duplicate content if not done correctly, which could negatively impact your ranking.
Guest Posts
Posting articles on your blog and guest posting on other blogs has three core benefits:
Expands your digital marketing footprint
Gives you brand name exposure
Provides quality backlinks to your businesses website
Working with a professional online marketing team that has already established a network of publications is the easiest way to secure guest posts. If you’re doing it alone, a good place to start is with affiliated professional organizations. For example, ask if your dentist’s association or local Chamber of Commerce has a publication that accepts articles from members. Also, dentists who aren’t competing for the same patients will sometimes collaborate on guest posting projects.
SEO for Dentists: Links Matter
To secure top spots on SERPs for desired keywords, you need to build a link portfolio. Without one, it is nearly impossible to land those coveted spots. So the question becomes: what types of links do you need to cultivate?
Foundational Backlinks
The value of a website’s backlinks depends on the website’s reputation. The more respected and established a website is, the more valuable its backlinks are.
Websites with .edu and .gov top-level domain suffixes offer the most valuable links. Links If you can get backlinks from established websites like Wikipedia and .org sites, do it! The same goes for .com backlinks from top industry sites.
Strategic internal links are a great way to link to other pages on your website. For example, this is an internal link to our blog post about the advantages of using WordPress. They are easy to implement and help both users and algorithm bots.
Backlinks and Mentions
Foundational backlinks come from websites with low authority, but they can provide a lot of “link juice” if you have enough of them. Guest post backlinks from high-authority websites are much more effective and can help improve your rankings quickly if done correctly. Mentioning your website on a local newspaper’s website is another good way to boost your local SEO.
Social media is essential for businesses today. Many people in their 20s and 30s rarely use search engines, instead relying on social media to find products and services. Therefore, it is important to have active accounts on multiple platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
In terms of social media content, every week you should:
Post links to any new blog entries and guest blog spots
Post links to evergreen landing pages
Highlight industry news
Comment on accounts that potential patients may also follow
Avoid controversial topics on social media, as you would when blogging. You want to attract clients, not drive them away.
Dentist SEO: Tools You Can Use
If you want to super-charge your SEO efforts like the pros, you’ll need a couple of tools.
Yoast: The Apple of WordPress SEO plugins, the free version of Yoast is fine for beginners, but if you want to unlock the plugin’s potential, you should upgrade to the premium version.
SEMrush and Ahrefs: The two leading standalone SEO platforms are SEMrush and Ahrefs. They both have dynamic keyword and backlink features that give account holders an edge.
SEO for Dentists: Good Reviews
Google, Facebook, and Yelp reviews can be very effective. For the best results, it is most important to establish a consistent flow of Google reviews. Positive Yelp posts can also be very helpful, and adding Facebook mentions often does the trick.
Paying for reviews can be considered unfair and deceptive marketing, which is punishable by the Federal Trade Commission. It may be better to hire a professional marketer to get testimonials and reviews.
Do not use a cookie-cutter dental digital marketing company. Your investment will be cannibalized if you do because the content and designs will be the same as your competitors.
To stand out, you need to cover similar topics and themes as other dentists, but in a way that is fresh and new. Algorithms and people are both drawn to what is new and different, so if you can find a way to stand out, you will be more successful.
Connect with a Digital Marketer
Harris & Ward is a digital marketing team that can help you attract more clients. We have a track record for helping dentists rank highly on search engines, so you can be sure we know what we’re doing. If you’re ready to get more clients, contact us and we’ll get started.
We tailor our online marketing and promotional services to each individual client, ensuring that they stand out from the competition. We don’t use generic templates – every client is unique to us. Follow us on social media and check out our blog for more tips on seo for dentists.
Search Engine Optimization Services to Grow Your Dental Practice.
Online optimization gives every business a better chance to succeed.
If you own a dental practice, you might not have considered how your online presence affects the way your business runs. After all, you offer a service that’s absolutely fundamental to living in our part of the world.
However, it’s still cutthroat out there and other practices are always competing to get patients in their doors. That’s why you need to do your best to show those potential customers that you exist and that your practice is the best choice. At the end of the day, you are operating a business and you need customers to stay alive. Business SEO services will help you do this.
The Benefits of SEO for Orthodontists and Dentists
Using organic SEO will simply bring more awareness to the existence of your dental practice. Sure, you could run a perfectly successful one based on word of mouth and reputation, but you wouldn’t be giving yourself the best chance to succeed.
But how many dental practices have the time of day to focus on digital marketing? Chances are, you won’t have a marketing professional on your staff and you’d be remiss to do it yourself or have one of your office workers give it a shot.
Hiring an SEO expert takes away the agonizing work of optimizing your website yourself. Here’s what you can expect from these valuable services.
1. Focus on Local Search
Search engine optimization as we knew it was primarily focused on keywords and website performance to determine which sites were appropriate to display on a SERP for a given search term. Now, with local SEO for Orthodontists and Dentists, it’s taken a step or two farther.
Local SEO appeals to searches with local intent. So, if you’re someone looking for a dental practice in Fort Worth; when you type in your search terms, Google will take into account your location and display practices nearest you.
As a business that operates in a static location, local SEO has to be a main focus.
2. Your Website Structure
The structure and speed of your website are some of the more important facets in appealing to Google’s algorithms. A slow and poorly laid out site is going to fall in the search rankings.
It should be easy for customers to navigate your website and find what they’re looking for within a few clicks. Categories and subcategories featuring relevant information are a must. For a dental practice, the site should be simple with only a few landing pages (about me, contact, testimonials, blog, etc.).
When you fill your landing pages with large images and unnecessary widgets, you’ll slow them down considerably. 40% of people will abandon a website if a landing page takes longer than 3 seconds to load.
3. Google My Business
Filling out your Google My Business card will improve your local search standings. If you fill out all of your pertinent information, namely the business details, your address, and contact information, then all of that will appear on Google and in maps.
More and more local searches are being conducted through map applications, so appearing on them will increase your chances of being found by your potential customers.
4. Consistent Citations
Filling out your NAP (name, address, phone number) on multiple listing sites will improve your visibility as well, but only if you fill out identical information on every platform. Inconsistent citations, which includes any online press about your practice, will lead to confusion for your customers and Google will burn you for it.
When we say consistent, we mean it. If you write “7th Street” on one listing and “Seventh St.” on another, that’s considered inconsistent. Every minute detail has to be the same. To that end, we are proud to offer automatic citation submission services to our SEO clients . Utilizing the power of Yext, we will do the heavy lifting of listing management for you so you can focus on doing what you enjoy most—caring for your patients!
5. Mobile Search 52% of global internet traffic is through mobile devices. If your website isn’t optimized for mobile search and mobile viewing, then you’re letting a big piece of the market pass you by. Any SEO service will be aware of this fact and advise you to build a mobile-friendly site.
6. Customer Reviews
Your dental practice should take customer reviews very seriously for obvious reasons, but also acknowledge that reviews have a big effect on your SEO. A practice that has thousands of great reviews published through various listings sites is going to rank higher than one with a few hundred good reviews.
Always encourage your customers to leave you a rating and review on the listings site of their choice. You should also promote your best ones on social media and through a testimonials page on your site.
7. Blogging
Content creation on your dental practice website is a huge part of SEO. You can use your blog to give your audience interesting and informative articles on all things dentistry, but also to toss in relevant keywords and phrases to appeal to search. Link building for dentists provides a boost in domain authority.
Offering up dental guides and how-tos will establish you as an authority in your field. Don’t overstuff your posts with keywords; the information and writing should always come first. A good blog can allow your practice to transcend your local area and give you clicks from all over.
8. Social Media
You may not like it, but people’s awareness of you is heavily predicated on your social media presence. People use Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to find almost everything these days, including their new dentist.
Simply being on these platforms won’t do it though. Formulating a content and posting strategy with your digital marketing campaign will get you more followers and create more awareness around your brand. When you’ve got a great social media presence, your Google rankings will increase.
DENTAL SEO IS THE WAY TO GO
Being a dentist doesn’t mean that you can’t bolster your business online like everyone else. Great business SEO services will take all of these methods into account and help you make the most out of your online presence.
With a defined SEO strategy and well-executed implementation, you can see an increase in your search rankings, an increase of organic traffic to your site, and ultimately begin growing your practice and revenue. We specialize in SEO for Orthodontists and Dentists.
LET US HELP YOU WITH YOUR BUSINESS SEO SERVICES
At Harris & Ward, our motto is all about helping you connect with your audience, no matter the field you’re in. Visit our page today to look at the different services that we offer and choose the one that’s right for you and the future of your dental practice.
For more dental marketing ideas, check out our blog.
In a survey on online health searches that the Pew Research Center conducted, 72% of internet users said they looked for health information online in the last year. Of those respondents, the vast majority started at a search engine like Google.
This group represents a massive pool of potential clients. But to capture any of them, you need to show up in those search results.
Proper search engine optimization, or SEO for dentists, can help. There’s no mystery in how Google creates these results. It’s a science. With a few small tweaks, you can reap the benefits of a better ranking.
Dentist SEO Starts With Link Building
Search engines build their results pages based on two factors: relevance and importance. Relevance is simple: it is the degree to which your content matches a user’s search terms and the intent of their search. Being relevant is the first step to showing up.
Importance is more complicated. Search engines determine how important a site is in the same way academics determine how important someone’s research is: through citations. But online, citations are links, so search engines rely on link analysis.
Link analysis can get complicated quickly, but for the purposes of dental SEO, you can boil it down to one key strategy: get authoritative or important sites to link to your site.
The more prestigious the site that links to you (that is, the more incoming links that site has), the more that link will help your SEO ranking. All links (with one exception to come) will help your SEO, but these links give you the biggest boost.
How and where those links are implemented also matters. Ideally, you want the anchor text (the blue text that makes up the hyperlink) for links to your site to include your most important keywords. Also, the links should be in relevant content and on a relevant site.
The one exception to the more links are better rule is link farming, or paying people to create fake links to your site. The suspicion of link farming is one of the fastest ways to get your site demoted in Google rankings. But link trading, or publishing a link on your site so someone will publish one on theirs, is fine. What does dentist seo success look like? It’s a combination of link building, content creation, and user experience. Finding a digital marketing agency that specializes in seo for dentists can help.
So, how do you get people to link to your site?
Publish Great Content
Search engines make their money, and a lot of it, by bringing in more users. They have an incentive to deliver content that people want to read. That means you have an incentive to provide them with the best content.
The most important part of your SEO strategy should be to think about what a human user would want, instead of trying to game the search engine. If you create good content, users will seek you out on their own, and other sites will link to your content.
In other words, the best way to get ranked by Google or other search engines is to create content that is rankworthy.
That kind of content will also help with your user interaction measures. When they rank pages, search engines look at how users behave once they find a page.
Do users hit the back button and pick another result?
How much time do users spend on the site?
How many other pages on the site do they visit?
One of these important measures is the bounce rate or the percentage of users who only visit one page on a site before leaving. Creating compelling content will lower your bounce rate. Local content, for instance, can help draw users.
Users will also visit more spots on your site if you create internal links between your pages. These internal links also have another key benefit.
Make Your Site Crawler-Friendly
Search engines build their database of websites by crawling the web using automated spiders. These spiders start with seed sets of high-quality sites and then follow the links out from there to discover other pages.
If these crawlers can’t find your pages, the search engines cannot include you. If you want to remove all doubt, you can always submit pages to Google manually. But there are ways you can structure your site that should make that unnecessary.
One thing you want to do is create a flat site to minimize link depth. Link depth is how many clicks it takes to get from the homepage to a given page on the site. Both crawlers and human users assume pages close to the homepage are more important.
Cross-links between your content can also help the crawlers. Once they find one of your pages, these cross-links will lead them to the rest.
Also, crawlers have trouble reading images. That is why you always want to include an alt attribute for all of your images. Otherwise, the crawlers will ignore any of your relevant pictures.
Think Carefully About Your Domain
Your website domain sends a signal to your potential customers. There are certain tips you want to follow to pick the best one possible:
Make it unique: never pick one that is just a plural, misspelled, or hyphenated version of another one
Choose only .com domains
Make it easy to type and remember
Avoid hyphens and numbers
For search engine rankings, you want to avoid subdomains as much as possible. Search engines will treat these as separate sites, so you will be competing with yourself for link authority and rankings.
Instead of subdomains, use subdirectories instead. Then, your single domain will build link authority instead of splitting it between subdomains.
Proper Keyword Placement
Search engines have gotten sophisticated enough that keyword stuffing won’t work anymore. In fact, keyword stuffing can indicate to search engines that your pages are low-quality, which will hurt your rankings.
Instead of forcing in as many keywords as possible, you’re better off writing naturally and using synonyms where appropriate. Again, think about what a human user would want.
Still, keywords are important to show that your content is relevant to a user’s question. As such, it’s important to include your most relevant keywords in a few key places:
Include keywords in the body content as well but, as we mentioned, write naturally rather than trying to shoehorn in more keywords.
Grow Your Business Traffic
No matter how small an area you are targeting, there are too many other dentists online for you to leave things to chance. The right SEO for dentists can bring in more business with only a few small changes to your present site. If you don’t grab those results, your competition will.
If you’re ready to maximize your traffic, online and off, browse some of our marketing services. The other posts on our blog can offer more tips to enhance your marketing.
Recent Comments