What is SEO? It stands for search engine optimization, which is the process of maximizing the number of visitors to a website, and for the website to be present at the top of the Google search rankings. Therefore, with so many dental practices engaging in their marketing wanting to reach the top, you can imagine how fierce the competition is!
What separates the best from the rest is the steps you take in your SEO to gain more visibility of your dental practice for the long term.
So, how can you get started? You can do so through local SEO for dentists.
What’s the difference? It’s a scaled-down approach to making your dental practice visible in the form of local search results.
Of course, it can be difficult to manage the dental practice with your local SEO. If you’re in this predicament and are concerned by the impact of a local SEO strategy that’s not up to scratch, learn below about how to surge ahead of your competitors today!
Investing In Local SEO For Dentists
Local SEO for dentists is one of the key elements of any successful marketing strategy, and the visitor presence online is very high.
Top dental marketing agency like Smile and Grow has prepared some reasons why you should invest in local SEO for dentists:
- Local Businesses Are Searchable Online – Visitors can perform a quick search for a local business online from their smartphone at a click of a few buttons immediately, and your dental practice must be ready.
- The Results Are Instant – Local results are much faster, but this is only achievable if you ensure that your SEO strategy is strong.
What Are The Key Steps?
To increase your presence on Google and to increase your patient portfolio, keep the mind the key techniques below:
Keyword Research
Your keyword strategy needs to be regularly updated following what the most popular searches are today. If the keywords aren’t relevant, the traffic will be negatively impacted. Google has a Keyword Planner tool that can be used to measure the effectiveness of your keywords. When determining the keywords, always think about keywords that take some sort of action. Also, you’d need to ensure that your web pages are updated to accommodate the popular searches.
For example, if a popular keyword search is “teeth whitening at home” or “in-office teeth whitening”, these keywords can then lead to you optimizing your pages so that the content relating to these keywords is easily accessible. If they seek your webpage on the Google pages and click on it, the information they’re looking for must be available and visible.
Google My Business
Whilst you have a quality website if patients are interested in your dental practice, how do they contact you? An accurate GMB listing is essential, and your details should be up to date to accommodate it. Your listing would need to be verified, and it should include information such as:
- Practice Name
- Practice Address
- Practice Telephone Number
- Practice Email
- Opening Hours
- Payment Options
As part of GMB, you can also take advantage of some additional features in terms of categories, which can highlight the more popular treatments you serve, and align your web pages to the specific search performed online, e.g., “cosmetic dentist”.
Links And Citations
Your dental practice should be listed in multiple directories, not just in one or two. There may be dental associations that may record your practice details as well. Therefore, you need to be aware of any references of your information because patients are more likely to search and locate your practice on these associations.
Citations can help improve the visibility of your dental practice. They will also come with direct links to your website as well. Therefore, you can imagine how important your practice details are to your search engine presence.
On-Page Optimization
Optimizing your website in blogs and content pages through tags and outsourcing links also impacts local SEO for dentists as well. These are some helpful tips that can improve your search engine ranking and optimize your content accordingly. Here are some of the tags you can use and a description of each.
- Title Tags – This is known as the webpage title, present on the search engine results page.
- Meta Description – This is an HTML element that summarizes what your webpage is about. This benefits the search engine results so that the page is ranked accordingly based on the keyword searched.
- Heading Tags – Headings and subheadings in your services pages or blog posts.
Your Article And Blog Content
Content is important, but what is equally important is its quality and its volume. Quality in the form of long-form content is something that users can engage with, providing it has a structure and is clear to the point of the topic.
Some of its benefits include a higher ranking on Google and higher visitor views. The dentistry topics are endless, and it is essential that you identify the customer pain points and write about them. Not just write about them, ensure that it answers the need of the visitor.
Here are some examples of content that have always been successful:
- Frequently asked questions
- The cost of dental treatments
- The content relating to available services
- Myths and misconceptions
- Oral hygiene
In your content, ensure that it contains inbound links to other relatable content. Your links may also contain outbound links to other sources of websites.
Now that you have a better understanding of what constitutes a quality local SEO strategy, it is time to get started with your local SEO for dentists!
