SEO is considered one of the key marketing fundamentals to expose your brand to prospective patients and increase your patient portfolio. There’s a variety of marketing techniques that can build and generate leads, but SEO trumps them all. When they’re used effectively as part of your marketing strategy, your online marketing strategy will be unparalleled to other competitors who don’t use it.
What Is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it’s the process of increasing the quantity and quality of website traffic to a website identifiable through the Google search engine. SEO is designed to help dental practices rank as highest as possible on the Google web pages.
Website traffic typically implies that your website delivers quality and meets key performance indicators for strong SEO.
Besides SEO, there are many other ways in which you can enhance your website traffic:
- Keyword Research
- Up to date and organic content
- Regular blog posts
- Advertising
- Social media marketing
- Short-tail and long-tail keywords
- Post linked content from external sites i.e., LinkedIn
Whilst these points help to support the enhancing of website traffic, SEO is essential.
Why Is SEO Marketing So Important?
Two aspects make up strong SEO: Organic Search and Google Maps.
First, SEO provides strong organic search results, meaning that your dental practice will appear as an Ad at the top of Google. If your dental practice has an Ad position at the top of Google, then it’s likely that your dental practice will be clicked and visited on. Although, it is important that you give them a reason to do this, meaning get your dental website in a position to enhance website traffic.
SEO also helps place you on Google Maps. This means your dental practice will appear on the results when the user searches for a dentist. For example, by inputting the keywords ‘dentist near me’. Depending on how strong your SEO is, your dental practice will appear at the top. This means your website will be placed in front of users, and if they click on your practice website, they’re likely to be interested. Therefore, ensure your Google My Business pages are up to date with the appropriate information such as telephone number, email, and address.
What Are The Other Benefits of SEO To My Dental Practice?
Strong SEO improves the visibility of your dental practice. Simply put, if your dental SEO is strong, your practice will be at the top of three of the organic searches and Google map results.
To keep your SEO strong in your strategy, ensure you know your keyword research, ensure high-quality content and ensure a simple and effective user experience. You’re more likely to gain visibility of your dental practice to those users who are seeking the best dental services.
What is also equally beneficial is that your dental practice will receive more foot traffic, meaning the more visitors to your website, the likelier those users will become a lead.
Being recognized locally is one of the key first steps to expand from. If your local community recognizes your dental practice as the number #1, you’re doing something right. Your local SEO is on point.
Ultimately, the end goal is to drive new patients to your practice and continue to maintain a strong reputation with your existing patient portfolio. SEO will allow for this along with increased benefits over time.
The SEO Process – Where Do I Begin?
So, whether you’re hiring a dental marketing expert, or you want to learn about the SEO marketing strategy
- Auditing Analysis – The first step is to audit your strategy and your website. The idea behind this is to audit how strong or weak your dental marketing strategy currently is, particularly when it comes to SEO. An expert would be clued up on successful marketing trends and keeping an eye on your competitors and identify opportunities to surpass them. Your website content and overall quality would impact SEO and hence, would need to be reviewed.
- Keyword Research And Selection – Keyword research and selection is fundamental when it comes to SEO. Keyword research determines the most appropriate terms that will generate the highest amount of traffic. For example, if a user from Melbourne is seeking to ‘find a dentist near me’, the search rankings would be dependent on whether the keywords are prominent in your strategy.
- Formulate Strategy – The auditing process is complete, and the results of your website have been outputted, and now you’ll understand what needs improving to yield the best results. This is where the marketing strategy is developed accordingly.
- Implement Strategy – The strategy is now live and now everything relating to your strategy will be monitored such as your SEO keyword ranking, total leads and volume of traffic. Monitoring is an essential responsibility for marketing experts who can continue to make improvements to your strategy to meet KPI’s and objectives.
Frequently Asked Questions about Dental SEO
If you’ve questions with regards to marketing strategy, all of your answers will be covered in this section.
Q: Is SEO Different For The Dental Marketing Industry?
A: The revenue that dentists make is much higher in comparison to other industries. This means careful attention needs to be placed on the dental website because that is the thoroughbred of a strong marketing strategy. This involves deep analysis into keywords and analysis.
Q: How Much Time Would It Take To See Results Of My SEO?
A: The upward trend is expected to be identified between the first 3 to 6 months. The upward trend would only be noticeable if you’ve performed a strong analysis of SEO keyword research and selection. After one year, SEO would need to be analyzed through new data to ensure its effectiveness. This is what’s known as continual optimization.
Q: Should I Continue SEO Analysis If The Ranking Is At #1?
A: If you’ve got to #1 in the Google search engine rankings, the most important thing is to sustain it. There are external factors that mean your SEO can become outdated such as patient demand, new services and treatments, and changes to algorithms. This means your rankings can go up and down. As part of marketing, you or your expert will need to keep on top of change, so you maintain your position at the top.
Q: Should I Use Other Search Engines Other Than Google?
A: The majority of traffic is obtained through Google. Other search engines such as Bing and Yahoo! whilst are also credible for SEO, they’re not as effective in comparison to Google.
Build Your SEO For More Patient Leads Today
If you’re seeking to generate more leads for your dental practice, get started with dental SEO. Ensure your content is optimized, your keyword research is strong, and your website appears organically on Google, and you’ll begin to see a trend of positive results within the first few years. If you cannot perform dental SEO or do not have the time to do so, you can always contact Smile and Grow a dental marketing agency like ours, to do it for you.
