If you’re a dentist, your website is an important part of your digital marketing strategy. It’s the first thing potential patients will see when they search for information about your practice, so it’s essential that you have a well-optimized site that includes all the information they need to make an appointment.
However, if your website isn’t ranking highly in search results or receiving organic traffic from Google, then you may be missing out on valuable customers.
The best way to ensure that this doesn’t happen is to incorporate SEO (search engine optimization) into your overall digital marketing strategy.
Dental Practice SEO Tips & Strategies
Although there are many aspects of SEO beyond what we’ll cover here—such as link building and social media engagement—these tips will help get you started with improving your online presence as a dentist:
Make sure your website is mobile-friendly.
When it comes to SEO, there’s no question that a mobile-friendly high-quality dental website has a leg up in the Google search rankings. In fact, if your site is not optimized for mobile devices, you can expect to see a significant drop in ranking positions.
Websites that are easy to navigate with responsive design will automatically adapt to different screen sizes and make sure that all content is readable on any device. This means less time spent trying to decipher what your customers are looking at and more time spent marketing your services!
Improve your website speed.
It’s important to have a fast-loading website as it will help your site rank in search results. Google uses page speed as a ranking factor. If your site takes too long to load, people will bounce and go somewhere else. The majority of people expect pages on the web to load in under 2 seconds; anything longer than that is considered slow by users.
Build Links From Website Relevant to Dentistry
Link building is the practice of getting other websites to link back to your website. It’s an important part of search engine optimization (SEO) because it helps search engines determine which websites are most relevant for certain keywords.
The more authoritative sites that link back to yours, the better search engines will think your site is. This can help improve its ranking in organic searches and drive more traffic from people looking for dentists in their area.
VIDEO: Dental SEO- How To Get Your Practice Found Online
Include Patient Testimonials & Reviews
A testimonial is a great way to show off the type of work you do, especially if it comes from someone who has experienced multiple procedures with you over time.
Testimonials and reviews are an opportunity for potential patients to see what previous clients have said about their experience at your practice. It’s important to include these testimonials and reviews on your website where they’re highly visible, like your homepage. Also, ask your patients to write reviews on local review websites as Yelp and Google Business Directory because that’s where people go when they are looking for a dentist in their area (or anywhere else).
Integrate social media into your strategy.
Social media is not just for keeping in touch with your friends, family, and colleagues. It can also be a powerful tool to build relationships with patients. Through social media, you can reach out to past patients and make them feel appreciated by offering discounts, promotions, or advice on their next visit. You can even ask them about their experience at the dental practice, which will help you improve it for future patients.
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Social media is also a great platform for promoting your dental practice by sharing articles that relate to dentistry and answering questions on topics such as how often people should brush their teeth or how much fluoride is safe to consume every day. By answering these questions on social media platforms like Quora, Facebook, or Twitter, other people will see your level of expertise and willingness to help and are more likely to reach out to you for further information to schedule a visit.
Define the goals of your dental website.
Of course, the main goal is to book more clients. However, people are not likely to schedule a visit the first time they visit your website. You need to show your expertise and build trust.
To do this, you need to define a goal and create an effective marketing strategy to help you achieve it. Your goal can be anything from getting more traffic from organic searches, increasing brand awareness, growing your newsletter list, or improving conversions.
Ultimately improving all these goals will help attract more leads and grow your dental practice.
Once you have defined the goal(s) of your website, you need to define what success looks like. For example: If you have a dental practice, then “success” may be bringing in new patients through organic search traffic and converting them into paying patients.
It’s important to write down specific metrics that indicate whether these goals are being met so you can measure progress as time goes on (for example 10% conversion rate).
When defining your target audience make sure it’s specific enough so that when someone types something into Google they will see your website come up as an option; this way it’ll be easier for people interested in what you offer (dental services) find out more about what exactly it is they’re looking for!
Figure Out What Keywords People Use when searching for dentists
The first step to improving your website’s rankings is knowing what people are searching for. To understand this, you need to know how search engines work.
A search engine uses algorithms to determine where a website should rank in its results based on the keywords that the site uses, as well as other factors such as links and social media profiles.
This is why it’s important for you to understand the terms potential patients may use when they search online. Then you need to perform On-page SEO and incorporate those keywords into relevant content on your site so that when someone searches with those words, they find yours!
Understand User Intent and What They’re looking for
Customer intent refers to the reason why a customer is searching for something online. Understanding customer intent can help dentists create more relevant and effective content, as well as improve the customer experience on their website.
There are several types of customer intent:
- Informational: The customer is looking for information about a specific topic or product.
- Navigational: The customer is looking for a specific website or page.
- Transactional: The customer is looking to make a purchase or take some other specific action.
- Commercial: The customer is in the research phase of the purchasing process and is considering different options.
To improve user experience and serve better information you need to know where users are on their journey:
- Understand what your customers are looking for.
- Understand what they are expecting to find.
- Make sure your website meets their expectations.
This is a critical step in improving your online presence and making sure your website is easy to use and navigate.
By understanding the intent behind a customer’s search, businesses can tailor their marketing efforts and website content to better meet the needs and expectations of their audience.
Make sure you’re found in local search results
It is important to remember that local search results are different from general search results. When you perform a local search, the results show you businesses near your location, which means dentists should be using their Google My Business page to ensure they are found when someone performs a search for their services in the area.
Claiming your listing on Google My Business is simple. It only takes a few minutes to do and can have a huge impact on how people find your dental practice when they’re looking for a local dentist in the area.
It’s also worth noting that there are many different types of local searches, including:
- *[local keyword]* – Searches for specific keywords related to specific locations or regions (e.g., “dentist [city name]”)
- *[keyword near me]* – Searches for businesses nearby with information about those businesses and their addresses (e.g., “closest dentist”)
Know How to Use keywords To Optimize Your Content
By including relevant keywords on your website, you can increase the chances that your website will rank highly in search results for those keywords.
Optimizing for keywords can also help increase the visibility and reach of your website. When your website ranks highly in search results, it is more likely to attract traffic from users who are searching for those keywords.
Follow these strategies for keyword optimizations;
- Perform keyword research before writing content.
- Use synonyms and similar phrases.
- Use long tail keywords.
- Write an interesting title that includes the main keywords.
- Add keywords to your headings.
- Place the most important keyword phrases near the beginning of the article (the first paragraph).
- Optimize images for SEO and include keywords in image names and alt tags
Use an SEO-friendly URL structure
Before you get into the nitty-gritty of SEO, it’s important to first understand how URLs are structured.
It is not recommended that you use underscores or hyphens in your URL structure, as Google does not consider these characters to be search engine friendly. While dashes and slashes can still be used in some cases (for example, in a directory structure), they should be reserved for internal links only and should not appear anywhere else within your site’s content.
It’s also best if you keep URLs short and descriptive—a great rule of thumb is that if users need more than five words to understand what their browser is looking at, then you probably have too many words in your URL! And finally, don’t include numbers or symbols in any part of the URL; instead, use lowercase letters when describing words.
Build authority with white papers and high-quality content
White papers, ebooks, and other helpful guides for patients are a great way to build authority in your field.
Publishing white papers and long-form articles is an excellent way to share valuable information and show your expertise. Providing quality content builds trust with readers who are looking for advice and get a professional to answer their questions.
They also help position you as an expert in the field that people can rely on for accurate information about dentistry or whatever else it may be related to.
Build Internal Links
Include relevant links within your article that point back to trusted websites or other related content pieces on your site, as well as links to external sources that may be useful or interesting for readers who follow through on those links but aren’t ready yet to buy anything from your dental practice right away (for example, you might recommend an excellent book about oral health).
Conclusion
If someone is looking for a “dentist near me” on Google, you want to make sure that either your website comes up first or one of your competitors does not rank higher than yours does because that means fewer clicks for you!
In order for your practice to remain competitive in the dental industry and grow as a business you need to implement and apply these and other SEO and marketing strategies.
If you follow these tips, you’re going to see an increase in traffic to your website. You’ll be able to serve more patients and grow your practice by being found in search engine results pages (SERPs).
