Do you want to make your dental practice stand out from the competition? If so, then you need a strong marketing strategy. One of the best ways to do this is by implementing an SEO strategy. There are many benefits to increasing your website's search engine ranking, not just for potential patients but for anyone who needs information on dentistry, thus building a strong brand presence online
What is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization - a tactic that helps to boost your website's ranking in search engine results pages, like Google and Bing. Higher rankings on Google means more exposure and more organic traffic to your website.
By implementing SEO strategies on your dental practice website, you can increase your overall web traffic, generate more customer leads, and rank higher in local searches for dentists in your area.
How SEO Can Help Your Dental Practice
SEO can help you increase traffic to your website, which will make your dental practice stand out. SEO is also a great way to improve your credibility on the internet. When potential patients look for a dentist online, they are likely to look at how many people have shared their experience. If many people are talking about the dentist, it's more likely that they'll be interested in that office.
SEO can also help your practice generate leads. When you rank higher on search engines, you're more likely to get phone calls from prospective patients who found you through their research online.
SEO Basics
When conducting SEO for your dental practice, you'll want to focus on four main components. Here is a quick and condensed SEO guide for dentists.
Step 1: Keyword Research
You'll want to discover what people are looking for before interacting with you online. For example, the keyword 'dentist near me' gets about 1.83 million searches per month. That's going to be a tough keyword to rank for, so you're better off researching keywords with lower competition. For example, 'when should I see a dentist' gets about 50 searches a month, and with one strong piece of content, you could be ranking for this keyword quickly.
Any SEO campaign always needs to start with keyword research to know what you're targeting.
Step 2: On-Page SEO
Now that you know which keywords you want to serve as the pillars of your SEO campaign, you need to make sure your website is optimized around these keywords.
For example, if you're a dentist in Southern California, you should have a local page on your website with the URL slug /dentist-in-southern-california.
You also need to ensure you have strong meta titles and descriptions and that your H1/H2 tags are formatted correctly.
You're telling Google what your website is about and what to rank you for by correcting your on-page SEO.
Step 3: Content Marketing
To this day, content is still king. Think about it; Google search is a search engine, and people go to Google to find answers, services, or products, so there's nothing to show without content.
For a dentist, you'll want to create content regularly that answers questions at all stages of the funnel.
For example:
Top of Funnel: Here's How to Avoid Cavities - A Guide
Middle of Funnel: What To Do When You Have a Cavity
Bottom of Funnel: Have a Cavity? Give Us a Call
These are all three different stages of the buyer journey. Having a piece of content that answers your client's questions at each step allows you to build rapport and brand awareness with a potential client who is now more likely to call your practice for an appointment.
Step 4: Link Building
Link building is one of, if not the most, essential part of SEO. Essentially, links serve as votes of confidence for your website. Any time another website links to your website, it tells Google that your website is trustworthy, and thus your website rankings will increase.
However, quality is always superior to quantity when it comes to SEO.
There are two ways to measure a strong link:
Domain authority
Organic traffic
If a website has a high domain authority or gets much organic traffic, they're usually going to be sites that you want to acquire a backlink from.
Conclusion
SEO for dentists is not easy, merely because it's a high-ticket and highly competitive niche. However, if you implement these strategies and do things the right way, you can see your keyword rankings increase and your organic traffic count goes up each month.
If you enjoyed this content and would like to see more SEO content, make sure to check out the rest of our blog.