Never imagined that dentists will refer to digital marketing services to promote their business online, considering that in the past dental clinics paid lots of money to market their practice in the phone book, local business directories, television and radio ads, or billboards. But here it comes! As a matter of time, the competitiveness in the dental marketplace added a big scope of work to make it happen and ensure to have an online presence of their dental website. And put more effort and digital strategy into promotion, you can see an increase in new patients and revenue in practice.
In the market, there is a term “dental SEO” which appeared in 2016 and made the dentist a bit confused, but in 2021 dental clinics can’t just ignore it and need to take serious steps to start optimizing their search engine visibility and rankings.
Search engine optimization techniques help dentists organically interact with current and prospective customers. Your dental website’s organic traffic, user interface, and rankings in search results will all improve as a result of a good SEO campaign, and your company will be seen as an expert in dentistry both online and in your culture.
Here is a step-by-step guide to dental search engine optimization:
Dental Search Engine Marketing Tips to Keep in Mind
Tip #1 Competitor research
The key factor of starting in-depth competitor research is finding out what works in the case of your competitors. According to your competitors, you can not only determine your pain points and strengths over your competitors but also get the list of dental keywords that your competitors rank on SERPs(search engine results pages). By identifying the right competitors and with comprehensive comparison you can pinpoint the weakest link to target and get a competitive edge over those competitors.
Tip #2 Choosing the Proper Dental Practice Search Terms
It doesn’t matter how SEO has changed over the years or which industry you are implementing SEO optimization for, the #1 rule still is implementing proper keywords. It is essential to conduct keyword research and choose the proper dental practice search terms along with making the keyword mapping for your landing pages targeting your dental services.
Choosing the right dental keywords for your business will be more accurate if you put yourself into your customer’s shoes, but also keep in mind to hone in on your “money” keywords:
So if your dental business is located in Toronto, these become the best keywords that you need to use in your website content:
- Dentist near me
- Dentist in Toronto
- Dental clinic in Toronto
Keep in mind not only to use the short tail and main keywords, as the competition in short-term keywords is also way too high and it would be harder to appear in SERPs top 10 results soon. Start with long tails keywords and then move to the short tails, like;Keep in mind that ranking for short-tail keywords is a highly competitive process, making it difficult to appear in SERPs top results in the immediate future, so choose long tail keywords like:
- Downtown Toronto dental clinic
- Bay street dental clinic Toronto
- Dentist in the bay street
Using the above-mentioned keywords you can help search engines rank them properly and also, make users land on their search query pages.
Always remember this one rule: never overuse the keywords in your website and dilute your content. Don’t try to manipulate the Google algorithm and overuse the keywords or start unnaturally stuffing your pages with keywords, otherwise, your website can get penalised for it.
Tip #3 Optimize and Prioritize it for Local Search
When it comes to local SEO for dentists, local is the key. It is more useful to target a local audience while creating the SEO strategy for your dental business.
You can help your practice rank in local searches by getting it on Google My Business, using geo-specific keywords. Key point is to use local GEO-specific keywords while optimizing your dental website to start ranking for local searches.
Keep in mind that business directories should include dental and medical specifications. Some high-quality dental directories can be relevant and publishing your website there can increase your visibility in the Google Search Engine.
Tip #4 Watch your Dental Headings and Meta Elements
Make specific headings with your website content and include dental search terms in them. Search engine bots work so it crawls your website and some of the first things that it pays attention to are meta elements, headings, where it should find your target keywords.
Optimization of headings with the inclusion of your targeted keywords creates a better user experience throughout your website and a more impactful first impression. This increases the likelihood of first-time users’ engagement with your website and the likelihood of them converting to clients inclusion of your targeted keywords creates a better user experience throughout your website and a more impactful first impression. This increases the likelihood of first-time users’ engagement with your website and the likelihood of them converting to clients.
Tip #5 Keep Your Dental Practice Website Mobile Friendly
If you want to attract and retain patients from increasingly mobile-oriented audiences, it’s important to make your dental practice website mobile-friendly. 73 percent of all internet users will be mobile users by 2025, so if you weren’t paying attention to this, it’s time to reconsider.
The search engine giant, Google, updated the way it ranked websites in 2019 changing the rules of the game. Mobile-first Indexing rolled out and search engines started paying first attention to mobile pages of the website then to the desktop pages.
To keep your website mobile-friendly, maintain the guidelines suggested by Google.
Tip #6 Technical optimization to go with
Technical optimization on your website can result in better search engine rankings. Audit your website and identify the current issues on your website which can negatively impact your rankings and ROI.
Go through the SEO technical checklist and make your website optimized for all of the issues.
Your dental clinic website needs to be technically optimized, it should have high website speed, user-friendly navigation so that your users can find what they are looking for smoothly.
Tip #7 Create educational & Informative Dental Related Content
Creating and publishing new content will keep the website fresh.Providing quality content on your website will improve not only your reputation on search engines but will also highlight the trustworthiness, authoritativeness, and expertise of your dental clinic in the minds of your readers.
Research shows that around 77 percent of internet users read blogs, and 61% of online shoppers confess to buying something after reading a blog’s tips. So creating up-to-date content for your dental readers will increase the chances your readers convert to clients.
Tip #8 Optimize for Voice Search
Voice search is becoming a primary part of our life. People are lazy to type and just ask Siri or Google assistant to look for a thing they are looking for.
So what does it mean to optimize your dental website for voice search?
In the case of typing and searching, people used to keep it short and use abbreviations in their queries, such as
- Dentist Toronto ON
- Dentist near me
But it is different in the case of voice search, people ask questions and keep it long and natural sounding.
- Where is the nearest dentist clinic in Toronto, Ontario?
This means that you need to optimize your website by diving into the mindset of the people searching for dental services and identify the search phrases they would potentially use to find you.
Tip #9 Outbound Links from Dental Niche
Improve your website’s authority and gain outbound links from niche-specific websites.
our website ranking in search results for keywords and phrases is directly influenced by the amount and content quality of external links to it. This ensures that if you want to keep your rankings high, you’ll have to work hard to win high-quality links.
Keep in mind, you can’t get links only with exact match keywords, you should have them with:
- Partial-match
- Branded
- Naked link
- Generic
- Images
- SEO-friendly anchor text
Also, always follow Google guidelines and keep the percentage distribution stated within to avoid getting penalized. Earn backlinks from high authority websites matching your niche wisely and add value to dental SEO work.
Keep the information you read above in mind and optimize your website accordingly to increase search engine visibility and to increase the chances of your dental website ranking high and on the first page.
Want a dedicated approach to your dental SEO, reach out to our team of professionals for outstanding results and better rankings.
