At its core, search engine optimization (SEO) is about increasing your website’s visibility in the organic search results of major search engines. Dentists are quickly learning the importance of marketing their practices online.
More and more dentists are taking a serious look at their websites and are making decisions to redesign their sites to keep in contact with patients and attract new ones. Some of them are even adopting content marketing strategies to get more shares on social media. However, these creative marketing efforts will go unnoticed if they are not optimized for search engines.
That’s where dental search engine optimization, or SEO, comes in.
Are you familiar with the Yellow Pages? Once upon a time, people would search for dentists in this infamous book, but now they go online. And with these changing times, people do not look beyond the first page of online search results, so sites that don’t rank high on search engines like Google or Bing are ignored. Whether you’re a new dental practice or have a long-established practice, SEO for dentists is essential to finding new patients—and keeping them.
What’s SEO for Dentists?
SEO for dentists, also known as dental SEO, focuses on optimizing a dental practice’s website for search engines and users to increase the site’s visibility in search results on Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. Optimizations can include making the site mobile-friendly, fast, and useful to prospective patients.
93% of online experiences begin with a search engine, according to a Forrester study. That means a search engine is the biggest billboard there is for brands.
At its core, search engine optimization (SEO) is about increasing your website’s visibility in the organic search results of major search engines.
Why is SEO important for Dentists?
The way people use technology today is far different than how it was used 10-years ago. From smartphones, laptops, or AI devices (Google Home or Alexa), people are constantly interacting with technology, so much so, the phrase “let me Google that” is now integrated into people’s vocabulary.
If you’re a dentist, SEO marketing might not be high on your list of priorities. Then again, without search engine optimization, almost no one will be able to find your site.
In order for your dental practice to succeed online, you need to recognize the importance of search engine optimization. Marketing has always been about connecting with your audience in the right place and time. Today, your audience is spending their time online. You need to meet them where they are.
What’s needed to develop a strong Dental SEO?
Any marketing plan requires knowing where to reach your target audience and how to reach them. SEO is no exception. When you address the needs of dental patients, you get their attention. This attention raises your rankings, which garners even more attention, and the cycle continues.
Here are some things your practice can do to begin the process of developing a good dental search engine optimization strategy.
Adding Keywords for SEO
The internet is a marketplace. And your website is competing with other dentist websites for search engine attention.
Adding relevant keywords to your website helps search engines match your site to specific search terms. And using those keywords strategically helps search engines see your site as relevant to the people looking for those search terms.
Types of keywords
Keywords fall into two categories:
- Head: Shorter keywords with a larger search volume, such as “dentist” or “dental services”. These target a wide audience and are usually more difficult to rank for.
- Long-tail: These are more descriptive, multi-word search terms, like “dentist in [your city]” or “children’s dentist in [your area], or even “broken tooth repair in [city], [state].
When optimizing your website, make sure to include keywords and phrases that describe all the services you provide. For example, don’t just use words like “dentist” or “dental services” in your website’s copy and URLs. Use words like “root canal,” “porcelain crown,” and the names of procedures you perform or products you offer.
Publish High-Quality Content
Quality content still reigns as king. And with the launch of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) based system BERT, quality content and user experience continue to be key to a strong SEO strategy.
High-quality content is about creating pages that increase time on page, lower bounce rate, and provide helpful content for the user.
Blog pages are the types of high-quality content search engines, and users want.
Content pages must be more than high-quality for today’s SEO. They also must cover the following areas to increase presence in search engine results:
Search Intent
In order to reshape your SEO content strategy and increase traffic you should be more aligned with searched intent.
Dive into Google Analytics to understand what your target searcher is searching for.
Keyword Research
Keyword research supports quality content creation.
Through competitor research and data mining, you can uncover keyword gems that have average search volume, but a high click-through rate for your audience.
It’s important to identify your primary keywords and bucket them into topics suited for your search.
Voice Search
According to Comscore, by 2020 50% of search is expected to be driven by voice.
Before the existence of innovative smartphones, people searched by plugging words into search engine boxes on their desktop computers. And this is how keywords were born. With the growing use of mobile devices, voice searches are becoming a popular trend with internet users.
According to Google, 72% of people who own a voice-activated speaker say their devices are often used as part of their daily routine.
Understanding how to optimize your website for voice search can help you generate more organic traffic if you understand and implement conversational searches into your SEO strategy.
Reach more patients with dental SEO services
Search engine optimization, when done effectively, can prove significant value to your practice.
Google is a search engine that processes information based on how search users behave and it’s getting more accurate, which means that each year new trends appear that change the way information is published on the internet. This means all users can get their questions answered in a matter of minutes or even seconds.