SEO for dentists?
You might be thinking this is some sort of a joke, right?
Well, let us assure you that it is not. SEO (search engine optimization) is just as important for a dentist or dental practice as it is for any other type of business. However, it is one field where the use of SEO is still fairly low as most dental professionals are not even aware that they need it.
That is why we decided to write this article to inform you about the advantages of using SEO for your dental practice and why you should invest in dentist SEO. Moreover, you will also learn some of the best dentist SEO tactics that you should use to grow your dental practice right now.
Ready to learn more?
Let’s get started.
Table of Contents
What is SEO for Dentists (Dentist SEO)?
SEO (search engine optimization) for dentists or dentist SEO refers to the use of SEO practices to improve the search engine rankings of dentist’s websites. Dental search engine optimization mainly includes local SEO techniques to make sure that local users find a dentist’s site when they search for a relevant search query.
Why local SEO?
It is mainly because a dental clinic serves a specific area and does not need to attract customers from far away regions. The goal of dentist SEO, therefore, is to make sure that a dentist finds and serves local users in need of dental services.
Why Do Dentists Need SEO?
In today’s day and age, almost everyone relies on Google search to find nearby businesses, and dental clinics are no exception. People don’t rely as much on word of mouth as they do on local business listings and customer ratings.
According to Google data, the number of searches for “dentist near me” have been steadily increasing over the past five years. This clearly indicates that online searches are a preferred way for people to find local businesses.
So, what does this mean for you?
As a dentist, you need not only create an SEO-friendly website but also invest in local dental SEO services to get the desired visibility and attract relevant website traffic. The goal of focusing on dental search terms and optimizing your website is, of course, to convert this website traffic into actual customers.
Ready to learn more?
Keep reading.
7 Dentist SEO Tips
Before we get into the details of how to leverage dental search engine optimization to grow your practice, let’s first cover the essentials.
If you do not have a website for your dental practice, then it’s high time that you start a website right now. If not, you will lose a lot of customers who visit local businesses simply by finding their websites or listings online.
But, all is not lost. It can be a good thing to start from scratch and implement a dental SEO strategy and SEO-friendly practices while designing your website. Use one of the numerous website-building platforms available online or hire professional dental web design companies to design your website.
Now that we have that covered, let’s start with the SEO tactics that you can use to grow your dental practice. We have compiled a list of seven best practices that you should follow to get the desired website traffic and prospective patients.
Ready to get started?
Here you go.
1. Create a Google My Business Listing
Google My Business is the holy grail of all business directories worldwide. Irrespective of which industry you are in, you need a Google My Business listing for local SEO.
Why is that?
A Google My Business listing is the first search result that you will see when you search for any business. Anyone looking for your dental practice will find all relevant information about your business from there. This includes your phone number, address, email address, and other contact information.
Let’s say that someone heard of your dental practice and wants to book an appointment or make a visit. The first thing they will do is search for your dental practice or dentist online, see your listing, and either make a call or directly visit the address provided in the listing.
Imagine if you don’t have a Google listing and your potential patients find it difficult to find any information about your business. What do you think will happen?
They’ll either think that your business is not legit if there’s no information about it online or they’ll simply move on to find another nearby dental practice.
You lose either way.
But, that’s not all that a Google My Business listing is good for. If you use the right keywords, your listing is likely to show in relevant local search results.
Need an example?
Let’s see what Google shows for a simple keyword like “dentists in Manhattan”. The first result, after the paid ads, is usually something like this.
Image via Google
Where do you think Google gets this information?
Google goes through the thousands of relevant Google My Business listings to find the most relevant ones to feature in this section. Needless to say that any dental clinic that would have mentioned their location would have higher chances of featuring in this.
So, what should you do?
First, create a Google My Business listing and update all relevant information about your business including name, address, and phone number (NAP). Second, optimize it for relevant keywords, but more on that later.
Pro Tip: Always keep your listing updated with the latest information and create multiple listings if you have multiple clinics in different locations.
2. List Your Dental Clinic in Local Directories
Google My Business is not the only place where you need a business listing. There are numerous local directories for every niche and these are just as important.
For a lot of “near me” searches, local directory sites are the ones that rank higher than any individual business, including dental practices.
Why?
Probably because they have thousands of similar dental practices listed and, therefore, have a much higher keyword density than any one business page can have.
Moreover, many of these directories have been around for years and have built their domain authority, making it difficult for any new website to compete with them.
So, what can you do?
List your business in all the important local directories in your region and get discovered by the right people. A lot of people search the local directories directly to find local businesses and if you are listed there, you can be discovered by potential patients.
The rules are the same as Google My Business listing: make sure you post accurate and updated information, and optimize for keywords.
Pro Tip: Provide the same, updated, information in all directories and your website to avoid confusion for potential customers.
3. Find the Right Keywords for Your Website
The basis of any good digital marketing strategy is keywords and dentist SEO is no exception.
You need to do smart keyword research to find the right keywords to target through your website and increase your website traffic. As a dentist, you probably won’t produce much content on your site on a regular basis. So, your first (probably only) priority for your site would be to find keywords for your service pages and other landing pages.
There are two things that you need to include in your keywords. First, you need to add your location as your target audience would be limited to a particular location. Second, you need to pay attention to user intent while choosing your keywords.
Not clear what it means?
Let’s understand each in more detail.
Location-Specific Keywords
This is simple: just add the location you serve to all the keywords that you want to target through your site. If you have a dental clinic in Los Angeles, for example, add that to the keywords you use for your site.
So, if your target keyword is “dental services”, make it “dental services in Los Angeles”. In fact, you can even choose a more specific location within the city, if that’s where you get most of your customers from.
Optimize your site for location-specific keywords to rank for the most relevant search queries.
User Intent
Different keywords, that may sound similar, can have different user intents. In general, dental health and services keywords could either have a research intent or a purchase/hiring intent.
Research intent is when a user simply searches for a term to gather information. This could be for a variety of reasons and does not necessarily mean that they need dental services.
Example:
Best ways to take care of dental health
Cost of dental implants
Does it hurt to get dental implants?
A hiring intent is one where a user searches for a dentist or dental clinic with the intention to employ the services of a dentist.
Example:
Orthodontist near me
Best dentists for teeth whitening in (location name)
Where to get dental implants near me?
To optimize your landing pages, you need to focus on these types of keywords for your site as this will help you attract users who are looking to employ a dentist’s services.
Here are a few examples of high-purchase-intent keywords that dental SEO services focus on:
- Orthodontist/dental surgeon/dentist + location
- Best orthodontists/dental surgeons/dentists + location
- Most experienced orthodontist/dental surgeon/dentist + location
You get the gist, right?
Just use this formula to choose the best keywords for dentist SEO and get more organic traffic to your website.
Once you've identified a few potential keywords, it's important to also consider your competition.
To get an idea of how competitive a keyword is, simply do a Google search and see what kind of search engine results come up. If the majority of the search engine results pages are from well-established practices, it's probably not worth your time to try and rank for that keyword.
Pro Tip: If you have a blog where you post informative articles, use research intent keywords to attract relevant organic traffic to your site.
4. Optimize for Keywords to Increase Website Traffic
Now that you know which keywords or search phrases to use, it’s time to actually optimize your content for these keywords. Using the right keywords, in the right density, can help increase your organic traffic to your website.
Here is a quick guide on dental search engine optimization using keywords for you:
- Maintain a keyword density of 2% or more for your landing pages and 1%-1.5% for your articles
- Add your target keyword within the first 100 words of your content
- Don’t forget to optimize your title tag, subtitles, meta description, etc. for keywords
- Also, add your primary keyword to your web page URLs
That’s the basis of keyword optimization for dentist SEO in short and is sure to boost your website traffic.
Pro Tip: Don’t forget to optimize your directory listings for your target keywords as well.
5. Ask Patients for Online Reviews
Many people not only search for dentists online but also look at user ratings and reviews for selecting one. Higher your online ratings, the more customers you will attract. So asking for ratings and reviews should be an important part of your SEO strategy.
But, how can you get more online reviews and ratings?
Well, the simplest thing that you can do is ask your patients to give an online review after you complete the service. Anyone who was satisfied with your service would be happy to leave a rating, if not write a review.
You can also do this by sending them a message after service completion, with a link to your Google listing, asking for feedback. To make it even more subtle, you can send this along with an online invoice of the service provided.
Pro Tip: Try to make it as easy as you can for your patients to leave a review for your practice.
6. Optimize Your Website for Conversions
Till now, we have discussed different ways in which you can attract more patients to your website or directory listings. However, not everyone who visits your website actually books an appointment and employs your services.
So, you need to make some changes to your website as well to optimize it for conversions.
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the process of making your website as effective as possible at converting visitors into leads or customers.
In this case, conversions would most likely be in the form of your website visitors booking an appointment.
There are a number of factors that can impact your website's conversion rate, so it's important to spend some time optimizing each element of your site including speed, page titles, meta descriptions, and backlinks.
Here are some ways to optimize your website for conversions:
Make sure your website is easy to use: The first step to optimizing your website for conversions or acing dentist SEO is to make sure it is easy to use. This means creating a clear and concise design, using easy-to-understand language, and making it easy for visitors to find what they’re looking for (a dentist in this case).
Share relevant and targeted content: Your keyword-optimized content should be relevant to your target audience and offer something of value.
While high-quality content is essential for SEO, not everyone has the time or skills required to write great content, especially a dentist. Outsourcing this task to experienced content writing professionals or dental SEO services is an easy way of acing SEO as a dentist.
Use visuals to improve conversions: In addition to using text, you can also use visuals such as images, videos, and infographics to improve conversions. Visuals can help grab attention and explain complex concepts in an easily digestible format.
Add relevant CTAs: Add relevant CTAs throughout your website. As a dentist, you can ask customers to visit your clinic or schedule an appointment.
What would be the right CTAs for a dental website?
Your CTAs should either ask your website visitors to make a call or book an appointment directly from your dental website. We recommend the former as it just makes things easier for both you and your customers and is a one-step process.
Your website's call-to-action should be clear and concise, and it should be easy for visitors to take the desired action. For example, if you want your new patients to sign up for your newsletter, your call to action should say “subscribe” or “sign up now.”
Provide your phone number on every page of your dental website and make sure that it is clearly visible.
Pro Tip: Add your address in the footer section, to make it easy for potential customers to simply walk in for a consultation.
7. Hire Local SEO Experts
As a dentist, you might not have the required time or expertise to do a good job of optimizing your website for SEO (search engine optimization). Although the tips provided here are enough for even an amateur to implement local SEO techniques successfully, it still requires time and effort.
So, if you don’t want to spend your precious time on this, you can always hire a professional dental SEO company to craft a smart dental SEO strategy. Hiring a professional dental search engine optimization (SEO) expert provides the following benefits:
- They can do a much better job of it than you
- It will save you a lot of time and effort
- You will see the desired results much faster
Want to know the best part?
You can hire a professional dental SEO company one time to set things up for you and then take over the responsibility of following up regularly. Also, get Google Analytics to continually track your website traffic and performance.
So, in a way, it would be a one-time investment for you.
Once a dental SEO services provider has optimized your website and local listings, you simply need to keep them updated. You can even hire them again to conduct SEO (search engine optimization) audits after certain time intervals.
Sounds good?
Then invest in professional dentist SEO services for your dental practice and grow your customer base multifold.
Pro Tip: Choose an agency that specializes in local search engine optimization and has a proven track record of delivering good results.
FAQs
Q1. What is dental or dentist SEO?
A. Dental or dentist SEO refers to the use of SEO (search engine optimization) techniques to increase organic traffic to the website of a dentist or dental practice. Dentist SEO mainly focuses on local search engine optimization to attract relevant users to a dental website and eventually the clinic.
Q2. Do dentists need SEO?
A. Dentists run a local business and need SEO (search engine optimization) just like any other business. SEO can help people in your area looking for dental services to find your dental practice/business and make an appointment.
Q3. How do you market a dental practice?
A. Though you can use traditional dental marketing methods like advertising, using dentist SEO to get organic traffic to your dental website is more cost-effective. So, invest in SEO for your dental practice and make it an integral part of your marketing strategy.
Other than that, you can also consider search engine marketing for your dental practice, but that would cost more than SEO.
Q4. How do you attract more dental patients?
A. You can conduct keyword research to find relevant keywords like “dental service in (location)”, “best dentist in (location name)”, etc. to direct potential patients to your dental website. Once there, you can then use a mix of SEO and CRO techniques to encourage them to visit your clinic.
Q5. How do you keep a patient coming back?
A. Dental marketing can only help you attract new patients, but if you want a patient to come back you need to provide exceptional service. If a patient is satisfied with the care and treatment that you provide, they would not only come back for future needs but also recommend you to their family and friends.
Q6. Which five activities could attract new patients?
A. Follow these local SEO best practices to attract new patients to your dental website and dental clinic:
- Create a Google My Business listing
- List your dental clinic in local directories
- Find and use the right keywords
- Ask patients for online reviews
- Optimize your website for conversions
Try these and you will surely attract new patients to your clinic and relevant organic website traffic.
Q7. Should I hire someone for SEO?
A. Hiring an expert is always a good idea, especially if you do not have the necessary skills to do a job yourself. As a dentist, you might not know much about SEO or digital marketing to do all that is required to get on the first page of Google SERP (search engine results page) and attract relevant website traffic.
So, yes, you should hire an SEO expert to do that for you.
Q8. How long does it take for SEO to start working?
A. There is no hard and fast rule about how long it takes for SEO tactics to deliver results. You might see a difference within days or it may take months or even years to see any substantial results.
However, if you get help from an expert, you can expect to see positive results within a few months.
Q9. Why do dentists need local SEO?
A. Dentists need SEO to attract potential patients in the vicinity to their website, from where they can make an appointment to visit their clinics.
Q10. As a dentist, how much time should I spend on SEO?
A. Ideally, you will need to spend more time setting things up initially, but after that, you can simply conduct monthly audits and improvements. Dentist SEO is an ongoing process, but it will not take up a lot of your time on a regular basis.
You can, of course, hire dental SEO experts to do the job for you and save your time for more important things.
Conclusion
Dental SEO (dentist SEO) is crucial for your dental practice if you want to attract potential clients online. Most people search for clinics near them before making a visit. You can attract these people to your dental clinic by using dental SEO tactics.
Use this post as your guide to local SEO for dentists. And, if you don’t have the time or expertise to do it yourself, you can always hire dental SEO professionals like us to do the job for you.
Hire our dental SEO services to boost your website traffic, build an online presence, and attract more potential customers to your dental practice.
Have any further questions?
Feel free to leave a comment and we will get back to you.
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