You’ve heard the term “dental SEO” a lot in the context of dental marketing, and for good reason. Local SEO for Dentists is a key component of dentistry marketing; even if paid advertisements help you get noticed, social media can build your brand, and postcards can help spread awareness locally.
We, as marketers, need to communicate to dentists that it’s not a one-time strategy but a long-term investment in their dental practice’s Internet future.
Dental SEO aims to establish foundations that will sustain growth for years to come so that people find your client’s practice first when they search for dental services in their area.
SEO has a single primary objective: making sure those seeking dental care can find your client’s office easily accessible and appealing. It is crucial to remember that attracting the correct kind of patients requires more than generating as much traffic as possible.
What is dental SEO?
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is improving a website’s content and the company’s online presence to guarantee that it ranks well on search engines like Google when a user looks for a particular product or service.
When people search for dental-related services online, dental practices should optimize their online presence to appear higher on search engine results pages (SERPs).
Dentists need to concentrate on more than just standard SEO. Dental marketers must carefully consider local SEO and its slightly distinct strategies.
Dentists near me
Consider someone looking for “Dentists near me” or “dental implants near me” in your city. The websites with the best SEO and the highest likelihood of attracting patients online appear in the map pack or top search results.
Search engines aim to provide consumers with the most precise and pertinent results that align with the purpose of their query. They are reluctant to display inaccurate, out-of-date, or ambiguous material. As a dentist marketing professional, your objective is to convince these search engines that your client is the most authoritative source of information and should appear on the first page of results.
This is gained by continuously giving users value; it does not happen overnight. Steer clear of SEO scams and avoid trying to manipulate the system. Put in the work, conduct thorough research, and establish authority for your clients that search engines like Google can’t ignore. This entails paying attention to your client’s appearance and how prospective patients will view them online in addition to regular SEO efforts.
Why is local SEO important for dental practices?
When was the last time you searched for a solution on Google and clicked on pages three or four? I don’t. And you don’t need to know anything else. Here are some statistics that demonstrate the importance of local SEO for dentists in case you need further assistance persuading one:
91.54% of the global search engine market is held by Google, according to the source
Google receives 5.9 million queries every minute.
Every day, 21% of Americans search online for local businesses. The source
Position 1 has an average click-through rate of 22.4% on mobile devices, followed by Position 2 at 13% and Position 3 at 10%. You only receive 2.3% of clicks at position 10.
According to a 2023 survey, only 0.63% of users click on the second page.
Given these statistics and our understanding of how frequently people use the internet, it is evident that ensuring your client appears in Google’s top 5 results will determine whether or not they receive organic traffic.
Additionally, when local searches are conducted, the local pack, by default, only displays three local pack sites at the top of the search results.
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Six Local SEO Tasks for Dental Marketers
Over the last four years, I’ve had the good fortune to execute SEO for more than 100 dental clinics around the US. Through trial and error, we at Pain-Free Dental Marketing have created a cutting-edge procedure that has been shown to provide results.
I’ve learned that you should consider the various aspects of dental SEO as building blocks. Without first laying the groundwork, you cannot begin with this. Does that make sense? Why would you concentrate on increasing traffic if the page is ugly? If you don’t have a website yet, why would you start accumulating citations or seeking reviews if your Google Business Profile appears blank? Build your home after laying the foundation.
Here’s how to approach dental SEO strategically:
Conduct thorough research, comprehend your competitors, and develop a strategy.
Local SEO for dentists cannot be implemented without a plan or a clear idea of your goals. This is important because, as a marketer, it will enable you to gauge success and share it with your customers.
You will not only be unable to articulate your plans for the dental office if strategy and success are not clearly defined, but it will also be difficult to assess your progress. To assist you understand what you need to accomplish, here are some first steps:
Do Your Keyword Research
Knowing what prospective patients are searching for is the cornerstone of a good SEO strategy. The main goal of this step is to find the appropriate words and phrases that speak to your target audience’s demands and questions. Consider it similar to selecting the appropriate instruments before performing a dental operation.
Finding groups of keywords that complement one another is another aspect of keyword research, in addition to identifying the terms with the highest volume. This includes utilizing long-tail keywords that can help you improve traffic and build authority by linking to your main sites.
The FAQ and People Also Asked sections contain long-tail keywords, and you can use Google’s auto-complete function to check what It recommends.
Understand Your Competition
Understanding your opponents can give you essential information. You might find opportunities to set your dental office apart from the competition and carve out a niche for yourself in the market by examining the online strategies of your rivals.
It indicates that a rival accomplishes something correctly when they rank top for a term. “This is what I like!” is what Google tells you. As a dental marketer, you must determine what Google finds appealing about the page, replicate it, and improve it!
Create a Plan
After conducting thorough keyword research and understanding your competitors and how you hope to outperform them, it’s time to create a strategy.
Enhancing your clients’ online presence and aligning them with your practice’s distinct voice, values, and online image should be the goals of this approach. SEO is as much about your online presence as it is about ranking well and attracting visitors. After all, a personalized touch can make all the difference in the broad world of online marketing.
If you appear better, you could still receive a click before others ranked higher, even if you are placed third.
Google Business Profile Optimization
With a plan in place, it’s time to get started on local SEO initiatives that will yield the most outstanding results as soon as possible. A Google Business Profile (GBP) can be extremely helpful in this situation.
A Google Business Profile must be the focal point of your dental SEO approach. It is one of the first things potential patients will encounter, frequently even before the website. Additionally, it might help a dental office gain visibility if it first has trouble ranking the website.
If you haven’t already, you should immediately stop what you’re doing and build a Google Business Profile for the dentistry business! Verification through the mail can take a long time, so avoid doing it. Verify using the company video or the office number.
Now you’re verified, it’s time to start optimizing.
Step 1: Optimize Your Business Information
Please provide precise and thorough information in each profile section, including your practice’s name, address, phone number, and website.
Consistently improving your visibility assists Google in comprehending and trusting your company. Make sure your business description makes sense for a human to read, and use the keywords you found that have enough volume to attract patients.
Provide as much helpful information as possible, including services, the company’s data, unique features, goods, social media links, and more.
Step 2: Select the Right Categories
GBP categories, such as “cosmetic dentistry” or “pediatric dentist,” assist prospective clients in finding your services when they are looking for particular dental needs. Be as descriptive as you can to stand out in the appropriate searches.
Step 3: Use High-Quality Photos
Visuals have a significant impact. Provide high-quality images of the staff, the practice, and the patient before and after pictures (with permission).
Adding photos to your listing might make it more noticeable and give prospective patients an idea of the friendly atmosphere you provide. They can also calm an anxious customer.
High-quality, up-to-date photographs are crucial. Even if your customer is ranked #1, it won’t help if the images are outmoded or amateurish. Your hard work will be in vain because no one will click on it.
This relates to my earlier statement that the brand should be aesthetically pleasing to prospective patients.
Step 4: Post Regular Updates
Use the posts tool to post news, deals, and updates about your practice. Frequent updates keep your profile lively and engaging, demonstrating to prospective patients that your office is busy and current.
Additionally, you should frequently upload fresh photos.
Step 5: Reviews, Reviews, Reviews!
Reviews are the foundation of your GBP’s efficacy and the dentistry marketing industry’s rocket. Urge pleased customers to post positive reviews using keywords and reply professionally to every review.
This can raise your search engine rankings and demonstrate to prospective patients that you value their opinions.
Google Search Console and Understanding Your Dental Website
Many marketers believe that tracking the effectiveness of your SEO for dentists requires a wide range of software. One of the most excellent tools in your digital toolbox and a great place to start is Google Search Console (GSC).
Google offers a free service called GSC that assists you in monitoring, maintaining, and troubleshooting your website’s visibility in Google search results.
Knowing how to use Google Search Console is like having powerful dental X-ray equipment that can look deep into the health of your website’s online presence, not just the surface. This is what you must do:
Verify and Monitor Your Site’s Performance:
Keep tabs on how well your website performs in Google search results. Examine your site’s click-through rates (CTRs), examine the queries that drive visitors to it, and see how you rank for particular keywords.
Inspect URLs for Indexing Issues:
Use the URL Inspection tool to determine whether Google can crawl your website’s pages, identify any indexing problems, and request that fresh or updated content be re-indexed. If pages are not indexed, you can determine the cause.
Identify and Fix Mobile Usability Issues:
Find pages that are difficult to use on mobile devices to ensure your website is mobile-friendly. This is essential for preserving and raising your website’s position in search results.
Improve Website Content Based on Data:
Use search analytics to improve your website’s content. Concentrate on developing content around search terms and queries that have been shown to increase website traffic.
On-Page and Technical SEO for Dental Websites
Now that everything is in order, it’s time to browse your website. You may think I’m insane for just now visiting the website, but remember that we require a plan first. We then used Google Search Console to learn how Google interacts with your website because a dentist is a local business. Thus, we had to ensure the Google Business Profile was optimized for the local pack.
We may now start working on the actual website.
On-Page SEO
On-page SEO is optimizing individual web pages to rank higher and attract more relevant traffic in search engines. It includes a page’s HTML source code as well as its content.
On-page SEO is essential for dental marketing because it aids search engines in comprehending your website’s content and relevance to search queries—particularly those about the dental services your client values.
Although many SEO experts combine a variety of criteria into on-page SEO, I’ve only observed a few that have a real influence on your website’s performance:
1. High-Quality Content
It’s true, even though you’ve heard it a thousand times already. The primary purpose of Google and other search engines is to give consumers the information they seek.
You must ensure your dentistry website offers practical details about every service you provide your clients. I drive mad when I see dental websites that lack location or service sections. A dental service requires its page to be targeted!
Presenting your authority and knowledge is a crucial component of Google’s E-E-A-T. Dental practices will employ dentists as in-house specialists! They should be used to assist you in producing truly authoritative material, such as guides or Q&As.
2. Keyword Optimization
If you followed my instructions, you would know what people are searching for, how they reach your client’s website, and what services the dentist wants to rank higher.
You may now begin incorporating the keywords you want to rank for into the content of your website. To assist the user in finding the required information, utilize several keyword variations, publish several pages that discuss the service in various ways, and establish internal linkages. That is all there is to it.
Too frequently, dental marketers focus too much on where and how often to use a keyword rather than creating excellent content.
Naturally
Use fundamental SEO best practices to ensure that keywords appear in your headings as needed, but having quality content with keywords strewn throughout is more significant than having a lot of keywords with mediocre content. Focus on topics rather than specific keywords.
Instead, create what I like to refer to as a “pillar page,” and consider that page the one for which you want the highest ranking.
To increase the value of the pillar page, you can then create supporting sites using variations of the same keyword or long-tail keywords that you link out to. That’s the reason Wikipedia is so popular. Create a fantastic page about a dental service and include links to other, more in-depth pages on your website so that those interested in learning more about particular facets of the subject may find out more.
For instance, on my veneers page, I provide a paragraph that briefly discusses the advantages. Next, I’ll include the following: “If you want to understand all of the benefits of veneers, you can do so here.” This will provide a link to a page in the veneers subfolder that includes further information. Because it allows visitors to learn more about the subject, Google will see that your pillar page is valuable.
3. Optimizing Meta Tags and Descriptions
Ensure every page has a distinct title tag and meta description appropriately conveying its content. These components serve as a user’s initial impression of search result pages and aid search engines in understanding each page’s subject matter.
Make a statement with your title. Choose a title that is different from the page’s title. This is your opportunity to attract potential customers’ attention on search engine results pages. Use an attention-grabbing featured image.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO ensures your dental practice’s website is visible and straightforward for search engines and potential patients.
You may add new pages to your website and no one would ever see them if you don’t have the technical SEO. Or you might write the ideal content, but no one will stay to view it because the page loads too slowly. These are simply two instances, but you get the idea.
I advise dentistry marketers to use the following top technical SEO strategies:
1. Website Health & Performance
Like the rest of us, Google detests sluggish websites because they affect the user experience. You must ensure a website loads quickly, is responsive and uses HTTPS to establish secure connections. As marketers, these elements affect search engine rankings and user experience.
Google PageSpeed Insights is one of the most valuable tools for analyzing and enhancing website performance. According to my research on the factors that affect website speed the most, it has nothing to do with the website itself.
One of the most significant elements affecting your website’s speed is hosting. How Google interacts with your website and, consequently, your SEO efforts will be directly impacted if the website you are working on is hosted on unreliable or unresponsive servers. More information about that can be found here at Search Engine Journal.
The size of your graphics or even plugins can impact how quickly your page loads. Consider auditing everything and fixing anything you can, such as outdated plugins or lazy loading.
2. Structured Data for Enhanced Visibility
An effective technique for enhancing a dental practice’s visibility in search results is structured data.
By implementing schema markup for nearby businesses, we can assist search engines in comprehending and displaying crucial information about dental offices, such as services provided, operating hours, and patient reviews. This can improve your clients’ presence in local search results, increasing their accessibility and patient attractiveness. Although SchemaPro is what we use, you can implement your local schema in various ways.
3. Submit Sitemap to Google
An XML sitemap functions similarly to a website map. It informs Google of the locations of your key pages, which is beneficial, particularly if your website is poorly connected or has many pages.
Strategic internal linking and a sitemap are surefire methods to help Google efficiently index your website. Google provides guidelines for creating and submitting a sitemap.
4. Optimize Your Site Architecture
A website has numerous pages. These pages should be organized, so search engines can easily find and browse them. This is where your website’s information architecture, or organization, comes into play.
Additionally, this will facilitate prospective patients’ navigation of the dentistry website. You must clear the path to ensure the site structure makes sense and flows helpfully.
Most patients are concerned about who the dentist is, how much this will cost, insurance questions, and how I can contact this facility. Although this is merely an illustration, you should use this framework for your internal link implementation and service pages.
5. Target Keywords in Your URL
This may not sound like much, but every little bit matters regarding dental SEO. If I can outperform my rivals, I’ll be one step closer to a new patient. Make sure your URL contains keywords and is short. Google dislikes generic URLs. Additionally, you should avoid using numerals unless it is required.
I always like to give the following example when it comes to citations:
If I informed you today that my name is Ian, here is my number and address; feel free to call me anytime. The next time I see you, I’ll introduce myself as Michael and give you a new phone number.
I introduce myself as John when I see you for the third time. And so forth.
You will eventually conclude that I am either insane or just unreliable. If your client’s company information is inaccurate across several platforms and directories, why should Google trust it?
These citations help improve a dental practice’s exposure on search engines like Google by regularly including the practice’s name, address, phone number (NAP), and website in various internet directories and platforms.
This is essential for drawing in local clients looking for nearby dental care. Citations further enhance a dental practice’s legitimacy and trustworthiness online by convincing Google and prospective clients of the practice’s well-established online presence.
Citations are Google’s way of confirming that you are who you claim to be and that the company you are promoting is honest. Creating citations has always been an essential component of my dental marketing approach, and I advise all marketers interested in local SEO for dentists to do the same.
My favorite tool for this is Brightlocal, making overseeing more than 100 dental practices at once simple.
Multilocation Practices Vs. Single Location Dentists
Your approach to dental SEO will vary depending on whether your client has one or several dental offices. The key to success locally is not a shift in what you must accomplish but in how you will do it.
One Website, Several Locations
Before we begin, I want to offer this: “I would like to draw in patients from a town 30 minutes away. ” This is one of the most difficult queries I have received. How can SEO help us do that?
The beginning of my reaction is always the same. Google search results will always display a business in that town or city over a different practice that is thirty minutes away, even if we start targeting another town with new pages.
When you consider it, it makes perfect sense. When other companies within ten minutes of my area can offer me the same services, why would Google require me to drive thirty minutes to a business?
I say this because implementing SEO for practice with several locations requires understanding this idea. You guessed it: local is the primary focus of local SEO. You must demonstrate to Google that your company is the best choice for that neighborhood.
To Accomplish This
Each location will require a website of its own, or at the very least, a specific page on your website that targets the branch and the town or city in which it is located. You can’t establish a website listing only the many places in these regions. This won’t be sufficient to compete with another practice with a whole website aimed at that particular area.
If you have a single website that serves several locations, make sure it has distinct pages that offer a thorough analysis of each practice and extra service sites that connect to the services you provide in that community.
Additionally, you should share reviews from that location and target local dental service keywords on those pages. Since the only URL I could get to rank well was the page devoted to that town, I know Google favors location-specific content. Because Google did not link the remainder of the website to the town or city we were targeting, no other page on the website would show up in that town.
Differences in SEO for Dentists vs. Other Industries
As you can see, backlinking was not a key component of my dental SEO plan. Obtaining backlinks from other websites isn’t as crucial for dentists’ local SEO as we once believed, particularly in places where there aren’t many dental offices vying for clients.
Concentrating on backlinks in these situations may not best use your time. According to Google, in 2022, backlinks aren’t as crucial as once.
In my experience, this is particularly true in places with less competition or where other dental offices are not using dental SEO. If the practice you’re marketing for is in a smaller city or town with less competition, you can score highly in search results without worrying too much about obtaining backlinks.
Instead, utilize the appropriate local keywords, update your website frequently with pertinent information, build out citations, make sure your Google Business Profile is accurate and updated regularly, and encourage satisfied customers to provide as many reviews as they can.
Final Thoughts & Advice
It’s crucial to understand that this post examines the key elements that have changed the lives of the dentists I’ve worked with over the past few years rather than offering a panacea for dental SEO. There is no one-size-fits-all method for local SEO for dentists. It involves experimenting with many tactics to see which suits you the best. The needs of various dental offices vary, as will the metrics used to assess the effectiveness of your SEO campaigns.
Be sure to underpromise, overdeliver, and over-communicate. Don’t expect dentists to recognize your value as a dental marketer because they are not marketers. You must demonstrate to them the impact your local SEO services can and have had on their exposure.