Every website needs an SEO strategy to get to the top of the search results. Google is full to the brim with information, and competition is everywhere. If you want to remain relevant, you need a good SEO strategy to do so.
When potential patients are looking for dental services online, it will be your detailed SEO strategy that brings you to the top of Google’s results page.
SEO is one of the most effective digital marketing strategies if you’re looking to grow your business on the internet. It is also extremely cost-effective. You don’t need to pay a cent towards it (unless you choose to outsource the work).
Why Is Dental SEO So Important?
Think of when you are searching for the best salon or barbers in town. You will automatically be drawn to the first few results. You know that those businesses have been searched for the most, and are the most popular, so you feel as though you can trust them.
Such businesses have a great SEO strategy that pushes their websites up on Google’s results page. Some reasons to invest in SEO include:
- It makes it easier for people to find your website
- It helps you get traffic
- It helps you build trust with potential patients
- It is cost-effective
With the amount of information out there on SEO, it can be daunting to dive into it. This article summarizes 5 of the most important things you need to know in order to optimize your website and improve your rankings.
Let’s get started!
5 SEO Strategies For Dental Websites
1. Create An Engaging Website
You may already have a website, however, if you do not, it’s time to get one. The only way in which you can implement an SEO strategy successfully is if you have a website that is rich in content and filled with relevant keywords. Oh, and of course it needs to look good too! Those first impressions count.
A top tip here is to make sure that your website is mobile-friendly as most people have instant access to the internet on their mobile devices, and this is probably the way in which they are going to search for your services.
Also, on the back-end of your website, it is important to focus on URLs, image and video file sizes, page load times and meta titles and descriptions. You need to tick every box with your website and make sure that your visitors have a positive experience when looking through it.
2. Create SEO-rich Content
Once you have built a pristine website, you can now focus on creating content that is filled with relevant keywords. You’ll need to do some research on the type of keywords that people are using on Google while researching dental services in your area, and then include them in your content.
For example, if you live in New York and you discover that many people Google the phrase “best dentist in New York”, then you’ll want to use it frequently on your website.
There are many free keyword research tools out there that will help you uncover all the keywords related to your practice, including Google Keyword Planner, Ubersuggest, and SEMrush. Such tools will tell you how frequently they get searched and their level of competition.
Ideally, you should target keywords with a high monthly search volume and low competition, because they are generally easier to rank for and have a high traffic potential. Make sure to use them in your headings, meta-descriptions, and in content.
Do some research about the types of questions that people may have regarding dental care and aim to answer those questions with elaborate articles. That will help you draw more traffic.
3. Optimize for people, not search engines
Although SEO-rich content is extremely important, you should always keep your target audience at the forefront of what you do. Don’t go overboard by overusing your keywords every opportunity you get. Your goal while optimizing your page should be to increase the experience for human readers, not for search engines.
At the end of the day, your business is there to support them with their concerns regarding dental care. Do some research to find out what questions they are actively researching, and then create content that answers them extensively. That’s how SEO battles are won.
4. Link building
Backlinks are simply links on other sites pointing to your site. The number of high-quality backlinks determines how much Google trusts your website, and as a result, how high it ranks on the results page.
In short, the more backlinks you have, the higher your ranking is likely to be. Besides content and page experience, this is perhaps the most important SEO factor.
There are many ways of building backlinks to your website. The most common is by doing guest posts on other blogs and then including your link in the author bio.
The only challenge with this approach is that it’s not very scalable. You need to build links fast! An easy way to get around it is by outsourcing the work to a dedicated link building agency so you don’t have to worry about it and only focus on your content.
5. Analyse
Lastly, ensure that you make time to analyse your SEO metrics, meaning how well your website is going regarding how long people spend on it, how much organic traffic you have, your average page load time, and your top keywords ranked.
If you do not take time to analyse your SEO metrics, you won’t know where or how to improve your dental website in order to gain more traffic. Google Analytics is a great tool you can use to find all your key metrics.
Key Points To Remember
Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of how you could incorporate an SEO strategy within the marketing plan for your dental business.
If you break down the information in this article into smaller chunks, you will become a SEO expert in no time and you will definitely find that your website will start crawling its way to the first page on Google.
Research is key! You will not be able to implement an SEO strategy if you have not done your research. After researching all of the concerns and problems that potential customers/patients may have, you can then focus on the type of keywords that you want to incorporate into your website.
Make sure that your content is unique and original. and keeps your target audience in mind. Answer their questions and engage with them. Eventually Google will reward you for your efforts with a better ranking, which will naturally lead to more organic traffic.
