Dental SEO- SEO for Dentists
Search Engine Optimization for Dentists
When was the last time your dental practice schedule was full of appointments due to patients finding your business on Google?
If your dental practice is struggling to increase your new patient intake each month, then you’re not reaping the benefits of an effective dental SEO campaign.
Let’s look at why dentists need SEO for their practice and how you can benefit from having a dental SEO agency on your team.
In this article, we’ll explain what dental SEO is, cover the primary metrics that Google uses to evaluate your business’ online presence, and walk you through our effective dental SEO strategy to rank your dental practice #1 on Google.
Why?
Because there is an evergrowing market share of new dental patients who are looking for a “dentist near me” or “dental cleaning near me,” you should be taking advantage of the opportunity that is presenting itself through search engines.
If you’re new to SEO, there may be terms that we use that you’re unfamiliar with, but dont’ worry. We’ll explain the terminology for those that are new to the subject.
At the same time, if you’ve hired an SEO for your dental practice in the past and haven’t seen clear results, then we’re here to help explain to you how our dental SEO campaigns are structured so that you can see real results to your revenue.
How Does SEO Work For Dentists?
Dental SEO is the process of driving more new patients to a dental office using local search engine optimization techniques that improve your Google Map’s and website’s position in their appropriate search engine results pages. The higher your business and website rank, the better chance of increasing the volume of potential patients to your dental office.
Google Maps Ranking for Dentists
In order to improve your rankings on Google Maps, you need to show the high-value signals that Google is looking for. This can be as simple as regular posts on your Google Business Profile page while generating reviews naturally from patients, or as complicated as developing custom graphic that have SEO’d content, hashtags, and silo’d link structures while generating reviews through patients by automatically asking them soon after they leave their appointment.
In fact, there are a lot of SEO techniques for Google My Business / Google Business Profile Manager that Google analyzes through their algorithm. Here’s a look at the Google Maps optimizations that we offer:
Google Maps Optimization for Dentists
- Google Business Profile Signals – Proximity, categories, keyword usage, consistent posting, complete service information, and accurate business information.
- Link Signals – Backlink profile via website content and external sources taking into account domain and page authority of each link
- On-Page Signals – Name/Address/Phone Number/Website Accuracy, proper keyword usage, Title/Description/Htags, content optimization, and blog strategy
- Citation Signals – Aggregator and specific directory NAPW consistency, citation volume, citation relevancy, etc.
- Review Signals – Review quantity, review acceleration, review diversity including different platforms, etc.
- Behavioral Signals – Click-through rate, mobile clicks-to-call, direction requests, Facebook check-ins, bounce rate, and messaging actions.
- Personalization – How your business stands out, design, wording, message, purpose, etc.
- Social Signals – Google engagement, Facebook engagement, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
Website Ranking for Dentists
When building websites for dentists, WordPress is typically the best option to build on. Using a fast, professional theme, you can effectively optimize a dental website for both technical and on-page SEO. We recommend using Kadence or Avada for building most dental websites and have ranked dentists at the top of page one on both of these themes.
In order to rank #1 a dental website is going to need a lot of powerful primary pages, in-depth and accurate supporting content, and plenty of links showing authority and trust. These factors greatly impact your rankings on Google.
For instance, if a potential patient goes to Google and types in keywords related to dentist services or a dentist in a specific location like “family dentist in keller tx” and “dentist near me,” they will find your dental office at the top of search results due to your SEO efforts within Google’s current ranking algorithm. Each dental patients is worth thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars if they are loyal patients. So, the next time a patient searches for a “dentist near me” you can’t afford to not show up as the top ranking spot on Google Maps and Google Search.
Website Optimization for Dentists
A web developers’ competence with SEO makes nearly all the difference in a website that looks beautiful and can drive new customers to your dental office. Hiring a web designer who knows only basic SEO from a plugin setup point of view or simple techniques found on YouTube will provide very poor results when it comes time to launching a digital marketing campaign. That’s why it’s important to hire a web designer and developer that have an experienced SEO on board.
For example, while many of the signals from Google Maps can support your website ranking, the primary ranking factors for a website are found in the three pillars of SEO: Relevancy, Popularity, and Integrity. Each of these has multiple aspects require both a broad knowledge of SEO and a deep understanding on how to roll-out a proper SEO campaign. Here’s what you should know:
- Relevancy involves structured on-page optimizations that maximize efficacy. This requires understanding both the dentists current position as well as the reason for competitor success in the targeted area to properly target the right keywords that are both valuable to the dentist and relevant to the target patients. Relevancy also requires providing the best information to solve a users questions or problems quickly and accurately. For example, you wouldn’t want to waste a patients time who is looking for an emergency dentist nearby. Nor would you was to simply provide information without local options to someone suffering from missing teeth. Content marketing and strategy is a must to stay relevant.
- Popularity demonstrates the success of relevancy and integrity in an SEO campaign. This comes from links, both internal linking silo’s and external backlinks from high authority websites and webpages. Volume, acceleration, and quality of the links matters and represents what other sites value your website to be.
- Integrity contains more than an estimated 2,000 to 10,000 ranking factors with more than 800 confirmed by Google itself. Each of these have varying value that can be added towards optimizing your campaign, but a developer must also know when to avoid over-optimization to ensure improving rankings on Google while maintaining effective conversion rates with real patients.
Choose Nickel SEO to Rank Your Dental Practice
Here at Nickel SEO, we know how to develop a complete digital marketing campaign for dentists. We can help you reach a larger market share of new dental patients and even attract patients from other dental offices by showing to both Google and the people in your city why your dental practice stands out from the rest.
Don’t be just another dental office in your city. Make a name for yourself and build a brand that people know and trust. Our team at Nickel SEO can help you rank your dental office in the #1 spot for hundreds of high-value keywords in your city. Simply give us a call and let’s discuss your dental practice and the goals you would like to reach!