Optimise your Dentist website for search engines (SEO)

The number of dental offices is constantly increasing, for this reason the competition between them will be tough and difficult. To stay competitive, stand out among other dentists and gain new clients, you need to use search engine optimisation for your dental website – as one of the most effective marketing strategies for dentists and other professionals.

But what is search engine optimisation? What problems and mistakes do most dentists make? Why should dentists invest in SEO? This in-depth guide will help you.

What is SEO and how does it work?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the optimisation of a dentist’s website with the aim of raising its pages in search results or higher rankings on Google and other platforms.

Simply put, SEO is designed to increase web traffic and help targeted patients find your website on search engines and social media platforms on the internet. Search engines are equipped with a clever and innovative search algorithm that attempts to place the most relevant, authoritative and credible information at the top of the list.

Why do dentists need SEO services?

As a dental business owner, you may be wondering why you need SEO marketing; we answer – without it, no one can find your website if it’s not optimised for search engines. Research shows that the top five search results typically get 68% of all clicks. So, if your dental office website reaches these positions, it will get more web traffic, more potential clients will appear.

In addition, your competitors are already investing in SEO for dentists. This means that they are already benefiting from SEO, getting new local patients.

Conversely, this is a great chance for you to attract more patients to your practice sooner. You can prove your effectiveness with a beautiful website and great SEO.

Best Dental SEO Practices

1. Separate web pages for specific keywords.
SEO experts usually dedicate one page to targeting a single keyword. The trick here is to use enough keywords on your page without compromising its quality. You can get creative by including them in the title or meta description of your page. Write a detailed description of your service, describe the benefits, talk about the results, supplement the article with client testimonials.

2. Lack of social media marketing
Twitter followers or Facebook likes don’t affect your search engine rankings. But your social media profiles are an exception. If your post interests users online, it can lead to more web traffic. People will start browsing your website, increasing your conversion rate.

SEO requires a lot of time, effort and patience. For those who don’t already have social media accounts, create them on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other networking platforms.

3. Optimise your site for mobile phones
The popularity of mobile phones has increased dramatically over the past decades. This means that people are shopping online, looking for companies providing various services online.

If your website is not optimised for mobile devices, an overwhelming number of customers will not be able to find your website and use your services.

If done correctly and your website is optimised for mobile devices, it will improve user interaction, increase the average time spent on your website, increase the loading speed of your website, and gain a competitive advantage over other companies.

4. Local SEO
According to Google, four out of five consumers perform local searches. Thus, local SEO can play a crucial role in your business.

Optimising for local search can be a complex process, it is designed to increase the visibility of your dental services to customers residing or temporarily located in your area. To increase the level of effectiveness of local SEO for dentists, there are three factors to consider. These include prominence, relevance and distance.

What sets search engine optimisation apart from other marketing methods?

1. Higher search engine rankings
Studies show that people tend to open a website that is at the top positions of a search engine.
Imagine that your website has good search engine results. You can expect web traffic and customer growth within a short period of time.
But don’t be satisfied with your ranking. You can lose the top spot if you stop investing efforts in SEO. Always stay up to date with SEO trends. Strive to provide something interesting and of high quality.

2. Improve your visibility online
The internet has provided an amazing opportunity to expand the flow of customers for your dental business. Intranet is the new way to market and work and you cannot afford to lose a lot of patients from this platform. If you don’t have a website, it will be difficult for you to increase your visibility online. In addition to SEO for dentists, don’t forget to publish content on blogs, be active on popular social media platforms, post on Facebook, and encourage customers to leave online reviews.

3. Help potential patients find you online.
Try to make sure that your potential clients can find you online, which is why search engine optimisation is important.
You will be able to find new clients, and patients will also find out about your dental services.

4. Reaching the right market
SEO aims to increase the visibility of your dental services in the region in which you are located, your web page will be accessible to local patients.

5. Gain insight into the needs of your audience.
With a website, you have a great opportunity to learn about the interests of your potential clients, the demand for your services, and get an idea of your audience’s needs, pain points, and requirements.

6. Provide information about your dental practice.
Building brand awareness used to be a challenge. Today, with the advent of the internet, it is easy and seamless. If content development is not your area of expertise, there are experienced professionals you can rely on and trust. Although the services incur additional costs, all your efforts will pay off in the end.

7. Increase web traffic
Search engine optimisation increases your visibility on the internet. This means that your target audience will be able to find your website online. If you are having trouble increasing traffic to your website, SEO optimisation for dentists can help you a lot. Once your pages are keyword optimised, interesting to read and have authority and credibility, your page will be on top of all the leading search engines.

8. Generate quality leads
SEO for dentist allows you to increase your website’s ranking in search engine results. This over time leads to increased traffic, clicks and sales. In addition, SEO for dentists generates leads. If you get to the point where you are seen in reputable search engines, attracting leads will become as easy as possible for you. Seek the help of qualified and certified experts to achieve this goal.

9. Loyal patients
Attracting new patients is difficult. But getting regular and loyal customers is even harder. SEO for dentists will help solve your patients’ pain points, it will be easy to increase the number of loyal customers. Set up feedback, be sure to answer their questions and other concerns as soon as possible. Be accessible, helpful, friendly and professional.

Create unique content

Content drives higher visibility on Google and other search engines. This leads to increased traffic, social traffic, conversion potential, increased brand reputation, closer customer relationships and more.

Use keywords

Keywords are essential to ensure that, your website is at the top of the search engines. As a result, you can enjoy excellent web traffic, customer conversions and continued success. You can include keywords in page titles, meta descriptions, subheadings, content, images, URLs, anchor text, social media, external listings and directories. Always strive to offer quality content to get long term results.

Both meta descriptions and title tags with keywords attract readers to your site from search results. They are visible to your patients and can play a good role. For this reason, creating compelling and readable meta description/headline tags should not be underestimated.

Share content on social media

In addition to publishing content on your websites, don’t forget about your social media accounts. Start creating Facebook posts, building up your Instagram/Twitter followers and YouTube subscribers. Don’t forget from social media to provide links to your website, maximise your friends/subscribers.

Implement Google Search Console and Google Analytics for your website.

It is crucial to track the entire progress of traffic changes. This is where Google Search Console, Google Analytics and other tools come in handy.

Avoid technical errors on your website

After creating your website, it is important to eliminate technical errors on it. You need to optimise metadata, remove duplicate page content and optimise images.