Dental Marketing 101: What You Need to Know About SEO

Have you hopped on a business’s website recently only to exit swiftly out of frustration? Maybe it was missing basic information like location or hours, didn’t have a clear explanation about their services, or perhaps it said a lot without saying anything. No matter the reason, this business lost your business, and that’s money left on the table.

Today’s consumer is evolving and is quite tech savvy. This means you need to stay on top of your game when it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your dental practice. SEO is a fundamental component of digital marketing directly impacting your online visibility, website traffic, and patient acquisition. Here are some pretty convincing stats to help support our point:

• Organic traffic is responsible for 53.3% of a website’s traffic
• 75% of people will never go past the first page of the Google search results page (you need fresh content and frequent website updates to stay relevant)
• The first organic search result on Google gets 31.24% of all clicks

If you don’t capture visitors’ attention and keep it, you’re losing to your competitors. And we get it — you’re a dentist, not a marketer so why should you care and what can you do about it? We’re glad you asked. This week’s blog is dedicated to helping you take relatively easy steps to help bolster your SEO and attract more and better patients who are just itching to find you online. 

Improving Your SEO To Maximize Your Online Visibility 

Nobody wants to spend hours online searching for a dentist to fit their needs. This is where Google My Business (GMB) comes into play. Having a GMB account allows you to claim ownership of your business profile, attain management rights to it, and utilize features that increase your visibility. Once you have an established GMB, you can get to work on your website with the goal of getting to the top of a search. 

We’re sharing five strategies you can use to improve that SEO and maximize your online visibility so more and better patients can find you: 

• Keyword Search: What do you want your practice to be known for? Implants? Sedative Care? General Dentistry? Then it’s important to use keyword search tools to identify high-volume keywords, with low competition, that relate to your services. Once you’ve identified them, you can naturally work them into your website content. 

• On-Page Optimization: On-page elements include tags, meta descriptions, headers, and content that align with your keywords. These help improve online rankings. You can take it a step further by ensuring that your content is informative and relevant to your services. 

• Local SEO Optimization: Your business information, known as NAP — Name, Address, and Phone Number — are crucial elements needed to boost your GMB listing. While you’re ensuring this information is present, you can encourage happy patients to leave positive reviews. Promptly responding to client inquiries and reviews is icing on the proverbial cake and shows you care about your clientele. 

• Content Marketing: High quality, informative content wins the day with new and regular visitors to your site. Creating fresh content, like blog posts, articles, videos, and patient testimonials, help engage your prospective clients — all while improving your search engine rankings. #winning

• Monitoring Performance: How do you know if your hard work on SEO is paying off? Using Google Analytics and Google Search Console are great ways to see how your website is performing. Tracking Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) like organic traffic, keyword rankings, and conversion rates, help you identify the effectiveness of your website tweaks while also revealing areas for improvement. 

We threw a lot at you above, but with small steps and tweaks, these factors make a huge impact on your practice’s online presence. If prospects can easily find you and they like what they see, they’ll convert. And they might even tell their friends and family.

Be on the lookout for Tip Tuesday emails and more posts to help guide you through marketing your dental practice.