Did you know that 46% of Google searches are conducted to find a local business? For a dentist’s office, knowing this statistic is significant.
This is because you serve a local area where patients are within certain geographical limits. To reach them, you can use local SEO for dentists.
What is Local SEO?
Local SEO is the practice of marketing a business online to local patients. To do it, specific geographical keywords are used that users may be searching for in your area.
For example, a user may be searching for you by using the term “dentists in Cape Town.” If you’re not showing up for this term on Google or other search engines, you will miss out on many patients.
Many of the standard SEO tactics will contribute to local SEO, however, there are specific tactics such as using your Google Profile Manager to acquire customers looking for a dentist near you.
Why Should Dental Offices Care About SEO?
Each day, more than 8.5 billion searches are conducted on Google. In fact, 60500 people search for “dentist near me” in South Africa alone. That’s a considerable number, and a good chunk of those searches will occur by users within your area or city.
Many of those searches will be looking to find a local dentist. This provides an excellent opportunity for you to take advantage of. With the right tools and strategy, you can ensure that your business is at the top of the SERP (search engine results pages) when a user searches for a local SEO term.
Local SEO is crucial if you want to create more search visibility and bring in more patients to your dental practice.
How To Do Local SEO Marketing
There are many different ways to conduct SEO marketing. To start, you need to understand how search engines work and how to conduct keyword research properly. It would be best if you also had a good understanding of how users search for your practice.
Then, you need to take that information and put it all into action. This creates a recipe for success and will help you rise in the ranks to reach more people in your area.
Now, we’ll go over some steps to take to achieve this.
Keywords
Keywords are one of the most essential pieces of the SEO puzzle. Without them, you will not reach the right audience.
You’ll want to find keywords that target that specific audience for a practice that relies on local SEO in Cape Town. You don’t want to be reaching people in other countries as they’re not your patients.
When selecting your keywords you’ll want to include a variety of different keywords for different purposes. You’ll want informational-based keywords, which you can use in content marketing. Consider adding transactional-based keywords for your service pages, most importantly though you’ll need navigational intent keywords.
Dental Keywords & Intent
- Informational – “How to choose a dentist”
- Transactional – “Replacing a crown”
- Navigational – “Your brand + website”
Once you have a nice amount of chosen keywords that your audience would be searching for, you want to put those into practice. This can be done through blog posts or by using these keywords on pages around your website. It’s even better if you’re able to do both.
You’ll become an authority in your niche by helping someone out with information in a blog post. This means that you can build trust and credibility with your patients and they’ll be more likely to become patients at your dental practice.
Link Building
In addition to keywords, links within the content are a fantastic way to boost your local SEO. You want to use relevant internal and external links within your content. This is done, so search engines understand how these pages are contextually related.
Internal links link to other parts of your website. External links are links to other relevant websites.
When linking externally, the goal is to find supplemental content that adds value to what you provide. Try to use content from other websites that are local to you when externally linking.
Backlinks are another crucial growth aspect for dentists. You’ll mentions and backlinks from those mentions to your website. A backlink is essentially a vote from one website to another, one which Google favours highly in its’ algorithm. This form of link building helps grow your brand as a dentist and ultimately helps acquire patients.
Page Speed
Getting a little more technical is the concept of page speed. You want to ensure that your website has a fast loading time. Otherwise, you risk losing valuable users and credibility with search engines. Google has introduced the concept of Core Web Vitals, which is a general score to understand your page load time. An SEO Consultancy such as Trail Digital will use developers to improve your page speed which helps reduce your bounce rate. Fewer website bounces or exits without interaction will ultimately grow your website visitors, leading to more conversions.
53% of mobile users will abandon a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. Optimising your website is extremely important because if it’s not, this is an easy way to lose a potential patient.
Google My Business
For a local practice, Google My Business is one of the most powerful tools that you can use. It allows you to create a profile for your practice where you can make posts and give contact information and business hours.
You can show up quickly in search, and patients can contact you with the click of a button.
It’s the perfect tool for a dental practice in South Africa to use for maximum exposure to potential patients. Your Google My Business has a reviews section, which patients will definitely check before proceeding to contact your dental practice. Get more positive reviews to improve your Google My Business profile.
Local SEO for Dentists: The Tools for Growth
As a dentist, you’re great at providing the best experience for your patients while helping promote a healthy and happy smile. No one can do a great job quite like you and your patients should know it!
Here at Trail Digital, we’re experts at local SEO for dentists. We proudly serve many local businesses by optimising their websites and online profiles for search.
Are you a dental practice that is looking to increase your local SEO visibility? Send us a message today to see how we can help you!
