If you’re a dentist looking to maximize your potential, whether as a current business owner or someone seeking to get into the field, here’s what you need to know about search engine optimisation (SEO) for dentists. SEO is a new field of digital marketing, whereby an SEO Practioner will improve your website. The goal? To gain quality traffic that converts, resulting in more sales or dentistry patients. When getting started, essential concepts covered include tracking, building an SEO friendly website, indexation, keywords, content, backlinks, and local SEO.
Tracking
Website tracking is the first and most crucial step when getting started with SEO. After all, how do you know if your results are improving and what requires improvement? Website tracking also allows you to gather your conversions accurately. Two necessary tracking tools to implement are Google Analytics and Google Search Console. There are tons of tracking tools, but these two are sufficient for most.
Google Analytics
This free service is a web analytics application that collects data about a website’s traffic and then provides that information to the site owner. It’s free to use, can be easily installed on most websites and allows you to track patient bookings, emails or phone calls, and contact form fills. Installing the Google Analytics code is pretty straightforward; however, incorrect installation can lead to data inaccuracies. Therefore, you should use someone who knows what they’re doing to avoid these types of problems.
Once installed, it is important to set up goals. These would likely be:
- Patient bookings for dental services
- Phone calls
- Contact forms sent
- Email clicks
- Views of your map
- Social icon views
We always suggest installing these through the Google Tag Manager tool, allowing for more advanced tracking. However, you’ll be able to track the basics, without this tool.
Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a suite of web-based tools offered by Google to help track and improve the ranking of a website in Google’s search results. It allows you to track important things like indexation, top pages, keywords, core web vitals, and backlinks. This tool is at the heart of SEO and gives you great insights into what users’ type into Google to land on your website, a fundamental principle for determining traffic quality.
Building an SEO friendly website
Building an SEO friendly website entails many things. Ultimately a good website is vital for a great user experience, promoting conversions. A great user experience is all Google is after at the end of the day, as this keeps users on page longer.
Your Dental practice website needs to load quickly.
Google, the most significant Search Engine by market share, has recently placed a big emphasis on page speed. You can use a tool called PageSpeed Insights to measure your page speed across various performance metrics. These are easily explained with the PageSpeed Insights tool, by selecting “Expand view”.
Your Dental practice website must be mobile-friendly. Between October 2020 and 2021, the market share for Mobile was 75.43%, underlying the importance of Mobile as a marketing channel. Google recommends that you make it easier for customers to complete their objectives on-site. For a Dentist, this may mean making the website’s focus the book now widget. Focus on consistency across the website. The website should “make sense” and be easy to use, with data grounded in total conversions or goals.
We’d usually recommend using a platform like WordPress if you’re getting into Digital Marketing. You’d like your website built from scratch instead of buying a theme, as this makes it lighter on code, with faster page load times. Elementor, one of the preferred website builders, offers an excellent article on the essentials for dentist websites.
Getting your Dental practice website indexed properly
In a nutshell, website indexing is how search engines find and add to their database websites and pages to keep up with and index new content in an easier and faster way.
This simple process includes checking for new or modified content and indexing it appropriately in order to optimise the user experience when browsing the internet.
When a website is indexed, the web crawler then extracts content from each page to place it into the database. This provides a clear idea of what a particular page is about and an appropriate ranking can be given to display the most relevant and popular pages in the search engine results.
To get your most essential pages indexed, they need to be high-quality. In the real world, a high-quality page would be defined by a potential patient finding the information helpful and, potentially take a valuable on-page action, such a form fill. Try to think like a patient, what information could you give them that is so valuable that places you as knowledgeable in their minds? So knowledgeable that they believe you’re better than your competition.
Keywords for Dentists
Keywords form the base of every SEO campaign. Keywords are the queries a user would type into a Search Engine, resulting in a relevant webpage being served in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). No matter how many SEO techniques your dental practice uses, your campaign will fail if you have not picked the right keywords. You can think of keywords as the targeting for your SEO campaign. The incorrect targeting will always result in the wrong patient, while the correct keyword targeting will put you on the best path to get your patients of choice.
Your practice must focus on keywords that are relevant to your dental service and have higher chances of appearing in the top results page. These keywords should also be able to draw plenty of traffic to your website. Also, pick those keywords that are more likely to help you achieve your goals for the SEO campaign. There are various free keyword tools that you can use or hire a professional. You’ll want to select a variety of high-volume and low-volume keywords that are longer, with various levels of difficulty to rank.
Here are some to get you started:
Keywords for dentists offices: dentist office, dentist, dental office, cosmetic dentistry, family dentistry, painless dentistry, kids dentistry, orthodontics, toothache, teeth whitening, root canal, cleaning, dental implants, oral surgery, crowns, bridges, cavities, mouth guard, braces, toothache, dental x-ray, emergency dentist, cosmetic dentistry, tooth decay, extraction, gum disease, laser dentistry, cape town dentist.
Location-specific, select the location most relevant to your business:
South African dental surgery, Cape Town brace, Cape Town oral surgery, Best Teeth Whitening in South Africa, Emergency dentist near me.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is the best way to start creating your dental brand. There are various types of content marketing. However, as a dentist, I’d focus on a few and do them incredibly well, good starting points are blogs, FAQS, videos and resource guides. You’ll want to include your credentials as within the medical industry, having credible authors or creators is very important to the Google Algorithm.
The following are potential topics to cover within your dental practice’s content marketing:
- What’s the best toothbrush for sensitive teeth?
- How often should I floss?
- How long should I brush my child’s teeth?
- How can I prevent cavities around Halloween?
- Does charcoal help whiten teeth?
You’ll want any content you produce to be rich and fulfilling and drive real value to the potential patient. After content marketing, it’s essential to consider what types of pages should make up your website’s architecture. Here are some pages that are crucial for your rankings, the home page, all of your services, your location and contact page, a blog or resource centre, FAQ page or pages, about the business, about the team, author profiles and of course various privacy pages.
Link-building for the dental industry
Backlinks (also known as “inbound links”, “incoming links” or “one-way links”) are how one website can pay tribute to another or acknowledge the value in another site. Google and other major search engines consider backlinks “votes” for a specific page. Pages with a high number of backlinks tend to have high organic search engine rankings. You can get these from creating valuable content that is worthy of backlinking or through a link-building expert. You might also want to consider useful dental directories that provide value and are not spammy.
An internal link is placed with specific text on your website pointing to another part of your website. Links don’t only lead your visitors to the next part of your site. They also lead search engines to relevant content on your site and add value to a page. With more links pointing to a specific page, it will seem more important to search engines. Good internal links are necessary if you want your SEO to be at its best. Your internal links should use the most relevant keyword for the page with a good search volume to boost rankings.
Local SEO for dentists
One of the most crucial aspects of your niche is Local SEO for dentists. The best tool for this is Googe Business Profile (previously Google My Business). Google Business Profile is an essential tool for localised SEO, allowing prospective clients to search for what you have to offer in their specific area. The more positive reviews you have, the more likely you will get local enquiries. You’ll want to ensure you have accurate information, including your address, business hours, categories, reviews and a verified listing. For marketing purposes, you can add your services or updates. Our top tip is to remember to respond and acquire customer reviews!
So there you have it, you’re ready to get started on your journey into SEO as a growth channel for your dentistry practice. As always, if you need any help with SEO services, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us for a quick call.
