What is SEO for Dentists?
Orthodontist SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the practice of optimizing your website and its content to help your potential patients attract more quality leads to your website when they encounter them when searching for a dentist.
If you can optimize your dental website for organic search, you can continue to grow your practice.
How to Optimize the Search Visibility of Your Dental Practice Website
Orthodontist SEO involves much more than just entering a few keywords that you want your website pages to rank for.
There are three pillars of Orthodontist SEO, whether it’s a dentist’s website or any other type of business:
- Google needs to make your site as easy to navigate as possible so that it can be crawled, understood, and indexed optimally.
- Maximizing the relevance of individual pages on your site to patient search queries.
- Maximizing the trust and authenticity of your website by gaining links from other websites through content showcasing your expertise, which acts as a “vote of confidence” on your website.
We’ve found that most of the SEO work needed by a dentist falls into the latter two categories, although quick and easy wins can often be achieved with the former.
The remainder of this article will take a closer look at how to improve the overall SEO health of your practice website.
Local SEO: Reach Potential Customers Near Your Business
Almost all of your patients live in your area, which means an optimized local SEO presence is critical to the success of your dental practice and booking new patients. When potential patients search for a local health care provider, they are likely to contact a geographic researcher such as “Cherry Hill Orthodontist.”
Company Profiles on Google:
Your business profile on Google will likely be a potential patient’s first point of contact with your dental practice, making a personal presence vital to standing out from the competition.
Local map packs appear at the top of search engine results for location-based services.
For example, a local map package is obtained by searching for “Cherry Hill orthodontist.”
Maintain a consistent NAP (name, address, phone number).
Google takes consistency seriously when it comes to how your office is listed across properties.
Even small changes, such as abbreviations instead of writing your address, conflict with the uniformity of the NAP.
You will need to use the same name, address and phone number:
- Your website
- Google Company Profiles
- Social network profiles
- Catalog citation
- Layout planning
Constantly Ask for Feedback and Give Them Feedback
Your Orthodontist SEO strategy doesn’t stop at optimizing your website—all of your practices can help your organic rankings.
Patient reviews are a key way to improve the rating of your local card package.
To implement the strategy of asking patients for feedback, administrators appear to remind patients when they make a follow-up appointment and send them a personalized email a few days later with a direct link where they can leave a review.
If your clinic can collect patient reviews, you not only improve your business profile ranking on Google; You increase the likelihood that a patient viewing your profile will be more inclined to trust you and your practice.
Internet Directories
Online directories can be another important aspect of your local search presence.
These directories provide an additional place to list your practice, which not only gives you a link back but also allows potential patients to find you.
For example, the American Association of Orthodontists has locator equipment. There may also be an association in your state to which you can list your practice.
Provide a Good User Experience With Quality Technical SEO.
The technical health of your website will ultimately determine whether it can rank competitively in search results.
Without a solid technical foundation, Google won’t be able to crawl your site, allocate share to the most important pages, or even index it at all.
The good news is that dental practice websites don’t have hundreds of products or thousands of pages like some e-commerce sites, so technical issues can quickly get out of hand.
Make Sure Your Site is Mobile Friendly
Most online searches are done on mobile devices, which means your potential patients are using their phones to understand your practice and decide whether to make an appointment.
Mobile optimization issues for your website can range from placing buttons too close together, making it difficult to interact with the site, to properly sized images and symbols that adapt to the mobile device screen.
You can test your website using Google Mobile-Friendly Test.
Also Read | How to Grow Your Chiropractic Practice: 8 Proven Chiropractic Marketing Strategies
Site Speed
The speed of your website is a key factor in attracting users. It is also used as a deciding factor for search engine rankings.
This means that if two sites are exactly identical, the one that offers the fastest loading time will be ranked higher in the search results.
Page speed is primarily reflected in Google’s core web metrics as First Input Latency (FID) and Longest Content Draw (LCP).
Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool allows you to examine these elements of your website.
Your site will have pages that have different layouts and load differently.
Test multiple pages such as home page, treatment page, blog, etc. to get a general idea of your website and the areas that need improvement.
Site Architecture
The way your site’s pages are laid out is called site architecture.
This significantly impacts both patient perceptions of your site and how search engine crawlers perceive it.
Good site architecture will create logical connections between pages so that users don’t feel lost.
Breadcrumbs are one way to establish strong connections between relevant pages.
They also offer search engines and users an additional way to navigate the site.
For a dental practice, the breadcrumbs look like this: Home > Orthodontic Treatment > Invisalign®.
It is important to consider the path a user will take when visiting your site.
This can help you develop your website architecture strategy. Ideally, you think about the architecture when creating your website, but sometimes this is not always possible.
Experts should change your website’s architecture to minimize potential traffic fluctuations, as this is an advanced SEO skill.
Look for Optimization on Your Page
SEO for dentists involves creating more content than most other strategies.
Without targeted content with the right search intent, you’ll be competing for the wrong search results, which means lower site traffic and patient registrations.
On-page optimization of your dental practice website will ensure that you create content that will provide value and drive the right traffic to your practice.
By following these on-page optimization strategies, you’ll be on your way to ranking higher for your practice’s most valuable keywords.
Learn More | SEO For Chiropractor: Get More Patients Organically
Improve Existing Pages With Content Optimization
Your dental practice may already have dedicated pages for the services it provides.
These pages may rank for some of your target keywords, but it is also possible that they are targeting the keywords as effectively as you think.
Every service page should encourage users to choose your practice over a competing one.
The information contained on these pages should provide an overview or description of the service, explain why your practice is qualified to offer the service, answer any questions potential patients may have, and provide a way to contact you.
It is necessary to establish authority and trust on an orthodontic website.
As a dental clinic, you need to gain the trust of users and establish credibility.
In the medical field, websites are subject to strict Google guidelines as the search engine strives to provide users with the best results.
Understanding the concepts of your money, your life and experience, experience, authority and trust will give you a starting point for defining your dental SEO strategy.
Your Money, Your Life (YMYL)
Pages or websites that can affect users’ “future happiness, health, financial stability or security” are classified by Google as “Your Money, Your Life.”
Dental practice falls into this category because it is related to health.
YMYL websites must maintain high standards and present accurate, scientifically-based information.
If a page does not provide information that meets these standards, it will struggle to rank high in search results and may also affect your website’s overall ranking.
To ensure that your website content is relevant to your money and standard of living, you must understand the signals of experience, knowledge, authorization and trust.
Rankingchief Provides Comprehensive Digital Marketing Services For Dentists
Many details compromise an effective SEO strategy for a dental practice. Internal employees can perform some of these tasks.
However, as you continually manage your Orthodontist SEO strategy and more complex SEO strategies, you may need outside help and expertise.
Rankingchief is a full-service SEO agency that can implement all aspects of SEO strategy for your dental practice.
From local search engine optimization to content strategy, we can help you improve search results and reach potential patients.
Start Orthodontist SEO for your dental practice by scheduling a call with our SEO team.