Dental SEO has quickly become an important part of any dental marketing campaign. As more patients use their mobile phone to search for dentists, or dental services, it is vitally important that you have a Google My Business page and various other local listings to ensure that you get found online by people needing the service you offer.
Just like any other business, a dental website will benefit from the best SEO practices as well. Assuming that you have a website already, you will just need to optimize it and claim your search listings. If you don’t yet have a website then you need to get one or you’re leaving tons of Internet traffic on the table. It is not a costly process and it will serve you for years to come.
What is Dental SEO?
Dental SEO is optimizing your dental practice website for the best ranking replacement in search engine results. The three major search engines are Yahoo, Bing , and Google. Doing things like making a site more mobile-friendly, making pages load faster, and providing top quality content are three things that can raise your site’s ranking position.
Some of the best strategies include focusing on local search, optimizing web pages, and collecting patient reviews or testimonials for social proof. Google gives websites with lots of reviews and back links a higher standing because it is evidence or proof of quality and relevance to what the user is searching for.
What is Google’s #1 Goal?
Put simply, Google’s goal is to provide the best and most relevant results to a user’s search query. Google states its mission is…“To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Which it is doing since it dominates a whopping 75% of all online search traffic.
Google has founded a reputation as a place to go to find information on just about anything. From facts and figures, to statistics, reviews, and directions to local restaurants, it makes finding the answers to questions much easier. Which is why it is important to make sure your site is optimized so it nets a higher ranking in the search results.
Why is SEO for Dentists Important?
As a dentist, your concern is mostly for your patients. Marketing is probably not the first thought that comes to mind, but it is a very important part of running a successful business. Without it, no one will be able to find your business and you won’t have any customers.
Besides taking care of patients, making sure that customers can find your website is the second most important part of running a business. This is where local search comes in. Because whether you know it or not, your competitors get this concept and are likely investing in SEO agencies to do this for them.
This means that in order to stay ahead of the competition, you have to adopt the same practices and get your name out there to those looking for a new dentist. We will outline a few ways to make sure customers can find you.
Benefits of Search Engine Optimization for Dentists
- It makes your website more attractive to visitors. An important part of your SEO campaign is to make your website user-friendly so that visitors are more likely to stay on your site longer.
- It helps your website stand out as an authority in your niche. Websites that are viewed as an authority in a particular area tend to show up first in search results. SEO campaigns focus on helping you improve credibility to your website, helping it to rank better.
- It gives your website increased visibility. Your listing will show when someone searches for “dentist”, “teeth cleaning”, “Invisalign”, and more.
It drives more traffic to your website. SEO can help direct new visitors to your website by optimizing keywords and search terms the user might type when searching for your business such as “local dentist,” “dentist near me,” or dentist+your city.” Optimizing your site for search will bring in lots of benefits for you and your business.
Dental Patient Reviews as Part of Your SEO Campaign
1. Create a listing for your dental practice with Google My Business.
You will need to verify (or confirm) your business and optimize your listing for better search results. This listing is where you can put information about your practice, your location, hours of operation, and contact numbers for new patients to book an appointment with you.
Create a business listing on other sources like Yahoo, Bing, and other places as links back to your website.
Besides Google My Business, you need to add your dental practice to other local listings. Having several listings is a good way to establish your practice as a local business.
You can add your listings to these sources:
Yelp
Facebook
Foursquare
Bing Places for Business
Healthgrades
Wellness.com
ZocDoc
Vitals.com
RateMDs
WebMD
It doesn’t have to be long and complicated. An example of a listing could look something like this:
“Your Name” Dentistry offers quality teeth whitening, dental implants, and Invisalign teeth straightening in {Your City}. We have been in the same location for 20 years and our patients love us. Call {Phone Number} today to schedule your appointment!
This should be roughly 100-200 words in length. It also helps if you have a photo of the exterior of the business and list the hours of operation as well. Sometimes a customer will see a photo and realize that they have passed your office on their way to work, school, or the grocery store and the next day they’ll stop in to make an appointment.
2. Encourage patient reviews. Did you know that over 88% of consumers look for reviews before buying a product or service. Search engines, especially Google, love high-quality patient reviews. And potential patients can see the feedback and are more likely to choose your practice over one that has no reviews.
Online reviews for dentists help build links and establish credibility. Encouraging positive patient reviews is one of the most effective things you can do to improve dental SEO.
3. Streamline the review process to make it easier.You can send an email to all your current patients asking them to leave a review. You might offer some kind of incentive like a coupon for a free tooth whitening, or a discount on a more expensive service in exchange for leaving a review. Try to only request reviews from a couple of patients per day so it appears natural.
The reviews could be left on a page you set up on your website or through Facebook or another platform. Then when you get the reviews, be sure to thank your patients for their feedback and monitor the reviews for quality assurance.
How Much Weight Do Online Reviews For Dentists Carry?
The reviews received by your dental practice shapes a potential patient’s initial opinion of you, and also helps improve your position in search. The first thing consumers do when looking for a product or service is to read reviews from previous or current customers.
When consumers perform a search on Google, local results appear first. If a business has a lot of positive reviews, Google will rank it higher in the local search results.
4. Encourage patients to leave online reviews. As mentioned previously, you should have a page on your website for testimonials and you could have people leave reviews on Yelp, Facebook, and the BBB. These additional sources serve as back-links for your website so, the more you can get, the better your ranking will be.
5. Build up your credibility with high-quality reviews. Patients are much more likely to choose a dentist with a high number of positive reviews over a website with little to no reviews.
6. Proudly display your positive reviews by adding them to your website. This is a badge of honor, as well as a customer seal of approval. You can add a column of 3 – 5 reviews somewhere on your website, like the bottom of the landing page or somewhere it would be seen by new visitors.
7. Give 100% for every patient. Every patient deserves the royal treatment when they step into your office. Make every patient feel welcome, listened to, and respond to feedback so your patients will be repeat customers and refer their friends and family to your office.
Evaluate your customer service to see things from your patient’s viewpoint.Think about the following questions that will help you provide the best experience for your patients…
Is your waiting room clean and comfortable?
Do you educate patients about caring for their teeth?
Do you encourage patients to ask questions and share their concerns?
Are your procedural processes designed to provide maximum comfort for patients?
Additional Tips for Your Search Campaign
Build Relevant Links
Besides review sites, there are other ways you can build links to help boost your visibility. Link building is a very important part of off-page SEO. It is probably the most difficult SEO strategy to execute, especially if you have a new website. Backlinks are like votes for your website from authoritative sites which carries a lot of weight with the search engines.
When another website links to yours, it is their way of saying they trust you and your site. That you have quality content and offer a quality service. It is a vote of confidence to people searching for services. Your web page becomes more important and Google will rank it higher.
How Can You Get Quality Backlinks?
How do you build back-links for your dental website? Getting back-links from authoritative sites can be a little difficult, but perseverance will bring results. Here are a few methods for building backlinks:
Guest Blogging
Marketing through content is a very effective link building strategy. As a Dentist, writing may not be your strong suit. In that case, you can hire a health writer to create useful dental-related articles for you and then post them to other dental-related blogs. Guest blogging gives you these possible benefits:
Increase your reach to a wider audience and gain more patients
Boost your credibility as an industry expert
Another popularity vote in Google’s eyes
When looking for guest blogs, simply type in search terms like:
Dentists + write for us
Dentists + submit guest post
Dentist blog + write for us
Dentist + contributor
Related Blog Search – Dental Website
Answering Questions in Popular Forums
When people have questions, they often go to forums like Quora and Reddit. As a dentist, you can join general or health-related forums and answer questions as an expert. This will help you gain more patients and boost your credibility. To find a question to answer, simply visit the forum and search for a keyword term that people search for: anything related to dentistry.
Maintain a Social Media Presence
Having an active social media presence also helps to boost your search ranking. It does not happen directly, and no one really understands how it works, but if you are actively posting on social media and connecting with other users you will see more traffic and a higher ranking.
SEO is important for your dental practice to show up in the search engines. This directly relates to how much web traffic your site gets, so it is important that your site is optimized and user-friendly. Follow the strategies outlined above to help you boost your search rankings and gain more patients.