Optimising your online presence is a cornerstone of digital marketing, but what is search engine optimisation, and how can you harness its power? In this article, we explain SEO for a dental practice so that you can convert your dental website into a source of new patient referrals.
How To Improve Your Online Presence For Your Dental Practice?
When working on your online presence, you generally have two major digital marketing options: paid and unpaid advertising. Paid advertising is great – if you have an unlimited budget, of course. But, to increase website traffic organically and without paying for each lead, you need to tap into the benefits of unpaid advertising.
What is SEO For Dental Practice?
Search engine optimisation, or SEO, is the practice of making your dental website more visible online. So, instead of paying for each lead, you optimise your website to attract new dental patients organically. In order to do this, you need to apply SEO best practices so that your dental website is easily accessible by search engines like Google.
How Does It Work?
How Does It Work?Whenever a user types a search query into a search engine like Google, the search engine indexes millions of websites, trying to match the user to the best answer. The goal of SEO is to make sure your dental website is matched when a user is looking for your services. That means your website should outperform your competitors- and the market is highly competitive.
To boost your online presence and bring more traffic to your dental website, your SEO strategy should harness the power of Google’s local listings. By doing this, potential patients will be able to find your practice location, telephone number, and website if they are searching for your dental services in their area.
So How Do You Apply SEO Best Practice To Your Dental Website?
Search engine optimisation rules are constantly evolving, so working with digital marketing specialists will ensure you are always ahead of the game. There are hundreds of best practice guidelines to apply- and even more competitors out there. Even so, some of the basics to boost website traffic never change:
- A user-friendly website that displays your services clearly
- Clean website code
- Promoting unique, high-quality content that focuses on what users want
- A collection of Google reviews from satisfied patients
- A keyword strategy that tells search engines how to index your practice website
- Managing your Google My Business profile
- High-quality links to your website to tell search engines you have a high-quality website for your dental practice.
How Does SEO Boost Your Online Presence?
By following a consistent SEO strategy, your website will be found on Google Maps, appear in local listings results, and appear high up on the search results on the first page of Google.
The Tenets Of SEO That Boost Traffic To Your Dental Practice
If you want to use SEO to boost your website traffic, there are three key areas to focus on
- On-page strategy
- Off-page strategy
- Technical SEO
What It Means | On-Page SEO
On-page SEO refers to improving your website content and HTML structure. It forms the foundation of your SEO strategy, so you need to have content that’s useful and informative. Your website should answer patients’ questions in the form of unique, content-rich dental services pages, patient FAQs, and informative blog articles.
Your on-page tactics also require strategic keyword placement in your content and meta titles and descriptions. Working with a digital marketing agency will ensure that your keyword placement and density are correct and conform to industry best practices.
But how do you know what patients want?
Google Trends is an excellent resource to help you identify what users are asking Google.
SEO For Dental Practice With On-Page Techniques
Increasing website traffic volume is one thing – increasing the quality of that traffic is another. To make sure you’re attracting the kind of patient who wants your dental practice services, you’ve got to focus on user intent and make sure you match the right kind of content for your target audience’s needs.
What It Means | Off-Page SEO
Your off-page strategy is primarily how your website connects to other sites and the signals it shows Google to let it know your site is reputable. In order to get this right, you’d need to develop a strategy to:
- List your website on directories like Yelp
The Yellow Pages and Yelp let patients know that you offer a patient-centric experience, making your dental practice easier for locals to find.
- Collect patient reviews
Being associated with positive reviews gives your practice credibility. It’s an organic way to boost website traffic and attract new patients looking for referrals.
- Do some social media marketing
Boost website traffic by being active on the social media channels your patients use.
What It Means | Technical SEO
Gone are the days of having a “set it and forget it” website for your dental practice. To increase web traffic, you need to think about your site as a constant work in progress. Heavy website code and broken links work against you, so you’ll need to pay attention to activities like:
- Optimising your website’s mobile speed and compatibility
- Checking for broken links
- Improving your website loading speed
- Optimising your headings and subheadings for searchability
- Having a site map that makes it easy for search engines to crawl.
Working With Dental Marketing Specialists To Improve Your Online Presence
The digital landscape is in a state of constant evolution. New channels are developing all the time, and patients are constantly bombarded with options and advertising. Working with a digital marketing agency that specialises in dental practice marketing will give you a competitive advantage and improve your online presence.
To find out more about SEO for a dental practice, contact us for dental practice marketing insights: 1300 163 058
References
Dental SEO Guide: Stories & Tips to Get More Patients
https://www.semrush.com/blog/dental-seo/
30 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/increase-website-traffic
