With so many dental offices to choose from, it’s vital to your practice that you stand out in terms of patient satisfaction, but also in online search rankings. But, in order to successfully stand out, your dental practice will need to implement a variety of techniques and tools to ensure that web visitors turn into prospective patients.
Keep reading to learn more about some techniques and tools that can effectively assist your dental practice in increasing its search engine rankings.
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Develop A SEO Strategy
One of the easiest ways to boost your rankings – and ultimately gain more patients – is by developing a solid Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy.
The whole point of SEO is to improve your website in order to boost site visibility, meaning a good SEO strategy will focus on garnering site traffic from free and organic search results. The aim is to have your website rank higher on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS).
For this reason, a baseline understanding of SEO practices is required to improve website traffic. However, it’s not necessary to be an expert, as several resources are available to those trying to learn more about SEO.
Some companies like Moz, for example, can be utilized to help your dental practice learn the ins and outs of SEO, including the process of site audits, rank tracking and backlink analysis. You can also do some basic keyword research yourself by using a variety of tools made available through Google.
Google Autocomplete
Designed to speed up the entry process of user searches, according to Google, Autocomplete’s “automated systems generate predictions that help people save time by allowing them to quickly complete the search they already intended to do.”.
This search feature can be a powerful tool for dental practices looking to build an SEO strategy because it offers valuable insight into popular searches being made in realtime. That means that you can effectively zero-in on which keywords and long-tail phrases you should target based on various search predictions.
Google Search Console
Search Console reveals how your dental website is performing on Google, and also explains what should be done to increase website traffic.
This tool is a huge asset in optimizing search performance, as it offers information on how Google crawls, indexes and serves websites. Not only does Search Console allow website owners to view search and backlink traffic reports, the tool also will alert you via email when problems are encountered on your site.
Google Trends
As the name suggests, Google Trends shows the popularity of search topics across different regions over time. This technology can be extremely insightful to dental practices because it offers an easy access point for available research data.
In addition to providing a means of tracking what dental patients are looking for through trending searches, the Google Trends technology also lets you monitor your competitors by comparing the search traffic of their website against your own. This allows you to get a better idea of what parts of your website require improvement, as well as your overall online reputation.
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Localize Your Dental Practice
When trying to boost your rankings on big search engine sites like Google, it’s of the utmost importance that you localize your dental practice so that you show up in location-specific searches.
One of the best ways to implement a Local SEO strategy is to create a Google My Business account to complement your dental website. This account will allow you to successfully localize your dental practice in search engine results, and will also provide a way to manage your online presence across Google.
Your GMB profile appears in Google Searches and Maps, meaning you’ll want to ensure that it is verified and up to date with any essential information, including your dental practice’s name, address, phone number, payments options and your business hours. These details should be checked and updated on a regular basis so that your profile reflects any temporary or permanent changes that your patients should know about.
To get the full benefits of GMB, you’ll also want to add three to five categories related to what you specialize in, as well as a personable description to introduce your practice to prospective patients.
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Optimize Your Website
To continue to gain traction on search engine rankings, you’ll need to be sure that your dental website is professional, organized and detailed with pertinent information. You’ll also want to ensure that it loads quickly, navigates properly and is accessible across devices.
Relevant keywords should be incorporated throughout the entire website and separate pages devoted to different services offered should be available. This will give your dental website a greater likelihood of ranking in search results when that specific topic is searched on Google.
It’s also important to provide useful content like blogs and Frequently Asked Question pages to keep current and prospective patients engaged in your dental practice. You can even utilize the data from Google’s Autocomplete and Trends tools to keep this content applicable and related to user intent.
The Dental SEO Experts
Although it may seem daunting, Search Engine Optimization is essential in increasing search traffic. Fortunately, The Dental SEO Experts are skilled in all things SEO, and can help your dental practice develop a successful strategy that’s tailor-made to your brand. Give us a call to start boosting your rankings today.