Tired of not ranking on the first page of Google and losing out on traffic to other dentists in your area?
It can be extremely frustrating to not rank highly in Google and other search engines after you’ve invested in building a nice website. But those dentist websites that outrank you are likely there for good reason: consistent SEO efforts.
So just know that SEO for dental practices is an investment that takes time and commitment, but if you stick with it and consistently apply best practices, your website will start to rank higher for the keywords that your ideal patients are searching for.
Below, you’ll find the dental SEO tips that I’ve used to rank multiple dental practices in local search results.
1) Set Up Your Google Business Profile
If there’s one thing I would recommend doing if you don’t have much time to do your own dental SEO, it’s setting up a Google My Business listing (formerly Google My Business, or GMB). The reason being is that it will give you the biggest ROI from your efforts. A Google Business Profile listing is very low-hanging fruit when it comes to getting leads for your dental practice.
Having one of these profiles is one of the very few instances I’ve seen in SEO or digital marketing where you simply set it up and leads quickly start coming in without extra effort. The reason being is that Google serves these business profiles in searches based on the location of the searcher. If someone types ‘dentist near me’ in Google, the first results that come up are Google Business Profiles based on which ones are closest to the searcher’s location. Of course, you do need to set your Google Business Profile up for success and continuously optimize it for the best results.
Setting up a Google Business Profile and optimizing it effectively is an article in itself, but here are the basics of what you’ll need to do:
- First, go to google.com/business and establish a profile with whatever Google account you want to use. You’ll be asked to enter some basic information about your business, including your name, address, and phone number.
- Choose the most accurate category for your business. Select ‘dentist’ if you provide general dental services, but be sure to select as your main category what describes you best, i.e. if you’re a specialist who does pediatric dentistry or endodontics, choose that.
- Fill out your entire profile thoroughly including your address, contact information, website, hours of operation, and business description.
- Next, you’ll need to verify your business with Google. This is important because it helps ensure that customers are able to find accurate information about your business when they search for it online. Google will require you to either receive a confirmation code at an email address, phone number, or even a physical letter at your practice, so keep in mind that can take some time.
- Get reviews from patients. This is important because many people base their decisions on social proof from reviews. A great way to get reviews is to make it part of your regular customer experience to ask them to review your dental practice on Google.
2) Keyword Research
If you want to improve your SEO and show up higher in Google search results, you need to have the right keywords in your page copy.
Keyword research requires using a keyword research tool. In general, keyword research tools work by having you enter seed keywords, and then the tool generates a list of related keywords.
There are many different keyword research tools available. Google Keyword Planner is a free option but gives you limited data and is geared toward Google Ads advertisers. Ahrefs and Semrush are considered to be the premium paid keyword research tools. There are more affordable keyword research tools such as Ubersuggest and KWFinder as well.
The keyword tool you use really doesn’t matter as long as it has the relevant data you need.
There are plenty of keyword research methods using tools, but to get started, the easiest way to go about it is to enter several seed keywords and have the tool generate related keywords. From there, you need to group those keywords into a list. Then, you’ll create pages that target those keywords, prioritizing the ones with the most search volume.
3) Optimize Your Homepage for Your Most Relevant Keywords
When you search the highest search volume dentist keywords in a given area (‘Denver dentist’, or ‘dentist in Denver’, for example), chances are the page for any dental office websites that come up in the search results is going to be the website’s homepage.
Google serves whatever pages they think are going to satisfy the searcher the most, so you can take that as an indication that you should optimize your homepage for your main service and area.
Let’s say you’re a dentist in Denver, Colorado as an example. The highest volume search term for the industry is ‘dentist Denver’. So you would want to build your homepage targeting that keyword by using it in your page title, meta title, meta description, H1/H2 tags, and throughout the copy of the page.
While you should build your page around this keyword, you don’t want to overdo it and have too high of a keyword density. Otherwise, Google may view your page as spam and you’ll turn off site visitors. There is no perfect keyword density, so you just want your keywords to be utilized throughout your pages and flow naturally.
When you do your keyword research, you’ll find other keywords that are synonyms for your main keyword. You don’t have to include all of these keywords on your page, but it’s a good idea to work them in wherever possible where it works naturally.
4) Build Local Citations
Citations refer to any mentions about an organization across the web. In local SEO, this usually means having your business listed on local directories.
When building local citations for dental SEO, the most important thing to keep in mind is to make sure your NAP (name, address, phone number) is consistent across all platforms. This helps build the authority of your business in Google’s algorithm and helps patients find your business.
When you’re just starting to implement SEO for your dental practice, I highly recommend using a citation-building tool such as Yext or BrightLocal. With these tools, you can create a listing once and have it listed on hundreds of directories pretty much instantly. Much more effective than building them all manually.
5) Build Links to Your Website
One of the most important aspects of local SEO is building links to your website from other local (and national) websites. This tells search engines that your website is authoritative and relevant for people searching for a dentist in your area.
There are a few different ways to build links to a local dentist website. One is to submit your site to online directories. Many directories will list dentists in their directory, and by submitting your site, you can get a link back to yours.
Another way is to partner with other local businesses in your area. For example, you could partner with an orthodontist or endodontist and include a link on their website to yours. Think of the related professionals you probably already work with and talk with them about how linking your sites to each other would be mutually beneficial.
Years ago, some Google representatives made statements about how they don’t condone reciprocal linking. However, that refers to abusing it as a tactic in a spammy way. As long as there’s a real relationship there, it’s totally natural for related businesses to link to each other.
6) On-Page Optimizations
On-page optimizations are key to improving the SEO of a local dentist website. By focusing on optimizing the website for relevant keywords, the site will be more visible in search engine results pages.
There are a few key areas to focus on when performing on-page optimizations: title tags, meta descriptions, header tags, and page copy. By ensuring that these elements are optimized for the relevant keywords, the website will be more likely to rank high in the SERPs.
Using a tool like Surfer SEO or Frase can help a lot to determine what optimizations you need to make to your content by comparing your content to websites ranking for the keyword that you’re optimizing for.
On-page optimization is an ongoing process that you have to consistently work on, especially considering Google’s preference for recent/updated content.
7) Optimize Your Website for Speed & User Experience
You don’t need to have the fastest-loading website in the world, but you should put some effort into getting your website loading as fast as possible.
Page load time isn’t the be-all and end-all for rankings, but it is a ranking factor. Plus, Internet users will quickly leave your website if it doesn’t load in a reasonable amount of time and will quickly leave if your site loads slow, meaning potentially lost leads for your business. A good load time to shoot for is under 3 seconds.
If your website loads slowly, here are some simple things you can do to speed up your website:
- Use WordPress. It’s much more lightweight and customizable than other content management systems.
- Switch to a higher-quality hosting provider.
- Optimize your image sizes. Consider the maximum width of your content container where an image is going — the number of pixels of the image doesn’t need to be greater than the pixel width of the container. You should also use an image optimization plugin to reduce image sizes on smaller screens.
- Use website caching. Caching stores the files of your website in a temporary location so that they load quicker for the user.
- Minimize your javascript and CSS files. If you’re using WordPress, there are plugins for this.
8) Create Helpful Blog Content
Regularly publishing blog articles can help build trust and credibility with Google and establish yourself as an authority. One way that comes about is that when you publish high-quality content, other sites link to you, which is a major ranking factor.
Additionally, by creating quality content that is relevant to your target audience, it works as a lead-generation strategy because you attract new visitors to your site, who then can become patients. Plus, regular blogging can also help build trust and credibility, and to establish a relationship with your patients.
Struggling With Your Dental SEO? Work With The Experts at Galactic Turtle
If you’re a dentist and you’re thinking these dental SEO tips are a lot of work, it is. If you have the time, resources, or in-house staff that can handle your SEO, that’s great. But as a dentist, you’re likely busy treating patients and running the administrative side of your business.
At Searchonnnect, we help dentists rank higher in Google and other search engines so that you can focus on what matters most to your business.
If you’re a dentist struggling to get your website to rank higher in search engines, then Galactic Turtle can help. We offer SEO services that will help improve your website’s visibility and get you more leads.
Contact us today for a free consultation.
