Our Expert SEO Tips for Dentists Can Help You Grow Your Practice

Steve DiMatteoAuthor: Steve DiMatteo
Updated on 03/08/2023

Are you looking to find what it takes to craft an effective dental SEO marketing strategy? Our informative guide is your best bet for learning about you need to do doing to get more patients. Because at the end of the day, your marketing initiatives should be helping, and not hurting your business, right?

What is Dental SEO?

SEO for dentists is a specialized approach to search engine optimization and includes specific tactics that are proven to help your unique niche. Unlike other industries, dental is one of the most competitive, and requires skilled SEO experts to brainstorm, evaluate, and implement strategies based off your services, location, and more.

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10 Things You Can Do Right Now for Dental SEO

Before starting up an ongoing SEO campaign, take some time to get a head start by crossing these easy-to-do items off the list:

  1. Claim your Google Business Profiles and ensure all data is correct, and all your services are added. Even if Google doesn’t have everything you offer, such as “cavity filling” as a main service category, you can add it in as a custom service.
  2. Create and optimize location pages with relevant keywords like “[city] orthodontist” if you have several offices or want to attract people outside of the area your physical office is at.
  3. Reply to any reviews you have online to show potential customers you are involved and professional, and find creative ways to ask patients to leave reviews, such as a text after their appointment or a flyer in their dental goodie bag.
  4. Make sure you are interlinking to top service and location pages throughout your site to help users find deeper content from your site, and give more specific pages more link equity.
  5. Check out your competitors’ websites content, backlinks, and user experience to see what else you can do to outrank them. See they’ve joined some established dental groups? See how you can apply. The more relevant the link is to dental, the more value it will have towards your marketing.
  6. Ensure all your pages include your phone number and a contact form to steer users to become patients, otherwise, if it is at all confusing for a user to figure out how to get in touch with your office, the more likely they’ll decide to go with a different dentist.
  7. Do a site speed test to see what improvements can be made to get your page to load faster, as the longer it takes for the site to load, the likelihood that they will leave.
  8. Purchase and activate an SSL certificate if your site isn’t already HTTPS, this not only lets users know that any information they add to patient forms is safe, but Google too.
  9. Do a scan across the web to see if your information is correct across various citation sites, especially if you have moved locations.
  10. Check your presence on social media and ensure your customers can reach your website from your profiles and show off any periodontal or cosmetic work.

FAQs for Dental Search Engine Optimization

  • Do all dentists require local SEO?
    Yes! Given that local search engine optimization is a customized practice that is more focused on a specific region you serve, it is very relevant to dentists since most patients want to go somewhere near them. Most dental-related search queries are analyzed by Google as having local intent behind them, thus triggering a local pack result. Having your business appear in the local pack can be crucial to growth.
  • How is SEO different from traditional marketing?
    Tactics such as billboards, radio, mailers, and other non-digital methods not only are costly, but they lack important features of digital marketing such as the ability to track data and more. Plus, there are 8.5 billion searches every single day, wouldn’t you want your business to show up in them? Especially since 77% of other dentists are using their website for marketing.
  • Do I need good reviews online for SEO?
    Online reviews are very important when it comes to local SEO, as Google especially values reviews on your Google Business Profile as a ranking factor.
  • How do I know people will find my business online?
    Let’s take a look at some statistics that can help you get a better idea of how your potential customers use the internet:

    • 73% of consumers use search engines to look for treatment information
    • Searches containing “near me” are used 350 times more than 10 years ago
    • 71% of their dentists say patients checked online reviews
    • And 52% of users only want to go to a business if its had new reviews in the past 2-4 weeks
    • Along with that, 61% of users are likely to only contact a business if their website is mobile-friendly and responsive
  • How long does SEO take to show results?
    All SEO is a marathon, but various tactics you implement can show results quite quickly! For example, after uploading new content to your website, we typically see a spike in keyword positions. Also, after removing some spammy competitor listings on Google Maps you can expect your positions to move up. But overall, SEO is part of the long game, and rewards of the work we do will stay with your website for years to come.

Types of SEO Dentists Should Know About

There are four different areas of SEO that you should know about and learn what different tactics are typically included in each:

On-Page SEO

Off-Page SEO

  • Link building
  • Guest posting
  • PR outreach
  • Unlinked mentions
  • SERPs analysis
  • Competitor research
  • Social media

Local SEO

  • GBP optimization
  • Location pages
  • Spam submissions
  • Local backlinks
  • Directory listings
  • Localized schema
  • Review collecting

Technical SEO

  • SSL certificates
  • Website speed
  • Mobile-friendliness
  • 301 redirects
  • Canonicals
  • Metadata
  • Image optimization
“The team at Sixth City is second to none!! Starting with the owner John and all his teammates I’ve worked with I have nothing but glowing things to say! I felt that they cared about MY business growth as their #1 priority even if it wasn’t always best for their bottom line. They are passionate about and great at what they do. If you’re looking for a team to help with your business, don’t look any further. This is the team that will feel like an extension of your own business!” – Dr. Paul Mikhli, Beachwood Dental

The Bottom Line on Why You Should Invest in SEO

One of our prior clients said it best, “Not doing search engine optimization is like having a phone number for your business and not sharing it anywhere.” SEO can help your business get better coverage online, not only in search engines, but across the web entirely.

Our Custom Approach to Dental SEO

A complete marketing campaign is what you need to be successful, and a key part of this is dental SEO. Your  services are important, so you need more than just a pre-packaged marketing approach – you need services tailored to your business and your goals, whether it be local SEO or national.

When we work with your dental office, we will examine various aspects of your current optimization for search engines and assess the best course of action to improve your online rankings.

In-Depth Look at Our Approach to SEO

Learn a little more about some of the things we normally implement for our dental clients:

  • Optimizing landing pages – From your homepage to your location and services pages, there are many key pages that potential clients will come to when searching for your services on the web. We will ensure they are optimized for users’ search intent, speed, conversions, and more.
  • Backlink building – In order to help your website gain authority, especially over your competition, we work hard to acquire new links to your domain. These will help your site can gain strength in the eyes of search engines.
  • Competitor research – This is a key part of our dental SEO strategies, as it helps us gain a better look into who ranks above you, why, and what we can do to improve your rank against them. We examine a variety of criteria, including keywords, links, reviews, speed, and more.
  • Technical improvements – The back end of your website is just as important as the front end that users see and interact with. Behind-the-scenes issues such as 404s, slow loading pages, and more can be what is holding your site back from success.
  • Strategic experimenting – One of the most interesting aspects of SEO is that the smallest changes can help give your site the boost it needs! We are always looking at data and staying up to date on trends in the industry and applying them to our clients.
  • Conversion design – While this isn’t entirely an SEO tactic, it plays a large role in getting results from the SEO work we do. We can make changes to your site’s layout that will help influence users to contact your office or schedule a cleaning, all to improve conversion rates.
“We re-vamped our website and quickly learned that we weren’t getting the SEO numbers that we were used to and in addition, Covid-19 hit. Sixth City came in and took control of our SEO and really improved our google presence and improved our leads by quite a bit. They are professional, well-versed in all things SEO, and very responsive. I am very thankful for Sixth City.” – Madison Osborn, FitWorks

But Wait, We Do More Than Just SEO for Dentists

At Sixth City, we can also supplement our search engine optimization efforts with our other digital marketing services, which include:

  • Pay-Per-Click Marketing – Our in-house staff can deliver custom landing pages, quality ads, and precise keywords to ensure you are reaching the right customers.
  • Social Media Management – As a complement to SEO for dentists, social media is an ideal way for your target audience to get more information about your dental services and their advantages. Our dental SEO agency will write posts, schedule them, and monitor your channels.
  • Website Design and Development – Once you do the work of drawing potential customers to your site, you will want them to find a clean and functional website. Our team has significant experience in crafting websites, and we make them both easy to navigate and designed for conversion.
  • Email Marketing – To aid your dental SEO efforts, we can create a template to match your brand and produce monthly newsletters for current and prospective patients. We work with MailChimp, Constant Contact, HubSpot and more.
  • CRM Marketing – At Sixth City, we are a certified HubSpot partner. This means that we can provide consulting and marketing for HubSpot, Pipedrive and other CRMs. These services will help you to manage your lead flow for better in-bound marketing.

Connect with Our Dental SEO Agency Today!

When it comes to local dental SEO services, no one will do it better than Sixth City Marketing. We have a deep understanding of the industry and how to reach target customers, all so your business can soar.

Reach out to us today to get started!

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