You’re here because you want your clinic to be ranking first on search engines. Over the course of this article, we’re going to share the strategies we use to get our clients ranked time and time again.
Search Engine Optimization isn’t just about understanding search engines. It’s about understanding how people work and what their needs are. Carrying out research on what people are searching for online, the solutions they’re in need of and the type of content they’re likely to engage in can drastically help businesses and Practices.
Search engines are essentially answer machines to the questions your consumers have, so implementing the right SEO strategies helps increase traffic (in terms of both quantity and quality) to your website. With the right strategies in place, the brand exposure your company can get through ranking organically (via non-paid methods) on search engines is immense as SEO is the only online marketing channel that will continue to give results over time.
This is a question many clients ask us.
Fundamentally, Dental SEO is no different to normal SEO. The most important thing is to select the right search terms to attract quality dental patients to your clinic.
Utilizing an in-depth knowledge of the dental industry and using internet tools such as Google Analytics, Adwords, Keyword Planner, Searchmetrics etc. can help you streamline the process of getting more patients to your clinic. Dental-focused SEO is important as it gives your marketing campaign a more focused and tailor-made approach that guarantees results.
The success of your SEO Strategy is dependent on how well you manage to tackle the below fundamentals:
User Experience
User experience incorporates many different aspects that we will continue to cover below such as quality content, load times, ease of navigation, and is measured through time-on-site. User experience doesn’t just help you rank higher, it helps your users stay longer on your website, leaving a significantly better chance of your patient picking up that phone to schedule an appointment. Great user experience helps transition a user into a patient.
So, how do you make your website more user-friendly?
Focus on good page speed, timeless website design, compelling Call-To-Actions (contact information such as emails, numbers & link), engaging text formatting with attractive content instead of lengthy paragraphs and much more. We’ll break these points down further to help you understand what gives way to the best user experience. These will essentially be the fundamentals of SEO.
Time-On-Site Quality content directly increases time on site. Quality content that is optimized is easily shareable and increases your exposure. This is content that is engaging enough to keep your users on your website long enough to increase the chance of an appointment being made. Poor content joins the other hundred of articles on the Internet that nobody ever sees, shares or pays attention to. You can:
Ease of Navigation Website navigation is the process of moving across different pages and websites on the Internet with ease. Much like how the labeling of aisles and organization of goods helps you buy your groceries at the supermarket, having a well-organized website simplifies the process of scanning through content.
Load Times
Load time is a measurement of how fast content loads on a website/page. 47% of consumers expect a website to load in 2 seconds or less. But it doesn’t end there. 40% of users will also leave the website if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load. By not paying attention to your load times, you’re losing nearly half your potential patients.
There are four common elements to stay clear of when trying to maximize load time:
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Quality Content
Quality content positions you as a point of authority to readers. Being an authoritative figure helps users be less price sensitive and makes for more phone calls at the end of the day! At its best, quality content can boost your website to the top of any major search engine’s rankings. At its worst, you can get a lot of penalties that will be quite difficult to recover from.
Content covers a variety of information in different forms, including text, videos, images etc. Search engines focus on delivering the most useful and relevant content to consumers so content is essentially ranked according to how beneficial they are for searchers. In order to create content that is beneficial, you need to make sure it is:
However, there’s more to content than quality control. You need to understand the technical side of it as well! Here’s how you can create optimized content:
Bounce Rate This is a measurement of the percentage of people who enter and explore your website versus those who enter and leave without any action. High bounce rate is a sign of poor content, design and user experience, which will have your website ranking lower on major search engines.
A patient’s dental experience no longer begins once they walk through your Practice’s doors. Most often, it all starts with a search and perusal of your website. Don’t let it end there. Get your patients to your door by keeping an eye on these problematic factors:
Keyword Optimization
The quality and relevance of your usage of keywords matters far more than quantity. In order to optimize your webpage and improve your organic reach, you need to carry out extensive keyword research, as we covered above. With prioritized keyword mapping, you’ll be able to form a website that significantly contributes to your Practice’s goals. You also need to strategically place these keywords throughout your content for an optimized page, however. Keep this guideline in mind when creating your content:
Mobile Friendliness
Over 75% of the traffic we’re seeing for major search engines to dental websites comes from mobile devices. Each year more and more people spend an increasing amount of time on their phones. Despite this, we see several websites that still aren’t designed to account for such devices. Mobile Optimization of your website is incredibly important so you aren’t losing patients who search for your site from mobile devices. Your website should be built and designed “mobile first” or you’ll be missing out on a vast customer base that could potentially bring in more than half your patients. Here are some things you should keep in mind:
Domain Authority When search engines analyze your domain, you’ll get a score on how much authority your domain has. This will depend on:
Website Security
Your website security is another key Google ranking factor. If not secured, you risk data being stolen, your search engine ranking being destroyed and being locked out of your website. Here are some steps you need to take to make sure your site is secure:
The bulk of people online that find themselves in need of scheduling a dentist appointment will search for “Dentist + Suburb”. 9 times out of 10 a Clinic of that suburb will want to rank for this particular keyword.
Keep in mind that 80% of search traffic on Google goes to organic results, the remaining 20% are paid ads.
Just by ranking at the lowest of Page 1 for a particular suburb, you can still get a healthy amount of visitors to your website.
1. Keyword Research Another great way of getting patients is to target specific keywords with a lower search volume. The reduced competition gives you a far higher chance of ranking on the first page. For example, other keywords such as “Dental Implants + Suburb” or “Cosmetic Dentistry + Suburb” will still be able to drive a healthy amount of potential patients to your website. As mentioned earlier, there are valuable internet tools such as Google Analytics, Adwords, Keyword Planner, Searchmetrics etc. that can be used to help you identify which keywords to target in your campaigns.
Conversion Rate Optimization
How efficient is your website at converting visitors to bookings? The key to converting visitors is a persuasive website in terms of both design and content. All the above SEO fundamentals need to be taken into consideration in order to create high-impact content that motivates your patient to schedule an appointment.
Optimizing your content doesn’t just include the keyword optimization across your content but the consideration you put towards the technical aspect of your content such as Call to Actions, meta descriptions and title tags as well. We recommend hiring professional content writers that are familiar with the dental industry, who can provide you with informative and persuasive content that will convince readers to make a booking/inquiry or phone call.
Online Reputation Maintaining your online reputation is no longer a choice. Major search engines take into account if users have a good experience with your brand when ranking websites. Use online reviews to boost your Practice and ensure your online reputation is conserved at all times.
If you are using an approach that caters to all of the above, you’ll have a website that is in tiptop shape while giving your visitors a great user experience. There is a lot of untapped potential in your Practice if you aren’t fully reaping the benefits of digital marketing. Make the change and watch your Practice grow as you implement the best SEO tactics.
Want results but can’t afford to spare the time? Simply contact our experienced digital marketing team and we’ll have your Practice consistently ranked on major search engines with the best SEO strategies.
That concludes the first of a series of "How to market a dental clinic" articles Bizgrow will be providing. If you are interested in receiving the subsequent articles in the series which include How-tos for Social Media targeted marketing, Increasing patient referrals, Paid ads etc, sign up to our newsletter and you will be automatically emailed a link to each new article as they come out in the coming weeks
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