Did you know that 53% of all website traffic comes from search engines?
That 53% is entirely made up of organic searches! And you guessed it! Driven by SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to get results.
The statistics don't speak to a specific industry, however!
So, if you are trying to market your dental practices, then how can you adapt your SEO strategy to do this? What tools should you include in your Search Engine Optimization arsenal?
Keep reading for the best tips on building an SEO strategy for dentists.
1. Understand What SEO Strategy Is
It may seem redundant to say, but understanding what SEO strategy is exactly and what it includes, can help you build an effective one.
An SEO strategy can be best described as the entire process of arranging and organizing your website's content to help search engines understand a user's intent. Basically, Google, and other search engines, need to be able to categorize your content in a meaningful and relevant way, so that they can best decide how to show it to people doing the searching.
This means that your strategy needs to cover topics on your website, as well as the keywords that fall into each of those topics.
For example, you may have the topic on your dental website of 'orthodontics', and under this would fall things like braces, jaw correction, and more.
2. Build Your List Of SEO Topics
Before you move onto the nuts and bolts of SEO, you're going to want to build a list of relevant topics for dentists.
Think of what people may be searching for surrounding dentistry, and use this to build your list of topics.
To build this list, start by writing down a list of 10 or more phrases associated with your product or service.
3. Then Create A List Of Keywords
The next step in creating an SEO plan for your dentist's office is to create a comprehensive list of well-thought-out keywords.
You know when you start to type a search term into Google, and you get a drop-down list of suggested searches? Well, this is a great place to start to build a relevant list of keywords.
Use your topics list to start this process, and jot down the phrases that appear, these can be the foundation for an effective keyword strategy.
4. Focus On Website Structure
One of the fundamental stages for effective SEO is making sure that your website's structure is high-level and makes sense for the user.
What does this mean for your SEO?
There are four things that you want to do:
- Make sure that your website is easy to navigate, that there is a logical thought process as to how a user can get from arrival on your site to where they want to be
- Ensure that your website load speed is quick, you have but a few seconds to grab your website visitor's attention, so make sure pages load quickly so that they don't exit too quickly
- Build a website that is mobile-friendly, with more than two-thirds of the world having access to a mobile phone, you'll want to ensure that your website can be used on a mobile device as well as desktop
- Lastly, make sure that your website has internal links from one page to another more than once, this helps search engines crawl your website and index your content
Focusing on these four things will help you to build a website structure that search engines approve of, and in turn, they will be able to show your content higher in search engine results.
5. Create Great Content
Successful SEO is about more than technical know-how. You're going to want to create relevant, useful content for your desired target audience.
This means things like:
- Blog posts and articles
- Video content
- Product and services content
- And infographics
What this means is that you should be creating content for your website that serves a purpose for your prospective visitor. Answer frequently asked questions by writing blog posts and creating other content for your audience. And spread your keywords throughout this content.
6. Consider Link-Building
Another important part of an effective SEO strategy is prioritizing your link-building phase of said strategy.
Inbound links are an effective way to drive traffic to your dentist's website.
Basically put, they are votes that a search engine will find on external websites that point to your website. You'll be looking for authoritative websites that will allow you to 'guest blog' on their website, and within this content, you would link back to content on your website.
The partnership of link-building should be advantageous to both parties, giving valuable content to the website you're writing for, as well as driving traffic to your website.
7. Prioritize Local Seo
What is local SEO?
72% of people who search for local business, land up visiting their found result within a five-mile radius.
This means that your online dental efforts need to include a certain prioritization of local SEO fundamentals. How do you do this?
Well, one way is to increase your online reviews and rankings. Ask happy customers to visit your digital platforms, and leave positive reviews on their experiences.
Also, make sure that your business is listed on online business listing websites, such as local business directories. This means that your business will show up in searches that are relevant to your geographical location.
8. Make Everything Measurable
One of the absolutely imperative steps to having a successful SEO strategy is ensuring that the entire process is measurable from the word 'go'!
Ensure that you have steps in place to be able to measure the performance of your SEO. You can do this through software like Google Analytics.
You should be able to tell where your traffic is coming from, which keywords are performing best, and other parts of your strategy that are working and some that may need to be changed.
Successful Search Engine Optimization
When building a successful dental SEO strategy, you'll need to remember one thing:
SEO is not a destination, but a journey. You'll need to be committed to constant checking on your tactics, analysis of things that are working and not working, and then be open to adapting your strategy so that all elements work for you.
There are agencies that specialize in dental website design, so consider hiring an agency that knows the ins and outs of the industry just as well you do.