On-page optimization is the foundation of any Dental SEO campaign.
If your on-page optimization isn’t on point, you won’t be able to see any real success from whatever other strategies you might try to implement.
While on-page search engine optimization is far from all you need to do in order to successfully lift your dentist office’s webpage through Google’s rankings, having a solid foundation can make the rise orchestrated by more aggressive SEO tactics much faster.
Here are the ten most essential on-page optimization strategies for dental SEO:
1. A blog that is consistently updated
Webpages with great content is one thing—having a blog that is consistently updated with great content is something else altogether.
Google puts an emphasis on high-quality, relevant, and fresh content.
The fresher the content, the more relevant and high-quality Google is likely to believe that content to be.
All of this requires a blog where you consistently post new topics that are likely to be of interest to your target audience.
2. Use of synonyms as well as keywords
Anyone who has used Google recently knows that the search results are not entirely comprised just of websites that use the specific keyword you searched.
Google’s algorithm also factors in the synonyms of those words, presenting you with results that are just as relevant, but use a similar, but ultimately different keyword.
You can maximize on this process by actually looking for and using those synonyms on your website.
You can search for these synonyms by simply using your search term and seeing what kinds of words Google suggests instead of the ones you’ve used.
3. Linking from your page to other websites
Preferably, those links should be to websites that have high page ranking and authority scores.
Why?
Because these websites already have a good standing on Google and linking to them allows you to steal some of that good ranking (often called “juice”) and use it to lift your website up.
While high-authority domains linking back to your website is better, linking to those websites from your pages is also pretty good and should be a tenet of your dental SEO strategy.
Luckily, as a dentist, there are lots of high-quality content sites that are not your direct competitors that you can link to.
4. Optimized for people
In the SEO community, there is a lot of talk about optimizing your webpages for search engines.
It’s important to remember, however, that search engines look for content to please real human readers.
In general, if you’re optimizing your content to please those real human readers, you are going to be optimizing it for search engines.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t worry about search engine guidelines, it simply means that you should worry less about how many times you used your keyword and more about whether or not the content is actually helpful.
5. Author is a part of Google’s Authorship program
You can make Google’s job of deciding whether or not you are authoritative and whether or not you are relevant really easy by becoming a part of Google Authorship.
This is a ranking system that allows authors to give their content more credibility, simply by being part of the program.
Those authors are also favored by Google when it comes to compiling search results.
Becoming a Google Author and then integrating that Authorship into your blog can give you a serious boost.
6. Great URLs
The longer and more confusing your URLS are, the worse they are going to do for your SEO.
If you want a successful URL, make it less than 100 characters, separate words by dashes, do not make it include more than three subdirectories, and include a location-based keyword.
This simple formula can help you make your dentist website’s URLs way more effective.
7. Longer content
It’s not that Google necessarily prefers longer content.
What it prefers is one of the symptoms of longer content: content that is more in-depth.
The longer a piece is, the more details it contains.
The more detailed a piece is, the more useful and relevant that content is going to be.
Therefore, Google prefers longer content because it is more likely to be useful.
That doesn’t mean that you should drag out content that really only requires 400 words; simply that the longer you can make your content, the better it will do on Google.
8. Tags for images
Alt text and captions are two places you can include keywords that Google will find them.
While many dentist offices have text-heavy websites, including pictures is always a good idea.
Many people avoid using pictures, video, and other visual content because it takes up space on a website, makes it load slower, and doesn’t provide a place for keywords.
Ask your web developer about ways to add visual content that won’t kill your page speed and to add keywords to your image tags.
9. Linking within your website
The goal of your website should be to make content as easy to find as possible.
You can do this by creating a web of links that will take your readers from one blog to another, from your blog posts to your website, and from your website to your blog post.
10. Add social share buttons
If you haven’t already, now is the perfect time to add social share buttons to your website.
Not only do these buttons give you a concrete link from your website (or blog), to your social media accounts, they are also essential for encouraging readers and site visitors to share your content to their own social media pages, which strengthens your social signals and redoubles SEO.
