Dental SEO should not take over your life and it should not be so difficult that you have to spend hours every day working on it.
Working with a SEO professional can help lift the burden of dental search engine optimization, but great optimizers will still need your help and input—it is your practice, after all.
If you’re tackling SEO yourself, or you want to be more involved with your professional, in order to make your campaign as good as it can be, here are ten really easy dental SEO tips:
1. Fix bad SEO.
Bad SEO is very rarely done intentionally.
Whether you worked with someone inexperienced or you did a little tinkering yourself, before you really got your feet under you, your website may be suffering from some bad SEO.
Removing it is really easy.
Get rid of bad content, make sure your 404 (Page Not Found) pages are updated, and make sure your website’s structure is SEO friendly (you can do this using a tool like Screaming Frog).
2. Start building backlinks.
Because “backlinks” is SEO jargon, many people will skip this step.
Backlinks are just what they sound like—links back to your website.
Building them is easy.
Guesting blogging is one of the best ways, as is sharing your content to your social media websites.
A blog full of valuable, interesting, engaging content will naturally generate backlinks, too.
3. Schedule your social media posts.
There are plenty of tools that allow you to do this, and it can make your social media posts much more impactful.
The more people your social media posts reach, the stronger your social signals, the better your dental SEO is.
What’s the best time to post?
That depends entirely on your patients.
Young mothers?
Morning is best. Busy professionals?
Afternoon or evening.
4. Start targeting local traffic by using local keywords.
This is one of the best ways to improve a failing campaign: start using location-specific keywords.
Because dentists are usually looking for patients in their local area, switching out more general keywords for location-specific ones is a really easy way to target your traffic and get more valuable leads.
If you’re not sure what keywords you should be using, there are lots of online tools for researching keywords.
You might also consider hiring a professional to do you keyword research if you want the human touch when it comes to keyword selection.
5. Review your local directory listings.
You probably have a local directory listing, whether you made it yourself or not.
It’s time to claim those listings and make sure that they contain only the most updated contact information.
Filling them out a little bit, with some pictures and a link to your website can help legitimize you and add in another great way for people to find your website.
This is a really simple, really easy way to boost local dental SEO.
Take an afternoon and get it done so you don’t have to worry about whether or not you are losing patients to incorrect contact information on local directories.
6. Create separate pages to talk about each of your services.
Providing lots of great information about the services you can provide to your patients is a great way to add more content to your webpage while also adding lots of value.
Someone wanting to learn about implants will find your website, read about implants and your skills, and will be more likely to make an appointment with you when it comes times for an implant procedure.
From cleanings to oral surgery, creating services pages is easy and can be very beneficial.
7. Start a blog.
Starting a blog might now sound easy, but if you have topics that you want to write about, it is actually quite easy.
Just add a blog to your existing website, and start writing.
It might take a while to find your footing, but as long as you are writing about topics related to your practice, in a conversational and friendly tone, with some actionable tips in each post, you are going to find interested readers.
Blog posts are also a great place to slip in keywords.
8. Look at competitors’ websites to see what they have that you don’t.
What do your competitors have that set them apart from you?
If their contact information is listed in large type at the top of every page and yours is hidden away at the bottom of the page, they are probably getting more calls than you.
If their credentials are listed and yours aren’t, they probably look more legitimate.
Look at other’s webpages to see what you might be missing.
9. Add captions to any pictures.
If you have images on your website that don’t yet have captions, add them in.
Use a keyword if it is appropriate and sounds natural.
This is one of the most neglected techniques, but ensures that your pictures show up in relevant image searches, which can bring you just as much traffic as website searches.
10. Hire a professional.
Any person who has the time and motivation to tackle their own dental SEO definitely can do it.
Most dentists, however, do not have the time that a successful SEO campaign requires.
This is where hiring a professional can make your life much easier.
While they will need information from you, a professional will take care of all of the gritty details, freeing up your time so that you can dedicate to your practice.
