As a dental SEO expert in Hamilton Ontario, my clients have asked me for my best practices in local SEO for dentists. Basically: How to get new patients for a dental practice using Google.
No sweat.
As a dentist you probably already recognise the value of local SEO for dentists. But you probably want to know how to do it.
You take a look around the internet and all you find are tons of companies advertising to you. No one really explaining what SEO is or how to do SEO for a dental practice.
You know that to succeed online, you need to get your dental SEO right because dental SEO is a key part of your dental marketing plan.
But how do you do it?
How do you get new patients for your dental office?
Relax.
In this guide I am going to show you how to do dental SEO successfully, so you can get more dental patients in the office. I’ll show you everything from keyword research for dental SEO to optimising your dental website. And if you would like to discuss any of this with me, feel free to contact me at your convenience. I’m a professional dental SEO in Hamilton Ontario and I am always happy to chat with my clients.
Now let’s get started on your dental SEO so you can start generating leads online.
Follow me through this guide.
The 8 Step Local Dental SEO Strategy From Your Hamilton Dental SEO Expert… er… me
Follow this complete guide to dental SEO. And you will probably want to open my free SEO tutorial for beginners. In it, I explain all the points we’ll be looking at.
1. Understand how your dental SEO strategy fits into your overall dental marketing plan
One of the absolute most important things to understand about dental SEO is that it is only one part of a bigger picture.
Your dental SEO should fit into your overall dental marketing plan.
With dental SEO you are bringing people from Google and other search engines to your site. That’s the core benefit of SEO. But here are some important questions to ask:
Who specifically do you want to bring to your site?
What will they do on your site?
What does your sales funnel look like?
What needs are people trying to meet when they visit your site?
Here’s an example:
Let’s say you are trying to do dental SEO for a dental practice in Hamilton. You want parents to come in and sign-up as a family. So you want your dental SEO to bring in mothers and fathers with their kids. The problem these customers are trying to solve is that their kids have sensitive teeth. Great. This is excellent info. Now you know that you are marketing to parents whose kids have sensitive teeth. This tells you that you should create content around tooth sensitivity. So you now know what type of content to produce.
Of course, this is just an example. Your own SEO goals and SEO strategies will depend on your business objectives.
Every dental SEO expert like me should check the background info on your service to determine the best SEO for a dental practice.
2. Know your buyer personas so you can create effective dental SEO
Another key is knowing your buyer personas.
Buyer personas are the demographics and basic bio information of your prospective customers.
When you create buyer personas you learn more about your customers so you can create content marketed specifically to them. This is something every dental SEO expert needs to know before starting.
Let’s say, for example, that were doing SEO for a cosmetic dentist. You know your customers are usually over 50 and have income exceeding $100,000. And you know that their primary concern is to look great. With this buyer persona in mind, you now know to create content that showcases the beautiful smiles that your customers want. This will also affect the type of keywords you target in your dental SEO strategy. Let’s look at that now.
3. Find the best keywords for your dental SEO strategy
Keywords are the words people enter into search engines in order to find the right search results.
What words would people enter into Google to find your business? Those are your keywords. For instance, one of my keywords for this article is “dental SEO in Hamilton ON”.
Keywords are very important because they help determine the search queries your dental website will appear in. If you want to come up top for “cosmetic dentistry,” you’ll need to write around that very keyword.
The best keywords for dental SEO are usually in the format: [SERVICE][LOCATION][FOR REASON]
- For instance [dentist][in Hamilton][for root canal]
This is the type of keyword you want to create your main content (such as your homepage) around.
This becomes more complicated when we consider individual blog posts. For instance, you might plan a blog post about different options for sensitive teeth. In this instance you would need to research various keywords around that topic. For this you would use Google Keyword Planner and other tools (I’ve put links to these tools in my beginner’s SEO guide, which we linked to at the beginning of this article).
One thing to note is that keywords should be in the manner people speak (or type) and not overly technical. “Why are my teeth crooked” is a superior dental SEO keyword than “Orthodontist for jaw trauma”.
4. Writing content dental SEO experts will scream about
When it comes to writing SEO content for dental websites you have the option of placing the content on your own blog or in guest posts. Either way, there are right ways and wrong ways of writing content for dental SEO.
The wrong way is to write overly advertorial content (my tutorial on dental copywriting will help)
Any dental SEO expert worth their salt will tell you to create content that actually helps your readers. If you’re writing about root canals, write a helpful guide to different options and some ways people can reduce pain at home before they even go to the dentist. That’s helpful. That’s the type of dental SEO expert marketers will love and that will make your website visitors want to use your dental services.
Another key is to create a wide range of content that covers various aspects of your business. Yes, you have a homepage on your dental website, but you should also have high quality content about all the common problems you help people with. This gives Google more ways to rank your site (which means more lead generation) and it helps your customers, which leads to increased customer loyalty. Basically, you will get more patients at the dental office when you start producing content they love.
Do not spam content. But do produce lots of high-quality content. Then you’ll enjoy the best content marketing for dentists. One you have this content written, remember to produce internal links between your blog posts, which is something a dental SEO expert like myself ca help you with.
5. How to get backlinks for dental SEO
One of the most important dental SEO tips is to earn enough high-quality backlinks. This is especially important when doing local SEO for dentists.
Backlinks (links other publications put on their site that point to your website) are one of the most important ranking factors. To achieve a high rank position in Google, you will need high quality backlinks.
Some ways to earn backlinks for dental SEO include:
- Run a special event where you do a free service and ask local websites to cover it.
- Produce whitepapers on your area of expertise.
- Create infographics on the most common dental problems
- Give testimonials on the suppliers and other companies you use
- List your site on local organisations you belong to
- Get reviews from third party sites (but only high-quality ones)
- Create press releases on your newsworthy events and submit them to the press and PR sites
- Sponsor local events
- Produce guest post content for blogs in a related niche
Note: Do not buy SEO backlinks for dental practices because this will lead to a Google penalty. You can buy content that creates backlinks. But you cannot pay for backlinks directly. Do not trust any dental SEO expert who tells you to buy backllinks.
6. Local SEO for dentists to get new patients at the dental office
Any good dental SEO expert will focus on local SEO for dentists.
Local SEO is the process through which you rank your dental website in Google for people nearby. Then, when people search for dentist while near your business, you will come up top. Or alternatively, when people perform a search that specifies a geolocation (e.g. dentist in Ancaster) you’ll come up top for that also.
There are several steps to doing local SEO for dentists.
- When you write content for a dental practice, include references to the location and to major nearby landmarks.
- Look for opportunities to get backlinks from local sites (refer to the previous step).
- Embed a Google map of your dental practice in your website
- Add Schema markup (this is covered in my beginner’s SEO guide—refer to the link at the beginning of this article)
7. Boosting your dental SEO by optimising your dental website
One of the most important areas of dental SEO is to have an optimised website from a technical standpoint.
Your site can’t help you to get more dental patients at your dental office unless it actually works.
Your dental website should load quickly and have a lower level of bloat (not many pop-ups, no unnecessary dental WordPress plugins, reduced image file sizes, a decent WordPress dental theme, etc.)
This is a technical aspect that I myself or another dental SEO expert will be able to hep you with.
Another important aspect of SEO for dentists is mobile optimisation. Make sure your website is optimised for mobile devices. Many of your potential dental patients will be searching for you on mobile, so this is imperative.
8. Backup your dental SEO strategy with dental SEM (Search Engine Marketing)
Dental SEO is the science and art of ranking your dental practice on Google organically. The alternative is to pay for dental Adwords ads and Bing ads.
There are many ways to use search engine marketing for dentists. Adwords (Google’s advertising platform) is a great option. With Adwords you can pay to show ads for a dental practice on Google and on the millions of sites that show Adsense ads.
The best thing about dental Adwords adcertisements is that there are many excellent options and you can choose whom to target and where and when.
For instance, if you are using dental Adwords advertisements for a dental practice in Hamilton, you could enter the demographic of your potential clients and a radius of 5 miles around your business. Then your Adwords ads will only show to people in your demographic who are within 5 miles of your business.
You can also choose whether to send people from your dental ad to your dental website, or have them call directly,.
One of the best dental SEO tips is to combine your local dental SEO with some dental Adwords advertisements. This will put your dental practice in a stronger position online.
And that is the best 8 step strategy from your local dental SEO expert
In this guide we’ve looked at the best dental SEO tips and strategies. As a dental SEO expert in Hamilton Ontario, I am always happy to help dentists with SEO.
Studies show that in 2018, dental SEO is one of the most important ways to market a dental practice online.
If you would like to discuss this further, or you would like to hire my professional dental SEO services, contact me today.
