Whether you are just starting out with your dental business or have been in the industry for quite some time, you need potential patients to find your practice with ease. It is imperative that your practice is one of the first to appear whenever someone seeks dental services online. A recent study shows that 77% of all online health inquiries start out on the search engine; you need to take advantage of that fact to gain new patients. This simple guide will direct you in the path that your dental practice should go, how to implement dental SEO techniques, and promoting a better social media presence.
What can SEO do for my Dental Business?
SEO or search engine optimization is the method of organically increasing visitors to your business’ website via various strategies. This can dramatically boost your online profile and visibility. A successful SEO campaign means that your dental business will be viewed as an authority on dentistry and will be among the first to appear on the SERP (search engine results page) whenever someone searches for dentistry related terms. This is how SEO can improve your business:
- Boost your Online Presence — SEO can help direct new visitors to your website through the implementation of search terms, called keywords, that they are likely to search for when seeking dental help.
- Optimize your Website — An important part of your SEO campaign is making your website more attractive and user-friendly; that way visitors are likely to stay for longer periods of time.
- Improve your Website’s Authority — Websites that are seen as authoritative voices in a particular subject tend to show up first when people search for terms related to that subject. An SEO campaign can make your dental website one of the definitive voices in that area.
- Drive New Patients to your Business — When all the previous changes have been implemented, your business will experience an upturn of patients looking for to partake of your dental business’ service.
What ROI Should I Expect?
Return on investment or ROI is the method by which the comparison of SEO campaign expenditure to SEO campaign success is calculated. In order to expect a decent amount of your returned investment, you must calculate your company financials after carefully mapping out your marketing campaign. You should rightfully expect to get more out of the campaign than you put in or the entire venture would be pointless.
However, you should also make sure that your expectations are realistic and are relative to the size of your business; a small or mid-sized business will not have the same increase in clientele as a large business. You should expect a significant ROI that matches the scale of your business.
How Long Does SEO Take?
It can take months before you see significant results from your dental SEO campaign but that should not dissuade you from continuing the campaign. It can take time to optimize your website as well as for the search engines to notice the work that has been done to it. An SEO campaign is a marathon, not a sprint.
- An SEO Campaign can take Months — It can take weeks before you notice any changes and months before significant results become apparent.
- Search Engines work Slowly — It can take some time for the search engines to crawl through your improved website and establish it as an authority on dental business.
- Persistence and Patience are the Keys — Since results take time, it is wise to show some patience if results are not immediate; an SEO campaign requires hundreds of hours of work each week so ending it prematurely would be detrimental to your website.
- Results are marked by Two Major Milestones — 1. A higher Serp ranking. 2. A steady increase in clientele.
- Your Website will Eventually reach Stability — This is when your numbers stop increasing and reach a plateau; this is natural and when it happens, your campaign will be about maintaining those numbers as opposed to progressing them.
Dental Marketing Campaign: Local or National?
These two different strategies play a completely different role in your business. Local SEO drives website traffic that is focused on a location specific to your city and state. National dental SEO drives a worldwide audience to your website focusing on the subject or industry, not just your business. In order to determine if local or national dental SEO is best for your business, you need to determine the goals and ambition of your dental website.
Maybe you want to appeal to clients in your locale but you have an article or innovation that can appeal to anyone across the globe. This is entirely possible but needs careful implementation. Local dental SEO is generally for local businesses attracting new clientele and national campaigns may be related to universal interests.
Assessing your Dental website for Key Performance Indicators
Key performance indicators, or KPIs, are how we determine the efficacy of your dental SEO campaign; they are how we ascertain what is working about the campaign and adjust our strategy to fix what is unsuccessful. These are among the most important KPIs for your campaign:
- A Clientele Increase — This is the ultimate goal of your dental SEO campaign.
- Organic Traffic — These are the people who use the SERP to visit your website.
- Keyword Ranking — High ranking keywords means better search results which means more visitors.
- Low Bounce Rate — The bounce rate is when people visit one page on your site and then leave.
- Pages per Session — The number of your website’s pages users visit in a single session.
How to Optimize On-site SEO for your Dental Business
On-site SEO refers to the work done on your website to make it more inviting to both users and the search engines. Offering the best user experience possible will help your site to rank higher, attract more visitors, and get noticed by the search engines. The following are the steps taken to improve the appeal of your website:
- Correct Keyword Selection — Well-thought out keywords with high monthly search volumes that focus directly on your services will benefit your cause.
- Optimize Website Structure — Optimizing the structure of your website means ensuring that it is simple for users and search engines to navigate your website and find any relevant information.
- Custom Content Creation — This means creating content unique to your website that users will find appealing; this could be anything from blog posts to scholarly articles. The more original, quality content you have, the more likely you will be established as an authority.
- Adding Google Analytics — A Google Analytics accounts is free and can be used to track important statistics like your website’s traffic, bounce rate, and other KPIs.
- Adding a Sitemap — A sitemap is a document or webpage that helps visitors and search engines find pages on your website; they let search engines know about the relevance of the pages on your website, how they relate to each other, and other factors.
- Website Security — Keeping the information of you and your patients safe is vitally important. A security breach can be devastating to your business. Strong security measures can prevent your website from being compromised.
- Website Loading Speed — A slow loading website will discourage users from spending any significant time on your website or visiting it entirely. Fast load speeds are an important part of a good user experience.
How to Optimize Off-Site SEO for your Dental Business
Off-site SEO refers to the work done away from your website that helps to increase its authority and make it easier for search engines and people to find it. The following improvements will help your website’s SERP ranking:
- Relevant Link Building for your Dental Business — When you link to relevant, respectable websites, it helps to establish and improve your site’s credibility; this will help to boost your site’s link profile.
- Cleaning your Website’s Link Profile — When relevant, respectable websites link back to your website, that also establishes your site as an authority on that subject. You also need to make sure that all of your links are current; dead links will harm your credibility and ranking.
- Directory Listings Specific to your Dental Business — Listing your site on directories relevant to your business is a great way to make it easier for people and search engines to find you.
Social Media Integration for your Dental Business
Maintaining an online presence through social media can be a boon for your business. Sites like YouTube.com, Twitter, and Facebook all play an important role in grabbing the attention of your potential clients. Our team can make sure that your social media is constantly updated with engaging content.
- YouTube Management and Optimization — You can use YouTube to promote your website through custom content; if you choose this method, we can provide guidance as to the type of content you should produce.
- Management of Major Social Media — You might not have the time to constantly update your various social media accounts –but we do. We can help to improve the visibility of your business through regular social media updates.
Tracking your Dental Company’s Growth
It is important to stay abreast of how the dental SEO campaign is affecting the growth of your company. There are multiple tools that allow us to discover which parts of the campaign are most effective and make corrections to the parts that are not
- Phone Tracking — We can use phone tracking to discover which part of the campaign made clients find you and made them want to contact you.
- Form Tracking — A contact form helps us to know where the client who filled out that form is located; that way we can create strategies targeted to that region.
- Traffic Reports — There are several tools that enable us to find out how your website’s traffic is doing on a weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly basis.
- Ranking Reports — This method is optional but if you want to get an idea of where your site ranks in search engines, a ranking report can provide the information you need.