If you want more patients and higher profits, you need to improve your search engine optimization (SEO). There are over 178,000 dental practices in the US, so competition is fierce. You need to make sure that potential patients in your area can find your practice easily online. Once you have them in your office, you need to provide them with high-quality care to keep them coming back.
This is where a local SEO strategy can help your small business marketing. Not sure how to conduct local SEO? Read this local SEO guide for a great patient flow.
Optimize Your Dental Website
What is local SEO? It is a process of optimizing your website and online presence for local search results. As part of an online dental marketing strategy, dentists can utilize a local SEO approach to target potential patients in their area.
By optimizing their website for local keywords, dentists can ensure their website appears in search results when people search for dental services in their area.
You should make sure that your website is optimized for mobile devices. More people are using their smartphones to search for businesses in their area. It is important to make sure that your website is mobile-friendly.
If your website is not optimized for mobile devices, you are likely to lose potential patients to your competitors.
Creating Local SEO-Friendly Content
Think about creating content that would be interesting or useful to people in your area. This could be blog posts about dental problems that are common in your area, or articles about dental care tips that would be relevant to your community. You can also create local SEO-friendly landing pages on your website that are specifically designed for patients in your community.
Be sure to use keyword-rich titles and meta descriptions and create content that is relevant to your local area. Use images and videos to help your content stand out and promote your content through social media and other online channels.
Utilizing Local Patient Reviews
Utilizing local patient reviews is a great way to improve your dental SEO. This shows potential patients that you are a trusted and reputable business. There are a few things you can do to make the most of local patient reviews.
Encourage patients to leave reviews by providing links and instructions at your front desk or on your website. Respond to all reviews, positive or negative. This shows that you are active and care about what patients are saying.
Also, use positive reviews as testimonials on your website and local SEO marketing materials. Finally, use negative reviews as an opportunity to improve your practice. Thank the patient for their feedback and use it to change your policies or procedures.
Leveraging Local Directories and Citations
You can use local directories and citations to help you with your local SEO strategy. To get started, you will need to create a free account with a local directory.
Once you have created an account, you can add your business information, such as your website URL, business hours, and contact information. You can also add photos, videos, and blog posts to your directory list.
Besides adding your business to local directories, you can also submit your website to local citations. This is a listing of your business on an online directory or Yellow Pages. You can submit your website to local citations by filling out a form with your business information.
Building up citations from high-quality, local sources can help improve your dental practice’s visibility and searchability online.
Creating a Solid Foundation with NAP Consistency
NAP Consistency stands for Name, Address, and Phone Number. It is important for businesses to have their NAP information consistent across the web. This helps search engines display the correct information to potential customers.
It is critical that this information is consistent across the web. Inconsistent NAP information will confuse Google and result in lower rankings.
There are a few ways that dentists can ensure NAP consistency. They should make sure that their website lists their NAP information prominently and that it matches the NAP information on their business listings. They should use consistent abbreviations and try to avoid using acronyms whenever possible.
Link Building for Local SEO
To maximize the number of local dental patients, use tactics such as link building. Link building for local SEO involves creating links on other websites that point back to the dentist’s website. This can be done by submitting guest blog posts to popular local websites.
This helps to improve the visibility of the website in search engine results pages, making it more likely that potential patients will find and click through to the site.
Creating a Google My Business Page
As a dentist, you can create a Google My Business page to help improve your local SEO strategy. This page will allow you to list your business name, address, and contact information.
You can also add photos, business hours, and other relevant information. This page will help your business to appear in local search results when potential customers search for dental services in your area.
Additionally, dentists can use their Google My Business page to post updates and special offers, which can help attract new patients.
Use These Tips for Local SEO Strategy Today
Dentists can utilize a local SEO strategy by optimizing their website for local keywords, creating a Google My Business page, and listing their practice in online directories. Also, they can use local directories and citations, create local SEO-friendly content, and increase NAP consistency to improve their chances of appearing in the local search results.
With a targeted SEO approach, your website is reaching the right people. So what are you waiting for? Start optimizing your site and marketing your business online for local search today!
