Don’t have a huge marketing budget? Can’t afford to hire a Dental SEO agency? Don’t worry. You can get started with SEO yourself.
Dental SEO is pretty straightforward. It’s about providing what the searchers and Google want. If you understand what your target audience is looking for and creating content around those topics while tweaking a few “technical” things you will soon be on your way to increasing your SEO.
But what is Dental SEO? What does it mean?
Definition: Dental SEO is the process of organically ranking high on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing. In other words, it’s getting your content or website to show up at the top of search results for certain keywords when searched such as “dentists near me”.
In this guide, you will learn 4 DIY Dental SEO strategies:
- Keyword Research
- Page Optimization
- Technical Issues
- Link Building
Keywords Research
Keywords dictate and help Google understand what your content is about.
What to do:
Jot down some ideas and keywords from answering the questions below.
How would you Google search for your own service or a dentist or any service you might need?
How would people describe your service?
Some keyword ideas to get you started:
- “cosmetic dentist”
- “dentist in (city)”
- “pain-free dentist”
- “tooth pain relief”
Now take your keywords and enter them into AnswerThePublic. AnswerThePublic will generate a bunch of keywords based on the most popular and common questions, prepositions, comparisons, alphabeticals and related searches.
This will give you more than enough ideas to get started.
Page Optimization
Now that you have chosen your keywords, you will need to create pages or content to start ranking for these keywords.
You will need to make sure that these pages are optimized for search. This is on-page SEO. On-page SEO is the optimization of webpages to improve a website’s rankings on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing.
No, keyword stuffing on a single page won’t help it rank.
If you want to rank in Google, you have to create content that matches search intent.
What to do:
It’s pretty simple.
- Google one of your keywords, look at the top ranking pages and replicate their content structure. I.E. if they are bulleted lists then do the same.
- Create your content making sure it is simple and easy to read.
- Create engaging title tags and meta descriptions.
- Use your keywords or variations of your keywords in your URL.
- Add internal links within the content to link to other internal pages.
Ultimately, Dental SEO is about providing a great experience, solutions to problems, generating leads and revenue.
Technical Issues
The fastest and easiest way to find all your technical issues is to perform a website audit. The audit will point out any issues that your site maybe facing. You will find that many agencies offer both free and paid dental website audits.
Two of the most common technical issues are:
- Securing your site by using HTTPS (SSL)
- This means that the website is encrypted. If needed, you can purchase SSL from your web host.
- Making sure your site loads fast
- Check your site’s speed with GTmetrix or Google’s Page Speed.
Here are some tips on how to improve page speed:
- Choose the right web host.
- Reduce image sizes.
- WordPress sites can use ShortPixel. Shortpixel will automatically compress your uploaded images without compromising the quality.
- Enable browser caching.
- This allows for faster load speeds as elements of your pages are stored onto your visitor’s hard drive. WordPress sites can use W3 Total Cache to enable caching.
Link Building
Getting backlinks from highly ranked sites pointing to your site improves your site’s credibility, authority, popularity and relevance.
There are many link building strategies but here are two quick tactics:
Guest Blogging
Publish a guest post on an influential (and highly ranked) blog that allows you to include your site’s links within the content or bio.
Start off posting or answering questions at popular dentistry sites. Some sites allow for dofollow and nofollowed links. Dofollow links are what you should be aiming for.
Copy your competitors’ backlinks
The quickest way to get started is to use a tool called Moz. You can get started by seeing at least 10 of their backlinks for free before having to pay. Now, reach out to those same sites and secure a link for yourself!
*Link Building Bonus*
Find Guest Blogging opportunities FAST! Type into Google, topic + intitle:”write for us” i.e. dental implants + intitle:”write for us”. You will now have a list of hundreds of sites that allow for guest blog submissions within your industry.
We hope that with this DIY Dental SEO guide covering the fundamentals of SEO will help you hit the ground running. Higher rankings = more traffic and visibility = more prospective patients and leads.
About the Author
Adam Yang, MBA, is the founder and digital marketing expert of Beyond Marketing Solutions, LLC, a digital marketing agency that specializes in teaching and helping dentists scale back their marketing budgets while increasing their patient volume and revenue through digital avenues. With his experience in corporate and private dentistry marketing and even dental laboratory marketing, Adam took his passion for both digital marketing and dental marketing to the next level by founding the first-ever e-commerce digital marketing agency to streamline and simplify the marketing and purchasing process for dentists.
