SEO For Dentists: Get More Patients with Local SEO Tactics
A robust online presence is essential for dental practices to attract new patients. While many dentists are familiar with optimizing their Google Business Profile and listing on local directories, there are often overlooked strategies that can take your SEO to the next level.
The fundamentals in technical SEO, on-page SEO, and link building always constitute a robust SEO campaign. Add a few things to keep your dental website optimized and on top of its game.
This guide will cover the basics of SEO for dentists and some actionable steps you should consider.
1. Create Direct Landing Pages for Dental Service Keywords
One of the most impactful yet underutilized SEO strategies is creating individual pages for each dental service you offer. Each page should target specific keywords such as “dental fillings” or “laser teeth whitening”.
You can’t expect to rank for these keywords if you don’t create a page for the service and optimize the keyword for it.
Optimizing these pages with local and service-specific keywords helps search engines better understand your offerings and improve the chances of climbing spots in Google’s SERPs.
Arrange the main categories and services underneath them in a precise, logical manner, from main categories such as Orthodontics and General Dentistry to their specific services like Oral Prophylaxis and Porcelain Veneers.
Here’s a quick look at the hierarchy of dental services. You can change it based on your current offerings and local context.
GENERAL DENTISTRY
- Airflow
- Dental Fillings
- Oral Prophylaxis
COSMETIC DENTISTRY
- Composite or Direct Veneers
- Laser Teeth Whitening
- Porcelain Veneers
- Zirconia Veneers
ORTHODONTICS
- Braces
- Invisalign
ORAL SURGERY
- Dental Implant
- Oral Surgery
PEDIATRIC DENTISTRY
- Dental Sealant
- Fluoride Treatment
PROSTHODONTICS
- Complete Dentures
- Dental Bridge
- Dental Crowns
- Removable Partial Dentures
ENDODONTICS
- Root Canal Treatment
PERIODONTICS
- Tooth Scaling and Root Planning
DIGITAL X-RAYS
- Digital Dental X-ray
Publish landing pages with detailed information about the dental service. Include FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) to address pressing concerns and help potential customers make better decisions about choosing your service (this helps boost the conversion rates for those money pages).
Use internal linking to guide users to related content, assist their navigation experience, and increase their time on your site. Linking related content encourages potential clients to explore your brand further. For instance, if you published the service page on Prosthodontics, link to more specific pages such as Dental Crowns and Dental Bridges.
The better your internal linking strategy, the more page authority it distributes across pages.
2. Apply Author Bio Best Practices
Dentistry falls under the category of "Your Money or Your Life" (YMYL) topics, which refer to subjects that can significantly impact someone’s health, finances, or safety. This means that Google applies stricter guidelines when evaluating content in the field.
Your website must showcase experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trust (E-E-A-T) to rank well for YMYL topics.
One way to exhibit expertise is to create individual author bios, which can help boost your website's overall brand credibility and SEO performance. Giving users and search engines an idea of the publishers behind every content helps add more positive elements that make your website deserve to rank for its target keywords.
Whether you opt to write blog content as a dentist or hire a medical professional to contribute content for your brand, here are some useful tips to optimize your author bio:
- Include relevant academic degrees, certifications, and professional awards your dentist author has received. Mention the specific institutions and organizations to build more trust with potential patients.
- Use professional headshots similar to those you consistently use across social media platforms, such as the profile photo on LinkedIn. This will create a more recognizable personal brand in the online space.
- Publish a detailed About Us Page. It must include credentials and achievements about your dental practice. Use schema markup to help search engines correctly display your information.
- Link to social media accounts such as Linkedin to help patients verify your qualifications.
3. Optimize Content for Long-Tail Keywords
When starting an SEO campaign, optimizing pages for high-traffic keywords like “dentist near me” is vital as this could bring significant search traffic.
However, if your website is new, it is best to compete for long-tail keywords that are more specific and less competitive. Examples are “Teeth whitening treatment cost in London” or “How often should I get a dental cleaning?”
This enables your newly optimized website to acquire initial traffic by ranking in less time for long-tail keywords.
It is best to incorporate these long-tail keywords naturally throughout your helpful content.
Here are some examples of dental-related long-tail keywords:
- Best family dentist near [city]
- Affordable cosmetic dentistry in [city]
- Emergency dental care for a broken tooth near me
- How to find a good pediatric dentist in [city]
- Teeth whitening treatment cost in [city]
- Dental implants specialist in [city]
- Pain-free root canal treatment near [city]
- Invisalign vs braces cost in [city]
- How often should I get a dental cleaning
- Gum disease treatment options for seniors
- What to do for a knocked-out tooth emergency
- Sedation dentistry for dental anxiety in [city]
- Best dentist for veneers in [city]
- What to expect during a dental implant consultation
- Holistic dental care for sensitive teeth
4. Encourage Patients to Leave Reviews
Patient reviews are critical in building trust with potential patients. As Google considers the quality of reviews a significant local ranking factor for local businesses, having quality reviews can help your site dominate the top ranking spots.
You can display printables in your office with a QR code to encourage patient feedback. Others fashionably use physical marketing materials to help patients share their experiences online.
5. Optimize Google Business Profile
Google Business Profile creation is one of the most fundamental initiatives to help your dental website rank for Google Map Packs.
Fill out all the essential details in the profile to maximize its full potential. A properly optimized profile must include:
- Name, phone number, and address also being placed on your dental site (make sure you consistently place just one NAP - Name, Phone Number, and Address).
- Accurate business hours, contact information, and appointment links
- High-quality images of your clinic, staff, and services
Regularly update your GBP with new promotions, events, and services. All these updates help engage your audience and give Google more content to crawl, which can positively impact your local rankings.
6. Be Visible in Comparative Pages
Getting coverage on publications that rank well in Google’s SERPs for comparative inquiries, like “best orthodontists in London”, could help position your brand strongly online.
We’ve had several names for this type of strategy, as some SEOs have coined it Barnacle SEO, Second-Hand Search Traffic, or Parasite SEO. The goal in any of these is to dominate the top page of SERPs by ranking for comparative pages where you can be appropriately included as a service provider.
Being visible on these ranking comparative pages can help increase brand share and recall for searchers looking for the best dental clinic in town.
7. Be Included in Local and Healthcare Directories
While getting links from local and niche directories is often misunderstood as merely a link building technique, their value in driving exposure for a dental brand is crucial.
Most users today consider directories a source of options when finding a particular service. They seek niche directories to increase their options, compare service providers, and find the one that will serve their needs.
Start creating and optimizing profiles for healthcare directories like ZocDoc and HealthGrades, as these sites often rank highly on Google’s SERPs.
Drive More Patients to Your Dental Practice
SEO for dentists requires a holistic approach that goes beyond just setting up a Google Business Profile.
By applying the strategies that strongly demonstrate EEAT to help your site foster trust and credibility for search engines and users, you can build a sustainable flow of new patients who trust your practice.
SEO For Roofers: How to Rank Higher and Get More Clients
The marketing success of a roofing business no longer hinges solely on word-of-mouth referrals. While those remain vital in the process, you’ll have to continuously consider investing in other channels, such as search engine optimization, to attract new customers for your roofing business.
Imagine a homeowner urgently needs roof repair. A quick search for “roofer New Jersey” finds a list of local roofing companies. Now, if your business doesn’t appear in local map packs and organic listings, you’re missing out on potential clients who are ready to hire.
In this quick guide, I’ll show you how to do SEO for roofers to climb Google’s SERPs for your local keywords and get the desired number of leads for your local business.
1. Achieve NAP Consistency
NAP stands for your business name, address, and phone number. These are the most important elements of a local SEO campaign. With a business name and address, Google can identify your brand and associate it directly with its geographic location. The phone number helps validate that your business is actually located in the place where you mention it through its area code.
Display NAP sitewide in every page’s header or footer and include them on your About Us Page.
If you have several roofing branches, the best approach is to create a location or branches page and state each location’s NAP. Use a local phone number with country and area code so Google can easily identify your location’s business as legitimate.
2. Claim Your Google Business Profile
Google Business is where businesses and other organizations create listings to help enhance their visibility on the search platform.
Creating your own Google Business Profile enables you to add your business details visibly and allows your business to appear on Google Maps Pack.
Fill in all the requested details as you create your Google Business Profile. Make sure you use the same NAP in detail. Don’t forget to complete every detail about your business, including selecting the proper business category and subcategory and your office’s opening hours.
It is best to upload original photos of your roofing service and physical facility. This helps send more positive signals to Google and lets your customers quickly find your business.
Get genuine reviews to increase the chances of climbing your website for map pack rankings. You can offer some incentives after every roofing service and simply hand them a Google Review QR code to get real honest feedback so they can help you improve your service.
3. Get Listed on Comparative Roofers’ Listings
People use different search queries to find roofing services, such as “best roofing services in New York”. During this purchasing decision stage, they compare different local services, determine both pros and cons through reviews and testimonials, and decide on the best roofing company that could provide the most value for their needs.
Aim to be listed in these listicles hosted on publications that rank well for the comparative terms. This link building method will position your brand visibility in these different places and help you capture an organic search share ready to purchase your services.
Dominating Google’s SERPs for these various investigative keywords by being visible on top-ranking pages helps you position your brand as a go-to source for roofing services.
You can use tools like Ahrefs to find pages or opportunities that feature your top roofing competitors in your local area but don’t include your site.
Reach out for link inclusion. Incentivize by offering free roofing service.
Another way to utilize this product-led link building strategy is to submit content with a list of niche segment services to a publication of choice (e.g., gutter installation services in New Jersey). This is a new angle of content asset they’re likely to publish and promote as it involves a new service category.
4. Build Local Links
Backlinks from sites that target geographic locations can strongly influence your site’s rankings on local organic search results (and could positively affect Google Local Map Packs).
The more quality links you can acquire from sites in your target location, the more local relevance your site will have. These sites do not have to be hosted in the preferred area, but you should aim to build backlinks from sites representing other businesses associated with the place.
Diversify your link types when pursuing backlinks for local SEO for your roofing business. A few kinds you should aim to build:
- Local directories
- Local chambers of commerce
- Local bloggers
- Local publications and news sites
- Local schools and universities
Ahrefs has a “Best by Links” feature that allows you to quickly spot the best link opportunities on websites you’re trying to reverse engineer.
Based on our decade of link building experience as a link building agency, getting links from national and even international websites also helps elevate your pages’ rankings for local organic search listings. However, local links could bring immediate rankings that are better than their link counterparts.
5. Publish Localized Content
One of the best ways to build local links isn’t just through manual SEO outreach but also through consistent publishing of content assets that target your customers’ pain points and challenges. This type of content passively attracts natural links that could help improve the rankings of both your informational content and service pages.
Start by identifying potential topics to cover in Ahrefs’ Question feature. Answer these questions with blog posts.
Optimize content by including keywords in the meta title, meta description, and first sentence. Sprinkle relevant local entities on the page to increase local relevance.
Final Thoughts
Ranking on both Google Map Pack and local organic search listings should be a top priority for any roofing business, as it drives quality leads that they can’t easily find elsewhere.
Being visible on the Map Packs, for instance, is quite underrated but considered to be one of the top search engine optimization techniques for guaranteeing new customers in your neighborhood and boosting your online visibility.