SEO Guide For Health Practice Owners
Digital marketing is becoming a better understood art form and the nuances of how to execute marketing effectively is growing. If you’re not staying on top of your digital marketing strategies then your competitors will be licking their lips and loving how you’re neglecting your seo. By appearing as the top result for your industry like “dentist” + “location” you will increase the amount of new patients you see and increase your brand awareness making the competition irrelevant.
We need to consider implementing a search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy to achieve these results. This complete seo guide will be useful for practice owners in a variety of industries including dentists, chiropractors, physiotherapists and more. How can you use seo to get in front of established competitors in your local?
A consistent seo campaign with the right mix of link building, content and on-page optimisation will help you surpass your competitors.
An seo company provides a clear roadmap with tasks to help you build the foundation of your google rankings in your location. Using bespoke SEO techniques, your website is then better optimised in the eyes of Google which facilitates increased rankings and website traffic.
Lets step into the proven seo tips for dentists:
Design the Best Website
One of the most crucial parts of an overall seo campaign for dentists is to have a great website design that your existing patients and new patients can connect with quickly once they land on your website. Most websites have a skeleton approach which means that only a few pages are found by Google which restricts your capacity to develop strong rankings.
Here is the most common sitemap approach for a website
– Home
– About
– Services
– Contact
A well structured website will have dedicated pages for content which provides great insights, addresses concerns and has relevant images to appeal to the reader. This more advanced seo approach also allows your seo strategy to flourish because we can target more long-tail keywords in pages with that corresponds to the page that Google is indexing. For example, if you provide cosmetic dentistry you can break this pages down into the following to better capture your audience and deliver more relevant information.
– Veneers
– Smile Makeover
– Teeth Whitening
– Dental Crowns
– Dental Bridges
– Porcelain Fillings
Now, this may seem like too many pages and an overwhelming amount of content however by designing the content and website with this volume of pages gives us the opportunity to carry out detailed keywords research and create quality unique content factoring in all of the search queries people are typing in so when those phrases around “dental implant costs” are searched, we will have a better opportunity to get that visitor onto your dedicated page and get the new patient. This proven seo strategy will help deliver improved google rankings for your focus keywords.
Optimise Your Google My Business
Claim Your Local and Optimise your google my business profile page
Using google my business to claim your practice location will be one of the most crucial SEO activities you do, it will help provide instant visibility and when optimised the GMB listing will have you positioned in the 3-pack. When you achieve this result from your local seo this will mean when someone is typing in “dentist” + “location” which is a huge new patient lead generator.
Setting up your google my business page is straight forward and should only take you 10 minutes to complete and insert valuable information, images and services better educating google and your potential patients about your practice.
If your dental practice google my business page hasn’t been claimed you will need to follow the below steps.
– Go to Google My Business
– Click: ‘Start Now’
– Follow the listing instructions
– Once these initial instructions are completed, you will then need to verify your listing, you will be sent a verification code in the mail which can take up to to 5-7 days
– Once you have received this code, log back into the google my business page and verify your listing by entering the code
GMB setup complete – You’ve successfully setup your profile and now can create business descriptions, add lots of photos of your practice and staff along with your branded information like logos, branded cover images and so on. By adding this additional information you improve your local seo results and will feature in more prominent google my business rankings.
Below are some initial optimisation tasks for your local seo listing.
– Practice hi resolution logo
– Business address
– Operating hours
– Website URL
– Phone number
– Email address
– Practice vision
– Practice description
– Areas your patients come from
– Photos of your practice and staff
– List the treatment and services you offer
Invest Time In On-page SEO
The very first place to start here is to use the keyword research data you gathered when creating the website and content. This keyword research will give you every keyword/phrase that relates to your services and the monthly search volumes. For example “dental implant costs” is searched 1,600 times per month on average. This is a heavily searched topic and by having a dedicated URL called “dental-implants” with relevant information detailing the costs, process you place yourself as a relevant source of information in Googles eyes.
Below are the steps y0u can follow to optimise your website:
Optimise the URL Structure
Your website will benefit from having succinct, keyword rich URL slugs. It’s also important to use lowercase letters and dashes to separate each words instead of underscores when creating your URL slugs.
Here is an example of a poorly written URL slug:
www.dentist.com.au/dentalimplant_cost_index.html
Now, here is an example of a well structured URL for SEO.
www.dentist.com.au/dental-implants-cost
Optimise Your Title Tag
There are several plugins you can use to make this process easier to manage, one of the more popular seo plugins is Yoast. Every page has a title tag and this is a really important factor that google uses to determine rankings. Your title tag should be 60 characters or less in length, if your title tag is longer than this Google will not display it fully and will be cut off.
Here is an example of an optimised title tag
Dentist Sydney | Experienced Dental Practice in Sydney CBD
You can read more here so you can create the best title tags to boost your websites seo.
Optimise the Meta Description
The meta description has a longer character count and should be used to improve your click through ratio or CTR. Your meta description needs to be applied for each page and be focused on drawing in the website visitors attention. This character limit is 160 and should include the primary keyword and a call to action
Here is an example of an optimised meta description:
Sydney Dentists leading the way in making your next check up and clean relaxing & quick leaving you with a fresh, healthy smile. Visit our Sydney Dentist Today
Optimise H1 Headings
Website content should be structured in a way where headings help the reader understand the topic and paragraphs below. You should have only one H1 tag on any one page and this should be keyword focused to match the content, URL slug and content flow.
A well optimised H1 in this continued example is:
Sydney Dentist
Optimise Your Content
Each page requires unique content and should consist of 50-800 words depending on the level of competition for the keywords. We would encourage you to create 800+ words of content for a competitive service like dental implants because there is a large search volume with lots of websites competing to rank for this term.
The focus keyword needs be included in the first paragraph of the body content and different variations that carry a search volume should also be used throughout the content. Each page should have call to actions highlighting the benefit post service and an easy to see call button or book online button making it easy for them to connect with your practice.
Optimise the Images on Your Website
Optimising the images on your website is a super easy and effective way to improve your website visibility in Google. When you add “media” into a wordpress website you then have an option to add text into an “ALT TEXT” which is then visible for google bots to crawl. When your website is indexed with images and they have variations of your keyword as at text then your page will be more relevant for searches.
White Hat Link Building
Building niche links, brand authority links and geographical links are an important part of your overall SEO strategy. These different types of links help your website and domain increase in popularity which then improves your rankings. Getting citations is one of the easiest ways you can boost your seo yourself. You can jump onto directory websites and enter your business information, including your website and publish. Most of these citations are free and the website link is now referred to as a backlink because it goes back to your website.
The more quality and relevant links you build, the better your results will be. Below are a list of some directory sites you can use.
– Yelp
– Hot Frog
It’s important that all of your practice listings are exactly the same, Name, Address, Phone Number – If they don’t match this will disrupt the network of links and create confusion in search engines. You should then setup the listing with the website and send that link back to your practice website and then add images as well with descriptions.
Building Authority Backlinks
Backlinks come in a few forms, the most valuable backlinks are usually those that are earned as opposed to bought or free, like a citation listing for a dentist. Having a featured article written by a dentist in the ADA website or a write up on a government website for a school speaking session these are valuable links that will add more value than 100 other low quality links.
The more quality links your business has connected, the stronger your rankings will be because Google trusts you.
Creating a blog is one of the most common approaches to link building. When you create and maintain a blog you will be able to link content throughout the website which helps with your internal link building. You can write content about particular treatments, tips on how to best brush your teeth, what’s involved with a root canal and so on. If you are creating interesting and engaging content relevant to your audience then you will be on your way to developing some great links.
If investing time identifying the most sought after topics, creating the content and applying optimisation to that content to ensure it yields maximum impact in Google remember that our dental marketing agency is here to help you. Our health marketing team creates all forms of content to engage your audience and boost your seo results.
Setup Google Analytics
Setting up and connecting google analytics is a great way to understand how people are using your website, what times they are on your website, what pages they review and how many people are going on there. SEO is a long term investment and requires a consistent strategy to yield the best results which happens once the campaign hits maturity – this time frame varies based on your current authority for your website.
Setup Google Search Console
Google search console is a brilliant tool that allows your website to communicate directly with google. You can find out issues google is finding in your website by using google search console, you can also find out the pages that are generating the most traffic and importantly from what keywords.
Google analytics and google search console are powerful tools that marketing agencies use to understand website performance, fix errors and make improvements to the site and content.
We can help your practice reach more new patients with our proven seo strategies, share your goals with us so we can show you how we can achieve them.
