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SEO For Dentists - Dental Website SEO

SEO For Dentists - Dental Website SEO Guide


Many dental practices focus on search engine optimization, or SEO, to ensure that their business is in front of potential new patients at the touch of a button. However, understanding the basics of SEO can be confusing. This in-depth guide is designed to explain SEO and the importance of good SEO for your dental practice.


SEO For Dentists - Dental Website SEO Guide
SEO For Dentists - Dental Website SEO Guide


Search Engine Optimization Dentistry - SEO


This idea spread in dentistry for thousands of years, from 5000 BC Sumerian to 14th century Europe - before modern dentistry really began. At the time, it made some sense. The cavities tend to look like they've been bored by a small worm. Unfortunately, the deworming treatment has been unhelpful at best, and at worst, possibly doing more harm than good.


We can laugh at these ideas now - while drawing on everything we know about modern dentistry. Dental care has been studied, perfected, and practiced for hundreds of years. There is little debate about how or why to fix caries. But imagine if dentistry was only in its first decade of practice and understanding. This is where search engines are now.


SEO history


Search engines have only been around for two decades. They have just come out of the "worms cause tooth decay" stage. For example, you may have heard of people "keyword stuffing" with their web pages so that they rank well for a variety of terms.


Populating your pages with a bunch of unrelated keywords has been an effective technique that SEO experts use to gain an edge. Of course, making web pages worse - just like treatments to get rid of toothworms don't help anyone's teeth. Therefore, we are still in the dark ages to understand the best ways to build, use and understand search engines.


That's why we see a lot of changes and new rules being replaced by new rules on this regular basis. And that's why the internet is still a very wild place. It seems absurd, because the Internet seems sophisticated, understandable and popular - but it is still developing rapidly.


Google search rules and results are still under development


Right now, Google's rules for searching and how to best optimize your website go through a confusing and confusing path. Basically, Google sends "spiders" to take pictures of websites, and then another program analyzes the websites using a set of rules to see which ones best fit Google's criteria. This process happens millions of times per second, over and over. 


The system breaks down when there is a disconnect between Google's rules and the actual experience of users on the page. In other words, there is a problem when Google has rules in place that either lead to bad search or create a rule that conflicts with the user experience. Google knows about these crashes, but despite the billions of dollars and years Google has spent improving the process, half of all searches result in a "bounce" - which means users enter a search, click on a result, and then click back on a Google page at Instant results page.


That's right: half the time you guess the best Google search results are wrong. That's still pretty good - and statistically it means that the first page of results contains what the user is looking for more than 90% of the time. But surprisingly, people still use old methods of SEO - some "experts" still use keyword stuffing or other tricks to try to trick Google. And despite advances in dentistry, there were still people in the early twentieth century who believed in toothworms.


While our understanding of best practices for search engines is still developing, we know a few things for sure. We know it's ideal to create user-focused sites that give people what they're looking for in an honest and clear way. We are getting closer every day to the time when a site that ranks well matches a functionally sound site for the user. And ideally, every time someone searches for something your practice should match, Google will show your practice at the top of the search results.


But since Google's software, bots, and algorithms aren't perfect, this may not always be the case. For now, Google is still working on bugs — or worms — and it's extremely important that you use a robust dental SEO strategy to ensure you rank on the first page for a variety of possible search terms.


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SEO Dictionary for Dentists


Before you can do anything to improve your ranking, you should understand some basic industry terms so you know for sure what to do. Here are nine of the most important terms you need to understand before you can help raise your site in the ranks.


  • Google Algorithm: A highly detailed and ever-changing set of rules and tests that search engines use to check and check how well a site is for searching. Sites with a lot of clickbait, bad links, duplicate content, irrelevant content, or obvious black hat techniques will not pass algorithm tests. Algorithms actually act as fallback jobs for the human user - trying to figure out what users want so that the search engine can return the most relevant and authentic search results. 


  • White Hat / Black Hat: Just like in the old cowboy movies, white hat SEO techniques are good and correct SEO techniques that make a site a perfect fit for the users likely to search for it. On the contrary, black hat uses all kinds of tricks to trick the algorithm into giving the site a better ranking than it should. Google and other search engines are constantly looking for ways to penalize black hat technologies, so web masters who think they've "won" the black hat SEO game do so at their own risk. Black hat techniques don't last, and it's a terrible way to try to build an online reputation for practicing dentistry.


  • Organic listings: It's not enough to have a site that matches well with search terms: the site must also be "tested" well using search engine algorithms, which look at a variety of factors to determine how well a site is as a legitimate search result. Sites with good organic reach meet a variety of "reputation" metrics that the algorithms consider, such as linking to other reputable sites, social media presence, overall site content, advertising, and original content.


  • Search Engine Results Page (SERP): What sites appear in a search engine when a user searches for certain terms. Search engines use fairly sophisticated ways of displaying results, but they mainly focus on matching certain search terms with sites that have good free access, or good paid access.


  • Local Listings (7 Packs): Search engines show 4-10 local companies that best fit your search terms. A package of 7 shows the closest and best rated company match.


  • Bounce rate: The percentage of people who click on your site only to immediately hit the "back" button to return to the search engine. It is an action that tells the search engine that your site was not what they were looking for. If your site has a high bounce rate, it will harm your page ranking. Part of SEO is figuring out why your page is causing a bounce, and how to fix it so it doesn't happen too often.


  • Keywords: Keywords are the individual words that make up a searcher's query. When you use the same keywords or keyword phrases in your website content as a search query, the search engine algorithms will likely rank your site well for the given query.


  • Crawlers/bots/spiders: Simple programs that browse the web by following hyperlinks on web pages. They make copies of what they find and then use their algorithms to index it to quickly retrieve it when someone enters a search into a search engine.


  • Impressions: The number of users who see a page or ad - not like a click. It is important because it is the most widely used method for measuring and calculating web ads.


Why is search engine optimization (SEO for dentists) needed?


There are currently more than 460 million active websites on the Internet. In a sea so vast, it's no surprise that it's hard to get noticed. Many dentists and small businesses are turning to search engine optimization (SEO) to help them get better rankings in online search results. This way when a potential new patient Google searches for "dentist in [city]", his clinic appears.


How does Dental SEO help patients find you?


Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of marketing your website to highlight the services you offer, so that potential patients can easily find your website when doing an online search. An effective SEO strategy uses different online marketing methods to help improve your ranking on major search engines like Yahoo! and Bing and Google. Taken together, these methods communicate with search engines, telling them that your website is relevant to certain keywords.


SEO For Dentists - Dental Website SEO Guide
Dental seo


Dental SEO isn't just an easy way for new patients to find you online. Having an improved website gives potential patients a chance to connect with your practice and learn more about the services they are interested in. Optimization for search engines proves that you are communicating with the researcher's needs, allowing the researcher (potential patient) to believe that you are a reliable answer to their problem.


How do you know if your website SEO is working?


Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies available to dentists. It can also be the most difficult to measure. Although there are many high-end tools out there, they can also be quite expensive. Fortunately, there are other ways to understand if your SEO efforts are working without additional investment. Before you can determine your results from SEO, you will need to have the right tools. We recommend the free Google tools: Google Analytics and Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools). You will also need a Google account to get started.



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