How Dentists Can Improve Their Local SEO

Boosting your site’s visibility, search engine optimization (SEO) allows you to gain more qualified traffic to your dental practice’s website. Reaching your audience on a wider scale, SEO helps your website to rank higher in search results, increasing clicks to your website and calls to your practice. Local SEO for dentists extends beyond organic SEO by adding Relevance, Distance, and Prominence to the results when patients are searching for services “near me” or “close by” Accounting for 46% of searches on Google, your site’s rankings in these local searches are the result of implementing Local SEO strategies.

There are various SEO tactics commonly used by marketing agencies to improve your site’s position among search engine results pages (SERPs):

While all important in the overall rankings for your website pages, these traditional (organic) SEO methods mean you’re in it for the long haul. It takes time to build up your ranking, with typical dental SEO tactics delivering results within four to six months as opposed to Local SEO measures that can see results in as little as a month. Organic SEO is not to be abandoned as a useful marketing strategy, though, but should be a part of a holistic approach to reach potential patients who are using search strategies in a number of different ways.

Optimizing your site for searches with local intent, Local SEO aims to capture the attention of your local patient base, making it easy for them to locate your practice when they are searching for dental care. These searches often indicate their location, whether it’s including a city name or the phrases “near me” or “close by.” Since 72% of consumers choose results that are within five miles of their location, NAP (name, address, phone number) consistency across your website and social media platforms and an updated Google My Business listing are crucial to your dental office’s placement in these results.

While paid searches are an important part of your overall digital marketing strategy, you can maximize your marketing dollars with thoughtful Local SEO integration. Bridging your Google Business Profile and the core pages of your website with back-end links and citations across multiple online directories, effective Local SEO is a multi-pronged approach to marketing your dental practice to patients in  your area.

With Local SEO, keyword research and optimization is an important part of building your marketing strategy. Understanding target words that identify local searches versus general information and research help you to build your online presence. The use of localized keywords helps your SEO results while understanding the treatments and procedures potential clients are researching help you to develop website pages and social media posts.