Top 10 Dental Marketing SEO Lessons Learned by SEO Experts over the Past Decade

The power of the internet lies in its ability to mould our social fabric by introducing us to new people and information. For dentists, the internet is a gateway to increasing their pool of patients and sharing vital information about their dental practices. This is why every dentist who runs a dental practice must invest in digital marketing strategies. At the core of every good digital marketing strategy implemented by a dental practice is a dental marketing SEO strategy. 

SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization. It refers to an ever-growing list of practices that make it easy for patients to find dental practices and information about dental care on the internet. As a dentist, you must position your dental practice to be found online by current and prospective patients. 

To do this, you have to create and manage your dental practice’s online presence by having a high-converting, mobile responsive website that is filled with valuable content for your patients, using keywords in your content that helps you rank high on search engine results pages (SERPs), implementing an online review and referrals strategy for your dental practice, and engaging in many other dental marketing SEO practices. 

In this article, we will be sharing 10 of the best dental marketing SEO lessons that we have learned from top SEO experts over the past decade. This article doesn’t cover the basics of dental marketing SEO. Instead, it is a list of lessons that guide you as you implement SEO strategies in your dental practice. Before you continue reading this article, you can click here to read a recent article we shared about the basics of dental marketing SEO. You can return to this article after reading that one. 

Top 10 Dental Marketing SEO Lessons from SEO Experts

1. Your dental marketing SEO strategy is all about your patients

“Become obsessed with your target audience. The more you understand your customers and audience, the easier it is to find the topics most relevant to them and understand the language they use when searching for products/solutions related to your industry.” 

- Dominique Jackson, Content Marketer at Baremetrics.

The first step to improving your dental practice’s SEO is to study your patients. You should have tools in place for communicating with your patients, gathering reviews from them and sharing updates with them. You can also use Google Analytics to study your patient’s engagement with your website. The insights you gather should be the basis for the SEO strategy you implement. 

2. Create Patient-Centric Content

“Create user-centric content that answers the questions your prospects have, and that makes them feel like you understand their problems, shoulder their burdens along with them, and feel their pain.” 

- Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer at MarketingProfs

When patients visit your dental practice’s website, they should be able to find answers to their basic dental care questions. Your website’s content should be clear and easy to understand. Patients should never have a difficult time trying to find ways to schedule appointments or learn more about your services. More so, patients should be able to find ways to contact your dental practice or communicate with a team member from your dental practice directly on your website. 

3. Do Not Underestimate the Power of Internal Linking 

“Internal link building is where a link you place on your domain takes you to another page on the same domain. These links will help Google to discover new content when you publish it, rank the pages that have links pointing to them and help you generate more income.”

- Matthew Woodward, Director at Search Logistics

Internal links are essential because they help patients and website visitors easily navigate through your dental practice’s website. More importantly, they help you to increase your website’s ranking on Google’s SERPs. When you publish new content on your website, find opportunities to include links back to your existing content. 

4. Keep your Dental Marketing Goals in Mind

“My approach to SEO never forgets that it’s about more than just links and rankings – it’s about your marketing goals and bottom line!” 

- Dan Shure, SEO Consultant at Evolving SEO

Although it is important to build internal links and rank high on Google’s SERPs, you should always act based on the goals you have set for your dental practice. Your goals should serve as your benchmark for making marketing investments and analyzing the progress you make over time. 

5. Improve the Quality of your Content

“Improving the quality of your content on your site will likely increase your SEO traffic. To be successful at this, you need to understand how Google defines better content. Usually, that means deeper, more comprehensive, content.” 

- Eric Enge, General Manager at Perficient

It is not enough to fill your website with words and media that superficially sell your dental practice’s services to current and prospective patients. You have to improve the quality of your content by ensuring they are as in-depth and comprehensive as possible. If your dental practice has a blog page, the articles on your blog page should be engaging and educational to your patients. The quality of the writing and supporting media must be top-notch. This goes a long way to helping your dental practice’s website stand out and rank higher on Google’s SERPs. 

6. Use Keywords in Titles, Headers and Body Text

“Indicate relevance. This is the most important, most effective SEO tactic or tips there is. If you expect to rank for a phrase, you need to use that phrase in the title, the header and the body text. It sounds obvious, but it isn’t. Go back to any page that isn’t ranking where you hoped and give it the “Control + F Test.”

 - Andy Crestodia, Chief Marketing Officer at Orbit Media Studio 

When used properly, dental keywords make it easier for your current and prospective patients to find your dental practice online. If you have a blog page on your website, you should ensure each article includes relevant dental keyword(s) in its title, headers and body text. Connect the Doc’s marketing specialists can work with you to pick the best dental keywords for your dental marketing SEO strategy. 

7. Update your Dental Practice’s Website

“Update your existing content — Existing content already has authority and an established readership. So rather than writing something entirely from scratch, find a post already performing well, refresh it with updated information, add visuals, and rely on existing signals to make it rank for terms.” 

- Eric Siu, Chief Executive Officer at ClickFlow

Sometimes, improving your website’s SEO is as easy as updating its existing content. Take some time to clean up your dental practice’s website, review existing content and update them to ensure they are relevant and can meet your patient’s current needs. If your opening hours, services or contact details have changed, make sure you update your website accordingly. If you have a blog page with old articles, clean up those articles and update them with new information. 

8. Update your Online Business Profiles

“Ensure that your Google My Business profile is well optimized and that you’re linking to the best page on your site that reinforces what you offer & where you’re located.” 

- Myles Anderson, Chief Executive Officer at BrightLocal

As you update your dental practice’s website, you should also update any online business profile you have created for your dental practice. If you have social media pages for your dental practice, update your biography and contact information on those platforms. If you have claimed your dental practice’s Google My Business profile, you should review the information there and update it as needed. If you do not have a Google My Business profile, click here to learn how to claim your dental practice’s Google My Business profile. 

9. Promote Your Content Using Paid Advertisements

“Getting your content in front of audiences in various places…not just on social, not just ranking well in Google, but everywhere. PPC ads, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Quora, Google, Bing, articles placed on other sites, etc. Covering all those means that you’ll have a much greater chance of driving traffic than if you simply relied on Google, as many people do.”

 - Julie Joyce, Owner at Link Fish Media

To drive more traffic to your dental practice’s website, increase your conversion rates and generate more leads, you should promote your dental practice using paid advertisements. Paid ads showcase your dental practice to prospective patients at the exact moment they search Google for a dentist like you or a dental practice like yours. At Connect the Doc, we can work with you to create and manage cost-effective paid ads campaigns that drive traffic to specific landing pages on your dental practice’s website. 

10. Have a Mobile-Responsive Website

“There are many things you can do to your website to improve SEO, but I would say right now that you should focus on making sure your site is mobile-friendly.” 

- Andy Drinkwater, SEO Consultant at IQSEO

A dental practice’s website that isn’t optimized for viewing on mobile devices can pose a challenge to prospective patients. You should ensure your website is accessible and mobile-friendly. Connect the Doc can create a visually stunning, mobile responsive website for your dental practice that keeps your website visitors engaged and converts them to high-value patients. 

These ten dental marketing SEO lessons, as shared by SEO experts, could be the turning point for your dental practice. If you want to give your dental practice’s online presence a boost and generate my leads, contact a Connect the Doc specialist today to learn how we can work with you to optimize your dental marketing SEO strategy.