When a person needs a dentist, he or she will search the internet and start pulling up reviews and websites of local businesses. Wouldn’t it be nice if your dental practice was easily found online? To pull up in search results, especially for local searches, search engine optimization (SEO) is a necessity. And keywords are an important part of any successful SEO strategy.
Local SEO for Dentists
People most often visit dentists in their immediate area. Focusing your SEO efforts on target neighborhoods or zip codes is what’s known as local SEO. Creating targeted content for your website and inserting keywords that reflect what potential customers near you are searching for will help your website get found.
SEO Smooth has worked with dozens of businesses dental industry and dentists across the US and Canada with great results. Check out the case studies for Wellington, FL Dentist Mohip Dental, Blue Hearts Dental, Boca Raton Dentist White Smiles of Boca, Toronto Dentist Casa Dental, and Jupiter, FL Orthodontist Meier for Orthodontics for some examples.
As a dental clinic, to appear in Google search results (where the majority of searches happen), it’s important to start researching keywords using Google. The process is simple:
- Make a list of any term you can think of that people might use to find your dental practice online
- Group related terms together
- Use keyword tools to refine your list
Work to create a list of mostly long-tail terms that focus on local traffic. Long-tail keywords are those that contain at least three words, so the longer they get, the more specific the search becomes.
Here’s a list of keywords to help you get started:
- dentists near me
- dental clinic near me
- dentists of (name of city)
- best dentists in (name of city)
- dentists near me that accept (name of insurance)
- emergency dentist (name of city)
- affordable teeth cleaning near me
Discovering Dental Clinic SEO for a Dentist
To make your keyword list as targeted as possible, there are a lot of free online tools you can utilize.
Google Autocomplete
When you you in a word in the Google search bar, a drop down appears with suggestions. These suggestions are based on actual searches done by users, so this is a simple and effective way to find new keywords and it will help you understand how people conduct searches.
Google Related Searches
Have you ever scrolled all the way down to the bottom of a search page? If you do, you’ll find a list of blue links that show related terms. They’re often longer than three words. Basically, a gold mine of long-tail keywords.
Keyword Planner
Another wonderful free Google tool, the Keyword Planner provides data on each keyword so you can see if it has a high search volume and competition. You’ll need a Google Adwords Account to access the Keyword Planner. From there, just type in some phrases and you’ll see a lot of useful data along with keyword suggestions.
Here are some other free keyword tools:
Finding the Best Keywords
Now that you have the tools to refine your list, here are a few suggestions for picking the absolute best keywords.
Don’t Immediately Pick the Highest Search Volume
Keywords with the highest search volumes often have the highest competition. If you want to do paid marketing, high search keywords can easily drain your budget. Since you’re trying to target local traffic, look for keywords with a low to medium search volume. And if you find one with low competition, even better.
Geo-location
Focus on keywords that have local-specific terms, like the name of your city. This will attract customers that are actually near you as opposed to someone not in your city who searched for a broad term.
Long-tail Keywords
As mentioned, keywords longer that three words will help target people who are close to using your services, so make sure your keyword list is full of these beneficial terms.
How to Use Your Keyword List
Once you have your list perfected, it’s time to take action. Start by putting the keywords in your website’s pages. Main headings are where you want to use your most important keywords and you can sprinkle the rest throughout any blog posts or text describing your services.
Here are some other places to use keywords to drive organic traffic:
- Meta-descriptions
- Alternative Tags for images
- URLs
- Sub-headings
- Image names and captions
A word of caution, however: you never want to “stuff” your website with keywords. Using too many might get your page flagged and actually lower your search rank. The idea is to “sprinkle” terms in so your text still reads well and provides quality information for visitors.
You now have a solid foundation to find keywords and use them on your website to drive local traffic. By continuing to refine your strategy and using search engine optimization, you’ll soon see a boost in your website traffic and more customers using your services. Need help getting results? Contact us to hear about our success with Dental clinic lead generation.
