Want to get ahead in the new year? Have the past couple of years led to a steady decline in your online visibility?
The Pro Impressions Marketing yearly SEO Guide for Dentists will give you an action plan for setting your dental marketing up for success with current dental SEO strategies.
Quick Check for Roadblocks
Before you can add the right SEO strategies to your dental marketing strategy, check to see if your practice suffers from any of these roadblocks that could thwart any SEO efforts that you might make:
- A bad reputation on the Internet
- A sluggish website
- A website that people don’t seem to like or know how to use
- A dental practice or service that people don’t actually want
No amount of SEO can help you overcome the above obstacles. This is critical for you to understand.
If you have the above problems and your competition doesn’t, then they will crush you every time. To check for these roadblocks, follow these steps.
Check Your Online Reputation
Do two Google searches:
- Doctor name reviews
- Practice name reviews
On average, do people seem to like what you offer, or do you have more negative reviews than positive reviews?
If you have very few reviews, this is a warning sign to Google that you are an unproven option for dental patients.
Leverage the goodwill of the patients who like you by asking them to share their thoughts about your dental care with the rest of the world.
You can use a tool like ProView to send them a text message with easy-to-follow instructions on how to find your profiles and leave you a review.
It’s all above board with Google as long as you’re not screening them for positive sentiments before they get to your profile or offering to pay them in some way for saying good things.
Check Your Website’s Speed
Use Google’s site speed tool to find out if your website is slow.
The tool is made for developers, but essentially, you want to see green results like this:
This will help you know how quickly your website is loading for Google as well as prospective patients. If your website is not in the green, you have some work to do. Google gives websites that perform well, especially on mobile results, a boost because they are easier to use.
Be Honest About Your Website
Look at your website as objectively as you can. Compare it to competitor websites. Ask people who are not your employees or relatives to give you their honest feedback about what they like and dislike about your website.
Are there things that you think of as important but your website reviewers don’t care about? Get rid of those extras.
Are there things that are critical that they can’t find or don’t get to because they are too far out of the way? Increase the visibility of those features.
Is your website outdated or ugly? Forget about how old it is. Even if you just finished the website, if it’s underperforming in speed or user feedback, you need to redo it again or you’ll waste your marketing dollars trying to promote a non-starter.
Truth: SEO Stinks at Driving Demand
If you have a niche dental practice concept or a service that people don’t know about, SEO is not going to be the way to drive that demand.
What good is ranking #1 for some phrase or brand if no one out there searches for it?
If you offer an alternative treatment method to widely accepted standards of dental care, then you may struggle on Google, even with the best dental SEO services. Google is afraid of leading people astray.
Alternative services may need to lean more heavily on pay-per-click advertising, social media marketing and advertising, and good old-fashioned referrals.
Evaluate Your Website Content
Once you’ve looked at some of the most common roadblocks and made sure that they aren’t holding you back, check out your website’s content—chiefly the text, but also the images you have on your website.
The best performing dental websites will have:
- Text that can’t be found anywhere else on the internet.
- Informative content that is user-friendly and user-focused.
- Images that help the user understand what you do and to give them a preview of what they can expect.
The text on your website should be written exclusively for your dental office. It should describe the type of patient that you help, the problems that you solve, and how you have solved them in the past.
Talk about the changes that people see in their lives when they trust you. We write this content for our clients.
Using stock photography is okay—even beneficial. However, use before and after photos and office imagery to give people who want to know more the ability to get a preview of what it’s like to be a patient at your office.
Find a Dental SEO Professional and Stick with a Data-Driven Approach
Dentists waste a ton of time and money each year jumping from one dental SEO company to the next.
Your website does need on-page search engine optimization. It should be coupled with technical optimization that helps Google digest your website and understand what it’s all about.
How do you know if that’s working? You need to track the data over time without trashing all the data and adding an entirely new set of variables every year.
Perhaps what you need is not just a new dental marketing company but an actual dental digital marketing plan.
There is no magic bullet for SEO. Even if there was, in 2023, it wouldn’t work. You need a long-haul approach that builds lasting results.
Use a multi-faceted approach to SEO that is quarterbacked by one dental SEO professional that you trust.
If you think that you need a new provider, see if we are right for you by taking our quiz about new membership.
You can call us right now at (970) 672-1212 and we can talk about your current efforts and how we might be able to help you.
