Filling the Cavity Between Dentistry and Online Marketing With Killer Dental SEO Tactics

For a local dentist, it is an everyday struggle to get new clients. The competitiveness of the field doesn’t make client acquisition an easy process. Regardless of all the new technology that has been installed, or a person being an adept dentist, it will be very tough to stand out and convey the message in the online competition. This is where Dental SEO starts its play.

Here are some reasons why dental-specific SEO is a must:

* The number of people looking for dentists is increasing with each passing day

* An increasing number of people go by the reviews given online by other patients

* People look up to the information given by dentists on their website blogs

This makes picking up the right SEO idea for those who pick out the tooth inevitable. So, let’s have a look at some of the best SEO practices which makes your dental practice an instant hit in your area.

* Get local citations: Quality citations have a promising future. In addition to links, local citations will also play a major role post the penguin era. Post your dental clinics information such as the business name, phone number, address and e-mail on the websites related to dentistry, which guarantees higher local search rankings. Also make sure that the citations are correct on websites like Yellow Pages, City Search and MapQuest, as this will help in establishing the business locally.

* Pleasing reviews on Google+ Local: Increasing relevance for social signals, such as online customer reviews, has helped in confirming a business’ position and credibility. Organic search has become more natural by paying attention to what your customers are saying about you. This reflects the real image. The best way to get rave reviews is by asking your satisfied patients to write reviews on your Google+ local page. Have a landing page that leads your patients to your Google+ page. On your website, make sure you have a testimonial and a review page and incorporate the good reviews as rich snippets.

* Rich Snippets Markup: Having rich snippets is another great idea for improving visibility. A widely prevalent way of doing this is with the help of structured markup for your reviews. You could help the search engines in identifying the nature of the content. Successful implementation of snippets for reviews will ensure that golden stars appear below your search listings on the basis of the keywords. Rich snippets definitely help in getting better click-through rates. The most prominent tools for creating rich snippets are hReview and Schema.org. A good review by one of those who just had a root canal will definitely help you get more stars.

* Optimize your Google+ local page: The local listings by Google+ provides a great opportunity to get prime visibility on the local SERP’s. The number of search results displaying Google+ listings have dramatically increased with keywords based on specific locations.

* Google Authorship: The “rel=author” structured data helps Google for a better understanding of your credibility through the content posted by you. This establishes a lot of authority for you as Google is able to identify between a spammer and the author. The details of the author along with the picture is shown in the search results for the content displayed. In addition to these, a link to his Google+ profile, number of Google+ circles and a link to more works by the author are also provided. This undoubtedly gives rise to the CTR. So, if you have some case files or some research in the dentistry field and feel like sharing it with others, you could definitely use the authorship markup for enhanced visibility.

* Content Marketing: A dental clinic could leverage content marketing on a number of platforms. The technique should be thorough research on what the targeted audience is looking for. Based on the research, provide your audience with relevant info through various forms of content marketing including articles, blogs, infographics, videos, PR’s, to name a few.

* Social Media: Social signals do play a vital role in influencing search engines’ rankings. Sites like Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and Pinterest are quite advantageous and if regularly updated, will definitely help in promoting a dental clinic for the local searches on the search engines. It s also a great platform to connect with your prospects and share a word or two about their dental ailments. The word-of-the-mouth publicity will definitely work big time here.

These takeaways are definitely something that you could immediately put into action for your dental website. What else do you think should add up to this list? Share your thoughts in the comment box.