4 Effective SEO Strategies For Dentists

#1: Understand Your Market

Understanding Dental SEO Strategy is as easy as understanding your market. When we talk about your market there are two things to consider:

First is your patient avatar. The more precisely you can define your patient avatar, the better all your marketing and SEO strategy will be. If your patient avatar is a 55 year old woman with a lot of money and time, you will market to her differently than you would to a broke college student with a new family. Unfortunately not everyone who visits your website will fit your avatar, but it's best to have 1 or two solid avatars that fit the majority of your patients, that way you can make decisions based on how your avatars will likely respond. 

Target audience profiles, give your marketing direction and make it simpler to communicate consistently. You're more likely to encourage conversions if your offerings are in line with what your target market wants.

Second, you have to think about your geographical area & your competition. A dental SEO strategy is largely based on where your patients are. If all your patients come from a 10 mile radius of your office, there's a reason. It could be competition, or it could be distance, but you or a dental SEO marketing agency will need to understand your market.

In its most basic form, geo-targeting is the process of learning about the location of your patients and serving them content or advertising based on that knowledge. With the use of geotargeting, you can identify your target market and the methods you need to use to connect with them. It assists you in selecting the appropriate keywords based on location; Thus, by using geo-targeting analytics, you can improve your search engine ranking.

Create a niche for yourself and decide who your target market is first. The positioning of your company and the personalization of your marketing strategy will be made simpler as a result, ultimately assisting your growth.

#2: Define your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

The best dental SEO tip I’ve ever heard was “Don’t be another Zebra”. Let’s say that in a Zoo, there’s a herd of zebras. One of them needs to be singled out from the herd. How would you go about describing that ONE animal to a fellow zoo-keeper? The zookeeper already knows what a zebra looks like. What’s unique about the one that needs to be identified and removed? 

Your dental office is perceived like a zebra to most potential patients. One is just like another. They all do blah, blah, blah. And they all inflict some form of PAIN! Your dental website has to describe the unique characteristics of your office that makes it stand apart and can be identified as UNIQUE, with a VALUE of that uniqueness that speaks to your ideal patient,  that avatar we were just talking about.

The simplest way to answer this question is to ask:

“What do I do better than everyone else that my patients actually want?” 

This question has two parts. The first addresses what you do best, why you’re the best, and why no one else can offer what you’re offering. This is what will sell you over other practices, assuming that part two of the question is true, do your patients actually want it? You could be the best in the world but if none of your patients want your services, no amount of SEO will get patients in your chair.

Developing an opinionated and deliberate USP aids in concentrating your marketing approach and has an impact on messaging, branding, copywriting, and other marketing choices. At its core, a USP should respond to a prospective patient's most pressing question when they come across your Dental practice:

"What sets them apart from the competition?"

Your USP should be built on what makes you particularly useful to your target market and play to your strengths. Being "unique" in and of itself rarely makes for a compelling USP. Your messaging won't be nearly as powerful if you don't stand out around a factor that matters to your target audience.

Pro Tip!

Go above and beyond. A good way to stand out is to make sure you follow up with patients between appointments, especially after any big procedures or treatments. Patients will appreciate it and be inclined to leave positive reviews on your website.

Potential clients place a lot of importance on online reviews, and they will probably look them up before selecting a dentist; getting satisfied clients to leave favorable reviews will help you draw in more clients.

#3: Create Your Message

Now that you know your avatar and what your USP is, it’s time to implement some dental SEO strategy. There’s a very basic article about things your website should have to make your dental SEO effective, certainly worth checking out. BUT they don’t give any tips for dentists to actually sell themselves. 

Your website has only two goals. 

• Rank on google for your keywords so patients can find you
• Sell your services to potential patients

If your website does not do either of these things, it is essentially useless. 

Most docs fail to write an effective message selling their services because they skip over the avatar and their own USP and jump directly into the science of the service. Many sites we’ve worked on have service page after service page that show the details of how to properly suture after an extraction. NO PATIENT WANTS TO SEE THAT!

Your patients care about two things, the value of the service, and the end result. So when writing any message to patients on your site, the focus should be on the outcome and not the process. 

Increased client retention may result from proving your value to patients. Why? Because it offers them the confidence that they are receiving the greatest service possible, removing the need for them to search for other doctors.

If you want your customers to genuinely know your worth, you must explain what they may expect from working with you.

Pro Tip!

One way to add value is by obtaining testimonials from your patients, you can make the most of this by sharing them on your website and social media channels.

Testimonials can make a significant difference in how you differentiate yourself from your rivals in addition to enhancing your authority and allaying the concerns of potential clients. They clearly convey your value to customers by demonstrating to them that you have a proven track record of success.

#4: Choose Your Media

When going through advertising options, there are MANY to choose from. Some of the media types you’ll come across are:

• Print (every door direct mail)
• Digital Ads (Facebook, Google)
• Billboards
• Radio
• Television
• Email Marketing

Before considering the type of media to use in any form of marketing, consider the following:

“Can my website cash my marketing checks?”

No matter how much you spend on your advertising, interior or exterior, your website will be cashing the checks and converting your potential patients. Because of that, your website has to help your potential patients learn why you're the best and why their best option is to come to your office, and do that as fast as possible. 

Remember the most successful websites focus on the user. They are made to offer visitors the information they need and to show it in an engaging way. They enable the customer to interact with you on a more personal level, fostering trust.

Once you have your content and your target audience locked, then take a look at your websites’ appearance.

How does your website look? Is it appealing to your target audience? Don’t get me wrong, content is crucial however, visitors to your website can decide not to stay to read what you have to offer if your website is poorly designed.

Visual appeal is important for your website. It should also be specific to the brand of your company. If you have brand colors, use them. 

Your website needs to be unique and reflect your business. The homepage of your website should feature your logo prominently. Create additional photos that might highlight your services. You can include photos of you and any staff to personalize your website, along with adding photos of patients (with their permission of course)

Increasing your company's credibility is one of the key benefits of having a website. A strong online presence is created and quality information is communicated to your patients with the help of an effective website.

In addition to having a great website, having a presence on a social media platform is highly recommended. If you don't have a presence on social media, you're losing out on the opportunity to potentially contact hundreds or perhaps millions of people.

In fact, it has been demonstrated that social media increases brand exposure through increasing engagement.  By driving traffic directly to your website, it also aids in building brand awareness for you.

In order to effectively use social media to sell your business, it is crucial to reach out to your patients where they are already engaged in social interactions.

By involving users in online discussion, social media marketing aims to increase traffic and brand exposure. To promote your practices’ brand and  services, employ social media marketing. Concentrating on social media marketing may be worthwhile given the billions of individuals who spend their time on social media platforms.