Importance of SEO for Orthodontics

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Right from a simple toothache to stomach cramps, your search engine will be the first to know about it.
Why SEO? A whopping 97% of online users search the internet before visiting any local establishment. And this includes medical professionals too. This is why it is impertinent that doctors and dentists invest in SEO techniques to improve their brand/practice’s visibility and performance online.

• It is a fool-proof method to increase your revenue by targeting local audiences as they are the ones most likely to look you up on Google before booking a consultation.
• It is an effective method to stay head and shoulders above the local competition, including rival dental practices.

With the USA having 195,000 dental practices (as of 2015), outshining competition is key to your survival in such a competitive market.
Long Term Results: When your website appears at the top of a search, people are more likely to find your practice and become your patients. It is a cheaper alternative compared to paid ads and produces more organic results that will have a long-term effect on your dental practice.

Stats: Studies show that people who find your practice through an active search are eight times more likely to become patients than other kinds of marketing. Also, 78% of mobile searches end up visiting a physical location in a week.
If dentists wish to remain relevant in a sea of orthodontists, upping their SEO game is the most effective choice.

Related : Importance of SEO for a Dentist Website

1. Enhance Visibility of Your Dental Practice

The sole aim of SEO is to do your practice as much as visible as possible to your target audience. This is the only way dental procedures can stay ahead of the competition and attract potential patients.
And it achieves this by incorporating keywords like ‘orthodontics,’ ‘location name,’ ‘dentists,’ and trending topics in your website.
Google senses these and picks up your website over hundred others to present to online users. It ranks websites according to popularity, keyword search, uniqueness, page load time, and other factors using its complex algorithm.
Boosting social media marketing, creating optimized content, making a mobile-friendly website, developing an easy-to-use, optimized website with the least lag time are the various ways in which you can improve your dental practice’s visibility with SEO.

2. Increase Customer Base Using Lead Generation

SEO is one of the most effective marketing strategies to increase your patient base.
As most dental practices have the local public as their primary patients, local SEO methods will further help in expanding this number. And you are more likely to receive qualified dental leads than generalized ones.
A ton of time and money can be saved through specialized dental marketing targeting a niche audience.
Studies show 90% of users click one of the top three links on a Google search. This is why getting a high SERP ranking is essential.
The higher you rank, the more clicks your website will receive. And with an optimized, user-friendly website with less than three seconds load time, it is more likely that you will shortly receive a call for a consultation.

3. Outrank Competing Dental Practices

With close to 200,000 dental clinics operating in the USA, it is hard to appear unique. There are too many choices. But improving your dental SEO techniques will set your business apart, at least in the online world.
More than 80% of users do a quick Google search before heading out to seek any kind of service. With an optimized website containing keyword-heavy blogs, and articles, there is an absolute chance that such users spot our website as Google will display it much higher than other non-optimized sites.
This will give you a definite edge over other practices which rely heavily on advertisements, yellow page listing, and other traditional methods.
You can bring back patients through email marketing campaigns; circulate interesting blogs through your newsletter; put out attractive discounts; create a Google My Business account, and effectively put other local SEO methods to use.
Read: How to Set up Google My Business Listing

4. Higher Search Engine Rankings

Search Engine Results Page (SERP) rankings are extremely crucial as they decide if a business will outlive its competition and whether people will note its existence. And SEO is one of the most effective ways to boost this number.
A high SERP rank can be achieved by executing on-page and off-page SEO methods. This includes on-page-optimized content creation, image optimization, keyword research, page speed, and off-page - social media marketing, link building, and email campaigns.
Higher rankings make your website more visible, attract potential patients and finally, result in generating revenue.
Dental clinics should keep an eye out for Google’s criteria for rankings and accordingly work towards improving it.

5. Boost Revenue

In today’s digital world, referrals from patients’ networks can only help in increasing your base to a certain extent. This is why most have switched to dental marketing techniques, especially SEO, to increase their website’s online exposure.
A robust SEO campaign can boost revenue by 250% and double monthly appointments. They help to drive the target audience to your website more efficiently.
This means there will be fewer window shoppers and more interested patients clicking on your website. With the help of SEO, you can control your content strategy, social media strategy and customize it according to your location, patient type, etc.
Another fool-proof method to woo patients is local SEO strategies. This will help in improving your online reputation within a specific geographical radius by taking your location details. This directly will have an impact on your ROI.

Tips to Do SEO for an Orthodontic Website

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1. Choose Dental Keywords with the Right User Intent

Keyword research is SEO's most robust and most successful method to capture online visibility. Even with Google changing its user ranking factors, Keyword has always been given the topmost criteria.
Incorporate popular words in your website content that are used in search engines by people to find dentists. These will bring the patients to you. You can find such particular keywords on Google Keyword Planner, Moz Keyword Explorer, SEMrush, etc.
But it is equally important to use these keywords in articles that have the relevant context. As search engines' algorithms have evolved majorly, they analyze online content for user intent and not just the Keyword.
Dentists should also focus on adding secondary keywords and related trending topics to create optimized content.

2. Utilize the Benefits of Local SEO

For any dental practice, the majority of their patients will be from the local neighborhood. Hence, location becomes a crucial factor in boosting online popularity. This is where local SEO steps in.
Getting your clinic on Google My Business Page is an essential first step to achieve this. Google reviews go a long way in building trust and assuring patients about safe medical practice.
This can be achieved by getting listed in local general and medical review sites. If first-time patients are urged to write reviews on such platforms, others will be able to see it and consider using your services. Also, one should include the target audience's location in the keyword list.

Related : Benefits of Local SEO for Your Local Business

3. Create a User-Friendly Website

This is an essential step that should be on your checklist even before fully setting up your dental practice. A fully optimized, user-friendly website is key to a business's performance online. This is because Google will know if your website is easy to navigate, how fast the pages load, how long people spend on it, and then will accordingly rank it.
Hence, make sure your website is not complex, easy to navigate, quickly loads, has many headings and subheadings, has plenty of internal links to other pages, and more. All these techniques make the user stay longer on your site, ensuring a low bounce rate, which is a significant ranking tool of Google's.

4. Focus on Informative Content Creation

Focus on creating valuable and informative long-form articles on commonly searched topics under oral care. Studies show 77%of internet users read blogs, and 61% said blogs majorly affect their decision to purchase a product or service.
This will become the leading platform where you will mix in highly ranked and trending keywords. Find out topics that keep your target audience engaged. Tracing their journey in finding a dentist and writing about trending dental topics are two ways to go about this.
Even if users aren't immediately converted into your patients, they will consider your website to be the one place to get valuable and relevant information. This is a great trust-building exercise.

5. Optimize Image and Video Content

It is more fun to watch a two-minute video than read a 2,500-word article. More than 80% of all internet traffic accounts for video. And mobile phone users, in particular, crave visual content.
Aim to incorporate short, informative videos and infographics in your website content instead of only long-form articles with images of teeth in them.
Also, don't forget to compress images on your website to enable faster page loading.
Optimized images are one of Google's most valued ranking factors. Please make sure they are of good quality, relevant to the text, and properly labeled with a file name.

6. Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly

In today's world, people search through their mobiles more than from their desktops. Nearly 52% of global traffic is generated from mobiles. There is an overwhelming amount of research that shows mobiles rule in today's digital era.
Also, studies predict that 90% of all internet users will use the internet primarily through mobiles. Hence, dental practices must make their websites mobile-friendly as well.
Right at the website development stage, one should make specific alterations to include mobile-friendliness.
You can test this quality using Google's test. Make sure that users don't need to zoom or scroll to read the content.

7. List Your Practice on Online Directories

Easy-to-use websites now replace huge and heavy telephone directories to find local shops and businesses. And getting your clinic listed on such sites will significantly boost your popularity.
You can urge your patients to write positive reviews on platforms like Yelp, FourSquare, Facebook, which will later directly impact your online reputation. This will create a domino effect as more people will seek your services.
Also, Google ranks websites higher when they are listed on multiple such platforms. You can also get listed on exclusive medical review sites like ZocDoc, WebMD, Wellness.com, etc.

8. Build and Add Patient Reviews

About 70% of customers read at least four reviews before beginning to trust a business. A single positive online review can increase the conversion rate by 10%. Studies show that 91% of users trust reviews as much as friends and family.
Hence, positive customer reviews help to build the business organically. The results achieved from this are sustainable and long-lasting.
Especially when it comes to medical and dental services, customers crave assurance of safety and ethical practice. Trust is another high ranking factor for SEO for many search engines, including Yelp, Bing, Google, Yahoo, etc.
The quantity, diversity, and velocity of reviews account for around 16% of Google's ranking factor for local map results.

9. Engage in Competitor Analysis

You might have stumbled upon SEO's importance now, but your rival dentists are not new to this. Hence, along with an eye on your progress, dental practices must monitor their competitors' growth. Competitor analysis is key to understanding the market and identifying your wrongdoings and your rivals' strongholds.
You can get to know the keywords they are using that you have missed out on. You can compare websites and find out shortcomings in yours.
You can write blogs on dental care topics that your rival's website skipped to cover without stealing or plagiarizing. These are easy steps that will exactly pinpoint your weak spots.

10. Expand Your Visibility on Social Media

Existing patients, potential patients, your rival dental practices- everyone is on social media. The world will get to know you better through these platforms due to the sheer number of people accessing them every day.
It is a great platform to bring targeted, organic traffic to your website. Running social media campaigns serves the double purpose of marketing and boosting SEO.
While social media is not a direct user ranking factor, it has a significantly positive effect on SEO. It helps grow a community around your brand and enhances your reputation, which directly impacts SERP rankings.

FAQs on Orthodontic Website SEO

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1. Why Is SEO Better than Traditional Advertising for Dentists?

Time and again, research and case studies have shown that focused dental marketing using SEO has better ROI than standard methods of advertising. More than 90% search on a search engine to find doctors, dentists, and other physicians.
SEO helps in brand visibility, reputation, revenue, and credibility. It is an overall solution to boost business online. Hence, SEO is the logical solution to appear on the first page of any SERP, which garners 98% of all traffic.

2. What Are the Local SEO Strategies for Dentists to Increase Appointments?

The target audience of any dental practice is the residents of a neighborhood. And local SEO is crucial to communicate with them.
Some effective local SEO methods include setting up My Google Business account, getting listed on local directories & review sites, including location-based keywords, making the website mobile-friendly, and getting customer reviews.

3. How Much Should a Dentist Spend on Dental SEO Marketing?

Decoding how much revenue a new patient will bring to practice will give you a fair idea of how much to invest in SEO marketing:

• Calculate the average value and lifespan of a patient.
• Get to know how many patients you are getting or will get through SEO.
• Compare this with the external agency’s estimate

If you are making a profit (which is usually the case), you have a good ROI. Consulting multiple agencies and reviewing with other practitioners will also give you an idea about market rates.
Are you looking to rank your Orthodontic website in search engines? Get in touch with us now!