Chances are that most dentists in the private practice who promote themselves online attempt to reach a specific geographical area. That’s why you see so many dentist advertisements in titles that mention the name of a city. However, those who have a practice outside of a major metro area might have a hard time reaching potential patients, since they don’t have a city to mention.
By trying these seven simple tips, there’s a good chance that you can reach a much wider area and connect with people who need a little tooth and gum-related TLC.
1. Leverage the Power of Analytics
Check out keyword performance for every geographical keyword you can think of that’s related to the area your practice serves. There’s a high probability that you can find at least 5-10 geographical keywords that should work well for the area you’re trying to reach. Considering that even Google’s less illustrious products are used by some 3 billion people worldwide, there are probably at least some people in your area who want to connect with your practice yet haven’t been able to do so thus far because they don’t know the right terms to use.
2. Link Your Social Accounts
Make sure that you add links to all of your social accounts to the header of each page you create. This is especially important for anyone running an online dental practice since potential clients might actually want to use these to communicate with your office. More than likely, you’ll want to create an online scheduling tool as well as a calendar. Self-service widgets work best for those trying to reach the widest area possible because individuals who find it hard to get to the dentist will appreciate the ability to make their own appointments.
Don’t be afraid to add a whole bunch of social accounts if you have them. Some successful practices now link themselves to Reddit or even smaller networks.
3. Check Your Ranking for Lesser-Used Keywords
While you might want to rank high for something like “dentist in Chicago”, that can be really difficult especially if your practice isn’t literally in northeastern Illinois. Try checking out a variety of different keywords you wouldn’t have otherwise thought of. Though comparatively few people might search these, the fact of the matter is that over a quarter of citizens click on the first search result they see, so you might get a decent number of visitors this way.
Hidden keywords are important to keep in mind as well. Google, and to an extent Bing, focuses largely on context rather than the actual content of a keyword. Use words throughout your writing that are related to the dental practice even if they aren’t exactly keywords themselves. For instance, you might want to try adding additional mentions of the words cavity, teeth, and even root canal if you prefer. Another good idea could be to use alternative medical terms, such as caries, which might not necessarily be understood by some members of the general public but are regularly picked up on by search engine algorithms.
4. Change With the Times
Google’s algorithms change on a regular basis, so you’ll need to change with them if you want to improve your ranking over time. Keep a sharp eye on these alterations to the rules, which normally happen quarterly if not more frequently. Techniques that are considered acceptable today could very well get classified as bad actions later on. Working with an outside organization might be the best way to do so.
5. Add New Content Regularly
Fresh content helps to keep your site indexed, as long as you’re adding something that’s worthwhile. This also helps you to rank with search engines like Bing and DuckDuckGo, which rely on a very different algorithm to source and rate sites. Try starting your own dental blog, which will give you the freedom to add content regularly without the risk of ever making it look like you’ve gotten into the habit of posting spam.
Boost older content with new features to make it fresh. You don’t have to rewrite everything, but adding additional words to an existing page can force the major search engines to index them a second time.
6. Provide Users with Accessibility Features
Assuming that they would have to travel over a wide area to get to your practice anyway, some potential patients might opt for the practice that has the easiest to navigate the site. Include a site map, which is good for those who require screen reading software. These can actually have some surprising SEO benefits as well. You might also consider adding captions after videos or accompanying images with some form of descriptive text for accessibility reasons. In some cases, taking these extra steps can help to ensure ADA compliance as well.
When thinking about the audiences you are trying to reach, these features can really help promote your practice to elderly audiences like 55 plus communities because they make technology easier to navigate and find your information.
7. Reduce Your Loading Times
Site rank sometimes depends on loading time, so it’s important that you focus on optimizing your pages in more ways than one. One study even suggested that this could help ensure customer engagement since people are more likely to connect with an organization if they can use their site. According to this report, every second of speed improvement could translate into a 2 percent increase in the number of conversions a page enjoys. If you’re using a large number of plugins or you have plenty of animations, then you might want to cut these out to improve overall performance.