SEO for Dentists: A Guide To Attracting More Patients

In this SEO for Dentists guide, I’ll show you the top strategies to increase your online visibility and get new patients to your dental practice from search engines like Google.

Is SEO Profitable for Dentists? Is SEO Worth It?

SEO requires a lot of effort, patience, and commitment. But if you stick with it, it will generate a lot of new patients to your practice.

Don’t take my word for it, let’s look at two main factors, demand and competition.

Search Demand

Over 510,000 searches are conducted each MONTH, for “dentist near me.”

There’s also much more demand for similar terms. In fact, there are over 1.1 million searches per month for variations of this one term.

You’re probably wondering how that translates to demand in your city.

Let’s look at “dentist henderson nv”, a town with a population of 325,000.

Over 1,100 searches are conducted every month for a dentist in Henderson, NV. And that’s only for one keyword variation. I could uncover many more relevant terms.

If you paid for ads to target these searches, the estimated Cost Per Click is $5.00.

SEO vs Social Media

You could promote your business on social media, which I encourage. But the algorithms on these social platforms make it very difficult for businesses to expand their reach outside of their followers.

And you need to be posting constantly.

You would have a better chance with TikTok to expand your reach. But do you really want to have to dance to get new patients?

SEO Competition

I typically find that only a handful of dentists do effective SEO in most towns.

That means that it’s much easier to get higher rankings when your competitors are not even trying.

In our “dentist henderson nv” example, let’s look at the Domain Rating (DR) of the dentists on the first page.

DR is this tool’s measurement of the site’s authority on a scale of 0 to 100. It is a very good indicator of how much SEO the site is engaged in.

As you can see, the competition is not very strong here.

Now that you can see the opportunity to attract new patients with SEO, let’s look at how to do it.

Keyword Research: What Are Prospective Patients Are Searching For?

The first step is to conduct keyword research, which is researching terms your prospective patients are searching for in Google that your practice offers or has solutions to.

Then, you’ll want to create a strategy for your target keywords and prioritize them.

Go after keywords with low competition first.

If your website is new, create a page and write content to satisfy the intent of that keyword (more on this later). You can also optimize your existing pages around these keyword searches.

My favorite tool for this is ahrefs.

Local Search Term Research

Because your business wants to attract new patients in your city, you should avoid starting with national keywords like “dentist.” Instead, target keywords related to the locations of your practice or offices, like “dentist Henderson, NV.”

You’ll often find that a search term with your city has little to no search volume. That’s fairly common, especially in smaller cities. It doesn’t necessarily mean that there isn’t any demand or searches conducted for that term. Tools often are not good at tracking lower-volume keywords.

In this case, look at the non-localized version of the keyword or phrase as an indicator of search volume or demand.

Top Keywords To Target For Dental Practices

Start with relevant keywords that describe your service offerings and your location. These are most likely to attract readers who will convert to patients for your dental office.

A good keyword phrase includes your service offering and city and state. For example, if you’re a dentist in Henderson, Nevada, that would look like:

[service] + city +ST

dentist + city+ ST

“dentist henderson nv”

Repeat this for other products and services you offer like: dental care, veneers, teeth whitening, wisdom teeth removal, invisalign, dental exam, cosmetic dentist, dental implants, emergency dentist, family dentist.

A page can and will rank for more than one keyword, especially variations of that keyword, but you must select one target keyword for each page to be effective.

Next, let’s look at how to do that.

How To Optimize Your Dental Practice Website for SEO

Before starting any marketing campaign, ensure your website is set up to convert traffic into leads.

Imagine someone walking into your dental office, and no one was assigned to the front desk to greet them. They would just walk out the door.

We want to create an inviting, frictionless experience for your website visitors.

Best practices for increasing conversion rates include:

• Clear and easy to find contact info. Make sure your phone number is easy to find and clickable on mobile devices.
• Online appointment booking system reduces friction, especially after office hours.
• Live chat helps to initiate conversation, as so many of us are more accustomed to texting than speaking on the phone.

Let’s look at how to create content to target people searching for your target keyword.

Creating High Quality, Useful Content

What is considered high-quality, useful content? First, let’s look at it from a normal human perspective.

Start by asking yourself, if someone is searching for “veneers henderson nv”, what do they probably want to know?

Use the questions your patients ask you when you are consulting with them to determine if they are a good candidate for veneers.

They may want to know how veneers are different from other options, the process and timelines, whether there is any pain involved, how much they cost, and whether you have payment plans.

How do they know if a dentist is good at applying veneers? Before and after photos and patient testimonials would be appropriate to satisfy this question.

Someone searching for “veneers” may want general information about veneers, but a search for “veneers near me” signals that they are looking for a dentist who provides veneers in their location.

Because this keyword is a buying signal, the content should be focused on converting readers to book an appointment.

Helpful, relevant content should satisfy the searcher’s intent, whether to learn information, compare, or make a purchasing decision.

Optimizing Content for Search Engines (On-Page SEO)

There are several tools on the market to help us optimize the quality of the content for search engines.

When Google crawls a page on your site, it looks for clues to determine what it’s about relative to other pages on the same subject. It scans your site for NLP terms.

NLP, Natural Language Processing, is a field of artificial intelligence that enables computers to understand, interpret, and generate human language.

In SEO, NLP terms help search engines analyze content context, relevancy, and user intent more accurately.

Tools like SurferSEO provide NLP terms to insert into your content based on terms used by other pages that are ranking for the same target keyword.

Rather than manipulating a sentence to try to awkwardly jam an NLP term into the content, use the terms as suggestions on the type of content or subject matter to address in your content.

Resist the urge to game the system with quick hacks. They may work short term, but Google will catch on and roll out an update that will catch up to you. Take the time to generate quality content that sustains long-term results.

Creating An Article Outline

Search the top dental practice websites in your Chrome browser for your target keyword.

Install the Detailed Chrome Extension and click on the extension at the top right of your browser window when you have the web page you want to analyze open in your browser.

Go to the Headings tab and copy and paste the outline for each of your keyword’s top 5-8 pages into a text editor.

From this, you can get some great ideas on the type of content to cover in your article.

On-Page Technical SEO

Once you’ve written your article, ensure that you include these foundational technical SEO elements on the page or blog post:

• Insert your keyword into your URL: mydentalwebsite.com/veneers-henderson-nv
• Include the keyword in your Title tag, meta description, and H1 tag.
• Make the Title compelling and relevant so it attracts clicks.
• Include H2, H3, etc. tags in your content headings.
• Include the keyword in the first sentence of your article.
• Include internal links to reference other pages of your site and external links to authoritative websites as references.
• Add images to break up the text and make the article visually appealing. Use descriptive file names for images and include image alt tags. Use exact image sizes and compress them to optimize page loading speed.
• Add appropriate schema markup.

Google E-E-A-T

In its quality guidelines, Google released an update that addresses a factor in how it will determine quality content. This is referred to as E-E-A-T, which stands for Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness. In short, Google wants to know how qualified the author of the article is to write about the topic. If an article about veneers is written or fact-checked by a dentist, this gives the article a high level of credibility.

If your website is on WordPress, blog posts typically display and link to the author page. Be sure to complete each writer’s author bio page. You can locate that in the Users tab.

Optimize For Mobile Devices

Provide a good user experience for visitors using mobile devices.

Your website should load quickly. You can test it here.

Make it easy for new patients to contact you. Your phone number should be at the top of your website. It needs to be clickable on a mobile device.

Your website design should make your location(s) and office hours easy to find and the type of dental services you offer.

SEO Link Building: The Key To Boosting Your Website’s Authority and Rankings

If writing great content was the secret to getting great search engine rankings, then anyone could achieve the #1 position in search engine results pages.

But there’s only one #1.

That’s where link building comes in.

What Is Link Building And Why Is It So Important?

When another website links to your website, it signals to Google that your website has Authority. It’s like a vote from someone outside your business that your website’s content is important or useful.

Just as articles published in scientific journals cite sources to back up their data or assertions, links to your website show Google that your website content is a good source of information.

When those links come from other highly authoritative, relevant websites, your website’s authority increases, which influences its search engine rankings.

Effective Link-Building for Dentists

Create content assets that other websites will want to link to.

This could be informational content, a quiz or tool, infographics, or statistics that could be cited in a news article. Get creative. Use Chat GPT for ideas.

Take that content and promote or pitch it to other websites that may want to link to it.

If you have a really enticing linkable asset, it will naturally attract links without much effort on your part.

This is the safest link-building strategy.

There are many ways to get links, but proceed with caution!

Depending on the type of websites that link to your site and the anchor text (clickable text) used it can inflict serious penalties on your site, causing your rankings to plummet.

Best Types of Backlinks for Local Businesses

Your link-building strategy should include getting links from websites in your location or from geo-relevant sites and websites in your niche or industry.

When you think about it, it makes the most sense for a website in your town to refer your business or another dental industry website to reference your content.

If an expert in your industry sites you, it holds greater weight than someone with less knowledge about your industry.

The more hyper-relevant a website is to your site, the more authoritative weight it gives you.

Local SEO for Dentists

Your top priority should be to rank in your local Map Pack. It’s displayed above the rest of the organic search listings, so it’s often the first thing searchers see.

Optimize Your Dental Office Google My Business Listing

Claim or Create Your Local Business Profile.

Create a new profile here, or search for your business name on Google Maps and look below the contact details to claim it:

Follow the prompts and complete as much of the profile as possible.

Make Your NAP-W Consistent In Online Directories

NAP-W stands for Name, Address, Phone Number, and Website. It should be exactly the same on your website, Google Business Profile, and across the internet, online directories and review sites like BBB, Yellow Pages, and Yelp.

There are several tools that help audit and clean up your listings for a very reasonable price.

Consistently Request Online Reviews From Your Dental Patients

The main factors that will influence your Map Pack rankings are: Google reviews, your office’s physical location (how far away it is from the person conducting the Google search), and your response time to inquiries from your Google Business Listing.

Bright Local is one of my favorite tools to help manage this and provides a system to secure more patient reviews.

There are many other tools on the market. Some practice management software systems have some of these features built into them.

Tracking SEO Success for Your Dental Practice

How do you know if your SEO work is working? The ultimate goal is to get more new patients into your dental office. But we need to track our efforts to get us there.

Understanding SEO Metrics

I classify marketing reporting into two categories: activity and results.

SEO activity includes:

• Creating content assets
• Link outreach and content marketing
• Website technical fixes and optimization

The results we track for that activity include:

• Backlinks secured
• Organic traffic
• Website rankings
• Conversions: phone calls, lead form submissions, appointment bookings, chat conversations

Using SEO Tools for Tracking

GA4 (Google Analytics 4) is a core tool for tracking digital marketing success across all channels. It will track activity across all your online marketing channels, including website traffic and conversions.

It requires installing a tracking code on your computer and setting up conversion tracking.

Google Search Console provides valuable insights into how your pages are performing and technical issues that need fixing.

Tools like SEMRush and ahrefs track search rankings, backlinks, and some technical issues, to name a few. They are highly robust tools that are vital to conducting a dental search engine optimization campaign.

How long does SEO take? What Can You Expect?

If you’re starting a contract with an SEO expert or company, you’re probably wondering when you’ll see a return on your investment.

The short answer is that you can start to see upward movement in search engine rankings and a slight increase in traffic after three to four months, and then it should snowball into larger amounts after 9-12 months, depending on your level of investment.

However, it depends on several factors:

1. The engagement level or amount of monthly work that is contracted.

SEO contractors typically offer packages at various levels. Obviously, the less work performed, the smaller the impact in the short term.

2. The amount of website content and technical issues that need to be fixed.

Occasionally, we see new clients with sites with many issues that need cleaning up. It can take months to reconcile all the issues before even getting to any proactive SEO work that will move the results needle.

3. The age and authority of your website.

If your website is new or doesn’t have much content or backlinks, it can take a bit longer than a more established site to get results.

4. The level of competition for your search terms.

If your competitors are running an aggressive SEO campaign and you are not, it will be difficult to overtake them. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still do what you can now. With a good SEO strategy, you can still find some wins in areas where they are weaker. The longer you don’t do SEO, the harder it will be in the long run. Do what you can with what you have now and build on it in the future.

Generally speaking, once a quality piece of content has been published, it can take one to several weeks for it to be indexed by Google.

If it’s a very low-competition keyword, it can get some rankings and traffic within 2-3 months.

More often, we need to market that content to attract backlinks, which can take several months, depending on the competition’s number of backlinks and your website’s overall authority.

Basically, the more you do, the faster you’ll see results.

So if your SEO budget is small, you need to be a little more patient.

Supplementing Your SEO with Google Ads

If you want to generate leads and appointments immediately, I recommend supplementing your dental SEO marketing with Google Ads.

The combination of paid and organic search marketing has garnered great results for my clients.

The business you generate from ads will help your business in the short term, so you can invest in SEO for the long term. The long-term SEO benefits will help reduce your dependence on advertising.

Working with a company that offers both marketing services is ideal because the efforts can be coordinated to inform your overall marketing and SEO strategy.

At the very least, I recommend running a remarketing campaign to advertise to visitors to your site who didn’t book an appointment.

How Much Does Dentist SEO Cost?

The cost varies depending on how quickly you want to see results and the level of competition in your area.

You should expect to pay at least $1,500 monthly for longer-term, modest results.

A good budget is $2,500-3,000 per month, whereas $5,000 or more can deliver better results faster and is recommended for a more competitive market.

If you have multiple dental office locations, add $1,500 or more per location to your budget.

How To Find A Good Dental SEO Company

It can be challenging to identify a good SEO agency. In my experience, some agencies are better at marketing and sales than SEO. And some good SEOs don’t spend much time on marketing and sales.

Here’s what you should look for in an SEO agency:

Comprehensive SEO Services

SEO is a multi-disciplinary practice. To build a dental SEO strategy for your practice, they should start with keyword research, conduct a competitive analysis, and create a content plan.

Services should include technical SEO, building out content assets (blog posts or articles, infographics, etc.), and backlink acquisition.

Transparency and Reporting

An SEO agency should provide regular monthly reports detailing the activity or work performed and tracking metrics, like rankings and traffic, as mentioned above in the “Tracking SEO Metrics” section.

Good Communication

They should respond to emails in a timely manner.

You want to be able to understand their explanations. Are they good at breaking down technical jargon into layman’s terms?

Don’t feel intimidated to ask them to explain it until you understand.

A good agency wants to educate its clients and see them as partners in achieving the common goal of generating more revenue for your practice as efficiently as possible.

It’s very common for rankings and traffic to go up and down from time to time. In fact, it’s quite unusual not to see declines from time to time. It’s the nature of SEO.

But you can expect your agency to explain what they think is happening. If the declines are sharp and persistent, they should communicate a game plan outlining their steps to reverse the trend.

When In Doubt, Start With An SEO Audit

It may be difficult to determine the level of expertise of an SEO agency or consultant.

A good way to work with them on a trial basis is by contracting them to do an SEO Audit on your website.

An SEO audit will uncover technical SEO and content issues with your site. The report serves as a blueprint or to-do list of all the needed SEO work.

It usually includes keyword and competitor research and a content plan.

If your website is fairly new or has very little content and pages, there will be very little to audit. In this case, keyword research and a content plan would be more useful.

SEO Audits are very useful and necessary reports. I typically do them at the start of most SEO campaigns and at least once a year for all my clients.

What To Expect When Starting an SEO Campaign

An SEO campaign should start with an introductory kickoff call or meeting.

The purpose of the call is to:

• meet the staff in your practice who will be involved in marketing efforts.
• get to know your practice and its individual needs.
• understand your marketing objectives and goals.
• learn the services and products you provide and prioritize them.
• Identify and coordinate the gathering of marketing assets, login credentials, and access permissions.

The first month or two of an SEO campaign is often spent researching, planning, and cleaning up work. Often, SEOs will use the first month to conduct an SEO audit if you haven’t done so already.

Alongside this, you might see some work on link building or content optimization.

There really aren’t any SEO metrics to report on in the beginning, as the work is just starting. You will likely get a report of all the completed work.

Conclusion: The Impact of SEO on Your Dental Practice

Implementing effective SEO strategies can profoundly impact your dental practice by significantly enhancing your online visibility, attracting more potential patients to your website, and establishing your practice as a trusted authority in dental care.

Optimizing your website and content for search engines improves your rankings, but it also creates a more engaging and informative online space that resonates with your patient’s needs and concerns, leading to higher conversion rates and sustained practice growth.

SEO is a great long-term investment in your business, increasing its value and making your business less dependent on advertising.

If you’d like some help with SEO for your dental practice website, book a call with me here.