The Internet Changed Everything for Dentists (and Every Other Business)
Rewind 20 years and the landscape for attracting new dental patients looked vastly different. You had your location, your signs, maybe some ads in the local penny saver or Val-Pak mailers. If you were really going big, a TV or radio spot. But the game has totally flipped in the digital age.
These days, when someone needs just about any service (dentists included), their first stop is the internet. They pull out their phone and do a quick search for “dentists near me.” In a matter of seconds, Google is going to serve up a list of practices in their area.
And you know what? The order of that list might as well be etched in stone. Research shows that the first couple of listings on page one of Google get over 60% of the clicks. The third gets about 10%, and it just keeps dropping off from there.
So if your practice’s website isn’t in those top few spots for your local area, you’re basically invisible online. All your marketing dollars get flushed (more on that in a minute). That new patient lead just opened up another tab and booked with one of your local competitors without a second thought.
Can you afford to miss out on those new patient opportunities? Let me put it another way…
Imagine a scenario where you have a prime street-front location right at the busiest intersection in town. You’ve got big bright signs from every direction broadcasting your services. A huge percentage of people driving by are going to see it.
But then imagine a handful of your competitors secure all the storefronts closest to that intersection, with their bigger, louder signs out front that block yours from view. The people driving by are only going to see and visit those closest competitors first before they ever spot your practice in the back.
That’s basically what’s happening online. The practices showing up first on page one of Google are the ones getting seen and found by the vast majority of prospective new patients in your area doing local searches. If you’re not in those top few listings, you’re getting ignored.
The Ongoing SEO Arms Race
So how the heck do you get your practice to show up towards the top of Google for your local area? Through local SEO tactics designed to make Google’s algorithm recognize your website as one of the most authoritative, trusted and relevant options for people searching in your town or city.
Now Google’s algorithm encompasses hundreds of different factors, and it’s a closely guarded secret. But quality SEO specialists have done extensive testing to determine what techniques reliably push businesses higher and higher in the local results.
Unfortunately, actually getting to the coveted #1 local position is becoming more and more challenging (and expensive) thanks to the ever-increasing number of dentists flooding the market and going after the same real estate on page one of Google.
It’s an arms race to see who can implement the latest SEO tactics and best optimize every aspect of their online presence to satisfy Google’s hunger for quality local content perfectly matched to what searchers are looking for.
But look… it’s a whole lot cheaper to invest in SEO than traditional advertising like billboards, newspaper ads and TV/radio spots (which nobody pays attention to anymore anyway). Those “rents” just keep rising and you get zero compounding benefits over time.
With SEO, all the work you put in with local listing optimizations, content marketing, local link building, review generation and technical website tweaks builds up like compounding interest. You’re creating a digital asset that continues paying dividends for years to come in the form of a steady stream of new patient leads coming in on autopilot.
The ROI potential is off the charts if you play your cards right.
But beware… SEO done poorly or with shady shortcuts is quite possibly worse than doing nothing at all. Google comes down hard on sites taking black hat tactics that try to game the system. You don’t want to risk getting whacked by a penalty.
So what exactly goes into a rock solid local SEO strategy for dentists? Let’s run through some of the highest impact tactics and fundamentals:
Mastering Local Keywords
You’ve got to start by going under the hood and looking at the actual keyword data to see what people in your city are searching around for dental services. What is the monthly search volume for “dentist philadelphia” vs “philadelphia dentist”? What about “orthodontist near me”?
These keyword insights allow you to weave in the precise vocabulary and location-based phrases that locals are using into your website’s content and architecture so Google recognizes you as super relevant for those searches.
With the huge rise of voice searches on mobile in recent years, nailing those natural, conversational queries is even more critical now. You want your site to show up when people say “Hey Google, find a good dentist near downtown Atlanta that does veneers.”
An SEO agency will assess your keywords from every angle and map out a content blueprint to integrate them seamlessly across your site without coming off as “keyword stuffy.” It’s all about providing a stellar user experience…
The Central Importance of Local Content
Another core SEO factor Google scrutinizes is the quality and relevance of your website’s content. Are you publishing pages, blog posts and other info that’s truly valuable and aligns with what local people are looking for?
I’m talking well above and beyond the surface-level “Here are our services” type pages that practices always have. To dominate in local SEO, fresh, in-depth content is a must.
Maybe it’s an area guide on fun things to do around your neighborhood. Boom, now local families with kids searching for that have a reason to visit and engage with your site.
Maybe it’s posts that go deep into specific services like dental implants with videos, graphics, success stories of your own patients. The content becomes a resource that gives you credibility and authority when people in your area search around on those topics.
Whatever the subject, Google is actively measuring whether your content leads to a satisfying experience where people stick around and don’t instantly hit the back button. Time on site, bounce rates, click patterns… all signals Google uses to evaluate your content’s quality.
Boosting Local Rankings with Real Reviews
You know consumers these days live and die by online reviews when choosing any service provider. It’s no different for dentists.
Google is now incorporating reviews and user sentiments into their local rankings too. A dental practice with lots of detailed, positive testimonials is going to get a nice rankings boost over another practice without that social proof.
Heck, your reviews are so important nowadays, you could have a site that’s a little outdated or maybe not as fast as it should be… but Google may overlook those flaws if the reviews from your listings and third party sites are stellar.
The bottom line is, if you’re not actively generating new reviews on sites like Google, Facebook, Yelp and industry-specific directories in your local area, you’re losing out on way too much powerful ranking equity.
So there’s a brief crash course on a few of the big tactics behind an effective local SEO strategy. Don’t get me wrong, there is still so much more that goes into this like:
- Technical website optimizations like mobile-friendliness, security, structured data markup and more.
- Consistent, up-to-date citations and listings across all the major online directories and data providers.
- A concerted link-building effort to earn high-quality backlinks from reputable local sources, which is still a huge factor in Google’s algorithms.
But you get the overall picture… local SEO is not something you can halfway do and expect extraordinary results. It takes a coordinated, sustained effort and commitment to being the best resource in your area.
I could go on and on, but I’m sure you’ve got a full waiting room to get back to. To sum it up, if you want to get found online and stay ahead of the competition, you’ve gotta put in the work to optimize every aspect of your online presence through local SEO best practices. Those willing to invest and go the extra mile get the steady flow of new patients while those who sit idle get left behind.
