Competition for first-page rankings are as fierce for dentists as it is for professionals in other fields. There are a lot of ways in which you can get more visibility and better rankings than your competitors. One such way is by implementing a local SEO campaign following a proven step-by-step process.

There are a lot of reasons as to why you should invest in local SEO. Most prominent among those is that increasingly more people are using search engines to find local businesses. It makes sense to invest in local SEO because when you get high rankings you can generate a lot of traffic for your business.

Further, it takes comparatively less time to get good results in local SEO. Most dentists don’t follow the best SEO practices. Therefore, if and when you follow such practice, you can gain good rankings in a very less amount of time.

Here are the 6 keys to building a local SEO campaign that can increase your chances of getting the first rank of search engine result pages (SERPs). You can implement these steps on your own or hire the services of digital marketing services providers for better results.

Step 1. Keyword Research:

The first step is to identify the keywords and phrases that people are using to search for the procedures and services that you deal with. Here your focus should be on identifying hiring intent keywords because people making such searches are more likely to get converted into visitors.

You can use such keywords to optimize your homepage as well as your service page. Once you are done with hiring intent keywords, you can get started with research intent keywords. You can use such keywords to develop informational pages such as blogs, articles, and FAQs.

This will put your practice in front of potential patients who are using these keywords to research procedures and services that you deal with. Your primary focus should be on hiring intent keywords and research intent keywords can play a secondary role in your SEO initiatives.

Step 2. Optimizing Google My Business Page:

Now we come to the pages you need to optimize to secure the best rankings on SERPs. You need to optimize your Google My Business page because it is easier to rank it on Google versus your website. You need to claim your page and get it verified.

Later if you find you have multiple pages for the same location, it is advised that you merge so that only one is displayed. Make sure you use consistent NAP across all the entirety of the internet, including and especially your Google My Business page, your website, and directory listings. Further, pick 3-5 categories that describe your practice and then write a description incorporating all of the keywords for your dental services and specialties.

Step 3. Optimizing Your Website:

Once you are done optimizing your Google My Business page, it is time to optimize the core pages of your website. This means that you need to optimize your home page and service pages to make them match up with the keywords that clients are searching on. Here again, the focus will be on hiring intent keywords.

You need to optimize the title tag of your website for your primary keyword. Further, your meta description should highlight your various services and the visible headline of the page has a relevant keyword. You should further make sure that you have 500-1000 words of copy on your homepage providing background information about your practice and a description of your services.

It is important to include your target keyword in the body copy. When it comes to service pages, you should have separate pages for each of your dental services as it will increase your chances of ranking in Google. Make sure that each page of the website has a unique title tag and meta description along with body copy.

Finally, we come to content pages and to get started here, you need to conduct keyword research to identify what types of relevant topics people are searching for. FAQs can be a good way to get started with content pages, and you can follow it up with blog posts.

Step 4. Citations and Links:

Now that you have done the preliminary work and have established a good foundation for yourself, it is time to separate yourself from the other dentists in your area. This can be done by building citations and links as the continuation of your dental patient marketing efforts.

You need to include a citation for your practice on your website, in the footer of your website and also on your contact page. Once you have done so, it is time to build citations across the entirety of the internet by getting listed in directories. Once you’re done with citations, it is time to move onto links.

It is the process of getting websites to link to your website. Your aim should be to get high-authority websites to link to you as it will increase your website’s authority and relevance. Links are favored by Google and the more high-quality links you have, the higher are your chances of ranking for competitive terms.

Step 5. Reviews:

You need to encourage reviews from your existing and previous patients because it can get you an edge over your local competitors and help you in your dental patient marketing efforts. Further, reviews can also give you higher rankings on SERPs. You should focus most of your attention on getting positive reviews on your Google My Business page.

When you get reviews on the said page it will rank higher and get you more exposure to prospective patients. For getting reviews you need to provide services that are worthy of getting positive reviews and then encourage them in different ways.

You need to make it very easy for people to leave reviews because if the process is time-consuming then many people will shy away from it, even when they have favorable views about your practice.

Step 6. Tracking:

Now we come to the last step of the entire process, in which you need to track your SEO efforts. You need to keep your focus on tracking 3 core metrics and we will go through them, one by one. You need to track your keyword rankings at least once a month using different tools that will tell you the number of impressions and clicks each keyword is providing.

The next step is tracking your traffic with the help of Google Analytics which will tell you how much traffic you are getting and which pages are receiving the most traffic. You are advised to track traffic monthly which will tell you how your SEO traffic is growing over time. Last on the list of things to track are your conversions, which will tell you how many new patients you are getting from your dental patient marketing efforts.

The Bottom Line

If planned when and executed impressively, a local SEO campaign can bring forth a lot of benefits to your business. It can be one of the best marketing investments you make for your practice. The aforementioned tips will help you in ranking higher, generating more traffic and getting more patients!

Author Bio:

Brij Bhushan Singh is a Professional Blogger and Content writer at Dental marketing services. He has written many articles on Digital Marketing, SEO and Technologies.