You must have heard of the saying ‘Every coin has two sides’. If you are wondering why are we referring to this popular saying here, let us explain it to you. This saying seems ideal in the case of professionals, like teachers, physicians, and dentists.
On the one hand, these professionals have to focus on providing the best services, but on the other hand, they also have to concentrate on the growth of their business. Being a dentist, you might not be pondering over promoting your dental practice all the time.
But SEO for dentists is crucial to attract potential patients, increase revenue, and attain the desired level of success. Though your primary motive might be enabling patients to achieve great oral health, you cannot neglect the importance of becoming popular and reputable. After all, you can help people only when they visit you. If your potential patients don’t know about the existence of your dental practice, no magic carpet can bring them to your dental clinic or hospital.
It’s important to mention here that merely having knowledge of your dental facility is not enough. People should also be able to learn about the quality of your treatments and your personality through the Internet. The rationale behind this statement is that people nowadays gather adequate information about every organisation or professional before getting services from them.
Why is that So?
Once any business entity appears online, people start posting their views about it. Along with social media channels and local listing sites, people also post their reviews on special review sites and forums. As your prospective patients can read reviews and ratings posted by your previous and existing patients, it’s necessary that you don’t garner any negative publicity.
Dentists, who receive SEO services, must be aware of the fact mentioned above. But dentists, who are new in the field or those who don’t stay updated with the digital world, might find this overwhelming. Along with this, such dentists might also get confused with other aspects of online promotion.
Therefore, in this article, we have mentioned some brilliant tips that dental practitioners across all dentistry branches, geographical locations, specialisation areas, and experience levels can follow. These tips are regarding the SEO, i.e., Search Engine Optimisation.
What is SEO?
Before we dig into details, let’s understand in a nutshell, what SEO means and what role does it play.
SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is one of the types of Digital Marketing, which, as the name suggests, involves marketing the business digitally. With the Internet ruling everyone’s life, creating a digital place becomes important for every business. Dental practices are not an exception. Website, social media accounts, and forum are different ways of creating a digital place.
You need to make your website rank on the top of the results page for the queries related to dental treatments and dental problems on search engines like Google and Bing. You can fulfil this objective by designing and implementing a search engine optimisation strategy.
Follow these Tips
The tips mentioned below will make the process of developing a strategy smooth for you.
- Stick to White-Hat SEO Tactics
Those who are even a little familiar with the concept of SEO must be aware that SEO tactics can be divided into two categories. These categories are white-hat SEO tactics and black-hat SEO tactics. The first category refers to the ethical methods of improving the website ranking, whereas, the second category refers to the unethical methods of improving the website ranking.
Due to being trapped into the greed of obtaining quick results, some businesses adopt black-hat SEO tactics. Such businesses might meet their goals in the short-term, but in the long-term, they have to pay heavily. Resorting to black-hat SEO can get you penalised by search engines and make you lose your reputation. So, you must stick to white-hat SEO even if it’s taking more time than expected to obtain the results.
- Share Useful Content Pieces
Though your website is a means to share information about your dental practice with the targeted audience, you cannot make it a promotion banner. Along with the essential details about your dental facility, you also need to post useful information on your website. You can create separate pages for these two purposes. For example, you can mention your location, specialisation, and experience on ‘Home’ and ‘About Us’ pages.
But on the service pages, i.e., landing pages that include the treatments offered at your clinic or hospital, you should explain various facets of the treatments. For instance, on the ‘Dental Implants’ page of your website, along with mentioning that you are proficient in performing this treatment, you should also specify the procedure, benefits, time, and cost of this treatment. You should even have a blog page on your website.
- Friendly User Experience
Your website is considered as your digital property or digital asset, but you should not get it designed solely according to your requirements. You should keep the varied requirements of your prospective patients in mind while getting your website built. The visitors should find your website user-friendly. Think from the perspective of patients to understand what they must be looking for after landing on your website.
You can take care of certain factors, which are a critical part of every SEO strategy, as they enhance the user experience. These factors include but are not limited to, speed, navigation, mobile-responsiveness, graphics, and scannable content. Your website should be fast to load and easy to navigate. As many people use mobile for browsing the web, your website should be mobile-responsive. Suitable graphic elements should be used.
Final Words
The field of SEO or Search Engine Optimisation has huge depth, as, over the years, several changes have taken place. A search engine optimisation plan of a website has various components, ranging from URL in the address bar to the copyright year in the footer. You might not possess the required knowledge of all the components. So, you should outsource the task of search engine optimisation for your website to an expert, i.e., a digital marketing agency.