Most people will choose a local dentist, so getting Local SEO right is key for dental practices that want to attract more business from potential clients nearby. This is especially true for what can be a very competitive market and because of the positive impact good local rankings can have on website traffic and enquiries – ranking well in the local search results when people search for the services you provide can increase your organic traffic by upto 40-50%.
What is Local SEO & Why is It Important for Dental Practices?
The majority of businesses that want to attract new customers from the search results understand the importance of Search Engine Optimisation. But as search engines like Google place increased importance on the proximity of relevant services to the person searching for them, with the ‘map pack’ rankings and in the organic search results, Local SEO is a focused strategy for gaining the best possible rankings in the results for these local searches.
For dentists, where potential clients are looking for a practice ‘near me’ or in a particular town or city, making the most of the right local SEO strategies to help gain the best possible rankings for these types of local searches is key to help capture as much of this relevant, organic traffic as possible.
Whether for searches focused on a specific location, e.g. ‘dentist in clapham’, or for more general searches carried out in different towns and cities, Google is now more likely than ever to display map and organic rankings of dental practices local to that particular area. To determine which listings to show, Google uses three main factors – Relevance, Geographical Distance, and Prominence – so, to capitalise on the potential for new client enquiries, dentists need to adopt the right approach with their local SEO efforts.
Local SEO Checklist for Dental Practices
- Select the most relevant local search terms
- Ensure your Google Business Profile is fully optimised
- Ensure your website/webpages are optimised for local
- Create locally-focused citations & directory listings
- Add locally-focused content to your website
Keyword Research
The success of any SEO project starts with selecting the most appropriate search terms to target, and Local SEO for dentists is no different. If you provide the full range of dental services, then you might want to focus your optimisation on general terms like ‘dentists leeds’ or ‘headingley dentist’ – depending on the size of the catchment area you want to target.
It’s worth mentioning that the larger the catchment area/location, the more competition for rankings there will be, and the more work is likely to be required to rank well. How well-established your dental website and practice are already will help determine the catchment area and location-focused terms you can realistically target.
If you are more of a specialist practice, you can focus on these more relevant keywords, as well as broaden the local area you want to target. For example, the local patients for a specialist in cosmetic dentistry are likely to come from farther afield, so this type of practice could be able to target and rank well for more focused terms like ‘cosmetic dentist leeds’.
GBP Optimisation
One of the key aspects of successful dental SEO is having a fully optimised Google Business Profile (GBP). Google’s map results are typically top of the results page for the majority of local searches, and when we’ve ranked clients in this map pack for their target search terms, we have seen it drive up to 50% of their organic traffic.
As well as benefiting from the prominence of these map listings in the search results, achieving these ‘map pack’ rankings by fully-optimising your GBP is also relatively quicker and easier than a traditional SEO project – so focusing your dental SEO strategy on these local search rankings could start to pay off in months rather than years.
You can find our step-by-step guide on how to effectively optimise your Google Business Profile for these local business map rankings here.
Website Optimisation
With your GBP fully-optimised, your dental practice now needs to focus on optimising its website for the local searches you want to target. Optimising your website as well as your GBP is important for a couple of reasons:
- Utilising the same local optimisation in the on page SEO of your website will help your site/pages perform better in the organic local search results.
- In our experience, having the same local optimisation on your website as on your GBP complements and improves your GBP’s local SEO performance.
So, if you’re a general dentist focused on a relatively local catchment area, you might optimise the homepage of your website around the general terms for that area, e.g. ‘notting hill dentist’. But if you were a business with a group of practices or focused on specific services, you would probably choose to have a separate page for each practice location or specialist service, and optimise these individual location or service pages for the most appropriate terms.
If you did have a number of practices within your group, you would want to make sure you had an optimised GBP for each practice, and that this was linked to the relevant, similarly-optimised practice page on your website.
With your website content optimised, you also want to make sure your site’s technical optimisation is up to scratch. Mobile search performance is not only important because Google uses this to assess where your site should rank, but it’s also key as more and more searches for local services are carried out on mobile devices. So, ensuring your website works well on mobile devices is vital for the best possible local rankings.
Local Citations & Listings
Links to your website are one of the most important factors in an SEO project, and for Dental SEO the search engines will want to see locally relevant links to your site in order for it to rank well for local searches.
Improve your local search engine rankings and the ranking of your GBP in the map results by gaining backlinks from online directories and citation sources that are relevant to your service and location. With SEO for dentists, this will mean getting links on the relevant industry, governing body, and association websites (e.g. https://dentistdirectory.co.uk/ and https://www.gdc-uk.org/), as well as the locally-focused directories and news websites (e.g. https://directory.nottinghampost.com/).
All of the listings using the same NAP (name, address, and phone number) as your Google Business Profile provide Google and the other search engines with the key relevance and location information they use to determine the rankings for local searches.
Local Content
You can further enhance the relevance of your website for the local area by creating and adding content that is locally focused. This could be testimonials from local clients, local news that’s relevant to your practice and its customers, or any other content that is focused on the local area.
The Benefits of Dental SEO
Businesses like dentists rely on clients in the local area, which makes local searches for your services, and ranking well in the results for these searches, key if you want to grow your practice. This means that effective Local SEO is vital in order to achieve these rankings.
The good news is that effectively optimising your website and Google Business Profile for better performance in the search results for your area is relatively straightforward and can start benefiting your practice much sooner than you might think.
If your dental practice isn’t appearing as high up in the organic or map results for your most relevant search terms, following the simple steps above to enhance your local optimisation could go a long way to improving these rankings.
If your dental practice is convinced of the potential of a fully-optimised business profile and wants some assistance to make the most of this opportunity, just complete the callback request form below and we’ll get in touch to discuss how we can help.