SEO for Dentists: Your 2021 Guide to Dental SEO

Let’s face it: it’s 2021, and every dentist should be incorporating dental SEO into his or her marketing strategy.

After all, there are thousands of clinics and practices around the world, especially in large Canadian cities like Toronto. As competition is only on the rise, you need to become more serious about using search engine optimization for your dental practice.

In this guide, our SEO experts at TechWyse will walk you through everything you need to know about optimizing your dental clinic’s website, and provide you with the best Google-approved “white-hat” techniques to use in 2021.

After reading this blog, you’ll be able to organically increase traffic, leads, and conversions for your dental office. So, let’s dive into it.

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Dental SEO On-Page Strategies to Master

The number one problem that comes with mastering SEO is not knowing which tactics are best to use. At TechWyse we’ve worked with numerous dentists over the years, so here are our recommendations for the best dental SEO practices in 2021.

1. Start with In-Depth Dental SEO Keyword Research

Doing keyword research should come before putting any content on your website. This includes meta titles, descriptions, and the text on your pages.

The purpose of doing this research is to gather the best and most relevant words to use on your website in order to be favoured by Google’s algorithm. Since the algorithm favours relevancy, it’s important to stick with keywords that best match your business, services, and even location.

How to Do Keyword Research for Your Website:

1. Use Google Keyword Planner to research your keywords
2. Narrow your search to your specific location (ex. Vaughan)
3. Use general phrases to find keywords related to dentists in your area (ex. “family dentist”)
4. Use one primary keyword for every page of your website
5. Pick low competition keywords with high search volumes
6. Pick 2-3 relevant secondary keywords to use for each of your pages

2. Implement Your Meta Titles and Descriptions

Use the keywords from the previous step to develop your meta title and description for each page. Your meta title should be general and straight to the point, while your descriptions should pull the user onto your page from Google’s Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

How to Create Effective Meta Tags for Your Dental Website:

1. Your meta titles should be a maximum of 600 pixels in length and include your primary keyword, location, and clinic’s  name
2. Your meta descriptions should be a maximum of 920 pixels in length and include your primary keyword, relevant information from the page, and a call to action

An Example of a Proper Homepage Meta Title Layout:

Name of Dental Clinic: Primary Keyword | Location or Secondary Keyword

3. Create High Quality Content for Every Page of Your Site

You’ve probably heard this a thousand times before but content is king, especially for dentist-related websites. Content is everything when it comes to ranking well on search engines like Google and low quality content will only put you at a disadvantage.

With high quality content, you’ll be able to attract the right visitors and keep them on your page long enough to convert them into clients.

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How to Write High Quality Content for Your Website

1. Ensure your content is relevant to your meta title and description
2. Make sure your content is unique and not copied from any other website
3. Be sure to include headers, bullet points, and images
4. Use your primary and secondary keywords in your headers and body
5. Keep your sentences and paragraphs short and easy to read

4. Lastly, Include Internal Links on All of Your Pages

While internal linking is very important for SEO, it’s often forgotten about. Internal linking is so crucial that it can even boost your organic traffic by 40%. The main purpose of linking your pages together is to help them get indexed by search engines faster.

Without older pages linking to newer pages, Google wouldn’t be able to notice or crawl the new page. According to Google, the more internal links you have pointing to a page, the better the algorithm treats it. You can read more about how Google’s PageRank algorithm works here.

How to Use Internal Linking for Your Dental Website:

1. Include at least 2-3 internal links in the content on all of your pages
2. Use natural, relevant, and short anchor texts for your links (do not use keywords for this)
3. Make sure your links are “do-follow”

Dental SEO Off-Page Strategies to Master

Now that you have everything you need to create a successful on-page dental SEO strategy, you can start focusing on your off-page tactics.

When it comes to the best off-page strategies, every agency or search specialist has their favourite approach. Here’s ours in 2021:

1. Become a Contributor and Write Blogs for Relevant Websites

This is undoubtedly the most effective way to gain high authority backlinks that Google actually values. While on-page content is required to rank well on the search engine, backlinks are necessary to add authority to this content. Without high quality backlinks, your on-page content won’t be trusted by Google.

Backlinks from external blogs are most valuable because they include a lot of text with a lot of relevant information for Google to pick up. For instance, if you write a blog like “Top 10 Best Dental Tools to Use in 2021” and have dental-related text around your anchor text, Google is going to understand the relevance and give you points for it.

Tips for Becoming a Guest Contributor

1. Find opportunities on other websites by searching “topic + write for us” or “topic + become a contributor”
2. Ensure the website’s domain authority is greater than 30
3. Make sure the website has a low spam score
4. Follow the website’s individual requirements
5. Pitch a unique topic that grabs the website owner’s attention
6. Use a natural anchor text in your content

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2. Add Your Dental Office’s Address to Local Directories

One of the best ways to improve your local rankings is to add your business address to local directories. By doing this, you’re letting Google know that your business exists and is located in the area of the keywords you want to rank for.

For instance, if you are located in Richmond Hill and want to rank for “dentist Richmond Hill”, Google will help you rank better if you have backlinks that list this address.

Tips for Acquiring Backlinks from Directories

1. Ensure the directory you want to add your business to includes a section for your physical location
2. Make sure the directory has a DA above 20 and a low spam score
3. Double check that all the information is accurate before submitting
4. Confirm that you have a business listing after the entire process or keep checking back to see that it’s posted

Why Is Investing in SEO for Your Dental Clinic Worth It?

We get asked this question a lot at TechWyse. The bottom line is that with an on-going proper SEO strategy in place now, you can secure leads for your business in the future. With any other marketing strategy, you simply can’t guarantee future business.

While you won’t see too many immediate leads from SEO, like the ones you’d get from traditional advertising or pay-per-click campaigns, you’ll be able to have your business rank on Google forever.

This is especially helpful if you can’t afford PPC, social media marketing, or any other strategies in the future. While these strategies can help you measure and track your performance more easily, they are temporary solutions. In other words, you’ll always be able to get business from SEO.

Overall, tracking ROI for SEO is close to impossible. However, having an endless amount of leads from Google is worth it in the long run.

Focus on Your Dental Patients, Leave the SEO to Us!

While search engine optimization is very rewarding, it’s also incredibly time-consuming. Fortunately, we have a team of dental SEO professionals ready to take on your project!

We can do everything from setting up your pages and meta tags to obtaining high quality backlinks. Contact us now to find out more about our services and how we can bring your website to the top of Google’s search results.

Click here for more digital marketing blogs specifically for dentists!

Post By Arielle Azmon (6 Posts)

Arielle is an SEO Specialist at TechWyse. She loves to immerse herself in everything related to content marketing and growing her knowledge in the field. While not reading about SEO or going to marketing events, Arielle spends time with her cat, Charlie, practices kickboxing, and enjoys watching old cinema.