When it comes to search engine optimization, one of the first step you want to tackle is keyword strategy. This is no different if you’re undertaking SEO for dentists or another industry. A keyword strategy for dental offices is essential to getting your practice off on the right foot. This is also combined with your keyword assignments, which should be an on-going process.
Keyword Strategy Uses
Every piece of content that is created should be optimized, including other elements on the page. However, be careful not to fall into the trap of keyword stuffing. Your content should be pleasant and insightful to your readers and users. A keyword strategy for your dental office will help you tackle some of your other objectives, such as:
- Competitor keyword coverage
- Competitor backlink analysis
- Keyword Assignments
- Content optimization
- Image Optimization
Your objective in this segment should be to allocate meaningful keywords to optimize that attract enough traffic to convert leads into patients. Now, Let’s go off topic for a brief moment. If your dental office is a brand-new practice, then you should consider a combination of SEO with PPC ads.
As we’ve stated in a previous article, “SEO is not a magic wand”. It takes time and effort, so you want to implement PPC advertising while you optimize for SEO. Optimizing SEO for dentists isn’t easy, but it sure does provide long-term results.
Focus on the Leads that can Provide Conversions
While dental services are an essential part of our health system, not all leads can become patients. You don’t want to stress on every lead or every visit turning into a conversion. Focus on the leads that can take action and show interest. They can be funneled and eventually convert into patients. Use a heat map to help guide you along this path. Below are some of the unfortunate circumstances why a dental lead from a targeted dental keyword isn’t always ideal:
- A patient lead may lack adequate dental coverage.
- Or they may have dental coverage that isn’t accepted by the dental practice.
- They may not have adequate cash reserves to cover the cost if they are uninsured.
- The patient could be in need of a dental service that the dentist doesn’t provide.
The Importance of Keyword Strategy for Dental Offices
Those are just a few of the examples that highlight the importance of proper keyword strategy for dental offices. As well as your keyword assignments to pages and strategic execution of lead acquisitions. In this example, we’re going to highlight just one of the different types of services some of our dental practice clients focus on. We’ll highlight 4 but we’ll focus our keyword strategy on just one of those four for this article. In this case, it will be dental implants that we will SEO for dentists.
- Dental Surgeons
- General Dentistry
- Implants & Crowns
- Orthodontics
In many cases, a general dentist may also provide implant and crown services. We’re going to focus our keyword strategy for dentists on implants and crowns. In case you’re wondering why, these two services tend to provide a higher profit margin for dental practices. Teeth cleaning for example is in higher demand and has more keyword searches. However, it takes more labor and provides a smaller profit margin. Search engine optimization for dentist isn’t just about the keywords, it’s also about intent and what those keywords mean to your practice. Both in profit and time.
Keyword Search Tools
According to Google Keyword Planner, “dental implants” as a keyword by itself, has a volume of 201,000 monthly searches across the U.S. SEMRush tracks less of these searches, but they are registering around 110,000 monthly searches across the U.S. This is true whether the keyword is a broad match, phrase match or exact match.
Google Keyword Planner: 201,000 monthly searches across the United States.
SEMRush Keyword Tool: 110,000 monthly searches across the United States.
For a local business like a dental office, you want to narrow this keyword search to their local area, usually a city. In this case, let’s use the city of Las Vegas. The total monthly search for this city for dental implants is 1,000 searches. That’s up to 1,000 potential opportunities you have to present your dental practice to local users.
Keyword Assignment
There are other variations of dental implant key terms that you will want to apply in your keyword strategy for your dental office. A quick look at the results in SEMRush shows us some that may be useful in content management and content optimization.
When you’re optimizing for your dental implant web page, you want to focus on 5 keywords. One that is your most competitive, one that is your least competitive and three that have mid-level competition. You want to be intentful on your content and cater to the user’s needs. Use your keywords on your:
- Title meta tags
- Meta descriptions
- At least once on your H2 or H3 tags
- Image alt attribute and
- On your permalink.
Stay away from keyword stuffing and keywords with no competition or search volume. Keywords with no search volume do not produce traffic. If no one is searching, then no one is looking.
Commercial keywords can be assigned to your top-level service pages. Informational keywords can be assigned to your blog post or article content. In this example, “dental implants” is a commercial keyword, which a dentist would use as a service they provide. “How to” long-term key phrases, or keywords labelled as informational are better used in your blog articles. One example is “How to clean between your dental implants”. Another example is “How to clean your clear aligners”.
We hope this article was helpful in guiding your dental practice towards its online goals. While every SEO agency may differ slightly in how they implement their keyword strategies. One thing is certain, a keyword strategy for your business is essential towards proper indexing and getting off on the right foot.
