In today’s world, having a strong online presence is as important as having good clinical skills to run a successful dental practice. Let us look at it like, a potential patient searching- “dental clinic near me”, now, all of us would want our clinic to be shown to the patient, but which one appears on the top? Well, that is what Search Engine Optimisation helps you with, ranking on the top on google places, or higher ranking of your website on google search results.
We have mentioned benefits of SEO in dental practices in our previous blog - What is Dental SEO?
Mistakes in SEO can cause your website to fall behind, rank lower in search results, and lead to losing high-value cases. Let us look at some common mistakes you may be making which may hurt the potential of your dental clinic’s online presence.
Here are some of the biggest mistakes that can easily affect the online presence of your dental practice. Let us look at each one of them in detail.
Patients will always look for nearby solutions to their dental problem, thus listing your practice on the Google Business Profile is a no brainer. It is easier for patients to find you through your Google Business Profile. Neglecting this would mean ignoring local SEO, and ending up with your profile not being visible to nearby patients searching for dental services.
Google Business Profile is the primary place to be, to rank on Google Maps, making a profile is simply not enough, it is equally important to optimise the profile. Missing information like name, phone number, address, opening and closing hours, further reduce ranking potential.
To optimize your Google Business Profile, one must enter accurate information, incorporate location specific keywords, ensure your primary details are consistent throughout your social media and website and encourage patients to leave reviews on Google, you must then respond to these reviews in adequate times. These activities increase the potential of your practice to rank higher in search results.
Keywords are the terms which are used to make searches online. If you do not do keyword research, you may end up guessing what potential patients are looking for. Relevant keywords allow you to reach your target patient group faster by identifying their needs. A well planned keyword strategy is the foundation of SEO success.
There are several tools which allow reliable keyword research. Identifying these keywords and using them on your website are crucial for better SEO. Building content around relevant keywords ensures your website a better ranking when similar searches are made.
A poorly optimised web page may be of minimal benefit if not properly optimised. Web page optimization includes title tags, meta descriptions, header tags and structured content. If any of them is not up to the mark or is missing, Google may miss the web page and not make it visible even if similar searches are made. Another aspect of good on-page SEO is internal linking. Internal linking allows good to understand the content relationship on your website, if this is missed, some pages may remain hidden on search results.
Thus, it is imperative to optimize all aspects of on-page SEO to the maximum for your website to be crawled by google easily and increase visibility on search results.
Searches made on mobile are far more than those made on desktops or laptops, this makes it important to have a website which is mobile friendly. A mobile responsive interface is recognised faster when searches on mobile phones are made. Similarly, a website which does not have a mobile friendly interface will rank lower. Second important thing is the load speed of the websites, a slow website sends in poor user experience. Patients are more prone to closing the website than to wait for it to load. This increases bounce rate, and potential patients are driven away even before having a look at your content. Page speed is an important ranking factor for websites on Google as well. Flowers sites rank lower on search results.
Ensure that your mobile website is responsive, has good loading speed and is easy to navigate providing a positive user experience.
Plagiarised content or content which lacks definitive information and pages with incomplete content bring down the ranking of your webpage as well. Ensure your webpage offers a clear description of your services, your clinic and about you. You can add pages constantly on your website as blogs, correct weaker pages by adding more relevant content and remove content on the basis of ongoing trends. This helps your website be relevant to your current patients needs and be constantly upgraded with new keywords.
Ensure your website is secured, unsecured websites affect search rankings. Also, implementing a schema markup or structured data is also a great way to help Google understand your content and allow higher rankings on search results. If you are neglecting this, it is possible your online visibility will not be great.
Backlinking is commonly ignored by most dental practices. Backlinks allow other websites to point towards your website. Basically, it is like building a backbone which connects you across various directories on google, which helps you outrank your competitors. A strong off site SEO strategy and backlinking allows you to reach a wider audience.
With everyone running a search online before actually walking into your dental practice, positive reviews are very important in building a strong online reputation. Patients may leave reviews for your dental clinic on Google or Facebook. They work wonders in building trust within prospective patients and also have an added benefit of better local SEO rankings. Thus, encourage patients to leave a review after their treatment and promptly leave a reply to these reviews as well!
Content marketing is a great way of adding new keywords and increasing visibility on relevant searches. It also increases the credibility of your practice amongst patients. Writing and uploading blogs based on keyword research results not only adds content on your website but also increases the chances of higher ranking on search results of these keywords.
The most important aspect of success of any SEO strategy is constant review and performance analysis. Failure to keep updating the strategy according to previous results may lead to an outdated approach. Thus it is important for us to keep analysing the issues and formulating an approach which may lead to better results.
At Clinitecs, we provide tailored SEO solutions to bring your dental clinic to the top of google search results! Let’s work together to grow your dental practice!
B-56, sector 57, Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201301 India
info@clinitecs.com
+91-9535101544
© Clinitecs. All Rights Reserved. Designed by 18th Digitech
