Are you currently running your dental practice without your desired call volume? Is the lack of interest by your target demographic weighing you down? Do you need a solution for local marketing that translates into real business growth? If you answered with a bold and resounding “Yes!” to any of these dental practice questions, then the super effective method of SEO for dentists is the panacea to all your dental SEO marketing woes. Before the dark clouds of skepticism start taking over your mind in regard to dental SEO, it is essential to understand that dental SEO is a tried and tested method to improve your site’s search engine rankings. Remember that dental SEO is effective and when performed in compliance with search engine guidelines, local SEO noticeably enhances your dental online presence to garner the attention of your target dental audience and increases your chances to receive more calls and visits for your dental business from your dental service area. That is why many a dental practice turn to local dental SEO to scale their dental business through their search engine rankings.
Learn how your dental practice can take advantage of this medium and improve business over the long-run.
Google Maps is a Very Important Segment of Local Search Engine Optimization
Now, think of what you personally do when you have to find a local business such as a dental practice? You often directly go to Google and search for keywords such as “dentist in New York” or “teeth whitening near me” any other area name for that matter. You get a list of dentistry results, and you are often drawn to the first three dentistry results that appear directly with a Google Maps visual.
Also called the “Google Snack Pack”, this list of local practices is directly influenced by results from Google Maps. It also appears before your organic search results, which makes them all the more evident to the searcher in question. Due to the prominence of their position on search engine rankings, these positions are considered prime real estate for local businesses who are trying to obtain as many benefits from SEO as possible. This is why, if the primary goal of your dental practices, like your counterparts, is to receive as many dental calls and visits as possible, then you need to pay as much attention to rankings as you do to your standing on organic search results.
How to Rank in Google Maps to Improve Your Dental SEO?
At first glance, obtaining local SEO and higher rankings in Google Maps may seem like yet another tedious task in addition to your regular SEO activities. But even when it is intensive, this mode of local SEO and search engine presence is too precious to pass up. It is all due to the sheer prominence of these dental practices search results, which is only enhanced further due to the ease of use that searchers on desktop and mobile devices feel in contacting these local businesses.
Ask yourself- what sounds easier from these two practices: Clicking on a search result, landing on the business’ website, finding a phone number, and then giving it a call? Or is it simply finding the number, address, as well as business times right on the Google snack pack? To make this obvious choice even more clear, if you are searching for dental services from your phone, then you can also simply click on one of the Maps results from the Google snack pack and call the business right away without ever having to visit their dental website or memorize their dentistry details. Sounds simple? It is precisely what it seems like and works in the same way for your own dental business as well. Thankfully, visibility on Google Maps isn’t as difficult as it may initially look like in the short term. By following these five simple steps in your company seo, you can get your company ranked in Maps to increase your call volume by a large margin.
1. Setup Your Google My Business Page
If you haven’t yet set up or claimed your Google My Business page, then you are missing out on a big part of local search engine optimization. The Google My Business listing is an integral part of local SEO, even if you are not looking into improving your Maps presence. But it gets all the more important when your main goal is to get as much traction as possible for your business over Maps. The steps to create a Google My Business listing are also as simple as they can get.
Simply visit the Google My Business portal → Login to your Google account or create one from scratch → Enter your business details → Request mail verification for your business address → Verify your business with the code you receive through mail → Put in addition details about your business. That’s it. Your listing is all set up. A few points to note in terms of dental SEO are that you may often find the option to verify your business by phone. Still, the option is not always available – which is where mail verification becomes the default method to verify your business ownership. You should also note that the mail verification code may take up to 2 weeks to arrive – so get onto verifying your dental practice listing as soon as possible.
As an added tip, make sure that you are paying attention to your keywords and learn more about what kind of terms are being searched by your target audience. This component is the foundation of your local SEO strategy, even if you are exclusively focusing on one aspect of your dental SEO campaign. But it gets even more prominent when you are looking into local Maps rankings. If possible, make sure to use one or more of your keywords within your business name on the Google My Business listing. This aspect contributes to enhancing your business’ relevance to your target keywords in the eyes of the search engines. But make sure not to overdo it. Only follow this practice if the keywords fit into your actual business name naturally. Another suggestion is to pay attention to the categories of your Google My Business profile. Usually, the more categories you add, the better it is for your visibility on Google Maps rankings. So make sure to utilize this feature as much as possible and do not give up on adding categories until you have reached the limit for them.
2. Build Name, Address, and Phone Number (NAP) Citations
Other than Google My Business, you need to follow additional practices to tell the search engines that you are present at a particular location. As an integral part of google search and SEO in the dental arena, these resources come in the form of name, address, and phone number (NAP) citations. You can build these citations across a variety of business profile platforms, and associate the contact information with your dental practice. Doing so only takes a few minutes per profile, but often provides your business’ contact details a permanent place on the web. As a result, you cannot only notice an upward trend in your call volume but also see your local search engine rankings soar significantly.
3. Optimize Your Website
Even if you build a world of NAP citations with your business contact details spread throughout the web, it wouldn’t do your dental SEO any favors if your website doesn’t have the required level of optimization to back it up. That is why you must look through your website and integrate your local search engine optimization keywords as well as location details into it. This aspect improves your website’s relevance to location-based keywords (such as the “dentist in New York” one mentioned above). As a result, this makes your Maps listing appear more relevant to the service area of your dental practice, and helps your rankings in Maps as well as organic search results.
4. Build Relevant Backlinks
Building high quality backlinks is one of the most popular practices in general as well as local search engine optimization. Keeping this in mind, it is no surprise to see that it plays a significant role in helping you improve your Maps rankings. You can obtain high quality backlinks through websites and platforms that relate to your dental practice. Here, you can write engaging and entertaining posts that one can publish on websites that are related to dentistry. You can also draft press releases and distribute them through high quality dissemination platforms that provide you with credible backlinks. As an added practice, you should also look into sharing relevant content on social media platforms and build a network of links through that medium. You can share targeted posts on Facebook, you can share educatory videos on YouTube, and you can make informative threads on Twitter. All of these efforts can provide tons of juice to your dental SEO. Overall, these practices can help you boost your presence on Maps rankings as well as your local organic rankings. Just remember to stay away from black hat SEO practices and only implement activities that are in line with Google and other search engines. This way, you will be able to increase your chances to improve your Maps visibility and increase your call volume in the long run.
5. Focus on Reviews
Along with these practices, another method to improve your Maps visibility to Google while also making your way to your target demographic’s hearts is by populating your reviews on your Google My Business profile. Since you can’t just go ahead and submit fake reviews and be done with it, this particular aspect has your work cut out for you. You need legitimate Google IDs submitting reviews from different computers and IP addresses for your reviews to register on the platform. This component means that your best bet for dental SEO in this regard is by asking your real patients to submit reviews on your profile. Now, this is a mammoth task, and we won’t play it down for you. But even while being difficult to accomplish, the goal is not impossible to reach. How can you make real patients who have interacted with your business leave a review on it, you ask? The answer is simple: you just request them to do so. You will be surprised by how many of the people you render your services to are open to the idea of taking a minute out of their day to write an honest opinion of your service. This notion is especially true if you render top-notch services through your dental practice, which makes the whole process a whole lot easier. The more 5-star reviews you have, the better chances you get of improving your rankings on Google Maps while also catching the attention of your target audience quickly. As a result, this practice acts as a significant contributor to any local SEO for dentists.
It’s Not a Sprint But a Marathon
Running a dentistry is difficult and takes a lot of work, you focus on services such as teeth whitening to provide your clients with the smile that they seek. Teeth whitening is just one of your many services that you are responsible for in your daily dentistry life and that is why we focus on your SEO campaign and provide effective dental SEO. We don’t profess to know much about the inner workings of a proper teeth whitening routine but we can certainly provide effective google analytics, link building, and the right SEO marketing for your dentistry practice. It is also important to remember that much like other search engine optimization practices, improving your visibility over Google Maps is not an overnight project. It takes time, patience, and a gradual buildup of required traction to get you the required results in terms of increased interaction from your target audience. But if you stick to these tried and tested practices while also following the ever-evolving guidelines by the search engines, you can see not only an improvement in your call volume but also your dental SEO that goes beyond just calls.
We at 51 Blocks will take a look at social media, link building, google analytics, and overall SEO marketing to make certain that our SEO campaigns are working properly in in our approach to SEO for dentists. The team at 51 Blocks understands that blog posts, social media, and other components of SEO marketing can play a critical role in an SEO campaign. We understand the each aspect of the process from google analytics and reviews from clients as well as the proper listings are of the utmost importance to you.
To make the most out of this medium, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at 51 Blocks today. We at 51 Blocks will be happy to understand the details of your dental practice and help you reach the optimal call volume accordingly.
