If you work as an orthodontist, you know how important it is to maintain a strong online presence. After all, you have a lot of competition in this field, which means it is important to use the right SEO (search engine optimization) tactics to help set yourself apart from the others.
Just like any other SEO, orthodontic SEO is a process focused on improving your organic search traffic and website’s visibility by optimizing its on-page elements, structure, and content. Also, orthodontists also need to take steps to improve their site’s rank using local SEO tactics and optimizing for certain regions or cities.
While some people believe that SEO strategies are all created equal, this is not the case. If you want to achieve the best possible results, you need SEO efforts that are customized to your business and your needs. In many situations, this isn’t something that a business owner can do alone.
Keep reading to learn more about digital marketing tips for orthodontists and how you can improve your overall visibility and drive additional traffic.
What Are the Benefits of SEO for Orthodontists?
When someone goes online to find a nearby orthodontist, you want to ensure you are the first one on the list. Getting into this top spot can be achieved by having an SEO-friendly website, along with several other marketing efforts. Some of the benefits offered by orthodontic SEO include:
Boost Service and Brand Awareness
Awareness is the first part of getting new patients to your practice. SEO will help give your practice the boost needed to create more awareness in your area.
Get More Website Visitors
SEO will help you boost your website to the top of SERPs for your location, name, services, and more. When your practice appears higher in SERPs, it means more people will visit your website.
SEO Costs Less Than Other Methods
It’s cheaper to optimize your website than to use paid online advertising. SEO is a long-term investment and one that will help you attract more patients in the long run.
SEO Offers Better Targeting and Inbound Calls
Targeted results aren’t achieved with broad terms such as “orthodontist.” You can use SEO to target the specific needs of your patients. This improved targeting is going to result in more inbound calls to your practice and more patients.
How to Get Your Orthodontic Website to Rank Highly in Search Results
It’s important to note that orthodontic SEO and marketing, in general, are competitive. Some companies will hire an orthodontist SEO service provider to help with rankings (which is a smart move).
However, no matter if you are handling SEO on your own or hiring professionals, there are a few tips to keep in mind if you want to achieve the best results with your SEO efforts.
Optimize Your Orthodontic Website
One of the most important things to note is that web design trends are constantly changing. Because of this, you need to ensure your website remains updated. Also, you should ensure that your website has been optimized for search engines and users. This means using the right keywords and creating a user-friendly design. This is going to increase the likelihood of ranking higher in SERPs.
Part of optimizing your website includes making sure it is easy to navigate, clean, and informational. If your site isn’t well structured, takes too long to load, is full of broken links, or confusing to navigate will cause people to leave. Be sure prospects can easily find what they are looking for by keeping your site easy to use and visually appealing.
Create & Optimize Google Business Page
It’s also smart to create and optimize your Google My Business page. When it comes to SEO efforts for an orthodontic practice, this is essential. This page is where potential patients can find information about your practice and services. Making sure it is updated and accurate is a must. When setting up your Google My Business page, be sure to include the following information:
- Business contact information that includes name, phone number, address, web address, etc.
- Hours of operation
- List of services you provide
- Photos of your office and staff
- General information about financing and payment options
When you keep this information updated, your patients will find it easy to get in touch without having to look in various places for the information they need.
Perform Keyword Research for Orthodontic SEO
Conducting keyword research allows you to find what keywords are best for your practice. It also provides you with insight into the type of queries your target audience searches for. This insight can help you implement these search terms and inform your content strategy and entire marketing efforts.
Most people use keywords to find the answers or solutions they need when doing research online. If your content is successful and is presented to your audience when they conduct a search, you will generate more traffic. This means you need to be targeting these searches.
Also, with inbound marketing, you aren’t creating content based on what you want to tell people. Instead, you need to create content on what people are searching for. This ensures your audience comes to you.
All this begins with conducting keyword research.
When you conduct keyword research, you can gain several benefits. Some of the most popular benefits include:
Marketing Trend Insight
Utilizing keyword research provides more insights into existing marketing trends and helps you focus your content on relevant topics and keywords. These are the things that your audience is looking for.
Traffic Growth
Finding the best-fitting keywords for your content will help you rank higher in search engines. This also results in more traffic to your site.
Customer Acquisition
If you create content that other professionals are searching for, you can meet their needs by providing a call to action that leads them into your buyer journey from initial awareness to making a purchase. When you research keywords based on popularity, general intent, and search volume, it’s possible to answer questions that people in your audience are asking.
Write Blog Posts with Great Content
If you want to generate more traffic to your site, it’s important to create blog posts with quality content. Some business professionals, including orthodontists, may wonder why this is so important. Some of the main reasons to create blog posts with quality content include:
Drive More Traffic to Your Site
Do you want more website visitors? If so, creating quality content is an effective way to get them. Each time you write and publish a new blog post, it’s another indexed page on your site. This means a new opportunity for your site to appear in SERPs and increase traffic to your site via organic search.
Repurpose Blog Content on Social Media
When you create blogs for your business, you can also get more traction on social media. Each time you publish new content, you create new content for visitors to share on various social platforms. This helps get your business exposed to an all-new audience that may not know about your services.
Convert Traffic to Leads
Once you get traffic coming to your site via your blog, you can start converting the traffic to leads. Just like each blog post you write creates a new indexed page; each post gives you another opportunity to generate more leads. To make sure this happens, be sure to add a lead-generation CTA to every blog post you publish.
Drive Long-Term Results
If you are regularly creating valuable blogs full of information your target audience is searching for, it will help you establish yourself as an authority or industry leader. This means that people will continually come to you when they have a question about what you offer.
Improve Link Building
Backlinks are one of the over 200 factors that the Google algorithm looks at when ranking a site on SERPs. While link building can be challenging, when you create blogs that are valuable to your potential customers, it will be easier to gain relevant links. Also, links from authoritative websites provide a vote of confidence from other websites and are a sign that you are an expert in the industry. More backlinks also help you improve your domain authority, which improves how easy your site is to find in search engines.
Focus on Conversions for Orthodontic Web Design
When you create a website for your orthodontic practice, the design you choose will impact the results you achieve. If your site isn’t set up in an aesthetically pleasing manner, people will bounce away quickly.
However, looks aren’t the only factor that matter. You also must consider navigation. How easy is it for someone to find what they are looking for? If your navigation is disorganized or hard to understand, people will leave and find a site where they can easily find the information they are searching for.
You also must consider loading time. If you use a lot of large images and other things like this, your site will take longer to load. If your site takes more than a few seconds to fully load, there’s a good chance people will leave to find a better option.
Get a Personalized Orthodontic SEO Strategy Today!
When it comes to SEO, there’s no question that investing in SEO can pay off for your orthodontic practice. However, it’s important to implement the right strategies and efforts to achieve the best results possible. In many cases, this requires bringing in professionals.
When you hire our company, we can create an orthodontic SEO strategy that meets your specific needs and addresses any pain points you have. Contact us today to learn more about these services and how we can help you meet the needs of your customers.