Dental SEO

What is SEO for Dentists?

SEO marketing for dentists is an essential part of any dental practice SEO strategy. Google and other search engines use proprietary algorithms and ranking factors to rank websites when an internet user enters a keyword to search. While we don't know exactly what is included in Google's algorithm, we do know that certain elements are essential. They include:

• Keywords and keyword placement
• Relevant content
• Tags and metadata
• Authority backlinks
• Location of search
• Geographic area being searched in/from
• How well your website is understood by the search engines
• Trustworthiness & authority
• Mobile accessibility

There are hundreds of different elements that go into calculating page rank and domain authority, but it is difficult to know all of them because search algorithms are proprietary. Much of what Titan Web Agency knows about SEO has been gleaned from our years of experience of testing different methods, and understanding the results of those tests. It isn’t enough to hire somebody to ‘do SEO’. That’s like assuming all dentists are the same. The interpretation of the results from testing, and the implementation of the framework makes all the difference in the world.

When to Hire a Dentist SEO Company

How do you know if you need to hire a dental marketing SEO company to help your practice grow? There's no one easy answer, but here are some indicators that you might need help to get your dental SEO campaign back on track:

• Your website previously had a higher rank on Google and other search engines than it does now.
• You aren't getting many (or any) new leads from your website or Google Business Profile
• Your return on investment (ROI) isn't as high as you want it to be.
• You are consistently getting beaten by your competitors in terms of attracting new patients.
• You feel like you're stuck in a rut with your dental marketing.
• You know that a digital presence is important, but don’t want to do it yourself.
• The user experience on your website is less than ideal.
• People comment that they had a hard time finding or using your website

If any of these things sound familiar, then it might be time to get some help. The right SEO strategy can help you overcome these issues. When people search for your website and click on a link, you want them to stay -- and make an appointment. If your practice is struggling to attract new patients, odds are, your local SEO performance isn't as good as it could be. This could be for a number of reasons, usually the company that you are working with isn’t experienced in dentistry, and doesn’t know the in’s and out’s as well as they should. Titan Web Agency can help.

Benefits of Hiring a Dental SEO Company

While there are many important reasons to have a great dental website for your practice, if you are looking to grow your business, having a run-of-the-mill website isn’t enough. Your website MUST attract new patients and help you grow your practice.

This may seem like an easy objective, but it can take a significant time investment to learn about SEO for dentists, optimize your website, and determine the best dental marketing strategy for your practice to land on the first page or rank in the first few positions on search engines. All of this while competing with other dentists in your local area for the same patients.

Rather than doing all these things themselves, most dentists hire an outside dental SEO agency with the time and expertise to manage their dental website’s search engine optimization. Before you do, you need to understand the benefits of hiring a dental SEO company as well as the characteristics of a high-quality SEO company (and the warning signs of a bad SEO provider.)

Hiring an SEO company can dramatically improve the reach and visibility of your dental practice online because they have the expertise to build an online marketing strategy, as well as a team of resources to manage it, leaving you free to focus on your patients and their care. The main benefits of hiring a dental marketing company are outlined below.

Expertise and Experience

Search engines are secretive when it comes to how they rank websites. Google claims to have more than 200 SEO signals (the criteria that measure a site’s effectiveness), including page-loading speed, mobile accessibility, and how often the site’s content is updated.

While you may know the basics of SEO, it’s unlikely you have enough time and resources to acquire the same level of knowledge and experience as a professional dental marketing firm.

Most dental SEO marketing companies can provide a variety of services, including SEO, website building, and content marketing to ensure your site has content that’s relevant to prospective patients.  

The success of your dental practice shouldn’t be left to chance. If you attempt to manage your SEO without the proper experience, you could damage your site’s reputation and rank instead of helping it. For example, link building can help your site’s authority, but the wrong kind of links can result in your site being penalized or even removed from search engine results.

Partnering with the best dental marketing company also ensures your business can manage unexpected changes in SEO, like algorithm updates.

With a dental SEO company, you’ll get both general expertise in search engine marketing plus first-hand knowledge and experience in SEO specifically for dentists. These companies can appropriately manage your unique ranking situation, needs, and expectations.

Improve Your Rankings with Search Engines

One of the key benefits of partnering with a dental SEO company is to improve your rankings with search engines. 75% of internet users view only the first page of search results, and 60% of all clicks go to the top three links. You’ll attract more patients and grow your practice if you can earn a spot in the top three.

For your dental practice, the key is focusing on local keywords. Hiring the right  SEO agency can ensure your dental practice is showing up in the local search results, which often appear ahead of the organic search results when searchers use the location feature.

It’s important to note that in a competitive market & industry, chances are, your competition has had an SEO company working with them for years! The truth of the matter is, it may take months to achieve the rank you want & expect. The key is consistent content marketing and smart use of SEO. Your competition didn’t build their trust with the search engines overnight, neither will you.

One stop-gap that many companies use in the meantime is Pay-Per-Click (PPC). PPC ad results are based on keyword searches and are served up in rotation with other competitors for those keywords. Companies bid on these keywords through Google Ads or other bidding tools so their ads will appear in paid search results. This results in immediate traffic to your website.

You need an experienced marketing agency to manage your dental PPC campaigns, as they can easily cost you far more than they are bringing in if not set up and monitored properly. They can help you choose the best keywords, build landing pages that will convert traffic to leads , and properly manage PPC for your business .  Hiring the right PPC company can ensure that your most important & profitable keywords are bringing in new patient leads on a consistent basis. 

Improving your search engine results, or even maintaining your top position in search results takes the right SEO strategy and consistent work. This is why partnering with a web marketing company for dentists is often the best strategy to increase your search rankings.

Improve Traffic and Conversions

When you hire a dental marketing company to manage your website and SEO, you can expect an increase in traffic to your website, and an increase in the resulting conversions (calls to book new patients).

SEO success is defined by a combination of search engine rankings, traffic to your website, and conversions. To have true success, you need a combination of all three.

Driving web traffic to your website is the main purpose of SEO, and rankings play a role in that traffic. As your ranking improves, you’ll get more visits to your website, more phone calls, and more new patients booking appointments.

When you work with the right SEO company, they will look at the content on your website and your calls to action and assess why traffic to your website isn’t converting. Based on their experience, they can identify areas of improvement to increase your website’s conversion rate.

Save You Time

Hiring a dental SEO company saves you a lot of valuable time. Instead of you or your staff spending hours learning SEO or trying to optimize PPC campaigns, you can let the experts do what they do best and focus your time and energy on seeing patients, providing excellent customer service, and performing dental procedures.

Proper search engine optimization is a full-time job that requires thorough research, attention to detail, and quality content and links.

Generating the right content consistently is especially time-consuming, but the content on your website is one of the most crucial factors to SEO success.

The best SEO companies have processes in place for analyzing their clients’ sites as well as competitors that are ranking well and keeping their clients’ sites optimized for search.

Team of Resources

If you’ve considered hiring an SEO consultant who runs a business as a one-man show, you may want to think again.

One of the major benefits of hiring a dental SEO company or dental marketing agency is the team of professional resources to call on, including:

• Expert content writers
• SEO professionals
• PPC professionals
• Web conversion specialists
• Graphic designers
• Web design professionals

You can imagine what it would cost to pay for these services individually, and yet you can get them all with a dental marketing agency. Each person on our team will bring their background and experience to the table, and you’ll benefit from their collective wisdom and the new perspectives they bring to your SEO strategy.

Access to Latest Technology and SEO Trends

Another benefit of using a dental marketing company to manage your SEO is that they have access to the latest technology. They attend conferences, are active in professional SEO organizations, have access to advanced software to help with the SEO research, and work hard to keep up with the latest trends in the constantly-changing landscape of search.

As the client, you benefit from their knowledge, skills, and ongoing education.

Hire the right SEO company, and you’ll have access to marketing tools that increase efficiency, productivity, and performance. As we mentioned before, the best SEO companies have the skills to interpret the data and make smart decisions to achieve the desired results.

You’ll have access to premium-level services and data reports without having to pay extra for them is another benefit of using a dental SEO company.

Continuous Monitoring of Results and ROI

Having a dental SEO company manage your online marketing strategy ensures continuous monitoring of your campaign results and ROI. If the SEO company you hire has an inhouse PPC expert, then you’ll be able to use the data from PPC to improve the results of your SEO, because as we know, when you are using both marketing strategies, you can ensure an even better dental marketing ROI .

This is especially important if you are investing in PPC campaigns, because they will be able to track and report everything from click-through rate (CTR) to cost-per-click (CPC) and more.

With PPC campaigns, costs can escalate quickly, so it’s important to monitor keyword targets and ROI closely and optimize regularly to ensure you are reaching the right audience and achieving your desired results.

The best agencies can also help remove negative search terms from your PPC campaigns. You don’t want to pay for clicks when online searchers are looking for something you don’t offer.

Signs of a Bad Dental SEO Service

You have many choices when you decide to hire a dental SEO company. In today’s internet-based world, it’s difficult to succeed without focusing on your online presence, and unfortunately, this has led to the rise of bad SEO companies who prey on those looking to improve their marketing and online performance.

You may have been contacted by SEO companies claiming to specialize in search engine optimization for your industry. A simple claim of expertise isn’t enough, although, of course, you should work with a company that knows the ins and outs of dental marketing.

That said, it’s challenging to sort through sales talk and slick promises to find a company you can trust. Here are nine types of dental SEO companies that aren’t trustworthy and the reasons why.

The One that Guarantees First Page Rankings

It is impossible to guarantee front-page rankings. Even the best dental SEO firms are guessing (though, an educated guess is going to yield better results) because no search company makes its algorithm public. Google, Bing, and other search engines expect you to play by the rules. Anyone who doesn’t do so may be penalized and see their ranking drop as a result.

If Google or Bing suspect that you’re using so-called “black hat” techniques to improve your ranking, they could remove your website from the search engine results. 

So, what is a reasonable expectation for how your ranking might improve? Here’s an example of what happened with one of our dentist clients. When we started working with him in August, he ranked #25 for his most important keyword (dentist + city), and then his results went like this:

• September, small improvement, up to #23
• October, a little bit better, up to #19
• November, inching up, increased to #14
• December, big jump, increased up to #3
• January, another jump, increased to #1 in Google

This is how a typical client of ours sees increases in rankings. If someone promises you a #1 ranking right from the start, you should be wary. You can see more of our results here .

The One that Focuses on Quantity Instead of Quality

Some SEO companies that work with dentists claim that SEO is a numbers game, just like sales. The more things you do, the more successful your campaign will be.

SEO isn’t a numbers game. You can’t just throw out a bunch of backlinks and articles and expect to see results. It doesn’t work like that anymore. Submitting too many backlinks and articles may be viewed as problematic and could lead to you being penalized or the work being completely ignored.

So, if the SEO company rep says something like, “We can get you 1,000 backlinks a month, and 5 press releases,” tell them no.

As mentioned many times before, two of the biggest differences between a bad SEO company and a great one, or even an average one and a great one are:

• The understanding of the data

• The implementation of the strategies

The One that Only Uses One or Two Techniques

What if an SEO company only uses one or two techniques and guarantees success based on that? If they don’t present a full spectrum of SEO strategies, ask questions such as:

• What is your plan to improve my search engine visibility?
• What do you do for other clients?
• Are there any additional services you offer?
• Will you audit my site before creating a strategy?
• Do your strategies always work? (IMPORTANT-Nothing ‘ALWAYS’ works)
  • What do you do if it doesn’t work?

If you don’t get complete answers, it may indicate a company that knows only one or two strategies and will ignore other aspects of SEO. The lack of a website audit is a red flag because it’s impossible to devise an effective strategy without knowing what you’re already doing and why it’s not working.

SEO strategies and tactics that work for one dental practice will usually work with another, but not always.  

The big question is what will the agency do when their strategies aren’t working? What is the game plan then?

An effective SEO strategy requires a detailed analysis of your existing website and overall online presence so that a strategy can be created that will get you the results you need.

The One That Can’t Answer Your Questions

Have you ever had a conversation with someone who artfully dodged all your questions? You probably had the feeling that they were either hiding something, just didn’t want to answer your question, or didn’t KNOW the answers. Regardless, it impacts your trust in them.

The same thing can happen with an SEO company. Instead of answering your questions, they’ll say something like, “It depends” or “Once you pay your first invoice, we’ll discuss it more”.

What if a patient came to you and said, “How are you going to fix my toothache?” and you replied, “I’ll tell you after you pay my fee.” They’d turn right around and leave.

Can you blame them?

It’s not a good idea to pay someone who won’t give you detailed and honest responses to your questions. You wouldn’t expect your patients to do that – and you shouldn’t either.

The One That Sounds Too Good to Be True

You know the old saying: if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Well, you should keep that saying in mind as you evaluate SEO companies. Rave reviews and testimonials can be faked and it’s important to view them with a skeptical eye.

Here’s how you can tell if those testimonials are real or just hype: read them. Are they general? Do they simply say things like “Good job” or “No other service compares to this one!” Or are they specific?

It’s not far-fetched to think that someone would leave a one- or two-sentence review with a business but being specific makes a testimonial seem more real. You can determine the value of testimonials by requesting case studies or white papers, or by asking for references that you can contact. Another good way to get a good feel of the legitimacy of the company is to visit LinkedIn, and go to the owners’ profile, and see if he or she has received recommendations from real people or anybody you know. The point is: don’t base your decision to go with an SEO company on their testimonials unless you can verify that they’re real.

The One That Offers Keyword Packages

What if an SEO company promises, “I can get you ranked on page one of Google for five of your main keywords.” Should you take them up on their offer?

The answer is NO.

There is no guarantee that you can be ranked on the first page of any search engine for any keyword. The promise to rank you for five keywords could be a monumental or virtually impossible one. It all depends.

Some keywords are highly competitive, even locally. Plus, your past SEO efforts and your current ones all come into play. If you have done SEO in the past, and the quality of the work was subpar, it may take much more work to dig you out of the hole you’re in before you can climb the ranks.

Often, keyword packages are simply an attempt to get you to pay more money than necessary. They may include keywords that aren’t essential for your growth and success. You’ll be better off hiring a company that offers proven SEO strategies to increase your traffic and conversions.

To go a bit more in depth, when working with potential clients, we’ve had them say that they’ve been told by another company they are looking at that another company can get them 10 keywords on page 1 of Google, and that the prospective client is considering them. 

Here’s the problem with that:

In almost every case, the SEO company chooses the keywords. They then choose keywords that are both super specific and easier to rank, or that are nearly on page 1 already.

Example, an important keyword for you may be: 

“Dentist in Las Vegas”

The prospective SEO company chooses words such as:

‘Las vegas dentist that does crowns with sedation’

‘Dentist in las vegas that accepts cigna insurance’

See what I’m getting at? 

The keywords in and of themselves may not be bad to rank for, BUT, they are purposely misleading you, giving you the impression that when they rank these keywords, your traffic and leads will increase (when they likely won’t),  in order to get your business. 

Cheap Dental SEO: The One That’s So Cheap It’s a Steal

If a dental SEO company promises you the world for an affordable price and results in a short amount of time, lookout.

For example, they promise you a successful campaign, complete with social media marketing, PPC, blog updates, and technical & on site SEO for only $199 a month.

How can someone do all that work for $199 a month?

As a business owner, you know how valuable your time is. You price your services according to what your time is worth. When an SEO company offers you a bargain-basement price, they’re telling you they don’t value the work they do.

An SEO company has a complicated job that often takes a lot of hands on work, and interpretation of data and results (are you seeing a pattern yet?). Your SEO company may run your Google & Facebook Ads. Each technique they use takes hours to get up and running, and hours more to maintain. Why is that only worth $199? You’re right to be suspicious.

When the price seems low, it is likely because:

1. They simply aren’t good at what they do 
2. They hire the cheapest labor they can to perform the work

We will talk a bit more about this, but you are likely wondering: 

How much should Local SEO Cost?

It will depend on many factors including market size, industry, competitiveness and more. Our pricing starts at $849 per month (typically low competiton/smaller city) and goes up from there. I’ve been very upfront and honest explaining SEO and how it works, and I’ll continue that. Keep reading to learn what SEO should cost for your business. 

Let’s continue discussing the types of SEO companies you should avoid.

The One That Doesn’t Give You an Audit

Before a company can begin working on your SEO, they need to run an audit. An audit tells them where the weak spots are in your SEO. Once they see that, they’ll know how to proceed.

When you started your business, you had to do research. You had to learn about your potential patients, find a place to set up your practice, and see which marketing methods people responded to. You couldn’t just open your business and expect to start getting patients.

Imagine a patient coming in and just beginning to do work on them without an exam! 

SEO companies are the same. The audit serves as research. They need to know your site before they can create a plan that will improve your results. Therefore, you should stay away from any company that doesn’t do an audit first.

The One That Promises Quick Results

Another common SEO claim: “We can rank you on the first page of Google and Bing within 72 hours!”

This is a scam, of course.

On top of everything we just discussed, even if the SEO company could get you ranked in such a short amount of time, the rankings wouldn’t stick. Legitimate SEO takes time and in nearly every case, the only way to see results so quickly is to use “black hat” techniques.” You would get a temporary boost in your ranking, but it could ultimately lead to your website being penalized or your Google listing being suspended.

People find shortcuts and holes in search engine algorithms all the time. They will exploit them. But once the search engines find out about them, they patch them up. Your rankings will fall, and your rankings and online presence will take a hit, and could be put in a hole that could take years to climb out of. It isn’t worth the trouble.

Is Local SEO for Dentists Any Different Than SEO for Non-Dentists?

Your dental website is the online headquarters for your practice. It's the place where prospective patients expect to find information about you and the dental services you provide.

Is dental practice SEO different from SEO for other industries? The answer is yes and no.

All SEO has the same goal: to ensure that people looking for your products or services do the following:

1. See your website on the first page of search results on Google or Bing.
2. Click your website instead of one belonging to a competitor.
3. Take the next step, whether it's filling out a lead form, making an appointment, or buying something.

Many local businesses focus on only the first step when they think about SEO. Rankings are undeniably important, but it's just as important to give visitors a reason to click on your website instead of one of your competitors' websites.

Is SEO for Dental Practices an Ongoing Effort?

It can be frustrating and confusing when your website drops to a lower spot in the search rankings unexpectedly. You may find yourself wondering what happened, especially if you’ve hired an SEO company to optimize your website in the past.

The explanation is that SEO for dental practices is typically not a one-and-done proposition. Dental search engine optimization requires continued vigilance if you want your practice to remain at the top of Google's search rankings.

Here are some of the reasons that SEO for dental offices is an ongoing effort:

How Much Does Dental SEO Cost?

One question we always get regarding local SEO for dentists is:

How much does SEO Cost?

We have options for most budgets, and we can work with you to determine which services are best suited to help you achieve your business and growth goals.

Our monthly SEO marketing services start at $899 a month and are suitable for practices in a sub-15,000 population market with little competition. If you're in a bigger market, the price increases due to the increased competition. Typically, it will run between $1,199 and $2,299 per month for SEO. The pricing varies based primarily on your local market and competition (how many dentists are you competing against, what is your online presence and rankings like vs your competitors, etc). Assuming their goals are the same, a dentist in Las Vegas will be in a much more competitive market and pay more than a dentist in Tonopah, NV.