In the age of Google, a great marketing plan for your dental office includes strong SEO practices. While this may sound complicated, it’s possible to start strong with a few key steps. This includes Google+, your number’s area code, ensuring your information matches across platforms, and not keyword stuffing.
Local SEO Tips for Dentists and Dental Offices
1. Complete and Maintain Your Google+ Profile
Yes, Google+ is important. Though the social networking component of it isn’t as strong as Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, it’s crucial for your SEO ranking. When searching for a business on Google, their Google+ profile appears either on the right-hand side or below ad listings.
You’ll also want to include keyword-rich descriptions, including your location, specialities, and “dentist”. By keeping your profile updated and maintained with regular posts, your SEO ranking will begin to improve.
2. Ensure Your Phone Number Matches Your Zip Code
Local SEO is based on a number of factors, as we can see here, but your phone number is crucial. Ensuring your phone number matches your zip code is one way to help boost your local SEO, especially since you’re a service based, brick and mortar business. So if your zip code is 92692, your area code should be 949.
3. Submit Your Information to Local Directories
The more places your business can be seen on the Internet, the better. Directory websites can help boost your local SEO as they give your dental office visibility. This can be a time consuming endeavor, because you want to be in as many directories as possible, but there are companies like Source Market that can assist you.
Some examples of directories include the Better Business Bureau, White Pages, Yellow Book, and Yelp. As we’ve mentioned, you’ll want to make sure the information you provide to these services is correct, including phone number, website, address, and hours of operation.
4. Add Your Location to Office Description
On many review and social media sites, your description is your chance to be seen and heard. By adding your city and county to your company’s description you’re more likely to be seen when people search for “dentist [your city]”. There’s no need to stuff your three sentence description with your location five times — more on that in a minute — but you should definitely ensure your location is present.
As an example, a dentist here in Irvine’s description is, “[Office] is Rated as a Top Irvine Dentist Since 2007. [They Specialize] in Family and Cosmetic Dentistry.” As you can see, they’ve added their location and specializations, as well as their rating as a top dentist in the area.
5. Create Social Profiles with Matching Information
One of the most important things about SEO, and digital marketing in general, is ensuring you have the same information consistently across your different channels. When there’s differing contact information, your SEO ranking will suffer.
So if you’re on Facebook, Google+, and Instagram, make sure your phone number, website, email, hours, and other relevant information is consistent. Without this consistency you’ll see a drop in referrals from certain websites.
6. Refrain from Keyword Stuffing
When SEO first began to develop, keyword stuffing was a common way to increase your ranking. Since then, Google has made the algorithm smarter, which means keyword stuffing won’t help you. Not only is it awkward to read, but it will cost you in regards to your SEO ranking.
This is a good thing, though! It means you can write stronger copy while focusing on adding keywords strategically.
Final thoughts: this is how you start
SEO can be tricky to master, but these are six ways to improve your local SEO without enlisting an agency. Make sure your information is correct, you can be seen across social media and directories, and that you have intentional and careful keyword usage, and you’ll soon see an increase in leads related to your local SEO.
