Keys to Improving Your Dental Practice Website’s SEO

Bill Fukui

About Author

Improving your dental website's rankings on Google is essential to growing your fee-for-service dental practice. Yet, dentists are constantly told how complicated SEO has become, and made to feel confused and intimidated. Most simply give up trying to figure it out and either blindly throw money at it, or suspend all efforts.

Sure, SEO has become more complex, but there are key factors that are easy to recognize and understand. Before you waste more time and money, or throw away the biggest opportunity to grow your elective dentistry patient base, the following ranking factors can get your website back on track.

Ranking Factors - Every year a team of SEO experts (SearchMetics) rank the most important factors that correlate to high Google search rankings. This article is based on their 2014 results and covers five areas: 1) Technology, 2) Content, 3) Backlinks, 4) Social Media and 5) User Experience.

Technology/Onsite Optimization – How your dental website is organized, built, and optimized continues to be a foundation for top search results.

• Load Time – How quickly your site loads was the highest technology-related factor. The faster, the better.
• Keyword Domains – Vanity keyword-based domains/URLs have a diminishing impact. Some instances even show a negative correlation.
• Page Title – Your page Title is the most important on-page optimization factor and key words should be positioned in front.
• Headings – Page headings (different than title) show a continued digression in influence, where page content has growing impact.

Content – The wording, sophistication and amount of content your website provides allows you to distinguish your site.

• Content optimization includes the density of keywords and other related terms, the number of words between target keywords, but “never the number of keywords themselves.” Overuse of keywords will be seen as spam.
• Higher ranking websites have easier-to-read content. Flesch-value (grade level sophistication) is typically easily understood by 11 to 13 year-old students.
• Websites that have more words in the copy have higher positions – some higher performing sites have more than 900 per section, and average approximately 17 sentences.
• Content that utilizes graphics, photos, videos, etc. enhance the user's experience and Google listings.
• The most important aspect: focus on quality. Content needs to be relevant to the target topic and include multiple related keywords, not just focus on one.  

Backlinks – Links from other websites have come under scrutiny recently with Google updates. How they are managed can make the difference between domination and obscurity.

• Backlinks continue to be a key metric and are probably still the most important off-site factor.
• The number of backlinks still shows to be a factor, but the correlation to higher ranked sites has declined.
• Higher quality links continue to have a high correlation with better ranking results.
• High volume links from non-related/irrelevant websites has an equally negative impact on search results.

Social Media – Search engines definitely utilize other online resources to help identify credible and useful websites and content, but their role in influencing Google’s index may be changing.

• The correlation between social media-related signals and high performing URLs appears to be decreasing.
• The social media platforms with the highest correlated value to better rankings are Facebook and Google+.
• Social activity and engagements with your website contributes to traffic, branding and the overall value of your practice’s domain.

User Experience – How visitors react and engage with your website is an area with the greatest potential to impact your Google listings. It is also something that you have complete control over.

• The correlation between how users interact with your website and higher listings continues to increase.
• Time on site/page is an important factor in the quality signal for that URL/page.
• Users that click on higher ranked websites typically stay longer. The average user session duration shortens the further you go down the search listings.
• Lower bounce rates have a high correlation to higher listings.
• Mobile experience continues to have an increasing influence on search results.
• 36 percent of results on mobile differ from desktop results.

Summary

Of course these are just some of the more than 200 factors that impact Google results. Effective SEO has taken on a more “holistic” approach that demands coordination, planning and synergy. But key takeaways are:

1. Your website continues to be the foundation for securing high search engine results. The design, organization development and content (text, photos, graphics, videos, slides, etc.) needs to be relevant and relevant to the page topic and not just focused on a given keyword. Similarly, traditional onsite optimization still has value, but taking an SEO-first perspective will likely cause you to misdirect your strategy and efforts.
2. Off site, link building continues to be an important signal for search engines, but the focus is more on quality and less on just quantity. There is also a correlation with social media signals, but it may be diminishing.
3. Positive User Experience continues to grow in its SEO value and what Google is demanding of your website. This includes how it is viewed from a desktop, tablet or smartphone. Strategies that focus on providing visitors with more interactive, helpful and credible information are keys to engagement and securing higher listings.

Like quality dentistry, SEO is a combination of art and science. Use the fundamental principles to guide your strategies, focus on higher priorities and implement high-impact actions. It will help you proceed with greater confidence and allow you to compete for top listings.