SEO for Dentists – Dental SEO Keywords, Tips, Implementation, & Hiring

DIY local SEO for dentists: A step-by-step, comprehensive implementation guide

This is the exact process that I use to rank & generate sales for our dental clients, and it’s what you should do too.

Follow these steps to a tee and you will be in a very good spot:

Step 1: Set up these SEO tools

When beginning your dental SEO efforts, the very first thing you need to do is set up the tracking infrastructure.

Mandatory free SEO tools include:

Google Analytics – This allows you to see your site traffic from a holistic standpoint and how users interact with your site.

Google Search Console – This tool is catered specific to SEO and is essential for seeing what keywords are generating traffic and for diagnosing/managing technical SEO elements.

*These 2 tools are free from Google and must-haves for gauging your SEO performance & developing strategy.

Optional free SEO tools include:

Yoast or Rank Math (WordPress plugins) – These free WordPress plugins will help with SEO tasks like on-page SEO and sitemap submission (more on both of these later).

Screaming Frog – Screaming Frog is a powerful free tool for batch analysis of websites.

*Both of these tools are great optional free add-ons to your SEO toolkit – especially the 2 WordPress plugins

Optional paid SEO tools include:

Ahrefs – A popular choice for advanced SEO. It is popular for having the most in-depth backlink data.

MOZ – Probably the most popular SEO tool, great for advanced and beginner SEO’s alike.

Semrush – Another powerful SEO tool, known for having superior rank tracking features.

*All 3 of these tools offer comparable services. At least 1 of these is a must-have for SEO agencies or those serious about their SEO. They have advanced features that simply aren’t offered with free tools.

Step 2: Optimize the technical framework of your site

Remember, technical SEO is 1 of the 3 pillars of SEO, and its 1 of the first things that you should do.

To address potential issues and optimize your technical SEO, some of those above tools will be your best friend.

Here are some technical SEO tasks that you need to conduct:

• Page Speed – Ensure your website loads fast. You can use Google Search Console and Google Page Speed Insights to test this. You can also use EXPERTE’s page speed tool to check multiple URL’s at once.
• Indexability – You need to make sure that your Robots.txt file is allowing access to search engines and that all of the pages on your website are indexed. Use Google Search Console’s “Coverage” feature to diagnose and fix potential issues.
• Sitemap submission – A sitemap tells search engines how to crawl your website. If you’re on WordPress, then use Yoast or Rank Math to make sitemap creation easy. Then submit the sitemap via Google Search Console.
• Mobile Usability – Google switched to “mobile first indexing”  in 2019 – meaning the mobile version of your site is not only every bit as important as desktop – its more important. Use Google Search Console to make sure this is in check. It will automatically notify you if there are issues such as text too small to read or clickable elements are too close together on mobile.
• “SEO Score” – Paid tools will scan a website for technical SEO errors such as broken links. Ahref’s “Site Health” feature is my favorite paid tool for addressing holistic technical SEO issues.

Step 3: Conduct keyword research

Now that you have the proper SEO tools in place and your dentist website is optimized technically, it is time to gain a strong understanding of your target keywords.

You can use Google’s Keyword Planner or a paid tool such as Ahrefs Keyword Explorer to learn about search volume, competition levels, and potential traffic.

Once you’re logged in to your keyword research tool of choice, start by searching for “Dentist [location]”. This will show you all of the variations of your money keywords, such as “dentist [city]” “dentist [state] “best dentist in [city], [state], etc.

You also want to check the data for “dentist near me”, but be sure to set your location to the city that you are targeting. Google’s Keyword Planner is good for checking localized keyword search data.

Also check informational-intent search terms to give you blog ideas, such as “What does the dentist cost” “How often to see the dentist” “How often should I floss” and so-on. This will give you a good idea of blog topics that you can write about in the future.

Step 4: Implement on-page SEO of your “money pages”

A “money keyword” is a keyword with transactional intent, such as “Best dentists in Denver”. A “money page” is a page that is intended to rank those keywords.

First, you want to make sure you have a separate page on your website for each location. I.E. if you are a dentist with locations in Dallas, TX and Fort Worth, TX, then you want a separate page on your website for each location. Your Dallas page would target the keyword cluster “Dallas Dentist” and your Forth Worth page would target the keyword cluster (you guessed it) “Fort Worth Dentist”.

If you only have 1 location (or multiple locations in the same city), then you want to target that city on your homepage.

Now that you know your keywords and have separate pages for each city, you need to conduct on-page SEO of each of those pages to optimize them for their respective target keywords.

On a fundamental level, on-page SEO is simply using the right keywords in the right places. Specifically, your target keyword should show up in the following places:

• The page title
• The H1
• An image alt tag
• The url slug
• The body copy
• The meta title & description

Use an SEO plugin like Yoast to make managing these on-page SEO elements easy.

Let’s go back to our earlier example. I am Dr. Jane Doe, DMD, owner of Smile XYZ Dental. Let’s say my dental practice is located in Iowa with 2 locations – 1 in Des Moines, IA, and 1 in Waukee, IA.

I want to have 2 pages on my website as follows:

smilexyzdental.com/dentist-des-moines 

and

smilexyzdental.com/dentist-waukee

On each of those pages, I should include “Dentist in [City]” (or a close variation of such) in all of the above-mentioned places. I also want to include variations of that exact match, such as “Dental Care in [City]” “Best Pediatric Dentists in [city]” etc.

There’s more to on-page SEO though. To learn everything you need to know, check out this article that will tell you everything you need to know about on-page SEO by Gotch SEO: https://www.gotchseo.com/on-page-seo-checklist/.

Step 5: Build & manage your citations (NAP listings)

A citation is a listing of your business’ name, address, and phone number (NAP) on a website other than your own.

Examples of citations include your Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Yelp, YP.com, EZlocal, social media, etc.

Here’s a list of a bunch of those sites that you can list your business on.

When creating these listings, consistency and accuracy is key. It is best to have 1 unified text document of your business’ info and to create new & edit existing listings for consistency.

You can also use a citation tool such as Bright Local to automate this process.

Another huge part of citation management is getting reviews to some of the bigger NAP sites. Reviews will not only help your rank, but they will make prospective patients more likely to trust you and book with you.

Focus on your Google Business Profile, Yelp, and Facebook reviews – those are the most important. The best way to get reviews is by simply asking each customer after each visit for a review of their service, with a direct review link. You can also manually reach out to your close clients, business partners, friends, and family – that is only if they’re actually patients – no one likes fake reviews, and neither do search engines. If they catch them, they’ll remove them and it will hurt your EEAT (experience, expertise, authority, trustworthiness).

Step 6: Begin an ongoing content & link building SEO strategy

The first 5 steps are imperative initial SEO steps for your dental website. Now what? Now you need to conduct an ongoing monthly SEO strategy. This ongoing strategy entails 2 things:

1. Content creation (blogging) – Content creation is essential for building topical authority, EAT, and earning natural backlinks. Focus on creating strategic, high quality blogs that target the right keywords. With time, you will generate traffic and authority centered around niche, and this will in turn rank your “money pages”.
2. Link building – Inbound backlinks from 3rd party sites are essential for SEO. Link building is the process of generating these links. It entails reaching out to websites with value propositions for linking from their site to yours. Some of those methods include guest blogging, niche edits, and broken link building. Here is a guide on additional ways to build backlinks.

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