When it comes to search engine optimization, there is a common misconception that the more keywords you provide through your marketing strategies, the more successful you will be in bringing in new patients.
Unfortunately, that is not the case.
Marketing campaigns that use a “bigger is better” mentality end up with too many locations being targeted, an excessive number of keywords, and major audience overreach. This approach ends up diluting their dental practice in the search results and hinders them from reaching a high ranking. This is why you want to narrow down keywords that convert to get your dental practice visibility in the local markets.
Understanding the Foundation of SEO Campaigns: Keyword Phrases
With so many potential keyword phrases that you can rank for, knowing which one to optimize can be quite difficult. The best way to start this process is to do some research into what your competitors are ranking for and which keywords they are choosing to prioritize. While this may sound like a complicated process, there are free tools such as Google’s Keyword Planner that is available to help you streamline your research.
Using Google’s Keyword Planner to Find Relevant Keywords
For Google’s Keyword Planner tool, head to this website with your competitor’s website link and input their website URL into the tool.
To do this, log into the keyword planner with your Google account and select “discover new keywords” and choose the “start with a website” option. Hit the “get results” option and see what keywords are brought back to you in the results list. Make note of which keywords are relevant to your dental practice and incorporate them into your content and advertising strategies.
To determine if a keyword is relevant, see if it has any links to the services you are offering. For instance, if you offer specialized treatment for dental crowns, you may want to rank for “dental crowns, tooth crowns, tooth cap, dental crown cost,” etc.
Additionally, continue to record keywords that competitors are using, even if you don’t find them super relevant to your practice. Keywords of all sorts give you insight into how the competition is marketing to their patients, which can give you some ideas on how to craft your own local SEO strategy.
Feel free to continue this process with more than one competitor’s website. The more you know about your market – the better off you’ll be.
Insights That Google Keyword Planner Offers for SEO Strategies
Not only can Google Keyword Planner (GKP) offer you a way to see what your competitors are ranking for and help you streamline the keyword optimization process, but it can also offer a ton of other insights.
For instance, you might have noticed that your keyword results list had an average search volume column. This search volume gives you an idea of how many people are searching for that particular term in the targeted area you selected (always select your local area when doing local SEO strategies). This can help you find keywords that have high average monthly searches, giving you another way to narrow down your keyword optimization.
Another way to optimize your keyword phrases is to include your immediate location, nearby areas, and even landmarks. This extends the reach of your SEO campaigns because it allows you to think beyond “dentist in [Toronto]” and expand to phrases that are more specific like “dentist in [North York].” This strategy works really well because many location-based searches are done on mobile devices where patients are looking for a hyper-targeted location area.
Finally, you’ll want to incorporate long-tail keyword phrases into your SEO campaigns, as these provide additional context around what you offer. Long-tail keyword phrases are at least four words in length (or longer) and will include hyper-focused wording.
How to Rank Your Dental Practice Using Your New Keyword List
Once you have narrowed down your keyword list, you need to incorporate these into relevant content, so that your business shows up on the first page of Google or Bing.
Relevant content can be any of the following:
Website Content
Add keywords throughout your website, especially on your website’s homepage, service pages, and blog posts. When using anchor text to insert a keyword into content, make sure it redirects to an appropriate and relevant page.
Meta Data
Place relevant keywords into your metadata. Doing so will allow search engine crawlers to figure out what your website, webpage, and media (photographs) are all about. This includes inserting keywords into title tags, meta descriptions, and alt tags.
Local Schema
Add keywords to your local schema. Local Schema is a markup page that will tell search engine crawlers what your pages are about – which, in turn, helps the search engine crawlers index these pages. You will want to include your dental practice’s location, hours, services, and keywords.Once you are done optimizing relevant content with your keywords, make sure to monitor the performance of your SEO campaigns so that you can make any necessary changes or updates.
About the Author:
Clayton Patterson is the founder and CEO of Digital Space Marketing. After spending nearly a decade developing websites and launching successful marketing campaigns for medium sized companies and startups, Clayton knows what truly drives conversions and brings growth to an organization. In addition to his extensive marketing experience, Clayton is a lawyer with a deep understanding of website accessibility laws and the technical requirements that all websites should abide by.
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