The common misconception about dental SEO is that all we need to do is include keywords in our blog post and we’re off and ready to go. That’s an insane practice that does not do any good for any website. SEO is a complicated process.
Improving the SEO of a dental website is even more challenging. There is no guarantee of success when you improve your dental SEO but it does give you a big opportunity to attract clients, convince them of your reliability and trustworthiness, and turn them into loyal clients.
SEO is not just about the end goal of every marketing campaign. It’s about awareness and relatability. Clients need to be aware of your dental practice in order for them to look for you and “find” you. So although SEO talks a lot about keywords and key phrases, it needs more than that.
It needs a strategic placement of these keywords. It needs research to ensure that the keywords being used are the right ones, the relevant ones, the ones being searched for by your target market.
Keyword density
Keyword density refers to the percentage or times a keyword appears on a web page compared to the total number of words on the page. When it comes to dental SEO, keyword density is important because it determines if a web page is relevant to a specified keyword or key phrase.
SEO experts agree that keyword density should hover between 2% and 3%. Anything more than that is considered spam. The keyword should appear on the title of the blog post, once on the first sentence of the blog, on the body of the blog, and the last paragraph of the blog.
To calculate keyword density, count the number of times the keyword was used in the blog then divide that with the total number of words. The result should be multiplied to 100 to get the percentage.
Local SEO
When we talk about SEO, we don’t just move around the generics. For dental practices, especially, SEO should be localized. Since dental practices are local businesses (meaning, your target market is the people living and working near your location), your website should be using the exact location of your clinic. This means that if you’re located in Jacksonville, Florida, your keyword should be Jacksonville dentist or Jacksonville dental clinics.
Local dental SEO is important because Google uses this to map dental practices around the area. So, when someone from a nearby area searches for dental practices, Google can include your dental clinic in the list of search results.