Introduction
Understanding the importance of SEO for businesses in today’s digital age is key to creating a successful and renowned brand. As more and more people look to the Internet for quality services, a successful orthodontist company must maximize its online presence to draw traffic and client conversions. Beyond that, SEO is also an essential tool in creating brand awareness, building relationships with clients, and positioning yourself as a trustworthy and reputable expert. Here’s everything you need to know about the most effective orthodontist seo measures for your orthodontist company.
Using The Right Keywords
The key to developing an efficient SEO strategy is to ensure that you use the right phrases and keywords to maximize your search result listing. This entails ranking the right search keywords according to what your prospective patients are using when searching for an orthodontist in your area. These include the following: orthodontist, Invisalign, an orthodontist in (your area), braces for kids, and orthodontist near (your area). In addition, using keyword research tools can help in further fine-tuning your keywords –– the technique of spamming keywords into your web pages no longer works and may cause your website to be sandboxed instead. This ensures that you are going for the right quantity and quality of keywords, tailored and specific to the right target audience.
The keywords used should also be created with the user in mind. Broadly, there are four categories of keywords: Navigational, where specific keywords are used to go to a certain page; Informational, to give the users answers to their queries; Commercial, where users are narrowing their choices; and Transactional, where users are ready to purchase the best deal. Therefore, orthodontists must understand these categories of keywords when deciding on the keywords to use.
Having A Good Website Structure
Search engines favor high-quality websites with increased rankings, which can translate into a boost in site traffic. It is imperative to have a good website structure for optimal user navigation, as Google uses user time spent on the website as a measure of the site’s relevance. Web pages should be easily accessed with no more than three clicks, and have minimal buried pages. Other important components include having a proper URL structure, titles, interlinking, appropriate website security, and HIPAA compliance.
Following A Marketing Strategy
We recommend basing your website on the sales funnel –– a marketing concept that details the journey a customer goes through, from awareness, interest, decision, and lastly, action. This should guide your marketing strategies with a clear and easy-to-understand “Call to Action” at the end.
Have A Good Site Speed
Your website should also have a good site speed to keep users engaged. This can be achieved by getting rid of unnecessary clutter such as plugins and using fast servers. Sites that have a loading time of more than three seconds have a significantly higher probability to lose visitors, so you’ll want to optimize your site as soon as possible!
Be Mobile-Friendly
This is the age of portable mobile devices –– 70% of all orthodontists websites are now being viewed on mobile devices, up from 30% from a couple of years ago. Hence, we strongly suggest your website be mobile-friendly and have respective a call-to-action (such as a Click to Call service) to increase client conversions.
Appropriate Internal Linking Within Your Site
Whilst incorporating good external links is essential for website ranking, having the proper internal linking structure is just as important. This is crucial in providing an optimized user experience for site visitors, as it gives them easier access to more information, whilst keeping them on your website for longer. Subsequently, this decreases your bounce rate which helps Google rank your site higher.
Search Results and Reviews
As most orthodontists are locally run, most of their patients would come from nearby localities as well. Hence, it’s important to list your company on web-based properties such as Google My Business, Business Listings, and Local Listings, which can improve your site visibility within local maps and make it more relatable to local customers.
Online Reviews
Having good and authentic online reviews is crucial in building your business’s reputation as a trustworthy and reputable company, which in turn can attract more prospective clients. One way is to encourage current patients to leave reviews and incentivize them to do so appropriately. Plus, it’s also helpful to get reviews on other listings like Yelp and Facebook, or even on paid services.
Content Creation
Content. Is. King. Regardless of the changes to the SEO landscape, it’s important to ensure a steady stream of content on your website –– do without it, and there’s a minimal chance of appearing in any search result pages. Good content can come in many different types, such as articles, infographics, videos, podcasts, and more. We recommend creating your website
with a mix of different forms of content that is objective, trustworthy, up-to-date, comprehensive, and professional. This would allow you to cater to all types of users, keeping them on your website for longer.
Do remember to take the main topic and keyword you wish to rank for, before starting on your content research. Next, create a high-quality informational page that is comprehensive, clearly written, and factually accurate. Bear in mind that whatever’s written is highly linked to your reputation as an orthodontist, hence every piece of content should accurately reflect your level of expertise, and be beneficial and trustworthy.
Building Relevant External Links To Your Site
In the online world, every external link back to your site is a vote of trust and validation. When there’s a substantial amount of links to your company, Google will reward it with higher rankings for the appropriate keywords used.
Here are some ways to actively build backlinks. Firstly, guest blogging with other orthodontists, magazines, and schools helps to build your credibility and expand your reach. Next, being active in answering questions on forums such as Reddit, Quora and Linkedin can help to make yourself known and further strengthen your status as an expert in the field. Participating in local community events and getting published in academic papers can help to market your practice as an orthodontist as well. Sponsorships can help in marketing as well while boosting your reputation by giving back to the community.
Evaluate Your Website
To accurately measure the effectiveness of your SEO strategies, you’ll want to record the increase in site visibility and traffic across all search engine pages. SEO isn’t an overnight miracle, and visible improvement often takes consistent work over months to a year to show up. One way to do so is to monitor the amount of rankings of your keywords, as well as conversion to patients making actual appointments. These can be done easily with Google Analytics. Another way is to monitor your organic traffic volume by the number and type of site visitors from the respective search engines. Lastly, getting a sense of the most visited and hence most valuable pages on your website is also important in understanding your user base and the type of content that attracts the most traffic. This would help you tailor your adjustments to make the improvements more targeted, maximizing the efficiency of your website.
Conclusion
Building a reputable and professional orthodontic website requires time, dedication, and long-term commitment. Whilst this can seem tiresome, the results are worth it. We hope that these above-mentioned strategies can help in achieving your goals and improve your business