Dental SEO and a guide to common terms
The world of marketing can be a bit complicated and yet, when it comes to marketing your dental surgery, it has never been more important. It’s worth noting that strategies used in marketing have changed dramatically over the last 10 years. So, in order to reach more potential patients, you have to consider all of the marketing options that you can use. The most successful strategies tend to be focused on search engine optimisation or SEO.
SEO is a bag of tricks that companies like ours use to get your website to rank on the first page of Google or another search engine. But this is a world full of terminology that can be confusing when you are new to it and can make you feel intimidated about approaching the subject with a marketing team.
At Dental Focus, we take the hassle out of dental SEO and will aim to ensure that you are not only well-versed in the strategies that we use, but that you have an active role in choosing which areas you want to develop to reach your marketing goals.
This may sound intimidating but don’t be concerned. In this article, we provide a very short introduction to common phrases that you will hear when engaging with dental SEO which can help you to make better sense of it.
Backlinks
Let’s assume that you want to write an article on your blog about dental implants. A backlink is a link to your website that originates from an external website. If there is a page that talks about the medical advantages of dental implants which links to your website, this is a backlink. However, as part of dental SEO, you may want to create a blog piece which links to a website which is a neutral but informative site about dental implants. This is also considered a backlink and plays a huge part in your SEO.
Conversion rate
When you attract patients to your website, ideally, you want them to become patients at your dental surgery. The number who click on your web page and then become dental patients is the conversion rate!
Duplicated content
If you have a website designed by Dental Focus, you will have a blog and our team of marketing writers will always aim to ensure that every blog piece written is unique. Duplicated content is basically when all the content on your surgery page is also available on another website. This does not rank well with SEO and therefore, if you are looking to build your SEO, you need to create relevant and engaging content that is not duplicated.
Keywords
A keyword is a phrase or word that somebody will use to search for information on a search engine like Google. If somebody is interested in getting emergency dental care, they can type in a phrase such as ‘emergency dental care in London.’ Using the phrase ‘emergency dental care in London’ on your website or your blog will link them to your surgery site.
Page speeds
To rank highly, your web page will need to load quickly; this is known as page speed. The ideal time for a website to load using a mobile device is 1 to 3 seconds. If it takes longer, patients will leave your site. This is one of the key areas that we will focus on in marketing and SEO strategy.