Welcome back to our Dental SEO series. In this video we’re going to talk about the first and arguably the most important topic when it comes to SEO which is Keyword Research or figuring out what dental services people in your area are ACTUALLY looking for, what they want to buy, and where you should focus your efforts in order to drive the most and highest quality patients to your practice.

Many dentists get little-to-no results with SEO because they start throwing money at SEO with no real plan for what keywords to target. All the time dentists come to us and say “I want to be #1 on Google” and we say… okay… cool… but for what keywords? They either respond with “ugh… I don’t know” or they say “all of them. I want to be #1 on Google for everything” 

Unfortunately, that’s not possible. There are thousands of different keywords people search for on Google when they are looking for dental services. You cannot build a website that ranks well for everything. If anyone tells you differently, I assure you, you are being scammed.

Success with SEO, like most things in business and life, starts off with creating a good plan and laser focusing your efforts on what will drive the best results. This is done through good keyword research, and it’s the difference between attracting a lot more new patients to your practice, or just lighting your marketing money on fire.

There’s a really powerful tool to help you figure this out, it’s called Google Keyword Planner and it’s completely free. All you have to do is go to ads.google.com, sign up for a free account, you don’t need to spend any money or run any ads, you can just use the Google Keyword Planner tool without paying a dime.

The Google Keyword Planner helps you discover what keywords people in your area are searching for when it comes to dental services and how competitive those keywords are.

As a dentist there are many types of services you offer, everything from checkups & cleanings, to root canals therapy, to teeth whitening, to dental implants, and much more. If you try to go after everything, unless you are in some small one-horse-town in the middle of nowhere with no competition, it’s highly unlikely that you are going to be successful.

Of the thousands of different keywords that people in your area are looking for each month related to dentistry and dental services, you want to pick a handful that are going to drive the best results. Let’s take a look at some examples of how you can do this using Keyword Planner.

In this report we are looking for dental keywords in Knoxville, Tennessee. We can see that there are around 2,400 monthly searches for “dentist near me” and it has a medium level of competition and dentists who are advertising for this keyword are spending between $5.71 per click to $16.96 per click to drive someone to their website.

This keyword has a lot of traffic but it’s pretty generic and it would be much harder to rank for compared to other keywords because it’s probably the keyword every dentist in Knoxville wants to rank for. We may be able to do it but it could take a tremendous amount of time and money to do so and it’s arguable whether this would actually drive good patients to your practice.

Looking lower on the list we can see two other keywords, “pediatric dentist” and “pediatric dentist near me” which combined generate around 650 monthly searches and both have Low competition. These keywords don’t generate as much traffic as “dentist near me” but I would say these two keywords are better targets to go after because the people who are searching this are more specific about what they are looking for, they are looking for a pediatric dentist, and the competition is also lower.

Looking further down we see another great keyword, “best dentist near me” which may only have 50 searches per month, but I would argue that those 50 people are probably much better potential patients because they care about quality, they’re not just looking for any dentist, they want to find the best dentist.

If we go a bit lower we can see some examples of bad keywords like this one here “cheap dentist near me” which I wouldn’t want to target because it’s likely going to attract low quality patients.

Remember above when we looked at the keyword “dentist near me” and it had 2,400 monthly searches? Those 2,400 monthly searches are made up of things like “cheap dentist near me” and “affordable dentist near me” and keywords that we probably wouldn’t want to show up for.

It’s critical to really take the time to think about what you are trying target and being laser focused on the best keywords. Just because you rank well on Google for a certain keyword doesn’t mean it’s going to drive high quality patients to your practice. It’s important to understand the search intent behind the keywords.

Let me give you an example. Let’s look at these five keywords that people may search for on Google when looking for a dentist in your area. They could type in:

• “Dentist”
• “Dentist near me”
• “Cheap dentist near me”
• “Best dentist in Knoxville”
• “Best Invisalign dentist in Knoxville”

Let’s stop for a second and think about the search intent of the person who would search for these keywords.

The first keyword “Dentist” is very generic, we really don’t know anything about them either other than maybe they are someone looking for a dentist.

The second keyword “Dentist near me” is a bit more specific which is good, and their search intent is probably to find a dentist that is in their area. They probably value convenience and location.

“Cheap dentist near me” is someone who probably places a huge emphasis on finding the lowest price, and on-top of that they also want someone close by. The likelihood this would be a good patient to your practice is very low.

“Best dentist in Knoxville” is a great keyword because it’s someone who isn’t just looking for a dentist down the street, they may be willing to travel anywhere in Knoxville if they can find a really good dentist.

“Best Invisalign dentist in Knoxville” is an even better keyword to go after because not only are they looking for quality and may be willing to travel anywhere in Knoxville, they also know exactly what they want, Invisalign.

By looking at each keyword carefully and really thinking about the intent behind the search such as:

• Does it seem like they know what they want?
• Are they just looking for the lowest price?
• Are they looking for whoever is closest?
• Are they looking for whoever accepts their insurance?
• Are they looking for a quality or expertise?

You can save yourself a lot of time and money by going after the people that are most likely to be the highest value patients.

Don’t waste time and money on SEO that doesn’t work. The right keyword research can help you show up where it matters most—right in front of patients looking for your services. By targeting the right keywords, you can attract the right patients and grow your practice. It’s time to get strategic with your SEO and bring in more of the patients you want.

Welcome to our Dental SEO series. In this series we’re going to demystify a lot of the confusion dentists have around SEO, show you why some dental websites rank better than others and what you can do to improve the ranking of your practice on Google in order to attract more patients.

The motivation behind these videos is that we’ve seen a lot of dentists take a crack at doing SEO either by themselves or by hiring someone they know. They throw a bunch of time and money at it, see little-to-no results, and then become frustrated and declare that “SEO doesn’t work!” and that’s really unfortunate because if you do SEO well it can be one of the strongest drivers of new patients for your practice.

Our goal with these videos is to help dentists better understand what SEO is, how it actually works today, how to do it correctly, and how to do the type of SEO that doesn’t just get you a bunch of website clicks, but actually brings patients into the practice.

So let’s get started. This series is going to be broken up into 4 sections.

In other words, what are people in your area actually looking for when it comes to dentistry? What should you focus your time and effort on? What will drive the best results in terms of new patients and quality of patients?

The most common reason dentists don’t see results with SEO is that there is never really a plan before they start, they end up wasting a lot of time and money trying to rank for a ton of different keywords that were never going to generate any return-on-investment.

How do you change your website design and content in order to be more relevant and rank better for the types of dental services that people in your area are looking for.

This is the topic many dentists know about but also the one that has the most misconceptions and we constantly see dentists use old and outdated strategies that not only don’t work, but they haven’t worked for many years.

To rank well on Google you need to go beyond just what content you have on your website, you need to look at how credible Google thinks you are compared to other dentists from the outside.

For example, you may offer dental implants or Invisalign and have content on your website about those services.. but so do dozens of other dentists in your area. Your website authority is going to determine whether Google trusts you more than the other guys and promotes you as the top choice for that service in your area.

It doesn’t do you much good if you get 1,000 clicks to your website but the phone never rings. You need butts in the chair for your practice to succeed. You can have the best SEO in the world that attracts thousands of potential patients to your website, but once they get to your website if those patients aren’t impressed with what they see, if they are left with a feeling of “this dentist doesn’t look like they are anything special” then guess what… most of those patients are not going to call you. They’re going to call your competitor down the street.

You may be familiar by now that when people search for “dentist in my area” your site could show up at the top of the results – bringing you a lot more visitors, and more patients. However, “dentist in my area” is a highly competitive keyword, and ranking at the top is often easier said than done. In this blog, you will find out how to bypass and go beyond this competition, to a level where your practice can rank first, bringing you the number of patients you need, without spending a dime on advertising.

Not all keywords that have lots of monthly searches are actually good for you. Let’s look at a few examples, and understand why less is more when it comes to Google ranking.

Searching on Google for “Dentist in Dundas”, we can see that there are over 402,000 pages relevant to that keyword. Google’s goal is to compare these results, determine which one is the most relevant to me, and show it at the top.

Our goal with SEO, is we’re essentially trying to convince Google that when someone is searching for “Dentist in Dundas” – our dental practice is the most relevant result, and should top all other 402,000.

Now let’s look at another example. Searching for “Invisalign in Dundas”, there are only 124,000 results.

This keyword is niched down to a specific dental service, which makes it easier to rank for because there are significantly fewer pages to compete with. And I’d rather compete with 124,000 pages and try to convince Google our page is the best, than compete with 402,000 other pages.

More importantly, people who search for “Invisalign in Dundas” are much more promising leads, since they already know exactly what they’re looking for.

Let’s look at a third example. When we type in “Invisalign dentist in Dundas” – we get only 51,400 results.

There are much fewer pages to compete with, and I’d argue the patient behind this search is a much more qualified lead, than people who search for “Invisalign in Dundas”, or worse, “dentist in Dundas.”

As you can see, the more specific a keyword is – the fewer pages there are to compete with. In addition, the people searching for specific keywords are more likely to be a high-quality lead, ready to call your practice and set an appointment.

Dentists who are “in-the-know” aim for niche keywords. Because while a generic keyword like “Dentist in Toronto” drives more traffic than a niche keyword – there are a lot more niche keywords to target than there are generic keywords.

It’s also easier and cheaper to rank for them. So, if you rank at the top, for dozens or hundreds of niche keywords – put together you could have more traffic than from one generic keyword.

But the difference is, whether you get less, more or the same traffic – your traffic consists of more promising patients, because they know exactly what they want, and they’re searching for it.

To rank for a niche keyword, or a group of keywords – you need a dedicated page for that keyword or service. A high quality, landing page.

If we search for “Invisalign dentist in Dundas”, the first organic result is our website’s Invisalign landing page, not the homepage.

Moreover, because we’ve built a high-quality landing page with great content, not only does it show up at the top of Google, but Google also displays snippets of the content right on the search results page. Questions such as “How are Invisalign trays made?”, “How much do aligners cost?” and more.

So, to rank for niche keywords like “best dentist for crowns in Windsor Ontario” you’re probably going to need a landing page talking about crowns, how your dental practice is located in Windsor, and featuring great information about how you do dental crowns and what goes into that procedure.

Now targeting niche keywords, and creating high-quality landing pages for them are excellent ways to rank higher. But there’s one SEO area you can improve that will have the most impact on your rankings.

What are backlinks exactly? These are links from other websites pointing to your website.

For example, directory listings like YellowPages or RateMDs that mention your business and have a link to your website.

It could be an article written about your practice that links to your website.

Or maybe you sponsor a local kids soccer team and again, they link to your website on their sponsors page. Those are all backlinks.

A higher number of backlinks tells Google that your dental practice is more popular than the competition.

For example: If you and I were competitors, and your website had 50 backlinks, while my website only had 10 backlinks – your website would show higher in the rankings.

The more backlinks your website has the more Google trusts it and the more authority it has. This is why it’s a great idea to sign up to many different directories like Bing, Yelp, Better Business Bureau, RateMDs, YellowPages, etc.

But it’s not just a numbers game. Quality matters too. You’ll want your backlinks to come from high-quality authoritative websites. Sometimes 10 backlinks from reputable websites will outrank a website with 50 backlinks coming from car repair blogs, Russian gambling websites or other low-quality, spammy places.

In fact, backlinks from spammy websites can actually lower your rankings.

Here’s an example of negative backlinks: A dental practice called Wise Dental in Maryland has a backlink from a website about buying, selling, and servicing cars.

Now you may ask yourself… why is a dental practice listed on an automobile website?

Well, about five to ten years ago, when Google’s algorithm couldn’t make the difference between a good and a bad backlink – all backlinks were good, including the ones from fraudulent websites. The more the better. So, people jumped on the bandwagon and bought backlinks by the hundreds. These nefarious tactics were considered “SEO shortcuts” or “SEO hacks” and it used to work… but not anymore.

Those $199 a month SEO services? That’s the kind of backlinks those companies create because it’s fast and easy. The expression “you get what you pay for” is very much true in this case.

A while back, we had just started working with a new client from Ontario, Canada. When we started digging to find out why they aren’t ranking, we found that their practice had backlinks from a dog breeding website in Florida, a mechanic website in New Jersey, and dozens more from Russian gambling websites.

When we asked them about it – they had no idea their marketing company was dragging their practice through all this mud. Ironically – their closest competitor who did not optimize their SEO even the in the slightest – were ranking higher on Google.

It took several months (and thousands of dollars) to manually remove all the spammy links before we could lay the ground for further work.

The moral of the story is… cutting corners when it comes to SEO can backfire. And the hacks that work today can bury your website in the Google Hell tomorrow.

Good SEO takes time, costs more, and brings qualified patients. It’s common sense that you should only practice Good SEO. On the other hand, if you choose the dark side and use SEO hacks – don’t be surprised if in the end it does more harm than good.

TIP: If you’re working with a company that is doing your SEO, make sure they’re not cutting corners on your behalf, because in the end, you’re going to be the one left holding the bag.

In order to rank higher on Google, you should target niche keywords, create high-quality landing pages, and start collecting backlinks from reputable websites.

I hope this information will help your practice take its righteous place among the Google rankings. If you want to learn more about SEO and marketing for dentists, check out this blog on how to optimize your Google My Business page for better visibility.