When considering SEO marketing for dentists, it’s important to remember that it plays one of the biggest roles in the process of bringing new patients to your practice. Whether you’re a solo or group practice, SEO—specifically local SEO—is going to have a huge say in how successful your website is.

Google understands the importance of local businesses. In fact, it uses a set of local ranking factors to determine whether a company is geographically relevant to a web user making a “near me” inquiry. This helps local businesses because it tends to screen out geographically irrelevant competitors.

The focus on local SEO increased when the pandemic hit. Now more than ever, people aren’t traveling very far to buy products or services. The pandemic only served to reinforce this trend. As a result, local SEO has become vitally important. It’s now a cornerstone of SEO marketing for dentists.  

What’s Involved With SEO Marketing for Dentists?

Like traditional SEO, local SEO is intended to increase your ranking on Google and other search engines. Local SEO, however, is laser focused on putting local searchers in touch with local search results.

At first, this may sound like this could be a complicated process. Actually, it’s simply about improving web traffic by building local online visibility. In traditional SEO, this may center around words and topics that are relevant to the reader. In local SEO, it’s your physical location that is one of the most relevant factors.

Local SEO marketing for dentists is focused on things like Google Maps and what’s known as the “3 pack” that appears in search engine results pages. These results are tied to physical locations and the viewer’s proximity to them.

Local SEO is all about proximity and relevance. By recognizing the power of local SEO, dental practices are in a position to drive more web traffic to their websites and find more new patients.

5 Benefits of Local SEO To Dentists

1. Local SEO Allows for Citation Building, Which Brings Greater Online Visibility

A citation is basically any time your dental practice is mentioned online. That includes mentions of your office’s location and phone number. As your dental practice racks up more and more citations on Google, Facebook and relevant directories, your online visibility can increase exponentially.

2. Local SEO Creates Higher Local Visibility 

Higher visibility translates into higher web traffic, more qualified leads, more new patients and increased production. With your dental practice website, the goal has to be about more than attracting viewers. It has to be about attracting the right viewers. The wrong viewers will never go to your practice. The right viewers will, which is a key aspect of SEO marketing for dentists.

3. A Dental Practice Website Optimized For Local Search Can Attract More Traffic 

This traffic is also more likely to consist of qualified leads. In other words, you get more bang for the buck. This is an important point. It’s easy to throw money at a website and not get the ROI you were looking for. Local SEO is one very effective way to achieve the kind of ROI your dental practices needs from its website.

4. Excellent Local SEO Means That You’re More Visible on Google Maps

This is accomplished by fully optimizing your Google My Business account, which is as simple as verifying and fully completing all of your business information. Not all dental practices do this. Consequently, the ones that don’t will invariably suffer lower Google rankings as a result.

5. Local SEO is a Key Way to Manage Your Dental Practice’s Reputation 

We’re talking about online reviews here. All local businesses, including dental practices, rely on positive online reviews to generate revenue. It’s a key way to build your reputation online, which is something Google wants to see. The greater your business reputation, the more likely it is that Google will want to rank you higher.

Let Local SEO Do Its Magic For Your Dental Practice

All of these benefits of local SEO are significant to your practice’s bottom line. Far too many offices don’t realize how important local SEO marketing for dentists really is. Dreamscape Marketing, a leader in healthcare marketing, can help you build your traditional and local SEO to bring more patients to your practice. Call us today at 888.307.7304 and let’s discuss local SEO strategies for your dental practice.