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THE IMPORTANCE OF USING SEO TO GROW YOUR DENTAL PRACTICE

 

The Importance of Using SEO to Grow Your Dental Practice

If growth is a key focus for your Practice, then investing in a good-quality dental SEO service is the ticket. 

The topic of dental SEO can be a pain-point for many Practices who believe their key focus is providing top care and customer service for their patients (and not investing in complex digital marketing strategies), but the reality is that focusing on lead generation by way of digital marketing (and indeed SEO) is crucial for maintaining a healthy influx of leads.

What is Dental SEO?

Dental SEO works the same way as standard SEO (search engine optimisation).

It is the process of making your dental Practice appear higher in search engine results, meaning your Practice’s website will be at the top spot in a search engine result page (SERP) – without needing to pay for a PPC (pay-per-click) ad, ensuring your company’s website will be the key focus of your potential leads.

How it works is a lead may type into a search engine (such as Google or Bing) something like “local dentists” or “dentists near me” (or other keywords, such as treatments or cosmetic procedures you may provide) and your SEO will ensure your Practice’s website will appear at the top of your lead’s search engine results page.

The Purpose of SEO

The purpose of SEO is to improve both the quality and quantity of the traffic to your Practice’s website, via search engines, by using targeted, well-crafted content with specific keywords and phrases relevant to what you offer.

By using well-crafted SEO, your website will appear at the top of the search engine’s results page, meaning it’ll get the most “organic” hits.

Organically drawn hits (potential patients) will then likely browse your website for whatever treatment they desire, and then (hopefully) make contact by way of a well-designed and easy-to-find CTA (call-to-action) on your site, allowing you to then nurture and convert.

This is why so many businesses with a website invest in SEO – because it is effective lead generation.

Why SEO is Important for Dentists

Did you know that when searching for a new dentist online, 70% of leads will only click on one of the top five suggestions in a dental search engine results page?

Over 90% of people will not go beyond the first page.

This is why having a high-ranking website is imperative for businesses who depend on digital lead generation.

What Good SEO Will Do For Your Practice

  • It will help to build trust and credibility with potential patients
  • It drives more traffic to your website (so making sure your website is up-to-date, easy to navigate, and holds all the information a lead will want is important)
  • It will keep you ahead of your competitors. If your site ranks higher than theirs, a lead will more likely follow through with communication with you as opposed to your rival
  • It will ensure you have new lead opportunities on a regular basis.

Things to Consider About Your Website

An SEO strategy is only as good as the website it has been designed for, so making sure your website creates a positive user experience is crucial. This includes:

  • Making sure your page loads quickly. The average web-user will give you approximately four seconds of patience before they lose interest, so if your website takes longer than that to load, you’ll lose them to the website ranked under yours.
  • Making sure your website is mobile-friendly. This means it is easily viewable and easy to navigate for users on a mobile device.
  • The content is well-written and the images are clear and high-resolution. Nothing is more off-putting than low-quality web content – it comes across as lazy and amateurish.
  • It’s easy to navigate. This includes good headers/captions, simple instructions (avoid great whacks of text on every page), and the contact details are easy to see.

Why SEO Will Provide a ROI

SEO has long-term growth at the forefront of its mind and so we need to look at the value of a patient to your Practice.

To help with this, we can calculate the return on investment (ROI) of running SEO.

Here’s the figures we’re going to need to work this out:

  1. The quantity of patients generated from your SEO strategy over a specific period
  2. Average patient value
  3. Average length of time a patient remains a customer
  4. Cost of running the SEO strategy  (either using a Dental SEO agency or in-house employee

Let’s go through an example

  1. 5 new patients per month from the SEO strategy
  2. Average patient value is £500 per year
  3. On average you keep your patients for 10 years

So we know that as each patient is worth £500 per year (on average) and they remain a patient for approximately 10 years, the value of each new patient to your Practice is £5,000.

If your SEO strategy is delivering 5 new patients per month, they have a lifetime value of £25,000.

Over the course of a year, the lifetime value of these 5 new patients per month will mean you’ll be adding approximately £300,000 in future revenue from your SEO activity alone.

So now you need to consider that number in comparison to the time or money you spend on your SEO strategy and you’ll be able to work out what the ROI for your SEO.

What’s important to remember is that, unlike an ad that runs for a while and then disappears, SEO has a compound effect on your business long-term.

In other words, the work you put in now to optimise your online presence will continue to yield results years into the future.

Why it’s Worth Investing in a High-Quality SEO Service

SEO is more than just peppering your website with a couple of relevant keywords. It’s a complex machine, and it requires continued attention and nurturing.

For example, it is important to implement link audits as often as every six months in order to make sure your links are healthy (and not infected with malware), and that your site is in compliance with the rules of Google’s algorithm.

The purpose of the audit will highlight anything potentially toxic within your website. It’s probable that you will then need to perform a link clean-up to eradicate anything that could harm your strategy (and inevitably, your business).

None of this is simple, so investing in a reliable and high-quality SEO service means this will be done meticulously for you, allowing you to focus on the other aspects of running your practice.