Getting More Dental Patients Using Search Engine Optimization

Not more than a few days go by without a dentist asking someone in our office, “How are the web pages found from the Dental Practice Dashboard get listed in the top of Google and the other search engines so prospective patients can find them?”

In today’s article, I’m going to tell you what we tell them. More importantly, I’m going to tell you exactly… with no fluff or hype… what’s really required to get a dental practice website to the top of the Google and the other search engines.

Search Engine Optimization (otherwise known as SEO) is all the buzz these days.  Everyone’s doing it and everyone is the best and will get you on the first page of Google in 3 days.  You have probably heard this many times already from these marketing and SEO companies targeting dentists.

Quite frankly, with the vast amount of garbage information about SEO (search engine optimization) being circulated it makes me sick. Dentist are getting ripped off half the time and paying far too much money for something they don’t understand.  This article is long overdue and I can’t take it anymore.

So, here’s the truth about what it takes to get a dental practice website listed at the top of Google. It’s a little bit technical at points but, I promise you… if you hang with me until the end… you’ll understand exactly how to get your site to the top of Google (without falling for any of the nonsense or expensive fee’s out there).

Let’s start with a basic principle: web-pages get indexed and listed in Google. Not websites.

In other words, you don’t optimize a website for the search engines. You optimize the individual pages.

So, what that means for you is that you can get different web-pages on your website listed and indexed in Google for different terms and keywords.

Next…

Google, and the other search engines, look at two categories of factors to determine how high one of your web-pages should be indexed: On-page Factors and Off-Page Factors.

On-Page Factors are all of the things that can be done on a web-page to optimize it for the search engines.

On-Page Factors include things like: the title tag of a webpage, the Meta description, the Meta keywords, the H1 tag, the alternate text of images on the page, and the frequency of how often a keyword is used on the page.  And not only that, Google changes what they look at all the time, this is not just a static set of rules, it is ever changing like the internet.

These things are directly in our control and can be tweaked and adjusted for each page to ensure every page on your website gets listed for the correct phrases in Google.

In the case of the Dental Practice Dashboard, we customize the on-page factors for EACH DOCTOR so their web-pages are found when a prospective patient in their geographic area searches for a dentist (or related information) in their local area. For example, a dentist using the Dental Practice Dashboard based out of Pacific Beach, CA, would have phrases like “dentist in Pacific Beach, CA” in their different on-page factors. This ensures the different web-pages are optimized for the doctor, their name, their specific location, etc.

Now, truth be told… On-Page Factors are only half the game. The other half is in the Off-Page Factors.

Off-Page Factors include the quantity of in-bound links pointing to your web-pages, the quality of the pages where those links are found, and the exact phrase (anchor text) that is hyperlinked in the link.

Let me explain each:

An in-bound link is when another web-page out on the Internet has a link on it back to one of your web-pages. The more of these links any web-page on your website has, the more important Google feels it is. But, it doesn’t stop there…

An in-bound link from a quality web-page is better than a link from a poor web-page.

What determines whether a web-page is quality or poor?

Well, it’s simple…

The more in-bound links a particular web-page has, the higher it’s quality.

A web-page with thousands of in-bound links – other web-pages linking back to it – the higher the quality or authority it has to Google. And, if there’s a link on one of those high-quality, high-authority web-pages that links back to your web-page, it’s much more valuable.

For instance, having a link on CNN.com pointing to one of your web-pages is worth a heck of lot more than having a link pointing to one of your web-pages from theguynextdoorwithawebsite.com.

So, the more in-bound links you have, from high-quality web-pages, the better. In this case, the more of these links you have the more important Google will think you are and the higher your web-page will get indexed.

But, there’s still one more factor with these links.

What you ideally want is to have lots of high-quality links pointing back to your web-page… with the phrase you want your page indexed for as the text that is hyperlinked. In other words, you don’t just want your web address posted on another web-page. You want a specific phrase on these other web-pages to be linked back to your web-page. Using our above Pacific Beach example, we might want the phrase “dentist in Pacific Beach, CA” hyperlinked. So, when someone clicks on that phrase it brings them to your web-page.

What this does – the use of proper anchor text – is it tells Google that for that exact phrase your web-page is extremely important… especially since you have lots of high-quality links using that same phrase… and so it indexes your web-page higher and higher.

I can’t stress enough how important using proper anchor text really is. It’s one of the most important elements of getting any web-page listed high in Google.

Let Me Prove Just How Important…

Go to Google and do a search for the phrase “Click Here”.

What you’ll see is that the number one listing on Google is Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Why is that?

It’s certainly not because Adobe optimized all of their on-page factors with the phrase “click here”.

No. It’s because there are thousands, and thousands, and thousands of links out on the internet pointing back to that Adobe Acrobat page with anchor text that says “click here”. That’s the power of in-bound links with targeted anchor text.

Bottom Line Is This:

Getting, and keeping, a web-page at the top of Google requires optimization of both on-page and off-page factors.

Don’t get too involved with all the technical stuff, you are dentist but know that these are the real factors that make SEO work.  Years ago, on-page factors were the most important. Today, off-page factors are more important and in fact, video, with correct SEO is even better (a topic for another day).

Another powerful way to get FREE search engine optimization is by using a dental practice blog.

http://www.moredentalpracticepatients.com/ten-reasons-why-need-dental-practic...

Google realized it’s easy for people to manipulate the search engines with on-page factors. It’s not so easy to do that with off-page factors. Hence, the heavier weight and value on off-page factors (in-bound links, anchor text, quality of web-pages linked to).

Being found on a local search results for your keywords are extremely important in order for your dental practice to be found, but that is only half the battle anyway because most of the mistakes being made by 9 out of 10 dental practice websites happen on the website itself, which are things you have the power to change.