The Smart Way to use Service Area Pages on Your Website.
Creating a dental website that stands out from your competitors is not for the faint of heart. It takes time. It takes an attention to detail. As we’ll discuss today, it also requires you to step your SEO game up. One area of importance when doing this is your website’s service area pages. Take it from a team who has worked with their fair share of dental practices. We’ve come across practices whose websites have potential to attract traffic via the quality of their services alone, but have done little-to-nothing in terms of optimizing the services advertised on their website. This includes:
- a standard “Services” page that lists every service offered (usually the website’s home page)
- A standard “Services” page on the website’s home page created with Adobe Flash (i.e one big image)
- Creating service area pages with little information on the service and confusing dental terminology
If your website is guilty of any of the above, you’re losing significant traffic (and revenue) by not creating optimized service area pages. If you’re ready to turn that around and start driving traffic to your website the right way, follow these simple steps.
Structure your website wisely
A well structured dental website can take your practice a long way in terms of attracting potential clients online. Before creating your service area pages, first outline the services you offer to have a clear idea of the pages you’ll be creating. Google ranks pages individually, so it’s important to focus on the services you want to rank on its search engine and create individual pages for those.
For example: Your practices pays a special focus Emergency Dentistry. This service should have its own individual page on your website. Not only can you provide your audience with detailed information on the service, but optimizing the content with a focus keyword can give it the boost it needs to rank on Google. Thus, more exposure for the service and your website.
Mention your target city
When creating services area pages, don’t forget to mention your target city in order to attract local clients. If you’re using keywords such as “Dental services in Florida” to attract customers, you’re basically a needle in a haystack of dental websites in your same state. Instead, mentioning your target city within your service page’s content to increase its SEO power. Grouping your target city with your targeted services (such as “Emergency dentist in Miami” or “dental implant services in Miami”) will help your focus keywords rank faster on search engines. However, keep in mind that overusing your target keywords in content (known as keyword stuffing) is a search engine no-no and can actually land you in hot water with Google and ruin your chances of ranking for that service (or at all).
Don’t overwhelm your readers with dental terminology
This is something we’ve seen on many dental websites. We’re not discouraging the use of dental terminology in your content, but using terms like bone resorption and cantilever bridge without at least explaining its meaning does nothing to pique your reader’s interest (and, quite frankly, it doesn’t make for memorable content). When potential clients visit your website for answers, they’re looking for simple, straightforward answers that they can absorb. This doesn’t mean your content should be boring, but making it easy for your audience to find solutions to their dental needs via your service area page content will engage them to contact you for that service.
Include images in your content
We’re not robots. Shoving a page full of content, however informational it may be, won’t engage our attention for very long. Incorporate images related to your content, like a colorful infographic, to provide a break between content. Images are known to not only lend a much needed visual element to your content, but are also crucial for optimization when advertising your content through social media.
Reminder: As I initially mentioned, stay away from listing your services in image form (i.e Adobe Flash). Google can do many things, but it can’t read images (yet, at least). You could use the most rank-worth keywords in your SEO arsenal and still end up dead in the water for making this one mistake.
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Want to crank it up a notch? Create a video
The use of video is a major SEO plus–so why not take your skills to the next level and add one to your service page? Yes, I know I mentioned that Google cannot read an image, and that includes videos. However, the trick is to optimize the back-end of a video to get it ranking online. I won’t take up too much of your time blabbing about how awesome video marketing is and how it can lend a major hand to optimizing your website. Instead, I’ll let this infographic courtesy of Hubspot) do the talking:
Make it easy for your readers to engage contact
Now that you’ve created individual service pages for your focus areas, you have to make sure they all point back to contact you. Include a contact form on every service area page to make it easy for your readers to reach you. The goal is to maximize conversion by minimizing the number of time readers roam through your website. If your website doesn’t include a contact form on each service page, you can instead add a large and visible button that leads them to your Contact page. To take it a step further, include your phone number beside the button for those who prefer to call you.
A prime example of a dental website that encompasses every point mentioned above the website of Beaufils Dental. Their 3D Dental Imaging page includes:
- An individual service area page for 3D Dental Imaging (an area of focus for their practice)
- A mention of their target location
- A simple image (HUGE plus: they even added a video to reinforce their content. The use of video provides major SEO points for your website)
- Content that is easy to read and understand
- A visible contact form
Give Your Website the Attention it Deserves
Every dental practice (or business, for that matter) should take advantage of the benefits that a solid website can provide. Not only is it a tool that helps bring revenue to your business, but you should also treat it as the “face” of your company. It takes a great deal of commitment and works to run a dental practice, and your image is a crucial instrument to its success. Contact us today to learn more about optimizing your dental website’s service area pages to maximize your SEO efforts.