3 Simple Key Steps To Help Your Business Start Ranking On Google
When it comes to researching dentists via a local search, people will usually Google the service they seek along with the city they’re located in, such as “dentist Pembroke Pines” or, even more specifically, “emergency dentist in Pembroke Pines”. For this reason, your website and SEO should be refined to target your local area in order to reach your specific target population. When it comes to a service industry such as dentistry, you are not targeting nationwide, but rather looking to reach individuals who are local and willing to drive to your office.
Achieving the top spot(s) in Google’s local listings is a great way to boost your dental office’s visibility – potentially gaining more clients and increasing your revenue. Below we have listed 3 key steps that will help your dental office rank on Google’s local listings.
Target Local Keywords
When performing keyword research for your dental practice, it is imperative that you hone in on keywords and long-tail keyword phrases which include the city in which your office is located. While it is ok to target ALL of the services your practice offers, we highly recommend to focus on the specific ones that bring in the most money. In our experience in working with dentists, these services are usually limited to emergency dentistry, teeth cleaning and dental implants. So, put yourself in the mind of your potential visitors to identify what they would search for, and also think about the services you can target to bring in the most money.
- Pembroke Pines emergency dentist
- Pembroke Pines dental implants
- Pembroke pines teeth cleaning services
- dental emergency services in Pembroke Pines
Google’s keyword planner is a free tool to use for keyword research. With this tool you can input your phrases and get a variety of insight, such as the level of competition (whether high or low) and monthly search volume. It is important to have a balance within both of these factors; if a keyword is highly competitive, it may be harder for your dental website to rank for that term, especially if it is a brand new site. If the search volume is too low then you might be putting too much effort on a keyword that will not generate the amount of leads you might be looking for.
You might like: “How to Target and Rank High for Low Competition Keywords“Reflecting Your Local Research on Your Website
After you have done your keyword research, the next step is to reflect this research on your website with proper on-page SEO – this will help increase Google rankings and boost visitor engagement. On-site SEO means adding your specified keyword phrase in the title tag, url, image alt tag and variations of the keyword within the page content. Make sure to add your practice’s address on your site with schema markup; this is a great SEO boost, as schema tells the search engines what your data means, not just what it says.
Backlinko.com has a great list of on-page seo factors for you to follow.
Create Listings In Top Local Directories With Consistent Information
Once your website is active, the next step is to create your business listing in at least the following directories:
- Google My Business
- Yelp for Business
- Bing Places for Business
- Yellowpages
- Manta
When creating or claiming these listings, make sure to provide as much information as you can. It is imperative that the business information inputted is consistent across the board. This means writing out the same business description, company name, phone number and address (NAP). NAP is not only crucial to matching the contact information from your site, but it also helps Google’s robots recognize that all of these listings belong to the SAME business.
Remove Duplicates
Before creating a new listing, perform a search to ensure that a listing hasn’t already been created for your business. Search with your company name and number – if there are multiple listings, claim one and update it with your consistent NAP and remove the others. Duplicates can hinder your local listing efforts, especially if all of the information is inconsistent – this can confuse Google’s robots.
Make sure to continue to add your business to other quality directories on a monthly basis. Here at Clicc Media Inc, we recommend you create 10-20 new links a month to contain a good link velocity and to vary the page to which the link is pointing to (meaning switching from home page to a service page or quality blog post). Quality backlinks to your site will help boost your website’s exposure and rankings.
Reviews, Reviews, Reviews!
One thing we ALWAYS advise to a new client is to ask for reviews! For dentists, we’ve seen how reviews double their monthly leads and triple their revenue. From experience, we can tell you that Google+ and Yelp reviews pack the most power. If you are ranking high on Google’s local listing and are the only one with reviews – or have the most positive reviews – you can bet that clients will be flooding to your office before even considering your competitors.
To maintain a good balance of reviews on other sites, we highly recommend you ask your patients to leave you some kind words on Yelp as well – this site has amazing ranking power within itself. If you can get your Yelp listing to rank for your targeted keyword, on top of having a website that ranks organically in the “3-pack”, then congratulations: you have just taken ANOTHER first page slot from your competition.
In Conclusion
By implementing the above steps into your online marketing plan, you can steer your website down a good path to top Google’s local rankings. If you would like to get more in-depth with your local SEO strategy, contact us via our online contact form or directly at 954-271-3111 to learn more about SEO services for dentists. We can help you take advantage of our content and video marketing plans to amplify your local efforts and help continuously boost your position above your competition.