Orthodontist Centered SEO
As more and more people turn to the Internet to find local goods and services, quality orthodontist optimization increases in value for the typical orthodontic office. Even in areas with only a few orthodontists practicing, showing up at or near the top of the search results is crucial. When a parent looks online to find someone to straighten their child’s teeth, an overwhelming number of them will contact the office they see first. That is why you need to make sure your practice has great exposure on Google.
Search engine optimization is needed by any orthodontist that hopes to draw new patients from the Internet. Orthodontic search keywords typically get significantly less search traffic than general dental ones, meaning that orthodontia specialists are competing for fewer potential new patients than general dentists in the same market. Because of that, a dental practice that ranks lower on page one can still draw in a decent number of visitors each month, while an orthodontist on the bottom of page one of the search results will draw almost none. For that reason it is imperative to maximize your rankings – and that is our specialty.
Unique Challenges for Orthodontist: How SEO Helps
The dental landscape has changed significantly over the years for orthodontists. The lines between a general dentist and the services they provide and a orthodontist have blurred. The American Association of Orthodontists puts it well when they say, “All orthodontists are dentists, but only 6 percent of dentists are orthodontists”.
Reduced Referrals
There are times when certain dental services such as Invisalign or clear braces are being performed by general dentists even though orthodontists have the specialized training in this particular area. As a result the referrals are not always passed from dentists to orthodontists. That is exactly why having a strong search engine optimization and content strategy for the services your practices provides is more important than ever.
Optimize to Give the Best Experience
Your digital marketing and SEO strategy should have the same goal that Google has when it comes to returning search results, which is to provide the most relevant and useful content for users searching for orthodontics. Your web presence is your opportunity to help inform potential patients why they should choose an orthodontist over a general dentist for correction of tooth alignment. It is also your opportunity to show why your practice should be chosen over another orthodontist in the same city. An important first step in this is making sure you can be found in the first place.
Orthodontic Services Are For a Specific Purpose and Procedures
We understand that orthodontic patients differ from regular dental patients in that they typically see you for braces or other procedures to correct alignment and then your services stop for them. General dentists have an ongoing relationship with their patients for years and years so their seo strategy is slightly different. As a result, for your orthodontics practice to be successful, you have to reach as many potential patients who need your service. Optimizing your website to reach as many patients as you can with the goal of converting them to paying clients should be central to your digital marketing efforts. We understand and can help with this.
Orthodontic Search Keyword Research
A successful Orthodontic campaign starts with thorough keyword research. As specialists in optimization for dentists, our experts know how to find the relevant ortho terms potential patients are searching for in your market. This allow us to adjust your website to target the best searches, and to rank well for the things people are actually looking for. Unlike other agencies that pick no-value keywords to give you a meaningless rankings win (read more about it in our “Dandiest Dentist” example page), we go after search terms that will translate into the most new patients for your practice.
In the same way that small adjustments to tooth alignment can make a huge difference in a patient’s bite and smile, subtle changes to the underlying structure and optimization of your orthodontic website can have a significant impact on the online visibility of your practice. You have undergone extensive training in orthodontia and dentofacial orthopedics to know all the particulars of how to diagnose and treat tooth alignment issues. General dental practitioners refer patients to you because you have specific knowledge on the proper way to treat alignment and occlusion. When it comes to your website, shouldn’t you turn to a firm that specializes in treating the search engine optimization problems unique to your field?
Practice Website Optimization Audit
Let us use our expertise give your website a proper diagnosis. With the best orthodontic search keywords for your area in hand, we can properly analyze your website to see how well you are optimized to rank for them. We go over the pages, images, title tags, and all the various markup elements under the surface of your site to ensure that it properly targets the terms people in your area are searching for. We also make sure that your site content does the best job possible in supporting your search keywords. Our skilled search optimization gurus adjust your site until it paints the picture for Google, Bing, and Yahoo that you are the best result for your target searches.
Site Optimization Details
DDSRank thoroughly analyzes your orthodontic website to find its strengths and weaknesses, and then adjusts the parts out of alignment. Successful search engine optimization for orthodontists, however, is not a one-time process. It takes continual monitoring from the time of launch. We periodically review and adjust your website throughout the campaign to ensure that potential patients that visit your site are supplied with the information they are seeking, which will help you achieve your practice’s new patient goals.
From the moment we start working for you and for as long as you remain a client, DDSRank will make sure your site follows the best practices of the top orthodontic websites and Google Webmaster Guidelines in on-site areas that include the following:
- Internal Linking: This refers to links that point from one page on your domain to a different page on the same website. They only reference your own content, improving user navigation and organizing information hierarchy. A proper internal link structure is a signal to Google that the information on your site is intuitively organized and your content is easy to find. This helps visitors navigate your pages easily, allowing them to spend more time on your site, and helps them consume more of your content.
- Site Content: The most important element on any web page is the content. No amount of optimizing wizardry can compensate for content that is badly written and/or irrelevant to the searcher’s needs. Our analysis and optimization starts with identifying you content needs. That can include adding basic blog posts and also static procedure pages. It also may encompass more visually-engaging elements like infographics and videos. Our talented team of writers and editors are well versed in orthodontia, and can produce content that both communicates your message and also helps convert visitors into new patients.
- Site Speed: It is crucial that your site is technically sound, and load quickly for users. Studies show that most users abandon a page that takes more than 5-10 seconds to load, and Google takes site speed into consideration as part of their algorithm. DDSRank optimizes your page loading speed through a number of techniques, including image compression, advanced cache configuration, and use of content delivery networks.
- Page Title Optimization: As in real life meetings, first impressions matter on the Internet. Title tags appear in browser tabs, on search engine result pages, and also on external websites. The page titles you use on your site provide users a snapshot of the page content, frequently through keyword usage and practice branding. We are experts at crafting titles that help your site content stand out from your competitors, and make a memorable first impression on potential patients.
- Mobile Functionality: Google has been a huge proponent of making sites “mobile friendly”, meaning that they display and function properly on mobile devices. Tablet and smartphone usage continues to increase, to the point where they now make up over half of all Google searches. That is why it is critical to have a website that looks great and also is easy to navigate on a variety of devices. Your website must be both impressive and responsive when viewed on devices with smaller screens, which means text large enough to read and links that can easily be clicked. Every dental website that DDSRank produces utilize a responsive design. That ensures users get the best experience when they visit your practice site, regardless of what type of device they view it on.
Exclusively For Your Orthodontic Practice
When we start working for an orthodontist, our goal is make you the most successful practice in your market. To ensure that, we promise that if we work for you, we will not work for any other orthodontists you compete with. That allows the DDSRank team to go all in to maximize your online exposure. So if you want the best orthodontist marketing team working for you, contact us today!