The importance of choosing the right SEO plan for your business cannot be overstated. This is especially true if you belong to a fiercely competitive market, like the dental industry.
With Google re-evaluating search results and changing algorithms consistently, creating a custom dental SEO marketing strategy is considered ideal.
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Dental Marketing: SEO Best Practices to Keep in Mind
If you want to enjoy exceptional visibility, traffic, and conversions, take the following SEO best practices to heart:
SEO Best Practice #01: Ensure your content is easy to read.
When writing about a scientific or technical topic, ensure you do not use too much jargon. As a general rule of thumb, your content should be easy to read even for those unfamiliar with the topic.
One great way to ensure your piece is easy to read (and understand) is to use the Flesch Readability Test. A score between 70 and 80 is deemed ideal as it means the average 13-year-old can understand your content.
SEO Best Practice #02: Use keywords in your URL.
Creating keyword-rich and memorable URLs for your dental practice is deemed an excellent way to optimize your website. Whenever possible, incorporate keywords (including local ones) in your URL.
Case in point: a URL that has a keyword and your city is far better than one that doesn’t. Ensure that your URL is not more than 70 characters.
SEO Best Practice #03: Name your images.
While seemingly trivial, the images that you use on your website plays a crucial role in your SEO efforts. That said, rather than just putting them there, provide a keyword-rich name for them. Keep in mind that Google won’t be able to identify the images’ content sans a descriptive title.
SEO Best Practice #04: Reduce lag time to make your website more accessible.
Some research indicates that people nowadays have a shorter attention span than goldfish. That means your site needs to load fast enough, or your visitors can easily hit the dreaded “back” button.
When you compress files and choose a reliable host with lightning-fast servers, you can minimize the chances of losing visitors because your site loads too slow.
SEO Best Practice #05: Include internal links on your site.
While not everyone may be aware of it, backlinks are essential for SEO. However, internal links are considered a must.
In your blog posts, link to service pages and other blog posts using keyword-rich anchor text. The practice can help build the site’s architecture and make it easy for Google to index your content.
SEO Best Practice #06: Make sure your site is easy to navigate.
Aside from internal links, it is also a must that new visitors can easily find whatever it is that they are looking for. To achieve this objective, have menus situated either at the top of the page or on the left-hand side.
You can also put a search box on the upper right-hand corner of each page. It would also be a good idea to ensure there is an easy way for visitors to navigate back to the home page.
SEO Best Practice #07: Make it a point to link out to authority sites.
When writing content, ensure that you always have a link that points to authority sites. Stay away from websites with questionable connections and stick to highly trusted ones, like industry publications, dental journals, and news outlets.
SEO Best Practice #08: Audit and fix any broken links.
Every few months, schedule auditing of external links on your site and fix any that are broken. Broken links are not only frustrating to your visitors; they also do nothing for your site. If you can’t find a replacement for the broken one, consider removing the link altogether.
SEO Best Practice #09: Enable breadcrumbs on your site.
The snippets of information that tell users where they are on a particular site are called breadcrumbs. For instance, on a blog page, a trail of breadcrumbs would look like this:
Your site > Blog > Proper Teeth Care for Kids
Ideally, each breadcrumb should be a clickable link so your visitors can easily navigate away from the page anytime they want to.
SEO Best Practice #10: Don’t buy backlinks.
Backlinks are considered an integral aspect of off-site SEO. While buying backlinks is a tempting idea, resist the urge. When it comes to building backlinks, going about it organically is the best way to go.
One way to build organic links is by creating topnotch content people would want to link to. If anything, buying backlinks can hurt your SEO efforts significantly. In some instances, you might even get penalized.
Final Thoughts
Dental SEO can be a tricky process, especially if you are not aware of the ins and outs. Fortunately, you can always invest in experts’ services, so your dental SEO practices are always on point.
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- SEO Practices That Will Benefit Your Dental Marketing - October 5, 2020
