I am one of the best SEOs on this side of New York State, and that is because I don't specialize in a niche: I get to floss across many different industries and gleam a huge amount of information on a daily basis as to why Google sorts the blue links the way it does. It's a lot to chew on!

 

 

• • So, if you're here because you're a dentist, and you're looking to rank your site, here's some info you can utilize without hiring anybody. This may prove very effective, for now--at least to get you on the map.

 

Dentists, Orthodontists, Pediatric Dentistry, Cosmetic Dental Practices, this SEO information is applicable to any dental specialty practice!

 

Dental SEO

Best Dental Practice SEO for Dentists

 

Where to start with Dental SEO in 2020:

 

 

• • Page Targeting

  • On-Page SEO

  • Tune SEO to Competition

 

Page Targeting

 

 

• • Understanding webpage Targeting is crucial in 2020 SEO. This, along with a good understanding of the next (3) bullets above (On-Page SEO & Tune SEO to Competition) is one of the main reasons recent algorithm updates have been dropping sites left and right that don't know their SEO (and the ones that "do"). 

 

• • Posting on your blog or doing On-Page SEO on every page of the website doesn't do anything but hurt your website.

 

 

• • Posting for the sake of "fresh content" (as if it's still 2014) doesn't do anything but create index bloat, eating up crawl budget and time that Googlebot can spend on your important content, the content that should be served in Search Results, the content that should be focused in targeting.

I'm getting real tired of dealing with this one...

 

 

• • The main problem that some of these things create, in addition to index bloat, is keyword cannibalization. Google ranks web-pages not web-sites. This means that posting to your blog, creating more pages for Google to decide how to serve, or doing On-Page SEO to the contact page for your main target keywords, posting so much industry-related content topical to your main keywords with highly relevant information--moreso than your main content that was supposed to be ranking for that keyword--these are all big mistakes. 

 

 

• • The remedy to this is to simply have a better understanding of Page Targeting. 

     

    • • Focus content creation toward your main content pages. Stop making your blog more informative than main content. ​

    • • This will naturally focus more relevancy (term frequency of keywords) topically on these pages.

    • • Additionally, if you're big on doing On-Page SEO (even in its most basic form) be sure you have a clear understanding of where each page is being served. Don't optimize two different pages for the same keyword.

Just gonna make sure that was loud enough for everyone to hear: 

Never Optimize two different webpages for the same keyword.

Feel free to contact if you have any SEO questions.

 

On-Page SEO

 

On-Page SEO is a lost art. You can read a post I wrote about a year ago on that here.

It's super important to tune your On-Page to competition, per keyword. However, outside of specific correlation to specific keyword, there is one constant we have found over the years from running correlation studies: What seems to be the #1 On-Page ranking factor is simply having a diversity of which. 

As you'll read in that article I wrote on On-Page, we measure over 500+ different aspects about a web-page, per keyword, across the top 100 ranking pages. A good portion of that are 'SEO Factors,' theoretically, and these are what are important when we refer to factor diversity. 

That's all probably a bit hard to understand, and I want to keep this article actionable. Here's where you should be diversifying keywords in On-Page:

 

• • Title Tag

• • Meta Description

• • Open Graph & Twitter Markup

• • Meta Keywords (Yep, they still help)

• • Heading Tags (H1-H6)

• • Anchor Text (Internal or External)

• • Alt Text

• • List Tags

• • Title Attributes

• • Strong Tags

To name a few...

If you're decent at On-Page SEO, that's probably all pretty redundant for you. But I think I lesser understood concept is the implication of true Page Targeting in conjunction with good On-Page SEO. 

I'm gonna say it again: Never optimize two different pages for the same keyword.

For instance, each dental service you want to rank for gets the whole On-Page job on each dental service page. These are the topical main content pages. 

You want to rank for 'dentist +location?' Topically, that's likely your home page. So, those keywords should be inundated inside these tags on the home page. Not on any other. 

Pissed I said Meta Keywords still help? Yeah, I'll hear the argument that it's been deprecated. I don't think they work like they used to.

But, we have reason to believe Keyword density is a huge SEO factor. We measure Raw & Clean. In my book, the jury is still out whether which is more important. I've got a decent hunch that Raw Density (# of matches before stripping the head block, and other HTML tags) carries some serious weight.

If anything, meta keywords helps us in two places:

 

• • Bringing Keyword density up

• • Keeping your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) & Page Targeting nice and organized

I work on a lot of projects, from site to site, it can get confusing (especially on the big ones) what each page was supposed to target. Soon, I'll be hiring help around the office and as we Collaborate between the team, this will be even more important. 

This is why I brought up Meta Keywords to close out this section, think of this tag as your little reminder as to what each page should be targeting. Further, if you've followed the last two points in the article correctly, when filling out this tag, you'll never have two of the same (or topically similar) keyword in the meta keywords across two or more pages. 

 

Tuning SEO to Competition

 

This one is going to be a little trick to help you along when you don't have the powerhouse correlation software that I do. 

 

• • Take cues from competition's ranking pages for target keywords

• • Try to eyeball the On-Page SEO tuning to these pages

Search the target keyword. It's amazing how much information you can glean from this.

View-source:competitor-website.com/target-ranking-page in a chrome browser and start ctrl-F-ing the through the source code the On-Page tags we listed above. 

Note how many keywords they have in H1 & H2 tags. Get an idea if they have filled out their alt text. See a lot of

• tags? Is that a Keyword tuned nav menu, a formatted unordered list in the body content, or both?

  How many keywords to they have in the Title? How many keywords are showing the SERP text? 

  One of the most important SEO concepts gleamed from a search result:

  What are some related keywords that Google is bolding in the SERP? 

  In a certain way, Google bolds keywords in a search to show off how relevant its results are for the searched term. Looking a little deeper, this gleams what keywords it thinks are relevant: including related terms & synonyms. 

  Take note of what synonyms and related words are popping up in bold. This is a glimpse into Google AI's understanding of a topic. Sometimes, it's got a good handle on related & synonym terms to a topic or industry, sometimes not.

  We tend to consider any of these bolded terms 'keywords,' and inundate our On-Page SEO with these words all the same. It's a nice way to make, say, a less spammy-looking Title or H1, being able reference keywords multiple times using synonyms.

   

  
   

  
   

  So what's the Big Joke here?

   

  This has nothing to do with Dental SEO, it just has to do with SEO.

   

  Whether you're a dentist or you operate a different practice to dental entirely; so long as you're looking for help ranking for profitable terms in Search (SEO), this article is talking to you.

   

  Looking for SEO Help beyond what this article provides for your Dental Practice? 

  Contact Us Today!

   

  Frequently Asked Questions

   

   

  • • What Is Dental SEO?

       

      • • Dental SEO should be approached like any other Search Engine Optimization campaign. There is absolutely no advantage to being a 'dental seo' specialist. As alluded to above, we feel those who supposedly specialize in only Dental are at a competitive disadvantage as they intrinsically understand less about how search engines work.

  • • Doesn't that make them better at Marketing for the Practice, understanding what Patients want?

       

      • • Yes, it does. They are better marketers for specializing in the field. They are intrinsically better at the marketing aspect after the User lands on the site, and how to convert that traffic into Patients. However, this does not precede SEO, this proceeds understanding how Google approaches Sort Order based on a User's query, which is necessary to executing true Search Engine Optimization & taking out competition directly from Search Results on Search Engines like Google. You should have a marketer on your side; this is not really our lane. Do recognize, Google's oft-regurgitated sentiment on Content Quality & User Experience is kool-aid that you should not drink. Good marketing does not equal ranking. If you are going to rank in your local area in both Google Maps & Google Search, you need someone who understands the technical side of the website & search so that your Marketer can go to work; you need a talented SEO that will compete on your behalf.

  • • How should we think of Organic Search Engine Results Pages & Local Search / Google Maps?

       

      • • Local Search & the 'blue links' found in a normal Search Engine Results Page can be a tricky one. The first thing to remember is that in Local Search, Google Maps are a completely different beast & concept than that of the Blue Links below. As the regular blue links are concerned, they normally don't reshuffle very often based on proximity to searcher, at least to the very high degree than that of the Map Listings. This is a very wide topic, on which we should definitely write an entire article at some point, but I will leave you with one tip:

      • • Plan to optimize and track for the 'keyword +locality,' in this case, 'dentist +locality.' This is because when introducing proximity-to-searcher into the aspect of tracking, this creates a wide array of potential extra variables into the equation when managing expectations with a client (or practice) and repeating found results in the wild. That is to say, a keyword like 'dental practice near me' means there are a huge amount of extra potential variables where 'me' could be when searching that could change the output drastically. If we keep our expectations managed around 'dentistry +location-keyword' this search term is technically calling on only one search engine results page (except the Map Listings, but that's another story). The flip side of this concept is that when running the On-Page Optimization for the same outcome (based on tracked keywords as addressed above), you will optimize all meta tags and content alike to include 'dental practice +location-keyword' which is the effective process to rank for 'dentist near me' if 'me' resides in 'location-keyword.' Because that process would look the same anyways, we manage expectations and run campaigns with all local keywords, dental and non-dental alike, with '+keyword +location' in order to iron out potential discrepancies--Including that of client searches for 'dental practice' on the other side of town and does not agree with the search engine results page we reported on originally.

  • • How do we deal with the Competition?
       

      • • While many Search Engine Optimization agencies leverage Off-Page Optimization and Backlinks in order to best their competition, we focus very aggressively on On-Page Optimization, by tuning and measuring to very specific measurements. However, not everyone has the software like we have at our disposal. We feel the best way to deal with competitors is to, while keeping topical focus on a single page as address above, try to write on these services pages as if it were your blog. Make additions with topical relevance to 'dental seo' that reference both the exact keyword, as well as related topics and subtopics. Add this content as needed, try to tune the keywords that will become your On-Page equity to competitive parity, adding sections at a time, watching the ranks in the Search Engine Results Page changing at the same time. Give each addition a few weeks to settle and be sure to watch the rate of Indexation in Search Console, to be sure Google has seen your changes.

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