There are many different techniques and strategies that you can implement to make sure that you have a successful patient attraction system in place for your dental practice. Digital marketing is the best way to attract new patients since the majority of the public searches for the answers to their daily needs online; this includes healthcare-related issues and healthcare services. If a person is experiencing dental issues, then it is more than likely that they will ask Google to direct them to more information and help them find a solution to their problem.
Dental SEO
When patients type their dental needs into the Google search bar, your website must be the first page they come across. To do this, you need search engine optimisation. Search engine optimisation or dental SEO is the key to a good patient attraction system and helping patients find you online. Dental SEO is the system of techniques that you implement on your website to help you reach a top position on the search results page. The higher you are listed on the results page, the more likely you are to attract patients who either want to address their dental needs or register with a new dental practice.
Paid advertisements and organic listings
There is a paid results section and an organic results section on the search results page. If you are a new dental practice, then you may wish to invest in Google’s paid advertisements, to begin with; this can help you build brand awareness and attract attention from new patients. However, Google Ads can be expensive to maintain, especially if you are a small dental practice, so during this time, you will need to create a website with SEO to help you achieve a good ranking in the organic section of the search results page.
Research shows that the top three results on the search results list gain approximately 60% of clicks. The top listing gains more than a third of the attention, whilst those who do not make it in the top 5 remain unnoticed. Organic traffic costs nothing for your business, and good SEO will help you attract organic website traffic for many years to come.
Analyse your performance
If you already have a website for your dental practice, then you can carry out SEO analysis yourself. You can search for common dental terms on Google and see where your website ranks on the results list. You could use terms such as “dentist near me” or “best dentist in [your location]”. You will be able to find out how you rank compared to your competitors, and you can also carry out competitor analysis by clicking on the top three websites that come up on the list. This analysis will help you determine what your competitors have to offer and what makes their websites so great that they have achieved a top ranking amongst the other dental practices in the area. If you speak to a digital dental marketing team, they will audit your website and determine how they can help you improve and enhance it so that you become one of the top performers too.