Having a dental website allows people to learn more about your practice and the range of services you provide to help maintain oral health. In fact, most potential patients look for a dental practice or dentist on the internet and even book an appointment online. But you won’t attract traffic just by having a dental website and leaving it at that. To increase the visibility of your website and drive online traffic, you need to use various practical digital marketing tips and tactics.   

Here are ten actionable ways you can use to drive traffic to your dental website and grow your dental practice as a result.

#1. Apply Dental SEO

For any website to perform in organic search, search engine optimization (SEO) is an essential digital marketing tactic. In fact, it is the foundation on which you’ll later build and expand your practice’s online presence. Properly done dental SEO drives a host of benefits including increased website traffic, brand awareness, competitive advantage, user experience and credibility.

The basics of dental SEO includes:

Keyword Research: Find those keywords and phrases that potential patients are using to look for a dentist or dental clinic. You can broadly categorize these queries into high level search terms and specific service-related keywords. Common dental keywords you may want to target are “dentist near me”, “kids dentist”, “dental clinic” etc. People often use keywords such as “dental implants”, “root canal”, “teeth whitening” and “tooth extraction” etc. Conduct adequate research to find all such keywords that people use to look for a dentist or dental clinic.

Content Optimization: Once you have finalized the most suitable keywords for the type of dental practice you run, it is time to incorporate them into your website content. Add these keywords to your web pages’ title tags and meta descriptions. Optimize the URL structures of pages as well.

Technical Optimization: You are not done with your dental SEO without taking care of the technical SEO in a correct manner. This involves improving the download speed of your dental website, linking web pages internally and creating a navigational structure that is easy to understand for search engines. XML sitemaps and schema are other crucial elements of technical SEO.

With the help of proper search engine optimization, you’ll be able to drive large volumes of targeted traffic to your dental website. More targeted traffic translates to a stream of qualified leads for your practice.

#2. Start a Dental Blog

A blog, attached to your website, can be your dental practice’s best friend. It can help your practice in multiple ways. A well-run blog will bring in a good deal of high quality traffic on a regular basis. According to a study, businesses that blog attract 55% more website visitors than businesses that don’t. Not just that, a blog helps generate a great ROI and tons of backlinks over time.

Here are some topic ideas for your blog:

Educate Patients: Write to educate patients on oral hygiene and common dental problems. Provide answers to common questions related to topics such as gum diseases, sensitive teeth, flossing, cavities etc. This is an excellent way to boost website traffic and engage potential patients.

Showcase Your Expertise: Use your dental blog as a platform to demonstrate you are an expert in your field. Share high-value information and insights with your patients. Talk about new trends and technologies in dental science. Present case studies and ask readers to share their opinions. This will increase people’s confidence in what you say and the dental services you offer.

Offer Promotions: Promote special offers and discounts to bring in new patients. Some examples of dental offers include free teeth whitening, free consultations, free teeth cleaning, discounts on x-rays etc. 

Use a content calendar to plan topics for your dental blog in advance. In any case, don’t forget to optimize the blog posts in a proper manner. Effective optimization of your blog content is essential to rank at higher positions in search engine results and boost the rate of conversion and lead generation.  

#3. Focus on Evergreen Topics

An evergreen blog topic is a topic that remains of interest to readers for a long period of time. While you publish educational and insightful content, you should never forget to create evergreen blog content. These evergreen posts provide long-term value while requiring less frequent refreshes.

Examples of evergreen topics include: 

How to Choose the Right Toothbrush
Common Causes of Toothache
Causes of Bad Breath
Tips for Maintaining Good Oral Hygiene
Best Foods for Healthy Tooth
Easy Ways to Avoid Tooth Loss

You can create evergreen topics in a variety of content formats such as tips, lists, how-tos, guides etc. The goal of this type of content is to drive traffic to your dental website for a long time. Just remember to select the most suitable keywords. Long-tail keywords can be your best bet. 

#4. Promote Your Content on Social Media

Social media can be a potential source of website traffic, provided you leverage it in an effective manner. A well-written, high value piece of content shared via social media can go viral in a couple of minutes.

Great content doesn’t travel around the internet on its own. In order for people to find your content, you should promote your dental blog posts on some of the most popular social media platforms. Sharing posts on Google Business will improve your website’s ranking in local search results. Twitter is suitable for sharing short posts and links to your blog content. Likewise, you can use other social media channels to drive referral traffic to your dental website.

When using various social media networks, you should know the best time and days to share content for maximum traction. Posting content when your target audience is most active will generate lots of clicks and shares. Don’t forget to use the relevant hashtags to broaden the reach of your posts.

#5. Make Your Dental Website Responsive

Responsive design lends a website the characteristic to change its layout to suit the viewing needs of the user. The purpose of such a design is to make a website render well on any device or screen size.

Today, most patients use their mobile devices to look for a dentist or dental clinic online. So, you can’t look at mobile-friendly websites as an option anymore. It is now essential to have a responsive website, which users can comfortably access and navigate, no matter what the device type. Such a website looks and performs great even on smaller smartphones. Mobile optimization provides users with a seamless experience whether they are on a mobile device or desktop and improves search rankings on major search engines such as Google and Bing.

Not optimizing your dental website for mobile simply means losing a lot of potential patients, which is a risk you can’t afford. So, make sure you adopt a modern, responsive design for your dental website.

#6. Regularly Perform Content Refreshes

Major search engines give more weightage to up-to-date and relevant content. Google counts content freshness as one of its ranking factors. So, it is not a good practice to publish a piece of content and never revisit it. Even if a certain blog post ranks well in SERPs, you should not ignore updating it with fresh information. This will give that blog post a further boost in search rankings.

It is crucial to understand what a content update actually means. Just replacing a few words here and there isn’t a refresh. 

Here are some content update tips for your help:

A tour of your dental clinic
Videos explaining various dental procedures
Video testimonials
How-to or tutorial videos

Google’s modern and smart algorithm can easily detect the kind of changes you make to your website content. Always, perform website content updates in a proper manner to increase traffic and engagement. 

#7. Incorporate Video

Creating written content is good. But you should also include videos in your overall plan to drive website traffic. In fact, high quality videos can do an excellent job of attracting and engaging the target audience. 

With YouTube video consumption touching one billion hours every day, it is not difficult to understand the awesome potential of this type of content. Videos can help you deliver your core message in a crisp and interesting way, providing you the opportunity to connect with potential patients. Here are some good ideas to create videos to get more traffic and boost engagement.

A tour of your dental clinic
Videos explaining various dental procedures
Video testimonials
How-to or tutorial videos

There are multiple ways you can use these videos. One good way is to embed them in the blog posts you publish. You can also publish videos on your YouTube channel and add a link to your dental website in the description. Adding call to action messages in the videos directly works well too.

#8. Create Fresh and Unique Infographics

Humans learn faster with the help of visuals. Infographics can be “worth a thousand words” too, provided you pack them with high-value content and make them look good to the eye. Readers like to learn from infographics while enjoying it as well. Fresh and original infographics can increase traffic to your dental clinic website, attracting potential patients in significant numbers.

People don’t just like to view and learn from infographics, but they also enjoy sharing them with others. You can use this content format to quickly stand out from competitors and grow your dental practice.

Select a Goal: You may want to use an infographic to inform and educate people or tell a story. Before you start to create an infographic, you should clearly know the goal that you plan to achieve with it.

Add Facts and Figures: One key feature of a good infographic is the presentation of key facts and figures. In fact, infographics containing interesting statistics do quite well on the internet. If you plan to make your infographics succeed in its goal, do remember to include eye-opening statistics.

Use the Right Layout: Don’t just put information on a blank canvas. Design your dental infographics in a way that reflects a theme and communicates the message effectively. Popular layouts include comparison infographics, timeline infographics, list infographics, one-column infographic, two-column infographics, hierarchical infographics etc. Make sure you pick what you actually need. 

Also, remember to have a lot of white space in your infographics. Adequate breathing space makes the information in the infographic look uncluttered. It improves readability and gives prominence to key facts.

#9. Feature Reviews and Testimonials

Any dentist or dental clinic cannot grow without building trust among patients about the quality of its care and services. 

Reviews and testimonials help you achieve exactly that. Positive reviews don’t just boost website traffic, but they can also significantly increase conversions. So, you should make it a point to list patient reviews and testimonials on your dental website in prominent locations. High-traffic pages such as the homepage and the services pages are perfect places to highlight positive reviews. It is a good idea to create a dedicated section for listing testimonials on your website, while linking back to platforms where patient have left those testimonials.

Video testimonials are proven to increase website traffic by up to 157%. So, make sure you place them on your website. Patients talking about their dental issues and how your product or services helped them as well as their overall experience with your team can be a game-changer for your clinic.

#10. Utilize Directory Listings

Think of online directories as virtual Yellow Pages. For your dental practice to be easily found online, you need to list it in directories such as Google Business, Yelp, MapQuest, Dun & Bradstreet, Foursquare etc. 

People often visit various online directories to seek out products and services as per their specific requirements. That is why directory listings help service providers generate a significant amount of website traffic. Plus, these listings also boost your overall SEO strategy in the long run. Here are some tips to optimize your dental practice listing in directories to maximize benefits.

Select the right categories/ subcategories for listing
Include as much information as possible
Provide accurate business information
Add top quality photos
Incorporate keywords in descriptions

It is crucial to maintain accuracy and consistency in listing business information across online directories. There are many directories dedicated to listing small businesses and service providers. Search for those that are a closest match for your unique services and list your practice or clinic there. 

Need Help to Increase Your Dental Website’s Visibility and Traffic?  

To significantly grow your practice and drive patient acquisition, you need to boost your website’s traffic and online presence. If you are uncertain about how to get started and use the ways described above in a proper manner, don’t stress. Whether you plan for effective SEO, want to start a dental blog or scale up your content creation for various platforms, feel free to connect with me for a free discussion. Give me a phone call or send me an email via the enquiry form.