It’s true: for your practice website to be found on the internet, you need to have it structured properly using the right keywords (or search terms). What makes a search term the ‘right one’? They need to be terms that real people (not dentists) are using to try to find a dentist or dental service in their local area… [Read more…]
SEO for Dental Practices
When many of the Australian dentists I have worked with decide to take the leap onto the internet, they suddenly find themselves on a steep learning curve! They discover that their journey online doesn’t begin and end with a brand new dental practice website- they soon learn that pushing the ‘Go Live’ button on their website doesn’t bring a stream of new patients automatically. [Read more…]
Is SEO Automatically Done To Your Website?
What many Dentists don’t realise is that SEO is not always done automatically or done well by their Web Designer. Some Web Designers have no idea how to do it, or have not kept up-to-date with what SEO techniques are working in 2011. Even if a site was optimised On-Page as it was built, without ongoing attention to On-Page and Off-Page SEO factors, rankings often end up being very low. [Read more…]
On-Page Factors for SEO
Here are some of the On-Page Factors that your Web Designer or Webmaster should be applying to your site.
- There must be good site structure, easy to navigate for visitors and Google-bots.
- Good use of keywords and key-phrases (search terms) relevant to dentistry, both within the content and in the coding behind each page
- External links going only to quality sites
- Fresh and relevant content regularly added to your site
- Your Practice Website content should be original– great chunks of copied text on your site will not give you any ‘ranking points’ at all.
- It is best that the site does not use Flash or Frames
Older websites (Aged Domains) or sites with higher Page Ranks (recognized authority) tend to rank higher
SEO is the Key to Organic Rankings
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the term that refers to the things that can be done to improve a website’s visibility in the search engines, especially Google. The goal of search engine optimization is to ensure your website appeals to search engine crawlers, or bots. The search engines will take note of your site and its content, categorizing it in a way that will allow it to show up in the SERPs (search engine results pages) when certain keywords are typed. For example, a dentist in Canberra would expect that their practice website would be optimised to appear for a term like “Canberra dentist”. [Read more…]