Part Two of our SEO Information Series
Excerpt: Welcome to Part 2 of our informational series on Dental Search Engine Optimization (SEO) programs. If you haven’t read Part one of the series on the State of Dental SEO in 2021, we recommend you start there. In this series, the team at DIGI Search will be highlighting the ranking factors that have a positive impact on your Google rankings. We will also be looking at factors that used to be critical but have been phased out by Google. This first Ranking Factors post will focus primarily on your website’s content, which is a key element of any SEO program. Because DIGI Search has a focus on putting SEO first, we ensure that any optimization completed during your dental SEO program will provide the best results for your practice.
What Factors Affect my Dental SEO Program?
As technology continues to advance, we are also seeing search engines like Google and Bing change along with it. Search engines constantly adjust their internal search algorithms to deliver the best results to the users of their search products. This means that your dental practice’s website needs to be optimized around the individual ranking factors that are being used by the search engine algorithm. At DIGI Search, our SEO team ensures that the most important ranking factors are covered on your site to help you rank higher in search results. In this section, we will primarily be focusing on Google’s algorithms, but Microsoft’s Bing search engine uses similar ranking factors for their content.
In recent years, Google has been changing its algorithms to focus more on the overall user experience on a website. This is compared to previous years where the focus was more on technical elements and having the correct search phrases on your site. Because of this, older dental SEO programs put more of a focus on having variations of keyword phrases on the site, instead of focusing on a quality library of educational content.
Your SEO provider must keep up with the frequent changes that search engines make to their ranking factors to keep your program from becoming outdated. In this post and the subsequent posts, we will be highlighting the factors that are most critical to your dental SEO program, as well as some ranking factors that no longer provide benefits.
Content Ranking Factors for Dental Search Engine Optimization
SEO Ranking Factor: Content (Important)
When it comes to your dental SEO program, the key focus should always be on the content of your website. Google uses the content on your website as the “answer” to a user’s search (question.) Google scans the content on your site frequently to ensure that your site is the best resource for any questions that patients may have. At DIGI Search, we highly recommend that your website features a complete content library focusing on the services that your practice offers. This content library will help Google to understand your services and allow them to show your practice as a solution to a user’s problem.
Once you have a solid base of content on your website, it never hurts to add more over time. While we would recommend against completely changing out content that is already ranking well, adding content for new services you are offering or blog posts about your practice can help improve your relevance in search engine results pages (SERPS.)
SEO Ranking Factor: Content Length (Not Important)
While quality content is a critical ranking factor for your website, Google does not discriminate based on the length of the content. In years past, SEO programs would heavily weigh longer pieces of content with the thinking that if some content was good, more was better. Google can now analyze your website content and judges the quality of the content over the quantity. Your goal with content is to keep your website informational while keeping your reader’s attention.
SEO Ranking Factor: Title Tags & Meta Descriptions (Important)
In addition to your website’s content, it is also important to include information that is specifically for the search engines. Two elements that are critical to your dental SEO program are Title Tags and Meta Descriptions. These two elements are added to every page of your site and provide Google with information they can use to categorize the page. This is also the information that will show up for your page in Google’s search results. While Google can automatically pull content from your site to use as a Title Tag or a Meta Description, adding your own during on-page optimization of your site allows you to create a unique page appearance that will help your rankings and overall conversions.
SEO Ranking Factor: Meta Keywords (Not Important)
Meta keywords are pieces of information that can be added to each page to show search terms that are used in the content. Before 2009, meta keywords were an important element of a dental SEO program to let Google know the keywords you were targeting. As Google’s tools have improved, they have been able to better understand your content without the need for meta keywords, and they have stopped using this in their search algorithms as of 2009.
SEO Ranking Factor: Header Tags (H1, H2, etc.) (Important)
The final piece of content that can positively affect your rankings are header tags, also known as H1, H2, and more. Header tags serve two important roles on your website, they allow you to easily segment your content while also providing concise summaries for Google to utilize. A page’s H1 tag is the most important tag on that page and should focus on that page’s subject and your practice’s geolocation to help drive hyperlocal search results. Other tags like H2 and H3 tags help break up the content to improve your readability and site structure, which helps Google better understand the overall content of the page. Your SEO program will benefit heavily from the correct usage of header tags in your content.
In Conclusion: Content Ranking Factors for Dental SEO
Your dental practice should never underestimate the benefits of a well-written and diverse content library. This content can set you apart from your competition and help you rank highly in local search results. By putting your website’s focus on quality content and the important on-page ranking factors, you can ensure your practice ranks well in Google for years to come. The SEO team at DIGI Search can help your practice improve in Google rankings with a Dental SEO program targeting your key services. Our dental websites feature an in-depth content library that will provide Google the information it needs, and our custom-written title tags, meta descriptions, and header tags will give you the boost you need to dominate search results. Contact us today to get started with a new Dental Website and Dental Search Engine Optimization program.
