Which keywords are your dental SEO company chasing?

Why your keywords may not be bringing website traffic!

Does your SEO team present you with a monthly report which shows you that your website is top of Google for a bunch of fairly obscure terms? Phrases such as “direct access hygienist Newmarket” or “air polishing Grimsby”? Stuff that on a shiny report may look good but practically means very little. The bottom line is that no-one actually searches for these terms so presenting them as SEO “wins” is of limited use other than to try to make out that the SEO company is doing a great job.

Whilst it is important to understand that “long-tail” keywords are important in bringing traffic to a website (more here), using their ranking position to measure the success of your SEO team is not very smart and something that all dental business owners need to be aware of.

The general lack of understanding around this along with the sneaky tactics some SEO companies use, was brought home to me recently when a client presented a free report she’d been sent, apparently detailing her website performance and how to improve it. A large section of this covered how the prospecting company could get her website to prominent positions in Google for a range of meaningless terms. Fortunately it was easy enough to illustrate why this was a scam and how such “work” would add little to her already excellent ranking positions.

Appropriate keyword markers

The days of having a huge list of tracked keywords in your SEO report are over. Today we need to understand that the real key to success is building and maintaining good quality website traffic rather than the obsession about keyword positions. Ultimately it’s traffic which leads to conversions (new dental patient enquiries) not whether you’re top of Google for a particular keyword or phrase.

However, it is still useful to derive a list of “marker” keywords which can also be used to see how a campaign is performing. These should include the main generic phrases such as “dentist location”, “cosmetic dentist location” “NHS dentist location” (if appropriate) as well as the key treatment terms such as “dental implants”, “invisible braces” etc. If you can gain prominence for these terms, chances are that you will also be in good shape for the associated long-tail phrases too; particularly now that Google can understand web page content contextually, far better than ever before.

Recommendation

If your digital marketing company insist on presenting a long-list of fairly meaningless keyword ranking positions, ask them to explain why. You should then request that they rationalise back to a meaningful list and apply an equal amount of effort to reporting traffic to your website (organic and mobile/tablet as well as overall) and also conversions.

This way you will have a balanced SEO reporting format which really does help you to understand if your campaign is performing, not just a bunch of random keyword positions.

You can find more information about how to measure your marketing performance throughout this blog but if you prefer to speak to someone directly, please call our digital marketing team on 01332 672548 for no-obligation assistance.