What is SEO and why do I need it for my dental website?

Improving website ranking positions in Google using search engine optimisation.

Continuing our Q&A series, today we look at another very popular question we are frequently asked by dentists who are looking to broaden their website reach and acquire new patients from the Internet.

Most dentists have heard of SEO (or SOE as some mistakenly refer to it after confusion with their practice management system!) but relatively few fully understand just how important it is when it comes to realising the full potential of the web for gaining new patients.

In a nutshell, search engine optimisation refers to all of the techniques and activities which can be brought to bear to help move a website upwards in the search rankings; particularly Google, which accounts for most of the searches undertaken in the UK.

Historically, SEO used to be “easy” and a couple of marketing companies with a specific dental bias made a lot of money simply by outsourcing the activity to very cheap off-shore companies whilst they charged their own clients large fees. However, in the early part of 2012, Google got wise to this and penalised “quick and dirty” SEO with many websites being effectively deleted overnight from the search results. Nowadays, SEO is a much more diligent affair which must be underpinned by quality and lie absolutely within Google’s web publishing guidelines. So no cheap wins these days unfortunately.

So why do you need SEO?

Data shows that most fruitful channel for new patient enquiries after word-of-mouth referral is the Internet and more specifically the Google search engine. The top three positions in Google command over 60% of all clicks and these levels decrease quite markedly as you descend down the first page of the search results. There are other factors in play now, for example the local “map” results, but suffice to say that the higher your position in the search results the more traffic you will get. It’s also true to say that most people don’t search for services off page one.

This information alone should be sufficient to indicate why you need a prominent search engine position and consequently why dental website SEO is important.

The main components of dental SEO

Optimisation comes in two main parts – “on-site” work and “off-site” work. The on-site work is quite a technical affair and involves ensuring that the structure and content of the website is configured favourably for Google. The text quality must be good and suitably engaging to ensure that visitors stay on your website once they land. Similarly, use of elements such as video can also pay dividends. Google is thought to measure web page “dwell” time and uses it as a quality indicator for ranking purposes. Good design companies will pay a lot of attention to the initial on-site set-up and it also makes good sense to review and adapt it periodically as your SEO campaign progresses.

Off-site optimisation is all about the activities which go on on third-party websites and which are associated with your own website. This will include back-links to your site, publishing content related to your business, mentions on local business directories, use of social media to disseminate information, blogging and more. All of this activity is monitored by Google and the “signals” it generates help to boost your search engine positions. As noted previously, this type of work must be good quality and conform to Google’s web publishing guidelines – get it wrong and you lay yourself open to receiving a website penalty which can be extremely difficult to recover.

How long does SEO take to achieve results?

This is a very good question and one for which there is no precise answer and it very much depends on the competition for the search term. So a client who aspires to be being top for the search phrase “dentist London” should expect a long and expensive campaign compared to a dentist who is after a niche term such as “sedation dentist Ipswich” – the former would be orders of magnitude more difficult to attain than the latter. Often it is a better strategy to target “longer tail” search terms to attract highly targeted enquiries than to go for the generic terms in competitive areas where websites have been entrenched in the top slots for years. This should be evaluated and explained by your digital marketing team before you sign up. However, you also need to be cautious of services which deliberately target easy search phrases which won’t really lead to much website traffic.

However, all SEO is not “long haul”. Google is extremely adept at identifying web content which is interesting and useful and if sufficient numbers of people are viewing and sharing it, then you can get a top ranking very quickly indeed.

As a rule of thumb, we would expect to see a lot of key dental search terms advance to page one of Google in 4 – 5 months. For the more general phrases like “dentist” and “cosmetic dentist” it can take longer and particularly where competition is significant. It does need to be made very clear that there are no overnight successes with organic (free) SEO rankings these days, so please be wary of anyone who promises this.

What does dental SEO cost?

Another good question and again there is no “one size fits all”. Indeed, you do need to be wary of dental marketing companies who have a single charge for their SEO services or go for the “bronze, silver, gold” package approach. If you think about it logically, all optimisation requirements are different, simply because all businesses and competitive environments are different. So all campaigns really need to be individually analysed and a bespoke scope and cost developed from there. A simple bolt-on package with a pre-determined price is never going to be optimal for your specific requirements, so this type of service is best avoided.

So as a rule-of-thumb for rough budgeting purposes, you should expect to pay anything from £250 -> £450 + vat per month for core SEO services for work done for locations outside of the major cities. For inner city locations where competition is intense, costs can be higher than this; however “niche” campaigns are possible at lower prices. As mentioned previously, each campaign we undertake is bespoke to the client and consequently it is not possible to provide accurate pricing in an article such as this unfortunately.

Don’t get ripped off!

Unfortunately the world of search optimisation has gained a bad reputation and perhaps justifiably so. 5 or 6 years ago when SEO was “easy” and Google’s penalties were not so punitive, lots of companies jumped on the SEO bandwagon, often outsourcing to very cheap offshore suppliers. This actually included a couple of the large UK dental marketing agencies. However, post 2012 when Google took action, many of the websites controlled by these companies were penalised and businesses and reputations suffered as a result. These companies are still selling SEO services, often at very high cost, but struggle to get the results they used to before Google cracked down on manipulative practices. So if you are approached by one of these companies, check their track records very closely – if you know where to look, you’ll see lots of failures as well as successes.

There are also the companies who still try to peddle optimisation services at ridiculously low prices which may seem to be quite attractive to the uninitiated. They typically present a large menu of the work they will do each month, but in reality, much of it harks back to the techniques of pre 2012 and is now defunct and dangerous. Please avoid this!

Summary

One of the main questions we are asked by dentists when it comes to website marketing relates to search engine optimisation, and reasonably so. We’ve seen just how important prominent search positions are in terms of generating website traffic and new patient enquiries. Organic search is still way ahead of pay-per-click and social media channels for this and consequently must be a major component of your digital marketing strategy.

We’ve also take a look at how long SEO takes to yield results, what you might expect to pay and also some of the things to avoid. SEO is a huge discipline and we could never cover all of the techniques and nuances here. However, if you’d like the team at Dental Media to be involved to take a closer look at your digital strategy, whether you’re just starting out or more established, then please call us on 01332 672548 for a no-obligation discussion.