Dental surgeries in the UK have an interesting position when it comes to marketing.
They are a place where people can get health care for aching teeth or restoration of teeth that have gone missing. But with the majority of dental surgeries now offering private options, such as cosmetic dental care, they are now also places of business and a core part of succeeding in business is to have a marketing plan to help you stand out from the competition.
Search engine optimisation, or SEO, should be a core part of any marketing plan as it is not only the best way to get visibility online for your dental practice, but it is also more affordable than printing thousands of flyers and investing in a graphic designer.
If you have never considered investing in SEO before for your dental surgery, you may want to know a bit more about it. And this article aims to set down the importance and advantages of dental SEO as part of a marketing strategy.
It gets higher rankings
At some point or another, you will have been on Google or another search engine and typed in a website or something that you were looking for. Do you ever wonder how some websites make it to the top of these search engine results? It is because of SEO and because the websites are optimised for this type of search. This will include things like having an up-to-date blog, having a website that follows a logical order and making sure that the website itself is mobile accessible. Ensuring your website is up to speed with SEO will get you to the front page of any search engine results, which will increase your visibility.
It promotes visibility
It is something of a shocking statistic that as many as 98% of people who use search engines do not click on the second page of search engine results, meaning that in order to be visible when somebody is searching for a service, you need to be on the top page.
SEO ensures visibility for your dental surgery, and if you have a keyword spread throughout your website, an updated blog and an interactive presence on social media, then you will likely have no issue attracting patients as you are more visible.
It attracts patients
SEO and social media now go hand in hand, and social media platforms such as Facebook act as beacons to attract patients that may have been previously excluded from a market, particularly patients who are under the age of 25. A clever SEO strategy will not only aim to attract these patients but will also seek to engage with them, thus helping you to grow your patient list.
It helps with engagement
SEO helps to promote engagement with potential patients or current ones via emails being sent to their inboxes, Facebook statuses and engagement on social media platforms. These are all part of SEO, and regular engagement with those asking questions about your dental surgery on social media pages will help you to boost the SEO of the page and grow the surgery.
It promotes brand and tone
SEO helps to promote the brand of your surgery in a way that no other type of marketing can. As it is online, it is accessible to a wider audience, so if you are looking to expand your dental surgery into cosmetic options such as dental implants, SEO can not only help to advertise this fact, but can also attract patients to your surgery who are looking to undergo this procedure.
