Understanding the difference between “local” SEO and “organic” SEO (sometimes called “traditional” SEO) can help dental practices get better results with dental marketing. Local SEO focuses on optimizing a business’s presence for local search results, while organic SEO aims to improve overall search engine rankings. In this post, we’ll explore these concepts, their importance for dentists, and how to effectively utilize both strategies to attract more patients.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It’s a set of strategies and techniques used to increase a website’s visibility on search engines like Google. When someone searches for a dentist, you want your practice to appear at the top of the search results. Effective SEO can make this happen.
Two Types of SEO for Dental Practices
Local SEO
Local SEO focuses on optimizing your online presence to attract more business from relevant local searches — in which potential patients search for dentists in a specific geographic area.
The core mission of local SEO is to get your dental practice listed in the “local pack” at the top of Google search results. Sometimes called the “map pack,” the local pack is a list of prioritized 3-5 (usually 3) dental practices that appear in a designated box at the top of the search engine results page (SERP).
Key Ranking Factors in Local SEO
- Google Business Profile (GBP): Your dental practice’s Google Business Profile is essentially an online business card for your practice. It includes key information about your practice, including contact information, services, business hours, and more. Claiming and optimizing your GBP listing is crucial. We’ve got an entire guide to optimizing GBPs for dental practices.
- Local Citations: “Citations” is a fancy marketing word for online directory listings. These are valuable opportunities to demonstrate your practice’s relevance in local search. Ensuring your practice is listed on various online directories such as Yelp, ZocDoc, Facebook, YellowPages.com, the local Chamber of Commerce, and others, can go a long way in optimizing your local SEO. Making sure your “NAP” citations (name, address, and phone number) are consistent across directories is essential.
- Reviews: Google reviews aren’t only important for building trust with potential patients; they’re also increasingly used as a ranking factor when Google determines which practices to prioritize in local search. Google considers the overall number of reviews, average rating, and “velocity” — the frequency and consistency with which your dental practice acquires new reviews — when positioning practices in the local pack.
- Links: Google considers links from external websites to your own as “votes” that indicate your practice’s authority and relevance, and building high-quality inbound links to your website AND Google Business Profile (GBP) is critical for boosting visibility in local search.
- Onsite Content: Your website is a prime opportunity to demonstrate relevance for local search terms. Be sure to optimize your practice’s website with location-specific content, including pages and references specific to the cities, towns, and neighborhoods you serve. You’ll also want to include links to your Google Business Profile, embeddable Google Maps, and other localized content to improve your local SEO.
Organic SEO
Organic SEO, sometimes called “traditional” SEO, focuses on improving the visibility of your dental practice’s website in overall search engine results — not just those relevant to location-specific queries. Unlike local SEO, organic SEO targets a broader audience and involves optimizing content to rank for more general searches, such as “FAQ”-type questions about specific dental services.
Key Ranking Factors in Organic SEO
- Quality Content: With its most recent algorithm updates, Google prioritizes “helpful” content and “EEAT” — experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trust — above all. Dental practices that want to rank highly in organic search must provide high-quality content that directly addresses the user’s intent.
- On-Page SEO: Beyond helpful content, Google is also looking for website content that is optimized for organic search, leveraging technical elements like headers and images.
- Technical SEO: Crawling the internet is a lot of work — and Google appreciates any help it can get. From the URL structure to navigation, schema markup to interlinking, and everything in between, there are many “behind-the-scenes,” “off-page” opportunities to make indexing easier for Google and help your site climb the search rankings.
- Links: Links to your website from external sites are viewed by Google as “votes” and a way to measure your site’s authority and relevance. Acquiring inbound links from other high-value websites (especially those related to oral health or those of high-profile organizations in your community) can signal to Google that your dental practice is likely to provide helpful content to searchers.
- User Experience: Google tracks user behavior on your website to measure overall user experience (UX), including engaged time on site, page views, bounce rate, etc. The company’s Core Web Vitals” also measure the speed of your website, and this also factors into search rankings.
- Content Freshness: Google rewards websites that are consistently updated. Regularly posting to your practice’s blog is a great way to keep your site fresh.
Although it requires time to build, organic SEO is an excellent example of the “rising tide lifts all boats” mentality, providing long-term results that can sustain your practice’s online presence. Although “traditional” organic SEO isn’t primarily focused on local searches, by creating high-quality content and earning strong backlinks, it can enhance your credibility, establishing your practice as a trusted authority and communicating its relevance to Google.
Leveraging Local and Organic SEO for Dental Practices
While local SEO is arguably more important for dental practices, dentists interested in fully leveraging online marketing for growth should pursue a strategy incorporating both local and “traditional” organic SEO. By positioning your practice for high-intent, local searches and demonstrating your authority on broader dental questions and topics, you can communicate relevance to Google and ensure that you stay top-of-mind for potential patients.
Ready to Get More Patients from Local Search?
At DentalScapes, we leverage both local and organic SEO strategies to position dental practices for better visibility on Google search, helping you generate more new patients at sky-high ROI. For a free strategy call with one of our dental marketing specialists, contact us today!