Are you trying to enhance your dental clinic’s online presence? If yes, you need to start optimizing it using on-page SEO components. In this blog, you’ll find the essential on-page SEO elements to optimize your dental website.

On-page SEO is one of the major pillars of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). A comprehensive SEO strategy helps your dental clinic rank on top of the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).

If you rank on top of the search engine results, your potential patients will most likely visit your website rather than your competitors. This way, you can easily gain exposure from your audience and grow your dentistry practice.

So, let’s start optimizing your dental website with the on-page SEO elements!

Highlights

On-page SEO deals with the formatting and content part of your dental website
Keyword-rich high-quality content, title tags, meta descriptions, visual assets, and URL structure are some essential on-page elements
On-page SEO provides enhanced patient engagement on your dental website
On-page, off-page, and technical SEO are three important pillars that are required to optimize your dental website for search engines
Google Analytics, Google Search Console, SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Moz are a few tools to track SEO performance

What is On-Page SEO?

On-page SEO refers to all your optimization efforts within the website to enhance its search engine rankings. Some of its major components include writing high-quality content based on relevant keywords, adding media assets, etc.

Optimizing your website content for on-page SEO helps both Google and searchers understand the page’s essence. Consequently, Google might prioritize your website over competitors for relevant search queries.

Besides, on-page SEO is not limited to content. It also incorporates the website’s other areas, such as mobile-friendliness, faster load speed, etc.

What Are Essential On-Page SEO Elements for Dental Websites?

On-page SEO is essential to building a foundation for your dental clinic that’ll enhance its performance in search engine rankings. Here are a few on-page SEO elements for optimizing your dental website:

1. Keyword Research

What common key phrases are your potential audiences using to search for nearby dental clinics? Identifying them will help you begin your on-page optimization process efficiently.

You can use keyword research tools, such as SEMrush or Ahrefs, to list the phrases that most align with your dental practices. Also, you need to analyze which keywords your competitors are ranking for and include them in your strategy.

After that, you have to include those keywords in your website’s content strategically. For instance, adding them to your service pages, blog posts, meta descriptions, and other components will be a great start.

2. High-Quality Content

Creating high-quality content for your dental website helps you become a thought leader in the dentistry industry. A higher engagement in your website content sends Google a signal that your content is valuable.

Make sure your content provides significant value to your audience. For instance, it can help them learn dental tips, resolve their dentist-related query, and more. This way, they’ll value your brand and might book an appointment when needed.

Your potential patients will gain valuable insights from your blogs, case studies, podcasts, white papers, and other content. Organizing the content creation process with a content calendar makes it smooth.

3. Use of Visual Assets

Incorporating visual content helps enhance your dental website’s online presence. Examples include photographs, videos, graphics, infographics, diagrams, memes, screenshots, etc.

Your audience might get hooked on one of these visual content. A compelling Call-to-Action (CTA) in some of these visuals encourages them to visit other pages of your site. This reduces the bounce rate while improving the site’s user experience.

Always optimize these images for mobile-friendliness. This way, your potential patient can view your visual assets with a shorter load time on various screen sizes.

4. Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

Title tags and meta descriptions are two crucial elements that appear on search engine result pages. These sections help both Google and potential patients find out the relevance of your page to the search intent.

Craft a captivating title tag for your webpage because it’s the most prominent of search engine results page. You have to keep it less than 60 characters. Also, including local keywords can help you attract clicks from potential patients.

Similarly, the meta description of your dental website’s pages should summarize the page with action-oriented language. You should make the text less than 160 characters and include dentistry-relevant keywords naturally.

5. URL Structure

The next element of on-page SEO for your dental website is to create easy-to-read URLs. Each URL of your pages/posts should be easily understood by your potential patients and search engines.

For instance, you can start by shortening the URL, adding dentistry-relevant keywords, and avoiding underscores. Instead of underscores, using hyphens will make your URL SEO-friendly.

Using lowercase letters and avoiding special characters are other methods to create an SEO-friendly URL structure. Also, Google recommends encrypting your dental website, so that the URL begins with “https://” instead of “http://”.

6. Header Tags (H1, H2, H3)

Header tags are crucial for structuring your posts which makes them easily readable. Your potential patients will get the required information faster after you use these tags to create a hierarchical form in your content.

Besides, header tags help Google understand the structure of your dental website’s page. You need to follow a top-to-bottom hierarchical structure in the content to optimize your content for SEO. For instance, first H1, then H2, H3, and so on.

If you skip a heading and jump to the next one, the structure will break and it’ll hamper your search engine rankings. But you don’t need to worry about the bottom-top hierarchy. For instance, H2 can appear right after H4 or H5.

7. Image Alt Text

Image alt attributes, AKA alt texts, are required so that search engines can understand what an image wants to portray. This is because Google can’t view the images the same way your potential patients can.

However, the use of alt text is not just for search engines. If a browser fails to load an image in your dental clinic’s webpage, it’ll display the alt attribute instead. This way, your potential patients will know what the image wants to show.

Image alt texts also enhance your site’s user experience for the visually impaired. They’ll rely on a voice reader to grasp the information provided by your dental clinic website. So, such tools can read the alt attributes out loud for them to understand.

8. Internal and External Linking

Including both internal and external linking is essential for the on-page SEO of your dental website. Internal links connect two web pages within your site, whereas external links direct your user away from your clinic’s website.

Internal links help your potential patient engage with your dental website, decreasing the bounce rate. Also, these links help enhance the crawl efficiency of search engine bots. This way, Google can easily discover valuable pages on your site.

On the other hand, providing an external link to trustworthy and informative websites has several benefits. It helps in enhancing the authority of your site and increases your credibility.

9. Call-to-Action (CTA)

Adding compelling call-to-actions encourages your potential patients to do certain activities on your dental website. CTAs can be for getting more information, filling out a contact form, calling the clinic, or booking an appointment.

Call-to-actions are an essential part of SEO. They entice potential patients to take the next step after they land on a webpage. This interaction drops the bounce rate of your dental website and increases the dwell time.

You can include CTAs on your website’s buttons, banners, sidebars, hyperlink texts, or images. Some examples are “Book an Appointment”, Call Now”, or “Contact Us”.

10. Social Sharing Buttons

Another essential on-page SEO element is to add social sharing buttons on your dental website. Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and Pinterest are some of the common platforms to insert the buttons.

Social media shares and engagement aren’t a direct ranking factor of Google. But, they help enhance social proof of your clinic in the eyes of potential patients.

When your posts receive higher social shares, your potential patient will perceive that your content is high quality. So, you need to prominently display the total counts of social shares for each blog or other content on your dental website.

11. Mobile-Friendliness

Google takes mobile-friendliness as an important ranking factor. It uses a mobile-first approach when crawling a website to determine its relevancy for a search query. So, non-mobile friendly has significantly lower chances of ranking higher on SERPs.

Your potential patients won’t interact with your clinic’s mobile site the same way they do with the desktop version. So, you have to optimize a few on-page components on your dental website to provide a great user experience across all devices.

There are several ways to optimize your dental website for mobile-friendliness. Some of them include designing with touchscreens in mind, optimizing its load speed, and making font size readable.

12. Schema Markup

Schema markup is a code that you add to your dental website which helps Google understand the content easily. It’s a type of language that machines can understand without the need for interpretation.

Integrating schema on your site increases the probability of displaying rich results on SERPs. For instance, when a potential patient searches for a dental service, Google might display your clinic’s reviews, pricing plans, etc. right below the meta description.

Some common types of schema markup helpful for your dental clinic are review snippet structured data, local business schema, organization schema, etc.

Why is On-Page SEO Important for Your Dental Website?

On-page SEO, when combined with other SEO pillars, helps your dental website rank at the top of Google’s result pages. After that, growing your business will be much easier with the help of organic searches on Google.

Each second, Google gets more than 99,000 searches. Imagine how many of them might be your potential patients searching for a dental service you provide! With a strong on-page performance, you can benefit from getting exposure from these online searchers.

Besides, on-page optimization provides an enhanced patient experience for your dental website. This builds credibility and trust in your potential patients’ eyes.

What is the Difference Between On-Page and Off-Page SEO?

Off-page SEO is different than the on-page components. Everything you do outside of your website to enhance your dental clinic’s online presence is part of off-page SEO.

For instance, you might want to create a Google Business Profile and publish regular posts on social media channels. Both of these approaches are essential elements of off-page SEO.

Other off-page SEO components include guest blogging, backlink building, public relations, etc. Google takes backlinks coming from high-authority websites as a crucial ranking factor.

Even though on-page SEO is essential to growing your dental business, without off-page components, your effort will be incomplete. Similarly, another important aspect of SEO is the technical aspect.

Is On-Page SEO and Technical SEO the Same?

Technical SEO is not the same as on-page SEO, although they two have some similarities. Technical SEO deals with enhancing the performance of your website whereas on-page SEO improves the content and formatting.

Some of the components of technical SEO are:

XML sitemaps
Duplicate content
Site security (SSL)
Site architecture
Robots.txt
Indexing

Some components of technical SEO are the same as on-page SEO. For instance, enhancing the website’s performance for mobile devices is a key component for both the pillars of SEO.

What Tools to Use For Tracking Your Dental Website’s SEO Performance?

No matter how much you put into optimizing your dental clinic’s website, if you don’t measure your success, you can’t improve. You have to consider various metrics to track your SEO performance, such as indexing reports, core web vital reports, etc.

Here are a few tools that’ll track your dental website’s SEO performance:

Google Analytics: Provides information about keywords, traffic sources, conversions, etc.
Google Search Console: Points out errors like slow load speed, navigation issues, and more
SEMrush: Helps in tracking backlinks, compare SEO performance with competitors, and so on
Moz: Provides social sharing information, day-to-day updates on SEO performance, etc.
Ahrefs: Displays page performance, backlink information, and other SEO data in a single dashboard

What Are The On-Page SEO Mistakes That Dentists Often Make?

Even if you optimize all other aspects of the on-page SEO of your dental website, a single mistake can ruin your effort. This can consume more time and effort trying to fix the issue and get your website on the top rank.

Here are some on-page mistakes that dentists often make that you have to be aware of:

Broken internal image
Duplicate title tags
Missing or duplicate meta-descriptions
Low word count on your pages/posts
Too many on-page links

Conclusion

If you take care of all of these components of on-page SEO, your dental website will surely provide a great user experience. However, without other pillars of SEO, you can’t easily rank at the top results of search engine results.

To fully enhance your dental clinic’s online presence, all on-page, off-page, and technical SEO are equally important. So, you have to create an all-inclusive SEO strategy incorporating these three pillars to strengthen your approach.

Essential On-Page SEO Elements for Dental Websites