SEO for Orthodontists
A simple (but effective) step-by-step guide to build a targeted SEO orthodontic marketing strategy.
What is SEO for orthodontists?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing a website or web page to enhance its visibility in search engines like Google and Bing.
SEO is crucial for any orthodontist or orthodontic practice owner looking to attract more patients. The higher your website ranks on search engine results, the greater the likelihood that potential patients will click through to learn more about your services.
Think of SEO as orthodontic care for your website.
Just as orthodontic care involves ensuring your patients’ teeth are properly aligned and healthy, SEO ensures that your website is ‘in good shape.’ In other words, it makes sure your site is easily found by search engines, bringing more traffic and potential clients to your practice.
Did you know?
- 99% of people use the internet to search for local businesses. (Source: BrightLocal)
- Consumer use of Google to evaluate local businesses has leapt from 63% in 2020 to 81% in 2021. (Source: BrightLocal)
- Mobile devices are used for over 50% of all online searches. (Source: Statista)
A person searching for an orthodontist on Google may use a search query like “orthodontist near me” or “best orthodontic clinic in [city name]”.
They may search for specific services such as “Invisalign treatment”, “braces for adults”, or “orthodontic emergency care”. Some may even include their insurance details in the search query, such as “Medicaid orthodontist in [city name]”.
To benefit from SEO, you want your website to rank for these kinds of searches.
Why is orthodontic SEO important?
Here are some of the benefits of using SEO for your orthodontists:
- Increased visibility: SEO helps increase the visibility of your orthodontic website on search engines, making it more likely that potential patients will find you when searching for orthodontic treatments or related services.
- Cost-effective: Compared to traditional advertising methods like print ads or television, SEO is a cost-effective way for orthodontists to reach new patients without breaking the bank.
- Targeted audience: SEO allows orthodontists to target specific keywords related to their services, such as “braces,” “Invisalign,” or “adult orthodontics,” ensuring that the right audience finds your practice.
- Local SEO: Local SEO boosts your website’s visibility for people searching for orthodontic services in your specific geographic area. This is particularly beneficial for orthodontists, as it helps target patients within your local community.
- Building trust: SEO can help establish trust and authority with both search engines and potential patients. By offering high-quality, relevant content, your website can attract new patients and strengthen your practice’s reputation in the community.
Don’t forget!
Orthodontic practices must comply with regulations such as HIPAA, ADA, and FTC guidelines, which govern patient privacy, accessibility, and advertising. Therefore, SEO and marketing strategies should be designed to align with these compliance requirements while effectively reaching potential patients.
How do search engines work?
Search engines work by crawling billions of webpages with their own web crawlers, known as search engine bots or spiders. These are then stored and saved in an index.
Google Search Essentials (formerly Webmaster Guidelines)
The Google Search Essentials define the actions that webmasters can take to make their websites better indexable or crawlable.
Read them here: Official Google Guidelines
The guidelines are based on three central aspects:
- Crawling – webmasters should support Google in finding websites.
- Indexing – webmasters should help Google to classify and “recognize” the content.
- Usability and user experience – webmasters should support the users of the websites in their use (usability and user experience).
Essentially, according to these Google guidelines, a website should support the search engine in crawling and indexing and ensure a good user experience.
Before you get started with SEO, there are a few prerequisites you want to check off first:
SEO Basics
At a bare minimum, you want to make sure you cover these basic standards before embarking on doing SEO:
- Website Speed – Have a fast loading site so potential customers don’t get tired of waiting for things to load.
- Mobile Friendliness – Make sure your site works on mobile as over 50% of users browse on mobile devices
- Analytics – Setup Google Analytics, Google Search Console & so you can understand what is and isn’t working.
- XML Sitemap – search engines use this to get your site’s URLs
- Robots.txt – tells search engine crawlers where they can (and where they can’t go) on your site.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO is the process of making website and server optimizations to help search engines to crawl and index your site more effectively (and therefore help to improve organic rankings).
Technical errors can hurt a website’s ability to rank. There are potentially a lot of errors, but here are some of the most common that will have the biggest impact when fixed:
- 404 errors
- Broken backlinks
- Poor URL structure
- Duplicate/thin content
- Poor internal linking
- Poor website architecture
- Missing metadata (page titles & meta descriptions)
- Missing H1 tags
Reach more patients with orthodontist SEO services
What is keyword research?
Keyword research is the process of identifying the words and phrases that people use when searching for specific products or services:
Once you understand the keywords your target audience is using, you can optimize your website to appear for these in search results.
Think of keyword research as a diagnostic test for your orthodontic practice’s website. Just as a diagnostic test helps an orthodontist understand the needs of a patient’s teeth and jaw, keyword research helps you understand what potential patients are searching for when they look for orthodontic services, such as “braces for adults” or “Invisalign near me.”
By identifying these keywords, you can optimize your website to appear higher in search results, making it easier for prospective patients to find your practice when they search for services you offer. This can help attract more patients to your practice.
Why is keyword research important?
Keyword research is important for orthodontists because it helps to:
- understand what people are searching for when they are looking for orthodontic services, and to optimize their website accordingly.
- identify the specific needs and pain points of their target audience, which can inform the content they create and services they offer, ultimately leading to more conversion and better patient experience.
- identify the competition in the local area and understand what they are doing, so they can create a more effective SEO strategy.
What keywords are best to target?
Understand that there’s no “best” keywords, just those that are highly searched by your audience. With this in mind, it’s up to you to craft a strategy that will help you rank pages and drive traffic.
The best keywords for your SEO strategy will take into account relevance, authority, and volume. You want to find highly searched keywords that you can reasonably compete for based on:
- The level of competition you’re up against.
- Your ability to produce content that exceeds in quality what’s currently ranking.
Short tail keywords are broad, general keywords that are made up of one or two words:
- Braces
- Invisalign
- Orthodontist
- Teeth straightening
- Retainers
Whereas long tail keywords are more specific and longer phrases that are made up of multiple words:
- Best orthodontist for braces near me
- Affordable Invisalign treatment for adults
- Top orthodontist for kids in [your city]
- Clear braces for teenagers near me
- How much does Invisalign cost for adults
How to do keyword research for your orthodontist practice
To start keyword research: put yourself in your customers shoes.
What words, phrases and terms might they use in order to find solutions to these problems? These are the keywords you want to find and target.
Here is a simple process to follow:
Step 1) Make a list of broad topics
Create a list of general topics related to your business. These might correspond to product categories, services or anything you believe your target audience would be interested in.
For example, broad topics like:
- Braces and Teeth Straightening
- Invisalign Treatment Options
- Retainers and Post-Treatment Care
- Pediatric Orthodontics
- Adult Orthodontic Treatment Options
Step 2) Expand topics into a list of phrases
Now you want to take those topics and expand them into a list of related phrases to target.
Imagine yourself as a buyer looking for your product or service and ask yourself: what would I type into Google?
Whilst keyword research tools are useful here, you can do this for free by Googling your keyword.
For example, Google “braces for adults” or “Invisalign cost”, and you’ll get a list of related questions people ask (which you can answer with blog content).
As well as related searches which may uncover other keywords to target:
Step 3) Analyze your keywords
Once you have a list of potential keywords, you need to gauge which terms are worth targeting.
You’ll need to use a keyword research tool here to pay attention to the following keyword metrics:
- Search volume
- Trends
- Search value over time
- Difficulty
- CPC
- SERP features
But most importantly, you want to consider relevancy and search intent:
Relevant keywords:
For relevancy, you want to ask yourself:
- Are these keywords relevant to my business?
- Do I have a chance of ranking for these terms based on the competition?
- Is ranking for these keywords going to have a positive ROI?
If you can answer YES to the above questions, chances are you have picked a relevant keyword
Search intent:
Search intent is the goal and purpose of a search query in Google. When someone searches for something, they are typically looking for more information before performing an action.
Search intent falls in four buckets:
- Informational – Searchers looking for information, they’ll use words like: how, what, why, when etc.
- Navigational – Searchers trying to find a specific site, they’ll use words relating to the service/product/brand
- Transactional – Searchers looking to purchase, they’ll use words like: buy, cost, pricing, cheap etc.
- Commercial investigation – Searchers researching prior to making a purchase, they’ll use words like: best, review, comparison etc
Not only is it important to select good keywords, but also to pick keywords you have a chance of ranking for.
For example, if you want to rank for the keyword: “Oral Hygiene Checklist” but your page doesn’t feature a checklist, you are not meeting a searchers intent so may struggle to rank for it.
Find profitable orthodontic keywords
What is on-page SEO?
On-page SEO describes specific elements of the pages on your website that you control, such as:
- Title tags
- Meta descriptions
- Header tags
- Internal linking
- Images
- Content
Why is on-page SEO important?
On-page SEO is crucial for orthodontists because it ensures that their website is easily found and understood by search engines, increasing visibility and driving more traffic to the site. This can ultimately result in attracting more patients to the practice.
For example, if an orthodontist offers a service like “Invisalign” but it’s not mentioned or not highlighted on the website, it will be less likely for the site to show up in search results when someone searches for “Invisalign” or similar terms. However, if the website is optimized with “Invisalign” as a target keyword, it will be more likely to appear in search results and attract patients searching for that specific service.
Additionally, on-page optimization helps enhance the overall user experience, leading to higher engagement and conversion rates. A well-organized website with easy navigation and clear calls to action, such as “Schedule a Consultation,” will be more effective in converting visitors into patients.
On-Page SEO Checklist
- Use short & descriptive URLs – this helps people searching to understand what your page is about in Google.
- Write a good title tag & meta description – these show up in Google and help searchers understand what your page is about.
- Linking to relevant resources – this helps users to navigate your website.
- Optimize your images – give them a descriptive filename and alt text.
- Add schema markup – this helps search engines to understand your content
- Add internal links – these help Google understand what your page is about and to navigate your website.
Get actionable insights into your orthodontic SEO
What is off-page SEO?
Off-page SEO refers to specific actions done outside of your website, such as getting backlinks from other websites or social media.
What is link building?
Link building is the practice of building one-way hyperlinks (also known as “backlinks”) to a website with the goal of improving SEO. Common link building strategies include content marketing, building useful tools, email outreach, broken link building and guest posts.
Why is link building important?
Link building is important for orthodontists because it helps to increase the visibility of a website on search engines. Google, for example, use links to a website as a way to determine the authority and trustworthiness of a website.
The more high-quality links that point to a website, the more likely it is to be considered an authority in its field and be given higher rankings in the SERPs (search engine results page).
This increased visibility can drive more traffic to a website, which can lead to more patients for your practice.
Link Building Tactics:
- Guest posts (either DIY it or use a done-for-you guest post service)
- Buying backlinks (like authority links)
- Content marketing (like linkable assets or editorial links)
- Tried and tested SEO methods (like blogger outreach, broken link building
- Using what you’ve got (link reclamation and brand mentions)
Additionally, link building can help establish an orthodontic practice as a reputable and trustworthy provider of orthodontic services, which can play a key role in attracting new patients. High-quality links from respected websites within the orthodontic or healthcare industry signal to potential patients that the practice is well-regarded in the field.
Link building also increases referral traffic, where visitors are directed to the orthodontist’s website through a link on another site. This boosts brand awareness and allows the practice to reach new audiences who may not have found the website otherwise.
In summary, link building is important for orthodontists because it enhances visibility, builds reputation and trust, and drives more referral traffic to the website, ultimately leading to more patients.
Get high quality backlinks
Orthodontic SEO Best Practices (+ 4 Tips)
- Use HTTPs (SSL certificates)
- Make sure your web site pages load fast
- Target a relevant topic that has traffic potential
- Meet search intent
- Target a topic you can compete for
- Use your target keyword in your page title, H1 tag and URL
- Use a short (but descriptive) URL
- Write a good title tag and meta description
- Optimize your images
- Write good content
- Add internal links
- Get more quality backlinks
4 Actionable Orthodontist SEO Tips
Here are some things your practice can do to begin the process of developing a good orthodontic marketing strategy.
- Add relevant keywords
- Optimize for local searches
- Start blogging
- Earn links
1. Add relevant keywords to your website
People searching for orthodontic care often look for specific services like braces for kids, Invisalign for adults, or clear aligners. Long-tail searches typically have fewer searches but often bring highly targeted traffic that is more likely to convert into real patients.
For example, instead of just focusing on optimizing your website for general terms like “orthodontist” or “braces,” you could include more specific keywords like “orthodontist in [your city],” “Invisalign treatment for adults in [your area],” or “braces for teenagers in [your city], [state].” This helps attract patients who are actively searching for the services you offer in your location.
2. Optimize your site for local searches
If your SEO plan doesn’t use local SEO to target specific areas, you’ll likely miss out on some great leads. Adding the name of your town and nearby towns to your website copy is the easiest way to get better results.
But don’t forget about things on your site besides writing copy. You should also add places to the titles and URLs of your pages.
Also, make sure that your business is listed on Google Maps and local directory sites. This will help your business show up more in local searches.
3. Start writing useful content
The main goal of orthodontic SEO is to get more patients by making your website more visible in Google.
One way to attract potential patients is by writing a blog. For example, if you write a blog with tips on how to take care of braces or the best ways to maintain Invisalign, you’ll start to attract interested readers who may become patients. As your traffic grows, so will your search rankings, and people searching for an orthodontist in your area will turn to you as a trusted source for helpful and relevant information.
4. Earn quality links
How high your site ranks in search results for keywords and phrases related to your business depends on how many and how good the links are to it. This means that you need to get good links if you want to keep your rankings.
You can do this by making good content and reaching out to bloggers and leaders in your field to ask them to share it. This will not only help you move up in search results, but it will also make your orthodontist practice look like a leader in the field.
Backlinks are a very important part of SEO for orthodontists. They are like a vote of confidence for the content your practice puts out. Because of this, links are one of the most important ways that search engines like Google decide how to rank pages.
- Not doing enough keyword research
- Not matching user/search intent
- Targeting keywords that are far too difficult
- Not building enough quality backlinks
- Breaking Google’s Terms of Service when building backlinks
- Missing out on internal link opportunities
- Not allowing Google crawl your content
- Not allowing Google index your content
- Having a very slow site
- Treating SEO as a one-time thing
How does orthodontic SEO work?
SEO for orthodontists means making sure that your website is optimized for both search engines and users. This makes your website more visible in relevant and organic search results.
Optimizations include:
- on-page SEO
- link building
- technical SEO review
- content audit
- local citation audit
Why do orthodontists need marketing?
It helps you set your practice apart.
Your patients are your customers, and a strong marketing plan helps you reach your target market while showing them why they should choose your orthodontic practice over others.
A good orthodontic marketing strategy should attract new patients, retain existing ones, and increase awareness of your services, such as braces, Invisalign, or other treatments. The ultimate goal is to get potential patients to call your office or schedule an appointment online.
How long does orthodontic SEO take?
Typically, orthodontic SEO takes at least six months to deliver results.
In some cases, practices may start to see results like increased traffic, phone calls, and appointments, in faster time frame than this.
Although typically 6 months is a good benchmark as SEO is a long-term strategy vs. a short-term strategy like PPC.
How much does SEO for orthodontists cost?
Prices for orthodontist website SEO depend on multiple factors, but the average cost for orthodontic SEO is $1500 – $5000 per month.
If you’re looking to partner with a consultant or orthodontist SEO expert, the average rate is $100 – $300 per hour.
What’s Next?
Guest Posts
We do guest posts better than anyone else with complete transparency. You get to approve all placements before they’re made and even the exact anchor text that’s going to be used. Site owners themselves will produce your content to guarantee its a perfect match.
Content
Crafting the right message isn’t just a matter of choosing the right words. We develop site content and blogs using the latest tools to determine the right keywords and balance of terms to build high-performing content.
Managed SEO
Sometimes, it takes more than just one service to make a difference. Multiple services working in concert can amplify the effect and create the growth that’s evaded you in the past. Talk to us about managed SEO campaigns built around any of your goals.
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