How to optimise your content
Content optimisation is improving the quality of your content so that it’s informative, valuable and engaging for your patients, whilst targeting relevant keywords to increase your visibility in the search results.
Statistics from firstpage.com shows that ranking #1 generates a typical CTR of 39.8%, 2nd position is 18.7%, and 3rd position is 10.2%. The top 3 organic search results receive more than two-thirds (68.7%) of all clicks on Google showing just how crucial it is to focus your efforts on positioning yourself at the top.
Ways to optimise your content
- Update your content regularly
- Include relevant keywords
- Always write for the user first
- Break up your content
- Add internal and external links
- Optimise your site for rich snippets
- Include alt-text for your images
- Include SEO Friendly URLs
- Add images and other visuals
Update your content regularly
Google loves it when you go back and update existing content because it shows you’re keeping your website up to date. Are there any blogs that you could go back and tweak with updated information or are there any treatment pages with thin content, that could be expanded on?
Include relevant keywords
Keyword research has always been an essential part of producing good content. When performing keyword research, you should be looking for several different types of keywords – Short-tail keywords (your main keywords), Long-tail keywords (terms made up of more than three keywords and are much more specific), LSI keywords (keywords that are loosely related to your main keywords) and Local keywords (if you’re looking to boost your rankings for local terms). You can use tools online to find the search volume of a keyword, i.e, the number of times the keyword is being searched for each month.
Always write for the user first
When optimising your content for SEO, make sure you’re writing for humans first, and search engines second. Google’s recent “helpful content” update has really emphasized this and explains the importance of writing for the user first. Your focus should be on creating engaging, informative and easy-to-digest content, inserting keywords where possible in a natural way. When patients type a specific query or question into Google, they will expect to see a simple piece of content, providing them with the necessary information on why it’s worth choosing your practice over another.
Break up your content
Patients are more likely to consume and engage with your content if it’s broken up into digestible chunks. This makes it much easier for them to quickly take in the information they’re looking for. It also provides you with the opportunity to add keywords to your headings and subheadings for SEO purposes. Use bullet points and separate blocks of text with images and/or videos. Making your website engaging and visually attractive will help capture new patients and Google will see that your page is valuable to the user and deserves to be ranked higher.
Add internal and external links
Internal links are hyperlinks on your website that send you to another page on the same domain, whereas external links are hyperlinks that send you to another website. The more links you have, the better Google can interpret and index pages on your website. This gives your website something called page authority. If you internally link a page on your website from an important page, that gives the page authority.
Optimise your site for rich snippets
Rich snippets are search results with an extra bit of added information. For example, if a patient searches for teeth whitening treatment Google will usually present the URL, title tag, and meta description on a normal search. A rich snippet, however, will display ratings, prices, FAQ’s etc. While rich snippets don’t necessarily increase Google rankings, they do increase your organic click-through rate. With this in mind, perhaps think about writing some FAQ’s for your key treatment pages.
Include alt-text for your images
If you’re including images on your site then it’s important that you add alt text. Alt text was developed to help the blind and visually impaired understand what an image portrays when the screen reader relays the text snippet back to them, improving their browsing experience. Alt text also provides additional context to search engine crawlers, allowing them to index an image properly. As some images contain critical information or provide context for the rest of the page, it’s crucial to take the time to write appropriate alt text.
Include SEO friendly URLs
To make sure your website address is user and search engine friendly, you should keep them short, and transparent. Get rid of capital letters, special characters, or underscores, and make sure they contain important keywords. When looking at a URL, the patient should be able to tell what can be found on that given page before they click on the link.
Add images and other visuals
Content isn’t just about text. Adding photos, infographics, or videos will help keep patients on the page for longer, and reduce the bounce rate. Images are also a great way to separate longer blocks of text. However, it’s important that your images don’t have a negative impact on your page loading time. To make sure this doesn’t happen, compress your images and upload them in a webp format.
If you’d like help building an effective SEO campaign then please give the Dental Design team a call on 01202 618967.
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