Keywords- where to start?

2 December 2014 | | Search Engine Optimisation

You’ve put so much time, energy and love into your dental practice website, I’m sure you want the world to see it! It can be hard to know where to begin when thinking about how you want to be found in the search engines. Our seo team have years of experience knowing what makes patients click on your website, as opposed to your competitors- here’s some insider knowledge!

If your pages are optimised for more conversational queries, known as ‘long-tail phrases’, you have a better chance of top rankings, as they are less competitive than having lots of highly competitive single keywords.

Many search marketers simply think of the main keywords related to their businesses, put them into a tool such as Google Keyword Planner, and then run with the keyword list it delivers. However, search habits vary widely; searchers may use hundreds of different word combinations to describe the same thing, so this tactic omits hundreds of potentially profitable keywords.

To get ideas for keywords, first it’s best to use a bit of common sense to come up with as many word associations that you can. Next, we check competitors’ sites and blogs to see what they are, and are not ranking for. A further good source for keyword ideas include: forum discussions, dictionaries and the thesaurus. The more research methods used, the better, as each method will generate new suggestions.

Now, it’s time to pick the keywords which are most relevant. We go through the list and remove the terms that don’t seem very relevant to your dental practice– even if a keyword tool said they were. Effective as they are, automated keyword research tools are not humans, so the results certainly need to be evaluated.

To finalise the list of keywords, we will do further competitor research to see how hard it will be to outrank competitors for particular terms. This research will include an analysis of the following:

Backlinks – Search engines consider backlinks as votes for a certain page, so the more links your competitor has, the harder it may be to outrank this site.

On-page SEO – Evaluate the quality of on-page optimisation of the competing pages by scanning their titles, descriptions and content.

Content – Users love unique and useful content – and so does Google. Check competitor websites for quality content.

Domain authority – Finally, check the age of the competing domains and their popularity in social media.

If you would like further information about how search engine optimisation for your dental practice’s website could benefit you, speak to a member of the Dental Design team on: 01202 677 277 who will be happy to help you.

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