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Does my Dental Website Really Need SEO?

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO is the practice of tweaking your dental website to make it appear closer to the top of keyword searches on popular search engines like Google.

The short answer is your dental website could probably benefit from SEO. In most areas of the country, there are more then a few dentists who will have dental web sites. In some areas, there will be hundreds. If you live in one of these areas, it's crucial that your dental website is optimized for search engines, otherwise patients searching via google will have a hard time (if not impossible) discovering your dental website and potentially becoming a new patient.

Size matters

Generally speaking, the smaller the city/town you live in, the easier its going to be to make your dental website optimized for search engines.

A 30 second test

A quick test you can perform is to google your own area for dentists, and see what comes up:

Here is a test search for Dover, De Dentist

You can see in the search results that there a few dental practice websites already listed, and some larger �directory sites� that are going to be tougher to displace. The 124,000 pages were found overall, but this is less important. You want to be on the first page, preferably in the top 3 choices. So if you are a new dentist in Dover, Delaware, you're dental website is going to need some SEO work if you want to appear at the top of results.

However, if you live in more rural area, such as Greenwood, De with a much smaller population, your work is going to be easier: Greenwood, DE Dentist

While there are some higher profile sites, there are no local dentists, and its going to be relatively easy for a new dentist to slip in there with only some basic SEO applied to their dental website.

When do I NOT need SEO for my Dental Website?

If you live in a very rural area, and you're website has been up for a while, you regularly update it, and you already have a few links to your website from some good sources, like the local paper, you may be in good shape. The easiest way to find out is to google yourself - if you aren't in the top 10, its time to rethink your strategy. The downside to this is that it will almost definitely take more time for your website to naturally get listed on the first page, even if there is no competition. Optimizing your website is a shortcut that will get it there faster.

Patience to get Patients

It will take some time for your dental website to get picked up and properly ranked by search engines. Sometimes its as little as a week or two, and other times it can take months of tuning a dental website to get it to the top of a search query for your area. All geographical areas are a little different, and may require different strategies.

If money is tight, you can always wait and see - your dental website can always be optimized later. However, time lost is money lost, and the sooner you start an SEO campaign for your dental website, the sooner you will get more website visitors, and ultimately more patients.