SEO for Dentists

Posted in Dentist SEO, Posts by Chris Adams on February 2nd, 2011 No Comments

Dentist SEO

If I was… a Dentist in Chandler Arizona Here’s the keyword I would target:

I know, the title kind of gives it away, and maybe for some people the answer is dead obvious, but after some research, the best keyword to target is: dentist in Chandler. Remember, just because you might rank for “dentist in Chandler” doesn’t mean you’ll automatically rank for “dentist in Chandler az” or “dentists in Chandler” because the search engines view those as completely unique keywords.

Why This Keyword?

Why this keyword above the rest? Well actually there are a number of good keywords to choose from, offering a fair amount of traffic, but “dentist in Chandler” has two things going for it: (1) roughly 3,600 searches every month, and (2) commercial intent.

Mexican Food, Dentists & Commercial Intent

When you’re craving Mexican food and you want to try a new restaurant what are you likely to search for? I’ll bet “Mexican restaurant in ___ (insert a city name)” is among your top queries. And what are the chances you actually go to the restaurant and purchase a meal? High, I’ estimate an 80-90% likelihood. The same logic for the Mexican restaurant analogy is the same for dentists. Sure the potential patient has a giant list of dentists in every city in the Phoenix Metro provided by the insurance company, but every name on the list is equal to the others, nothing makes one stand out over the rest. So when the potential patient goes to the search engines chances are good they’ll type “dentist in Chandler.”

Here Are 2 Keywords I Wouldn’t Pursue:

  1. It might be tempting to pursue ranking for a keyword like “dentist”, because it receives roughly 5 million searches every month (that’s almost 7,000 searches every hour). But let’s take a look at the competition, what do you have in common with 1800dentist.com and Wikipedia.org? I’m guessing the answer is “very little” or “none” and if that’s the case then it’s a good indication you’re trying to rank for the wrong term. One caveat, the rule I just mentioned above, doesn’t always apply (especially for long tail keywords) but for a keyword like dentist – it applies.
  2. Another keyword that might be tempting is “Scottsdale dentist.” Unless you’re a dentist in Scottsdale the traffic coming to your website would be completely irrelevant and convert at very low rates. It might be cool to tell your friends – but it won’t be cool for your wallet.

Who’s Ranking #1 for “Dentist in Chandler”:

Kelly Joorn Cook DDS (website) One note before we move on, results will vary somewhat depending on your location (in state, in city) and whether or not you are logged into Google or have Web History turned on within Google.

Here’s what KellyJoornCook.com is doing to rank for “dentist in Chandler”

One of the biggest factors in deciding what websites rank #1 for any given keyword is the number of high quality and diverse backlinks. Backlinks are inbound hyperlinks pointing to your website from an external (or internal) website.

Where does KellyJoornCook.com stand? The site has a total of 131 backlinks, originating from 26 unique websites. But what about the quality of the backlinks? Any good SEO professional understands that link quality is a very wide spectrum, and just because a site has 10,000,000 backlinks doesn’t guarantee it will rank for anything.

KellyJoornCook.com’s top 5 backlinks are:

Very good collection of backlinks indeed – although relatively easy to get for most competitors. Getting listed on the BBB will cost a little bit of money, but if you’re trying to rank for “dentist in Chandler” it’s looks like it might be worth it. Getting insiderpages.com – they have a free and premium option. Although the 5th link would be tougher to match for your site, doing something similar isn’t out of the question (i.e. sponsoring a charity event).

How long would it take to rank for “dentist in Chandler” ?

I think if you had a strong SEO campaign, doing so could be in as quick as 30 days, although that depends on a number of factors such as your current backlink portfolio, the age of your domain, among others.

Good News

What if you ranked number one for the keyword “dentist in Chandler” and were receiving 3,000 visits every month? And of that 3,000, 1% became new patients? That’s 30 new patients every month, 360 new patients every year! Hmmm, sounds like you might be expanding the office.

That’s just the tip of the analysis iceberg. A full analysis would likely spread some 30,000 words – I’m not sure many people would be up to reading all of that in one sitting. But if you have questions or want to learn more? Feel free to email us or leave a comment below.

NEXT TIME

We’ll talk some more on how a dentist in Chandler, AZ could get themselves ranking for the local search results on Google.


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Image credit: Winston Hearn

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