For the past 18 years, keywords have been the benchmark of what successful SEO and dental SEO relied on. With the advances in software and changes in hardware, are keywords still important to dentist SEO?
Don’t let anyone fool you. Keywords are still important, but not as much as they used to be. Reason being, the ability to manipulate the search engines became so easy that surfers weren’t getting the quality results they deserved. Instead of getting results that were pertinent, surfers would get spammy, ad-laden results.
Google couldn’t afford to have such crummy results to their customers so they developed several pieces of software to filter out these keyword manipulated sites. Now, keywords are behind such things as social media presence. With social media presence we end up with a far more broad a series of metrics to market by. Social media content that points to your site shows Google that people are not only interested in your site, but that your site is performing a valued service.
These social media metrics also add up to your citations. People leaving positive reviews about your site from several venues. This is why you have all your pertinent data on all your pages as Google indexes pages, not just sites. Each page should highlight what you do, where you are, prices, and an interactive site map so people can get through your site without stumbling around. This allows for people to go through your site and click or interact with what is important to them. This data, you and the search engines can benefit from. Therefore, as a dental SEO campaign, you campaign should include your name, contact info, services, pics, videos, graphics that are properly tagged with relevant descriptions. Leave no stone un turned here. Each page should act as a landing page. If you have dental implants on one page, surfers should be able to see all your other services and products on that page with a hyperlink, graphic, pic, video, that has a description and well tagged.
These tags, descriptions, etc., act as keywords, keyphrases, and keygroups. No need to worry about them unless you’re targeting a competitive area and want to get the best position. In this situation, you’re going to have to fight for. It can be costly and troubling, but can pay off.
Just keywords won’t suffice, as stated earlier, and optimizing your site for mobile markets and local SEO is also required. Reasons being that mobile is the biggest hardware market and local SEO fine tunes searches down to the address on the door of your office. These are all factors in being indexed higher and in your specific keyword goals.
Thus in retrospect, you’ve got to toot your own horn. Let surfers know who you are and what you do wherever you can on your site. The search engines will see this data and index your site properly, especially if you have answers and bullet lists regarding important issues of the dental services and products you have.
Give keywords their proper due but don’t overestimate their value nor underestimate them.