At the beginning of every year, medical clinics need to consider what will be the most effective ways to attract new patients. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has made growing clientele a little more challenging in the last couple of years for places like dental clinics. Worries about going to any medical establishment have arisen for patients who fear they will get sick. Medical offices are expected to provide seamless, extra sanitary, personal healthcare experiences that build lasting, authentic connections with old and new patients. So how are medical offices, including dental clinics, supposed to increase their patient volume in 2022? Mastering local SEO allows these businesses to draw in new patients and increase their clientele. Here are some local SEO optimization tips for dental clinics that that draw traffic to your website and creates new patients.

Why Use Local SEO?

For years, marketing firms like ourselves have told healthcare clients that local SEO is a significant part of acquiring patients in the healthcare industry. Local SEO is important because people search for and visit healthcare providers near them, especially in an emergency. Any person in San Diego looking for a dentist will go to a dentist in San Diego. If you need an emergency procedure, you’re probably finding the closest dentist to alleviate your pain the fastest.

We all use search engines on our phones and computers for research today. Because of that and increased local demand, Google and other search engines have gotten very good at putting together highly relevant local search experiences. Taking advantage of local SEO perks, especially nowadays, can help you develop a strategy that will keep driving in new patients as long as you are in business. SEO is a long-term investment, but it remains yours and will continue to lead new patients to your clinic well into the future.

How to Optimize for Local SEO

When users search locally, they usually follow through and visit the business they searched for and found or a similar one within 24 hours. When you optimize your content, business listings, and digital presence for one or more local markets, you can reach those who tend to visit their local searches. They could become your prospective patients. Your objective as a local dental clinic is to send multiple signals to Google to tell them that you are an active, reputable provider in a specific geographic area. Here are a few ways you create an effective local SEO strategy:

  • Local Listings
  • a Google Business Profile
  • Location-specific pages and content on your website
  • Patient reviews
  • Locally relevant backlinks

If you have more than one location, you want to make sure that you cover these bases for each one. By consistently producing this kind of rich local content, your dental clinic will rank at the top of the search engines, and your business’ information will appear on local platforms like:

  • Map searches
  • “Near me” searches
  • Search engine results pages (SERPs)

In the end, your goal is to increase your patient volume, and mastering local SEO optimization can help you achieve that. If a patient called your office or made an online appointment, there is a good chance that at some point, they landed on your website. Creating a website full of pages of SEO content gets you seen by users seeking a dental solution, therefore helping with your patient acquisition.

We hope that this blog has provided insights into local SEO optimization tips for dental clinics and acquiring new patients. Reach out to our Fotex Labs experts, who can help you formulate your SEO strategy and get you on search engines in no time. Call us now at (858) 228-7697 or visit our website to learn more!