Local SEO marketing or local search optimization is the method of optimizing your owned website to
generate traffic from location based searching. The fast growth of mobile usage and on the go searching
has made local optimization an vital focus for a variety of businesses including medical and dental
practice.
If you’ve monitored SEO approaches for any length of time, you know one thing: SEO changes all the
time. When it comes to local SEO, it’s more essential than ever that you optimize your on-site and off-
site SEO strategies for patients who may be searching for your local business practice. Local rivalry is
heating up, and if you’re not on top of your rankings, you can bet your competitors will be.
Here are four solid local SEO strategies you can use to help your medical and dental practice rank higher
for local search terms.
1. Online directories
Rendering from Google, roughly four out of five patients use search engines to get into local searches.
Yet many small businesses have not claimed even a single a local business listing online, which is a huge
wasted opportunity.
It’s imperative that you get your practice listed correctly and steadily on top online medical and dental
directories, like HealthGrades, Yelp, Merchant Circle, Citysearch and others. You will also want to
pursue out decent local directories to get your practice listed on. You may look at local newspaper’s
website and your Chamber of Commerce to see if they have a local medical and dental business
directory you can get listed on. You can also do a search for keywords like “[your city] directory” to find
other local citation sites or directories.
You should mind that you get your business’s name, address and phone number (NAP) on the major
citation data aggregators. Constantly make sure that your company’s NAP is constant on as many of
these directories and citation sites as possible. Inconsistencies like misspellings, abbreviations, lack of
suite number and wrong phone number can generate mess when Google can’t define which information
about your business is correct. If Google’s not sure, they may show improper information — or not show
your practice at all in search results.
2. Title and meta description tags matters
Title and meta description tags are HTML features that you can modify to mirror the content of your
web page. The text of your title and description tags is exhibited in search results. Think of this text as a
“mini-ad” that you need to cautiously craft.
Last year, Google augmented the width of the main search results area to 600px. In light of this, the
generally tolerable length for title tags is approximately 50 to 60 characters, and description tags can
be approximately 160 to 200 characters. Take benefit of this space and use it wisely — and make sure
you double-check that your titles and descriptions aren’t getting cut off in search results.

If you’re unsure how your title and meta description tags will look or how many characters you can get
away with, try using an emulator like the one from SEOmofo or Yoast’s SEO Plugin for WordPress.
Think about it, if your practice shows up in the search results, you have one shot to get that person to
click on your link. Don’t blow it by wasting characters that won’t help persuade a patient you’re worth
looking at.
3. Online reviews matter
Medical and Dental practices are finally beginning to understand the significance of online reviews from
their customers. Rendering to a recent survey, 84 percent of people trust online reviews as much as a
personal endorsement and seven out of 10 customers will leave a review for a practce if asked by the
physician, dentist or the staff.
Moreover, many social media platforms, like Hootsuite and Tiny Torch, permit you to monitor and get
alerts any time your product or brand is mentioned. Each and every time a review is left about your
business, positive or negative, be sure to reply to it. That demonstrates other people reading the
reviews that you, the medical or dental practice owner, care what your customers think.
Here are two places where you should emphasize on getting reviews the Facebook page and Google My
Business page. These are great ones. Many individuals turn to social media to see what their friends and
family think about a practice, so having good reviews on your business’s Facebook page can help to
draw in potential customers. Receiving positive reviews on your Google My Business page is critical since
these reviews show up on Google when someone searches for your business.
Google also notes that “[h]igh-quality, positive reviews from your customers will improve your
business’s prominence,” which suggests that reviews might factor into rankings on the local pack.
4. Utilize local structured data markup
Structured data markup — often referred to as “schema markup” or “schema.org markup” — can be
further added to your website’s code to offer search engines with more statistics about your practice,
like the specialty that you do, reviews you’ve collected, services you offer and so on.
Only 31.3 percent of websites are using this markup — and most are only using the fundamentals. You
can make your local business stand out (and possibly rank greater than your competitors) if you add
structured data markup to your site where suitable.
Google requires you to use structured data markup as it helps their spiders better regulate what your
site content is about. Google even offers a Structured Data Testing Tool so you can check to tell if your
markup is correctly implemented.
These are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to local SEO. Applying these local search strategies
above will give you a head start on your competition.