8 Steps to Professional Keyword Research for Your Dental Website

As owners of dental, physician, and chiropractor practices we must understand that each Google search has one thing in common – it starts with a keyword.  You may have typed in ‘digital camera reviews’ in Google as you were searching for the perfect Christmas present for your spouse.  You might have typed in ‘best pot roast recipes’ as you were gearing up for a big dinner.  And your potential patients are typing in ‘braces Anytown, USA’ when they are looking for a reputable dentist.

When choosing keywords for your website you should follow this 8-step procedure:

1.  Create your root keywords – What does your practice do?  Family Physicals?  Invisalign?  Cosmetic dentistry?OBGYN?  Spine adjustment?  Veneers?  Write down all of the services that your practice provides.

2.  Type each of these root keywords in the free Google Adwords keyword tool.

3. Add keywords that you think are relevant to your dental or physician practice website.  Tip:  Look for “long-tail” 3 and 4 keyword phrases as well as short one and two keyword phrases.  Example:  ’center for cosmetic dentistry’ vs. ‘cosmetic dentistry’. Create a list of approximately of 20 to 30 keywords to start out.

4.  Append the geographic locations, from which you draw your patients, to each of these keywords.  This assumes that someone that finds your website in Buffalo, New York does you no good when your practice is located in Tampa, Florida. For Example:  ’family physician practice tampa fl’ and ‘family physician hillsborough county’ (Tampa’s county.)

5.  Categorize or “theme” your keywords.  For example, place all of your ‘invisalign’ and ‘braces’ keywords in one category or theme and place all of your ‘fillings’ and ‘cavity’ keywords in another theme.

6.  Further categorize your groups of themes into two and three keyword bundles.  This should leave you with somewhere between 10 and 15 keyword bundles.  For example, from the ‘invisalign’ theme, you might have two bundles:

Bundle 1

‘cost of invisalign tampa florida’

‘invisalign price hillsbourough county’

Bundle 2

‘invisalign orthodontist tampa fl’

‘invisalign orthodontics hillsborough fl’

7.  Create a separate web page on your site (do you see why I recommend a blog for your dental or physician website?) that includes these keywords in the content.  These keywords do not have to appear verbatim.  If it is difficult to create text in proper English with the keywords used verbatim, simply use the keywords in the same vicinity as each other.

Use the keywords in your bundles in as many of the following places as possible:

-Title Tag

-Heading Tag

-Strong Tag

-Link Anchor Text

For more information about these tags visit this blog post.

8.  Interlink each page in your “theme” with the others using keyword rich anchor text for the link.  For example if you are linking from the first example Invisalign keyword bundle to the second Invisalign keyword bundle you might use some text like this:

‘Sorensen Dental has been providing Invisalign orthodontics in Hillsborough County, Florida since its inception.  We provide financing for those that are concerned about the cost of Invisalign.  Our Tampa, Florida offices have a kid-friendly atmosphere that extends to our staff, services, and waiting room. ‘

You would use the ‘Invisalign orthodontics in Hillsborough County’ text as a link to your page that concentrates on the second bundle of keywords.  This will funnel relevance to that page for that keyword.  Notice that the keyword ‘cost of invisalign tampa florida’ is not used verbatim but is used as close as the English language will allow.

Do not simply create text that uses these keywords over and over again.  This is considered spamming and could get you banned from the search engines.  Not to mention, it is not readable by your potential patients! Instead, use each keyword two or three times on the page if it is possible but don’t sacrifice the quality of the writing to fit it in that third time.

As always, leave a comment below or contact me directly if you have questions about this or any other issues with your online marketing.

December 28, 2008    Posted in: Dental Keyword Research

6 Responses

  1. The Visible Dentist - January 2, 2009

    Nice tutorial Hayden — very informative. A months back I compiled a list of dental keywords on my own site. Since then I’ve discovered that less than 1% of dentists have any desire whatsoever of writing anything for their website. As you mention, a blog for their site would be a powerful marketing tool, though still, getting them to write something is another story!

    John Barremore
    Houston, TX

  2. Hayden Dell - January 3, 2009

    I understand completely. Those that are busy running a dental practice do not have the time to create new content for their site. It’s a shame though because it really is important .

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