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Hey guys, welcome to this week's MMM! Today we're diving into the world of SEO with our special return guest, Xana Winans. Join us as we explore the secrets of utilizing SEO for your dental practice, and how to know if it's actually moving the needle. We'll uncover the importance of location and service keywords, with Xana's expert advice recommending 3-5 keywords for every 500-600 words of text on your website. The competitiveness of your area impacts your SEO strategy vastly, so we share some thoughts and strategies on effectively assessing your competition's keyword usage. Plus, we'll uncover a crucial tip: if your website hasn't seen new content in years, Google may be ignoring it.
Don't miss out on this chance to boost your SEO chops, and get more searching patients through your doors!
You can reach out to Xana Winans here:
Website: https://www.goldenproportions.com/
Get Xana's free assessments and guides here: https://www.goldenproportions.com/dental-marketing-resources/
Other Mentions and Links:
AACD - American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry
If you want your questions answered on Monday Morning Marketing, ask me on these platforms:
My Newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/
The Dental Marketer Society Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041
Michael: Hey Xana. So talk to us about s e O. How can we utilize this, or what advice or suggestions or methods can you give us that will help us actually attract new patients through
Xana: seo? So first off, thanks for having me, Michael. Um, I love talking about seo O I'm a complete geek when it comes to this stuff because it feels like Google has this secret sauce that they're not willing to share with the rest of us.
But there's actually a ton of information out there, and, part of the reason I'm so excited about it just because doctors don't understand what they're buying. So I like to teach them things that allow them to literally look on their website and see. Did I get the right thing? Am I getting something that is gonna actually help me to rank my website?
So it all starts with keywords. so let me ask you a question. When you want to find a question or the answer to a question on Google, what's the first thing you do?
Michael: I'm gonna ask it. Like, where can I find. Take, I don't know, something like that. You know
Xana: what I mean? Sure. Yeah. So with within the phrase that you're asking, there are target keywords that Google is trying to match up with the best possible result.
Their entire goal is to give you the best user experience, and that means they wanna give you a website that matches the, the answer that you're looking for. Um, and that happens because they're able to find that answer on your website in the way it's been built. So, For any doctor to know if their website is ranking.
It's all about understanding the keywords. And the keywords are, are the basic things that just like if you were a patient and you were trying to understand, how do I find the best dentist for, uh, pediatrics, for cosmetic dentistry, for dental implants, they're gonna go online and they're gonna type in a phrase that says, cosmetic dentist near me.
How do I find a good pediatric dentist? Those keywords. Physically have to be on your website. I don't know how familiar you are with seo, but do you know the top couple of places that you can look at on your own site to see if your keywords are being used? Well, is it like homepage or? No, it's all over the website.
Oh, okay. So when you're in your browser, let's say you're in Google Chrome. I don't know about you, but I have like 10 tabs open at all time. I'm hopping back and forth. Yeah. Between like email and my calendar and something I'm researching and something I'm working on for a client. Well, every time that you're in your browser and you're looking up a couple of different websites, you probably don't even realize this, but if you take your mouse and you hover over the little tab at the top mm-hmm.
It has some words on it. And those words on the website are known as the title tag. It's a meta tag or a meta description that kind of explains to Google what the purpose of the website is about. So if, for example, I am on a doctor's website that is in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania where I happen to live, and um, it's a page about cosmetic dentistry, I would expect to see the words cosmetic dentistry.
And Lewisburg, the town that's most important to me physically pop up when I hover on that, that little tag, that tab. If you hovering over something and it says home, or it just has your business name without any local geo identifiers, your website is definitely not optimized. That's place number one to look for keywords.
Another really good place to look for them is called anchor text. I'll ask you, do you know what Anchor text is and what the purpose of it is?
Michael: Um, man, this on you. You're putting me on the spot and I don't know anything about seo, so I, I'm assuming anchor text is like the, the text that people can easily find, like if they click on something and it goes to it, or, or no.
Am I super
Xana: off? No, you're, you're roughly right. So let's say you're on this page about cosmetic dentistry. part of the goal is to get you to maneuver around the website to a couple of different pages to explore what this doctor has to offer. Mm-hmm. So, as you're reading the text on this page, on cosmetic dentistry, You might see a couple of underlines or hyperlinks that will take you to a different page.
So for example, if you are accredited with the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry, you might say that in your bio, or talk about the importance of that accreditation. But then you're gonna link out to a different website, the very words that are used in that link. That link is considered anchor text.
And the better the keywords that are used in that link, the more valuable it is in Google's mind. So often you've probably seen this, we all have, where um, you're reading something on a website and it says, click here. Mm-hmm. And click here are the only two words that are your hyperlink. What do you think that does for, say, somebody who's trying to rank for cosmetic dentistry in Lewisburg?
Michael: it doesn't
Xana: go with it exactly. It doesn't do anything. It doesn't tell the search engine what is most important on that page. So instead, you might want to have your hyperlink with the anchor text, say, learn more about cosmetic dentistry services in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania and. That whole section is typically like a highlighted word and it links to another page, but there's keywords physically in that link that make a better user experience.
It helps someone know, what is this thing I wanna learn about? It's a great signal to Google. there's also a couple of other places that you wanna use these keywords and it's in the text on your website page. So the content on your page should contain not just the one keyword that you care about, like cosmetic dentistry, Lewisburg, but it should be repeated and talked about a couple of different ways.
Throughout the website, Google has something that they call semantic language. So they understand when you're talking about cosmetic dentistry, that that's also tied to smile Design. And smile design might also be affiliated with porcelain veneers. And so you talk about a couple of different cosmetic dentistry topics and Google knows to tie it all together.
So ideally you need to be incorporating your primary keyword, say cosmetic dentistry, Lewisburg into that website page. I'd say probably three to five times in about five or 600 words on a page. Doctors hate to see all this content on their website. They seem to think like nobody's gonna sit there and read all that, so they just want like a little blip of text.
Unfortunately, Google wants to see all of it. So you've gotta have enough information to actually describe this thing that you're talking about.
Michael: Mm. Okay. Now information wise, how much is like too much? How much is too little? If I were to be like, can we just do, like for example, let's hire Golden Proportions.
And I tell them, can we just do like five sentences every month of a specific topic, but like really talk about it or no. Um, well,
Xana: I would tell you to probably not waste your money doing that. it really needs to have some depth to it. Mm-hmm. So there's a, a couple of things to keep in mind. Let's say you wanna rank for cosmetic dentistry, Lewisburg, but there's somebody else who's po in position one and you're in position for, one of the things you want to do is go to your competitor and literally see how many words.
Are on that same page that they're ranking for the term that you want, and then how often is that keyword repeated in their text? And believe it or not, and this is very well documented and proven, you need to have more words than the next guy as one of a really big ranking signal to get you up there.
So you know, if you only have five sentences and the guy. Who is ranking number one has a thousand words on this page about cosmetic dentistry. He's gonna win hands down, over and over and over again. it's not just that there's a hard and fast rule, it's kind of more knowing I. If there's nobody else in town who cares about that keyword, you'll rank by default.
But if it is, you know, a really competitive keyword, you've gotta do some competitive research to find out what else is going on in your community and take a really targeted approach to your
Michael: success. Gotcha. Okay. Would video work in that scenario
Xana: or no? So video works in a couple of different ways in that it's great for user engagement.
People love to watch videos, but just watching the video itself only gives Google one signal, which is how long somebody spends on the website. What it doesn't do is give them any actual content. So what you'll need to do is use a transcription service. Who then writes out the script of what was talked about in your, um, video, and then you include that text on the website and that text is inevitably going to be containing some of the keywords you're looking for.
Gotcha. Okay. So
Michael: this is what, a portion or all of it, or is this part of what we kind of pay for when it comes to s
Xana: e O? So this is just a part of it. This is a little bit of the magic behind why search engine. People write what they write and the way that they write it. Often I've seen doctors who want to go in and edit the way that something is written because it doesn't sound as much like them.
Or, they want to use a word that might, in their mind be more descriptive of the procedure, but if it's not a keyword that somebody is actually searching, it's kind of useless. So it's important to know that, you know, what you're paying for is someone who knows where to put the right words in the right place with the right frequency in order to get you to rank.
Michael: Gotcha. Okay. So that's part of it, right?
Xana: That's part of it. Part of s Yeah, it's actually kind of like a mathematical formula, figuring out that right density of keywords. Oh,
Michael: okay. Okay. And so frequency matters too. I heard you say that right? Like how often we're supposed to be posting, um,
Xana: You're ready. Um, frequency matters both in how many times the keyword is used in a page on the website, but also how often you're adding new content.
So that's one of the great joys of blogging is if you have a blog on your website, it's really easy to write something interesting, maybe about an FAQ that you hear from a patient, and you write 350 to 500 words about that particular topic, and you're adding new content to the website. I'd every two weeks, you know, once a month at the absolute minimum.
And it shows Google that your website is active and interesting. So if you have a website where you have not added any new content in literally years mm-hmm. Your website is being completely ignored by Google.
Michael: Okay. So, for example, let's just say some, we're listening right now, right to this episode.
We're like, all right, I wanna get golden proportions to do just by, by the way, do you guys just do seo? If we were to just ask you guys just to do
Xana: seo, Well, it depends on the quality of the website. So if somebody comes to us and they have an otherwise really good website, absolutely we can transfer the site in, we can do SEO o for them.
but often part of s e o is also the websites speed and how good the user experience is. And so sometimes if you've got a website that's more than three or four years old, often it needs kind of to be re-skinned on new technology that makes Google happy. So, And I always say Google because they're the king of the search engines.
Obviously there's more than just Google out there, but it is really helpful. Gotcha.
Michael: Okay, so then we did the seo. What's the best kind of, you recommend if we're like, Hey, you're on page 10, you're on page seven, right? Like if you wanna get to number one, this is the frequency, this is the package you need to get, and then can you kind of let us know like, okay, if somebody were to recommend that, that's a little bit.
Eh, they're just getting you for your money kind of
Xana: thing. Well, that's the thing is it's really different from practice to practice. It depends on the market that you're in. Mm-hmm. If you're trying to rank number one for dentist in Chicago, it's gonna take a whole different level of effort. Then dentist in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, which is a town of about 25,000 people.
So when you have a package, That's kind of trying to shove a really unique situation into a standard solution for everybody. Mm-hmm. I think it's better to make sure that the company really looks at your website and says, okay, knowing your market, knowing your competition, knowing what you wanna rank for, here's the best way to do it.
And it could be outside of a package, it could require something completely different. So packages have their place, but they might not be serving you really, really well.
Michael: Gotcha to like your unique demographic and everything like that.
Xana: not so much demographic as it is understanding your market and the other doctors that are out there.
So it, it's one of those situations that, you know, if you're at a trade show and you see somebody selling SEO services and it's 2 95 a month, they're selling the exact same solution to somebody in a Podunk small town where there's no competition as they are to somebody in an incredibly competitive market.
And it might not be the right solution for you. So seo, you don't wanna buy on price. You wanna buy on someone who actually understands what it takes to rank in your market for the things that are important to your practice.
Michael: Awesome. I appreciate that Xana, and thank you so much for your time. And if anyone has further questions, you can definitely find her on the Dental Marketer Society Facebook group, or where can they reach out to you
Xana: directly?
Uh, best way to reach us is on our website, golden proportions.com. Um, there'll be a live chat. We can definitely have a chat on there, or you'll see a place where you can schedule an appointment and we'd love to talk to you.
Michael: Awesome. So guys, that's gonna be in the show notes below. As always, anzania, thank you for being with me on this Monday morning marketing episode.
My
Xana: pleasure. Thank you, Michael.