The title tag and meta description for dental clinics are one of the most important SEO factors when building a website. These two factors are how potential new patients will be able to find quick information about your dental clinic.
A strong title tag and meta description will improve the SEO of your website, making it organically drive more traffic to your business. Using SEO practices correctly for your dental clinic can provide a high return on investment rather than other marketing methods like Google Ads.
According to Hubspot, using SEO practices can drive more than 1000% traffic rather than social media.
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What Is Title Tags and Meta Description for Dental Clinics?
A title tag is the blue bolded words on the search engine results page under the URL. The title tag will tell the patient what the page will be about, this is usually done in about 50-60 characters.
The meta description is a short snippet of the information under the title tag. This gives potential patients a little more context about the page, to write a meta description you want to keep it around 130-160 characters.
Although the meta description doesn’t affect SEO factors directly, it is still an important factor as it can help increase the click-through rate which affects SEO.
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How To Improve your Title Tag And Meta Description
Having a well-written title tag and meta description will improve your click-through rate, which is the number of patients actually clicking on your website.
Here are some tips for both title tag and meta description you can apply to your dental website.
Title Tag
Keyword Stuffing
The first step to improving your title tag is by not keyword stuffing. Even though keywords are important to SEO as this is how patients find your business, overusing them will not help.
Google will be able to recognize this and it will hurt your ranking on the search engine results page.
Example of keyword stuffing:
Best Dental Clinic | Dentist Office in Anaheim | Dentist Near me
Notice how many times dental or a variation of it shows up in the title, this would be a flag to Google.
Secondary Keywords
The second tip for title tags is to include secondary keywords that patients would use when finding a dental office. Putting yourself in the shoes of a patient is going to be important.
As a patient, they may use secondary keywords in the search like
- Wisdom Teeth Removal
- Teeth Extraction
- Fillings
- Teeth Cleaning
- Implants
- Root Canal
- Teeth X-Rays
Having secondary keywords like these or any other services you offer will help your business show up in the search results for what patients are looking for. Also using secondary keywords will help avoid keyword stuffing.
Try using these keywords more towards the beginning of your title tag in case your title tag is too long. You want the searchers to be able to know what is on the page regardless.
Location
The third tip is to include the location of your local dental office in the title tag. Often patients will use keywords like “near me” or the location they are in.
Example of including location in your title:
Wisdom Teeth Removal Specialist | Dental Office Los, Angeles
By including the location of your dental office it will help target patients that are using the local keywords.
Different Title Tags
The fourth tip is to use a different title tag for each page of your dental website. This will help avoid the bounce rate on your website.
Bounce rate is the percentage of a searcher staying on your page and interacting with the page. Having a high bounce rate means that the searcher’s intent doesn’t match with the page they are on.
If you have keywords in the title tag that are mentioning teeth cleaning but the page is actually about you then the patient will more likely to bounce off the page.
To avoid this, use keywords that match the context of the page.
Example:
About Us | Dental Los, Angeles | Dr. Pham
From this example, patients will be able to know that the page is going to be about who they are working with.
Length of Title Tag
The fifth tip is to keep your title tag concise. As we talked about earlier you should try to go for around 50-60 characters, going past this has the potential to have it cut off.
You don’t want your title to be cut off as it can make it hard for searchers to fully understand what the page or the message you are trying to say will be about, especially if they are on mobile.
Sometimes if your title tag is too long Google will replace yours with what they think best fits your page but sometimes it doesn’t really help you.
Brand Name
The sixth tip is to include the name of your dental practice at the end of the title tag. This will help build recognition and credibility to your clinic.
Example of including brand name
Teeth Cleaning | Dental office Los, Angeles – DentalExperts
Often you will see this with bigger brands like eBay as it helps searchers recognize sites that they trust right away.
Need Help With Title Tags?
Meta Description
Once you have the attention of a potential patient from the title tag, the meta description can help guide them with the next step.
Here’s how to do it.
Call to Action
Depending on the page, you will want to include a call to action. A call to action is you telling the customer the next action that they should take.
Example of a call to action to include:
“Call now to schedule for a free x-ray”
Adding calls to action will drastically improve your click-through rate and attract more customers to your dental page.
Make sure to keep the information on the page and meta description relevant to each other as if it’s not, your bounce rate can increase.
Keywords
Keywords are how your dental page will be triggered to the search results page for a patient.
When including keywords in the meta description, Google will bold the words making it easier for the patient to find information about your business.
If you mention wisdom teeth in the title tag, you will want to give more information about that within the meta description.
Here’s an example
The keywords used in the title tag, meta description, and page should all tie together with relevant information.
Length of Meta Description
The length of your meta description does not matter much like the title tag. Definitely want to try to use as much character as possible, the more information you provide the more likely the patient will click on it.
Include important context or keywords towards the front of the description like any promotions and other information that attracts customers. Anything past 160 characters will get cut off and shown with three dots.
This method can actually improve your click-through rate as it will make patients want to keep reading about the information talked about.
Conclusion
It’s notable that optimizing your page takes time before knowing if it actually works. By applying these SEO strategies to your dental clinic and being patient it will boost up your Google ranking, attracting new patients.
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