If you think local SEO is not that important to keep your dental practice, think again. As a matter of fact, it matters a lot. Consider this the lifeblood of your practice. Believe it or not, there are more searches for local businesses than any other. Consumers or patients hit the search engines right away to look for the local information or the nearest dental practice.

Maximize Your Dental Practice’s Local
So, how are you going to maximize your dental practice’s local SEO? Here are 5 keypoints you need to take note of.

1. Google My Business
This is a user-friendly approach that targets small businesses including your dental practice. It’s an integrated approach to the local SEO where it reaches search engine, G+, and even Google Maps searchers. How do you take advantage of this? All you need to do is to go to the site and click on the ‘Get on Google’ button, this will allow you to claim on your dental practice. Just make sure that you have optimized your information, not to mention, relevant keywords, business hours, images, etc. Remember, Google always wants your details to be specific.

2. NAP
Although a lot of businesses have their own style book only to ensure of having a consistent material, if you’re talking about local SEO, you need to follow this concept: NAP. It stands for Name, Address, and Phone Number. And most of all, use NAP style in all platforms, that includes your websites and even your social networking sites accounts. Furthermore, the clinic hours, how to get there or maps, and staff listings, and the information in the ‘About Us’ tab should also be the same.

3. Keywords
Yes, they are that important. In fact, you have to be specific as you also describe your practice. There’s got to be more than the word ‘dentist’. In order to reach more patients, you can always include the name of the city where you belong to or perhaps, the name of your neighborhood. Not only that, the services you offer can be good keywords to hit your target market. ‘Cosmetic dentistry’, ‘general dentistry’, and so on can be used.

4. What does your patient want?
Think about your patient or a consumer who is curious. Well, that’s what consumers are. Whenever they search about dental practices, they always want to know the address, phone number, and other important information. If possible, never forget these.

5. Third-Party Search Sites
As being said, Google My Business is essential, but you also have to consider other search engines such as Bing, Yellow Pages, Yelp, Manta, Refer Local will always be as important as Google. Moreover, you have to take note that your potential patients do not only search for your practice in these search engines, but they also dive into social media platforms such as Foursquare and LinkedIn. So, you have to drop in that necessary information so you be seen.

Once you have all these 5 keys in your website and in all your social media accounts, your patients will be able to locate where you are.