How to Use Keywords in Your Orthodontic Marketing

There are plenty of helpful guides out there on basic SEO (search engine optimization) best practices for marketing. The majority of them will encourage you to start with keyword research. Keywords are the phrases in your web content that make it possible for people to find your orthodontist website via search engines, like Google.

If you’ve done the work of identifying keywords and come to the conclusion that this is just the beginning, you are correct. After you’ve identified a core group of topics your sought-after visitor base is going to be interested in reading about, then identified the search phrases they’ll type into search engines to find this content, it’s time to use them in your marketing strategy. Here are some tips for how to use keywords in your orthodontic marketing.

Create a Spreadsheet of Content Topic Ideas

As a part of your marketing strategy, you are likely already developing content–blog posts, podcasts, videos–to increase your visibility online. And since you’ve already done the research on keyword phrases for the orthodontics industry, your next step is to determine what keywords would make great content.

From there, you can make a spreadsheet of content topic ideas. For each content topic, you can include additional notes about your topic idea, the content type you want to create (blog post, podcast, video, etc.), the best person to create it, and any other relevant notes.

Use Keywords to Optimize Every New Web Page

When you are actually creating a new page on your website, you’ll want to make sure the keyword phrase you are targeting is in several key places on the page:

• In the main title of the page
• In the meta description for the page
• In at least one image’s file name and in the alt-text for the image
• In the first paragraph on the page
• In two or three other places throughout the content

Optimize All Your Social Media Profiles

Potential patients may be searching for you within social media. Here are some tips for how you can optimize each platform:

• Facebook – Add keyword phrases to text boxes on your page titled “Category,” “Short Description,” and “Long Description.” All of these fields can be edited on your page’s “About” tab.
• Instagram – Add a keyword phrase to your bio.
• Twitter – Add a keyword phrase to your bio.
• LinkedIn – Add a keyword phrase to your company description, company specialties, and company industry.

Try not to overstuff your social media platforms and pages with keywords because your content may be perceived as spammy. However, adding your main keywords and phrases to your bios and any description fields on your social media pages can help you show up in searches in each respective platform.

Directory Listing Discovery

Try searching for your target keywords and phrases on Google and see if a general, niche, or local directory shows up on the first page of your search results. Based on your location and target keyword, you may find several different types of directories for small business owners, and perhaps, specifically health care professionals. The ones on the first page should be considered for your website listing. You might even be able to pay to be on the first page of that directory category.

Email Subject Line Optimization

You likely already have a way to gather potential patients’ email addresses, and if you are going to the effort of sending emails, you should make sure the email subject lines are optimized. This is important because a new patient may be on the mailing lists for several orthodontists or they could have contacted more than just your office asking for information. If several months have passed since they did their initial research they will likely put a couple keywords into the search bar, and you’ll want your email to pop up first.

Using keywords as a part of your marketing strategy can go a long way in helping you gain more visibility online.The worst thing possible for your marketing strategy is for you to invest lots of time and resources into creating content and there is no audience for it. Even if your new patients have been driving past your office for the past five years, they are more likely to do a Google search for a local orthodontist than to stop by your physical location. By using keywords in your orthodontic marketing, your practice is more likely to be the one they discover when they search online.