Local SEO: How Far to Stretch for Your Dental Practice

Search engines have come a long way when it comes to helping the user figure out the answers to their questions. The key is for businesses to figure out how to use that technology to their advantage. If you’re designing a local SEO strategy for your dental practice in San Diego, CA, particularly if you just have one or two locations, we’ll look at what you should know about the algorithms and how to factor in your customer’s needs and habits for even better accuracy.

Consider Your Location

San Diego is a big city with plenty of competition in your area. Deciding how to draw the parameters comes down to who you want your customers to be and why they’re likely to visit you in the first place. If you’re a general dentist providing general services, you may want to limit your local SEO to people within a 15-minute drive. Those who are more than 15 minutes away may be more likely to choose a general dentist who’s 10 minutes away or less.

Now is also a good time to map out a location radius based on your customer habits. If you’re in an area of town with nonstop traffic, you’ll want to factor that into your drive time. This may mean cutting down on how many miles your local SEO stretches (e.g., to people who are 4 miles away or less).

Consider Your Specialty in San Diego

Local SEO can get a little muddled when you consider your specialty in San Diego. For a specialist, patients may be willing to travel for longer, especially if you have proven skills that other dentists in the area don’t. For instance, if you’re a root canal retreatment extraordinaire who has worked with some of the most complex cases, you may want to branch out to people who are a half-hour drive away or more.

If you’re looking for a dental marketer in San Diego who can help you answer these questions, the staff at Digital Healthcare Professionals has you covered. Our team is not only skilled at local SEO, we can adapt it for any dentist in the area who wants to make their marketing more effective.