A beginner’s guide to local SEO for orthodontists

The 101 of local SEO for orthodontists

As an orthodontist, you have to do more than correct misaligned teeth and jaws. In order for your orthodontist practice to thrive, you have to market it correctly to prospective patients in your geographical area of focus. Local SEO helps orthodontists to stand out from competitors. Here’s an overview of its key procedures. 

Keeping business listings straight 

First and foremost, make sure your NAP data (Name, Address, Phone number) is correctly displayed in all relevant online directories where your orthodontist's practice appears, so potential patients can find you. 

Listings solution: With Semrush Local’s Listing Management tool, you can disseminate your business information across the most authoritative business directories with a few clicks.  You can also edit these details from one place when necessary, and all your listings are updated.  

Regular checkups of your local search rankings

Google ranks local businesses in search results based on relevance, distance, and prominence—how much their profile matches the search terms, how far they are from the user, and how trustworthy they seem based on reviews and citations. To stay ahead of competition in the area, keep an eye on how your business is doing in local search, as well as other orthodontists near you. 
Maps Marketing: Semrush Local’s Map Rank Tracker shows you search rankings for a given keyword in a map grid of your geographic location.  

Tending to online reviews

Reputation management plays an important role in local SEO for orthodontists. Remember to request reviews from satisfied patients, because five-star ratings are crucial in gaining the trust of new clients. Be sure to respond to every review, regardless of its sentiment—this will help to establish your reputation as a caring and meticulous orthodontist. 

Reputation tool: With Semrush Local’s Review Management tool, you can monitor all your reviews in one dashboard, and use AI to leave replies to Google reviews.  

How to overcome the main hurdles of local SEO for orthodontists

Orthodontists face some unique challenges in local SEO that are specific to their profession. Here are some of the hurdles, along with strategies to tackle them.

Keyword optimization for highly specific medical terminology

To you, using words like “malocclusion” or “dentofacial orthopedics” may be the most accurate way to describe symptoms or treatments. But remember, your patients might not be familiar with specific orthodontic terms. They’ll probably use more generic search keywords like "braces" or "teeth straightening". In order to ensure your content is both informative and understandable, you’ll want to balance using professional terminology and layman’s terms. 

Also, if you offer specialized orthodontic treatments, such as clear aligners or lingual braces, you have to optimize your Google Business Profile along with all forms of your digital content for keywords describing each specific service. 

When doing your keyword research, use the Semrush Keyword Magic tool to identify both professional and layman terms related to orthodontic services. In the Semrush Keyword Overview, you can see a keyword’s metrics (volume, intent, difficulty, cost per click) on a local as well as a national level. 

Reputation management when beauty is at stake

Straightening someone’s smile can be a tricky business. The discomfort of wearing braces and the tedium of lengthy, recurring treatments can leave even the most devoted patient a bit, well, impatient. For this reason, accumulating positive reviews can be more challenging for orthodontists. In addition, the long duration of orthodontic treatments means you’re tasked with managing patient satisfaction over the course of months or even years. Earning five stars in the long game is definitely harder than in the case of instant, one-off services. 

Still, you can make the most of your patients’ feedback to boost your local SEO. Implement automated systems to request reviews from satisfied patients, ideally after a pleasant visit or a successful treatment milestone. 

You can then monitor and manage online reviews with the help of Semrush Local’s Review Management tool. You can also leverage its AI Auto-Reply feature to respond promptly and professionally to all your Google reviews. 

Top ratings based on a thousand reviews earned 2nd place in Google Maps’ Local Pack for this orthodontic clinic.
Geographic targeting for a broader service area

Compared to general dentists, orthodontic practices often draw patients from a wider geographic area, as people are willing to travel farther for specialized care. This requires a more nuanced local SEO strategy: you have to stay relevant and visible for potential clients beyond your immediate vicinity. Find and optimize for keywords that are location-specific on a larger scale: not just “orthodontist near me”, or “orthodontist in (your city)”, but also search terms that include broader geographic areas. 

Whatever you consider “local” in the case of your orthodontist’s practice, regularly create content that highlights your involvement in that community and features local patient success stories or area-specific promotions.

Using visual proof in content

For orthodontists, showing positive results through before-and-after photos is a good idea, but it requires careful handling of patient privacy and consent. Also, producing high-quality, compelling visual content to demonstrate successful outcomes can be expensive and time-consuming. If you create visual content with local SEO in mind, you can leverage it to boost the ranking of your orthodontist’s practice in local search and on Google Maps. Invest in professional photography and video production. Use tools like TinyPNG to compress images for faster loading times. Optimize images with descriptive filenames, alt text featuring local keywords, and captions, so search engines can find and interpret them. 

Creating educational content for patients

Some people are reluctant to undergo orthodontic treatments; they are not convinced that the discomfort of wearing braces is worth the uncertain, distant reward of neatly aligned teeth. You need to educate potential patients about the benefits of treatments, and to explain the processes involved, so they can make informed decisions. This requires creating detailed, informative content that addresses common concerns and questions in a simple, engaging way. 

A blog post offering useful guidance for first-time orthodontic patients

A regularly updated blog with educational posts is just one means of achieving this. You can also create videos to explain procedures and treatments to the more visually inclined. Offer downloadable guides, infographics, and checklists about the ins and outs of orthodontic treatments. All these assets will help your practice to stand out from the competition and to rank higher in local search. 

More local SEO tips for orthodontists

Make the most of your Google Business Profile

With Google being the top search engine, the Google Business Profile is a key asset of local SEO for orthodontists. Make sure it’s up to date and well-optimized with relevant categories and local keywords. Provide an accurate description of your services, and add photos of the premises, or images of orthodontic procedures and their results—whatever encourages users to visit your clinic. 

The Google Business Profile photos of this orthodontic practice give an overview of the services, as well as a sneak peek into the clinic

Get noticed: Semrush Local’s free AI Google Business Profile Description Generator can help you create compelling GBP descriptions that will attract traffic to your profile, thereby bettering the odds of having more potential patients. 
Build relevant local backlinks
As a local business, the credibility and success of your orthodontist’s practice depends on how well it’s integrated into your local professional network. Whether you’re part of an orthodontists’ association, you team up with health insurance companies, or you participate in health or awareness initiatives in your area, make sure your partners include links on their websites that refer back to yours. Backlinks to well-established organizations enhance your online visibility and trustworthiness for patients and search engines alike. 
Optimize for the small screen
Most people use their phones to search for local businesses, and orthodontic clinics are no exception. The location data of handheld devices enables Google to list services near the user, even if they haven’t specified the geographic area or “near me” in the search query. 
Therefore, it’s important to optimize your website as well as your Google Business Profile for a seamless mobile user experience. It makes sense to upgrade to a responsive web design, and to compress images for faster loading times.