Case study · Dentists
Dental SEO case study: 219.56% more organic traffic in 2 months
What we did for a dental practice, and what changed in 2 months.
Organic traffic growth in 2 months
Organic traffic growth
Before
The situation
A dental practice in San Diego came to us wanting to build a new website and market it. Many dental practices build their sites on template builders. Those builders are quick to set up, but they hand every practice the same few themes and very little control over how the site is put together, and those sites tend not to rank well. We saw a gap there that a properly built site could take advantage of.
Dental search is competitive, and for a good reason. A single patient can be worth a lot to a practice over the years, and a great many people search for a dentist every month. Every practice in the city wants the same handful of searches, so a practice with a new website has to be smart about where it starts.
Before
The problem
The practice was starting with a new website, and a new site has no history with Google. The broad search, the word dentist plus the city name, was out of reach for a site that new. Chasing it first would have meant months of work with little to show for it.
The site also had to be built right from day one. Structure is a large part of how Google understands a site: the pages need to make it clear what each one is about and how they fit together. A site that is hard to understand is hard to rank, which is exactly where template sites fall short.
The work
What we did
Step 01
Built a new site on WordPress.
We built a new, properly structured website that looked the way the practice wanted, and we built it with ranking in mind from the start. Google weighs a long list of signals, so before the new site went live we checked it against the ones we could control. It launched in good standing instead of needing repairs later.
Step 02
Did full keyword research.
Instead of the broad search, we chose long-tail searches: longer, more specific phrases that a new site could realistically win. The keywords we targeted had a combined search volume of 2,235. That was a sensible first step for the campaign, not the finish line.
Step 03
Studied the competition.
We looked closely at the practices already showing up for those searches, so the plan rested on what was working in this market and we had all of the information we needed for the on-page work.
Step 04
Wrote and tuned the homepage.
The practice wrote 1,000 words for its homepage in its own voice, and we optimized that copy for the target keywords so the wording stayed natural but clear. Strong on-page work matters most for a new site, because a new site does not yet have many other sites linking to it.
Step 05
Built citations.
We listed the practice in 25 quality business directories. Citations are a gentle first step toward building links. They strengthen the site's link profile and make the practice's Google Business Profile more visible.
Step 06
Worked on the Google Business Profile.
We optimized the profile, and once it started to respond we doubled down and had the practice begin asking patients for reviews. Reviews are a big part of what keeps a profile near the top of local results.
Step 07
Started earning backlinks.
With the citations in place, we began a campaign to earn links from other websites, which strengthens the practice's standing beyond its own pages.
After
The results
Organic traffic to the practice's website grew 219.56% in 2 months. The Google Business Profile work also paid off quickly, which is why we leaned into reviews as early as we did.
The campaign did not stop there. With the foundation in place it moved into a second phase: new service pages and blog posts aimed at more of the searches patients make. Out of respect for the practice's privacy, we do not publish its name or any details that would identify it.
Organic traffic growth in 2 months
Next step
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