Did you know that meta tags for dental clinics play a role in increasing your rank on the Google search results page? In this article, we’ll give you some meta tag ideas that you can use on your dental practice’s website.
What are meta tags?
Meta tags are codes that are commonly used by webmasters so that Google can further understand the content of your web pages. It is not visible on the actual page of your website, instead, it is found in the <head> section of the Hypertext Markup Language commonly known as HTML.
Want to know what meta tags are used by other dental practices? It’s easy! All you have to do are the following:
- Visit a dental page.
- Press right-click
- Select “View page source.”
Then, it’ll show you an entire page that is composed of all the codes/keywords that are used in a specific dental website. Something that looks like this:
Need help creating meta tags for your dental clinic’s website?
Importance of meta tags for dental clinics
Although meta tags don’t directly impact the search engine optimization of your dental website, these are still considered essential in every dentist’s website because it helps your dental practice stand out among your competitors, and improve page visitors’ experience. Using the right meta tags helps Google more familiar with the content of your website, and when Google gets used to your content and sees that it is accurate, then, it increases your search rank Aside from that, it also boosts your click-through rate especially if done properly.
Types of meta tags
1. Title tag
The title tag should have an accurate description of what your website is all about and is the first thing that people see when searching for something on search engines.
What makes a good title tag?
- less than 60 characters
- the main keyword is used at the beginning of the title
- relevant to the content of your webpage
- must captivate the attention of searchers
Like in this example, the dental clinic used their starting price for dental braces to attract the attention of searchers into clicking their website. Adding words like “Affordable” and “Best.”
2. Meta description
Meta description, on the other hand, is composed of 1-2 sentences and a maximum of 160 characters that include the main keywords that you have used in your dental website. This appears below your title tag. When a specific phrase is searched on Google and it happened to contain some of your keyword phrases, it will be highlighted in a bold format.
Like in this example, you can see that I searched for “Dental clinics near me.” Google showed results that contain the exact and related phrases to the one I have searched for and highlighted the relevant phrases that were used in other meta descriptions.
Note: When writing meta descriptions, make sure to use the exact focus keyword that you are using, so that Google will get used to it and recommend your website to come up when someone searches for a keyword that contains one or some of the main ones that you are using.
Also, the meta description is where you have to let people know what your page is all about. So, use this section as an opportunity to grab the attention of potential page visitors. Understand your desired visitors by using the marketing funnel to curate specific content. So, take your time to write a good one.
Use Facebook Ads for Dentists to attract even more visitors to your clinic’s page.
3. Robots meta tag
This is a kind of meta tag that is used to tell search engine crawlers if they have to index or not index the content of your dental webpage. The meta robots tag serves as instruction on what to do on your webpage. Here’s what it looks like when you click “View Page Source”:
4 Main Meta Tag Values:
- noindex- is a command that tells web crawlers to not index a specific page, meaning it won’t be shown on the search engine results page.
- index- tells web crawlers to index your entire dental webpage
- nofollow- is a command that tells web crawlers to not use all of the links that are found on the page
- follow- tells web crawlers to follow all of the links included in your entire dental webpage
First time working on meta tags? Our friendly team is here to help!
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4. Alt text tag
Search engines don’t have the ability to process and read images. But, with the use of alternative text tags, they will have an idea of how to interpret the images you are using on your website, by reading the alt text you have written. It also helps search engine crawlers if the image you used has not loaded properly.
Reminders when writing alt text for images:
- Your text must include a detailed description of the image.
- don’t stuff too much of your main keywords
- Keep it short yet precise
Example:
Good alt-text: Dental retainer
Better alt-text: Transparent dental retainer
Best alt-text: Girl wearing a transparent dental retainer
Here’s how alternative text tags appear on WordPress:
Want to learn more on how to use alt text? Also, read more about mobile-friendly websites to accommodate for those viewing your site with phones.
5. Header tags
Header tags represent the HTML code of the headings used in your dental clinic’s website. With the use of these tags, it is easier for page visitors to navigate your website because they see an overview of your site’s content. It goes from Heading 1 which is the most important header down to Heading 6 which consists of the subsections (Heading 6).
Wondering how to use header tags? Here’s a short guide:
Heading 1 (H1) is used for the title or main idea of your dental webpage.
Heading 2 (H2) is used to give more information about the title or main idea of your dental webpage.
Heading 3 (H3) is used if you want to further explain what’s in your Heading 2.
Heading 4 (H4) serves as a subsection if you want to clarify your explanation from Heading 3.
As you can see Heading 4-6 are like the subcategories of Heading 1. The purpose of header tags is to indicate the hierarchy and structure between the contents of your dental practice’s site.
Don’t have time to fix meta tags for your dental website?
Conclusion
Using the right meta tags can greatly help increase the visibility of any business website on the Search Engine Results Page, but when not used properly, it might negatively impact your website ranking. So, you have to be extra careful when utilizing it on your dental site, or maybe seek help from a web developer.
Here are other relevant articles for dentists like you:
Why Dental Clinics Should Have Mobile-Friendly Sites in 2023
