SWSmiles is a dental practise based in the London suburb of Battersea. The company’s website wasn’t on page one of Google for any of the keyword phrases they were targeting. This included the keyword phrase Battersea Dentist.
There is a surprising amount of competition for this keyword phrase, but not enough to explain why a 3 year old domain hadn’t made it onto page one. In fact, the site was sitting on page seven of Google’s results pages.
Clearly, something had gone wrong.
When I looked over each page on their site, it was clear previous efforts had been made to have the site ranked in Google. The following list shows what had been attempted previously (and hint at why it wasn’t working)…
- All page filenames included the word Battersea
- Every page included a well-stocked keyword list, many including the word Battersea and Dentist
- Every page had the same meta description and keyword list
- Every page had the same title, which consisted of the company’s name
- There were no internal contextual links
- Text on the page didn’t reflect the contents of the keyword list, title or description
Putting this right was a relatively simple matter. For example, if you take a look at the contact page on the SWSmiles website, you’ll find an internal contextual link back to the site’s homepage (i.e. the words ‘Battersea Dentist’ are clickable, and linked to the homepage). This helps to create an association between the keyword phrase ‘Battersea Dentist’ and the site’s homepage.
The key pages on the site now have unique titles, meta descriptions and keyword lists that reflect the actual content on the page. Headings and titles are now coordinated, and build an accurate picture of what each page on the site covers. I used a keyword density program to achieve this (an essential tool in search engine optimisation).
For various reasons, I had to pick my SEO battles carefully on this site. In particular, it was essential to focus on the main keyword phrase. The client wanted more optimisation than was possible, and it came down to selecting a keyword battle we could win. It’s worth noting that this is one area where day-to-day experience with SEO pays off. Anybody can learn the mechanical steps of SEO. It takes time to develop an instinct for the specific area in which a site is likely to gain the most SEO benefit.
I selected Battersea Dentist because it was clear this was a battle we could win. While there is competition, it’s not especially sophisticated. We’ll probably never unseat the number one site (they have the perfect domain for the keyword phrase, and it’s 4 years older than my clients), achieving spot #2 or #3 is entirely reasonable given the constraints I’m working under.
The site arrived on page one with nothing more than highly focussed content optimisation, and a couple of well chosen external inbound links. The goal now is to get into a top 3 spot for ‘Battersea Dentist’. This puts SWSmiles above the Google Local Business map. There are 2 keys to making this happen…
- External inbound links (including but not limited to contextual links)
- More content
The cheapest of these 2 tactics is #1, external inbound links. So that’s what I’m focussing on. These will be spread across a series of directories, and other sites. High PageRank sites are not required in this case, which makes the exercise affordable. In fact, I provided a fixed quote for a set number of links.
It’s my normal practise to over-deliver with links, as it’s not always possible to control context, the nofollow attribute, or indeed the SEO value conveyed by any external link.
These links will be delivered over a 4 week period, as link building works best when it’s carried out on an incremental basis.
If the client decides to go for #2 down the tract, there is an obvious candidate to easily and quickly generate more content. This has the advantage of setting up future SEO gains for other potentially lucrative keyword phrases (e.g. teeth whitening). That candidate is the Costmetic Dentistry page, which covers a number of specific dental services…
- Teeth Whitening
- Porcelain Veneers
- Cosmetic Bonding
- Cosmetic Orthodontics
- Botox
From an SEO perspective, these have a better chance of ranking well if they each sit on their own highly focussed page.
