Optimizing your dental practice’s website for success should be an ongoing process. Make sure that each search engine optimization effort returns actual results. To do so, you’ll need to understand which key SEO metrics to track so you’ll know how to improve your strategy. 

At Dental Intelligence, we provide tools that help your business flourish. Our local dental SEO guide can help you navigate the complex ins and outs of designing your website to rank high in search engines.  

Here, we discuss the top six metrics you should track after implementing our SEO strategies. 

1. Website Traffic

Website traffic may seem like the most obvious SEO metric to track, though it involves many complex insights. When measuring website traffic, consider the following:

• Organic traffic: Organic refers to anyone who searched for a term and clicked on your website in the results (rather than an ad). Steady growth in your organic traffic means you have successful SEO strategies. 
• Paid traffic: Any visitors who come from paid advertisements do not reflect the success of your SEO efforts. 
• Social media traffic: You may gain visitors from people navigating from your social media accounts. 
• Referral traffic: If any other websites link to yours, they can direct visitors to your site. Backlinks are excellent SEO tools that develop website authority.
• ‍Direct traffic: Anytime someone directly types in your website’s URL to visit your site, this displays growth in brand recognition and authority. 

2. Keyword Rankings

When developing your SEO strategy, you likely selected various keywords that you wanted to rank for. You should measure your ranking progress for these terms and compare them to where you started. Keep in mind that ranking high for difficult terms with tens of thousands (or more) of searches per month takes time, so you shouldn’t expect to reach the top immediately. 

We recommend seeking short-term wins by using easier terms. Maybe one of your blog posts can rank at the top for a term with lower search traffic that’s related to your primary keyword. 

3. Click-through Rate

Click-through rate refers to how many people actually click on your website after viewing the search results. Just because you appear near the top doesn’t mean people click on your site. 

A low click-through rate could mean a few things:

• You’re ranking for the wrong keywords
• Your website’s title tag or meta description isn’t engaging or relevant enough
• Your metadata doesn’t adequately answer the user’s question

If you have a low click-through rate, we recommend analyzing the search engine results page (SERP) to see how your listing compares to competitors. You can adjust your metadata to suit user needs better.  

4. Session Duration

Session duration refers to how long users spend on your website in total. Google Analytics provides deep insights into user sessions, like where they navigated, which pages they spent the most and least time on, and more. 

Low session durations may mean that you don’t have engaging-enough content. For example, users may give up if they see large bodies of text without visuals or easy-to-digest headings. You may also see low session durations if you have confusing navigation, making it hard for users to find what they need.

We recommend analyzing your pages that have the longest session durations. Your users enjoy this content the most, so you should continue writing more on the subject. 

5. Bounce Rate

The bounce rate refers to how many users clicked on your website and then immediately left. Bounces may happen from users finding the information they need quickly, like a phone number, or they may indicate website issues.

For example, high bounce rates may display poor loading speeds. Many users abandon websites if they don't immediately load. You can resolve this by compressing your images and following the recommended HTML template.

6. Total Conversions

Your total conversion rate may be the most important SEO metric to track. Conversions refer to how many people called and scheduled an appointment after landing on your site.

Determining how leads discover your dental practice can be tricky. For example, a new patient may have found your practice from a Google search or a referral. We recommend asking new patients where they heard about your office so you can compare the success of your different marketing strategies. 

Do You Want to Increase Referrals? 

As you learn the top SEO metrics to track, consider implementing a referral program in your practice to increase revenue and conversions.

At Dental Intelligence, we offer a Swell integration that helps you grow your online reputation through reviews. Request a demo from our Dental Intelligence team today to see how our platform works. 

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