Search engine optimization (SEO) is a marketing practice that helps your website reach the first page of Google. When you use structured data for SEO purposes, you can significantly enhance the appearance and functionality of your dental practice’s web page links in the search results pages of Google and other search engines.

Read on to learn the purpose and benefits of structured data, including tips for how to get started adding structured data markups to your dental clinic’s website.

What Is Structured Data for SEO?

Structured data is a tool for helping search engines like Google understand how to interpret and display the content on your web page. While languages like the one you’re reading now are a great way for humans to communicate, they’re too ambiguous for search engines. 

By using structured data for SEO, you’re speaking the language of the search engines, explicitly labeling specific content on your web pages with information that Google, Bing, or Yahoo can use to create a rich version of your page’s search result.

You can create structured data using supported markup vocabulary, such as Schema. Using Schema’s website¹, you can find standardized markups for whatever data type you want to tag on your site.

Some Examples of Structured Data

You can find hundreds of schema markup types, which typically fall into the following categories:

Rich Snippets

Rich snippets are enhancements for your web page in search engine results pages (SERPs), displaying information like reviews, images, and location data. Rather than simply having the title and description, your web page result shows users helpful information to enrich the search experience and increase organic traffic to your site.

Rich Cards

Rich cards are the mobile version of rich snippets. When someone types their search query into a mobile device, rich cards will be at the top of the page. Considering how many people use smartphones to find information, rich cards are highly beneficial to boost the visibility of your dental website.

Knowledge Panels

In Google search results, a knowledge panel appears to the right of the results and includes key information from the web page’s content. The typical content in a knowledge panel about a local business includes:

• Images
• Address 
• Opening hours 
• Phone number
• Reviews

Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs replace URLs above the title of search results pages, indicating the relationship of the web page to the rest of the website. Breadcrumbs help users understand the hierarchy of your site’s web pages and could lead them to click other links on your website.

Articles

You can add structured data to your blog post or news article to help Google understand the page’s content and display improved title text, images, and dates in search results. Using this strategy helps your articles become features at the top of search results for specific topics.

Q&A

People looking for information about a business often turn to the questions and answers (Q&A) section of Google search results. With structured data for SEO, you can help potential or existing dental patients find answers to their questions about your dental practice.

How You Can Use Structured Data for Your Dental Practice SEO

You can find many tools and plug-ins to help you add structured data to your site. Below, we give an example of how you can implement structured data using Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper:

1. Open Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper

2. Choose the type of content data you want to add (i.e., Articles, Local Businesses)

3. Click “Start Tagging”

4. Highlight components of your web page to assign data tags

5. After adding tags, click “Create HTML”

6. Download the structured data markup

7. Add HTML markup to web page source code

8. Test the markup with Google’s Rich Results Test and fix errors

Get More Clicks for Your Dental Clinic Website with SEO

Our Dental Intelligence software provides your dental practice with tools for analyzing your clinic’s performance, addressing office inefficiencies, and improving communication with patients and team members. We help you dig up the data needed to identify problems in your practice and offer solutions for the issues you find. 

With our Analytics and Engagement modules, you can save your dental team tons of time, allowing you to focus on patient experience. We can also help improve your dental marketing strategies, so your business can continue to grow.

Ready to practice smarter? Try our demo today!

Resources

¹ Schema