Use Personas to Define Your Dental SEO Strategy

A comprehensive dental search engine marketing strategy has a lot of moving parts, but the most important element is the people who will be conducting the searches.

Understanding these people better, by defining personas that accurately describe them, will help you plot out the best dental SEO strategy by guiding your content and keyword planning. Personas, if you’re not familiar with the marketing term, are semi-fictional profiles that describe your ideal patients so you can target them more effectively.

Define your personas

If you already have personas created for your ideal dental patients, you’re ahead of the game. If not, no worries. Here is a quick primer on how to define them.

Who are you trying to attract?

First, consider how you would describe the patients you want to attract to your dental practice. This breaks down into demographic and psychographic characteristics.

Demographics

The demographic information you can use to describe your ideal patients includes:

• Age
• Gender
• Income
• Family size
• Education
• Occupation

All of these factors can influence their behavior and decisions when it comes to seeking dental care.

Example: Charlie Checkup is a married father of two grade-schoolers and owns a suburban home. He has a college degree and works remotely in a management level position for a mid-sized company.

Psychographics

Psychographic information helps to clarify what your ideal patients believe and feel. That can include their opinions toward politics, social issues, and especially dental care. Also closely tied to this is their behavior and how they spend their time.

Charlie Checkup is a married father of two grade-schoolers and owns a suburban home. He has a college degree and works remotely in a management level position for a mid-sized company. Charlie enjoys coaching his kids’ sports teams, traveling with his family, and volunteers for a local charity. He believes that dental care is important and makes sure that his family visits the dentist at least twice a year for preventive care.

What do they want or need?

Next, ask yourself what your personas are looking for in terms of their dental care and what you can provide them with.

Charlie Checkup is a married father of two grade-schoolers and owns a suburban home. He has a college degree and works remotely in a management level position for a mid-sized company. Charlie enjoys coaching his kids’ sports teams, traveling with his family, and volunteers for a local charity. He believes that dental care is important and makes sure that his family visits the dentist at least twice a year for preventive care.

Charlie’s dentist has recently retired and he is looking for a new dental care provider for his family. He is willing to pay out of pocket for quality care.

Which stage of the new patient journey are they in?

Adding in details about where Charlie is in his patient journey might look like this:

Charlie Checkup is a married father of two grade-schoolers and owns a suburban home. He has a college degree and works remotely in a management level position for a mid-sized company. Charlie enjoys coaching his kids’ sports teams, traveling with his family, and volunteers for a local charity. He believes that dental care is important and makes sure that his family visits the dentist at least twice a year for preventive care.

Charlie’s dentist has recently retired and he is looking for a new dental care provider for his family. He is willing to pay out of pocket for quality care. Charlie is just beginning his search and is trying to come up with a list of possible dentists.

Define your persona-based content

So, what content will Charlie be looking for online to solve his problem? He will likely want to narrow his search to dentists who provide preventive cleanings and exams. With his kids both in school, he will also be interested in offices that offer weekend and evening appointments. You probably already have pages on your practice website that explain the services you offer, office hours, and scheduling options. That’s good. You’ll just need to make sure they’re optimized for Charlie’s online search.

Define your persona-based keywords

What keywords will Charlie likely use to find the information you have waiting for him? By brainstorming, you might come up with a list of possible search terms, ranging from general to specific:

• Dentists near me
• General dentists near me
• General dentists near me with weekend hours
• General dentists near me with evening hours
• General dentists near me accepting new patients

These all seem like reasonable guesses as to what Charlie might type into a search query. The good news is that you don’t have to try to pick the right one. You can optimize for all of them. It just takes some strategic use of keywords on your website pages and within your content.

Want a complete guide to dental SEO?

Dental website SEO is one of the most important, and most challenging, topics in your entire dental marketing strategy. Download your copy of The Definitive Guide to Improving Your Dental SEO and get an in-depth explanation of search engine optimization and how it can help you reach your marketing goals.