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In the past, a dental practice having a website put them ahead of their competitors. Now, just having a website is not enough to compete with other practices, large or small. Websites were initiated to be an extension of a practice in an effort to reach more patients, but now that website must be optimized to be found by patients searching for a practice. When more than half of people search for information and services on their mobile phones, optimizing websites for mobile search engine results is an essential component for a practice’s website to engage and attract patients. As a dentist or dental practice owner, focusing primarily on providing exceptional care for your patients is a priority-as it should be. However, from a business perspective, you also need to be proactive in ensuring that your website can reach and serve potential clients effectively. One of the most significant factors in modern marketing is having a mobile-friendly website. If your website isn’t optimized for mobile devices, you are missing opportunities to attract new patients, damaging your SEO rankings, and harming your practice’s reputation.
So, how can you DIY your way to having a mobile-friendly website first? We’re giving you the steps and invested in helping you understand the importance of mobile SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for dental practices and explore how a mobile-friendly website can lead to more patient appointments, higher search engine rankings, and a better overall user experience.
What is Mobile SEO?
Mobile SEO is different from regular SEO because it’s impacted by the location the patient is searching from, the size of their screen, the device’s operating system, etc., and understanding those differences makes it possible for you to improve your rankings in mobile search. What differs the most between regular and mobile SEO is the layout of Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Desktop results pages are wider and can fit two columns whereas mobile phone screens are narrower and do not have room to showcase two columns of information. This means anything that would normally land on the right side of the screen for a desktop SERPs page, will either stack below or above the organic search results. For example, Google Business Profiles on a desktop land on the right side of the screen, but on mobile will stack above the organic results. To have your practice ranking higher in organic search results for mobile, you have to include mobile SEO in your overall SEO strategy.
The goal of mobile SEO is optimizing your website to ensure it works well on mobile devices and can be found easily by search engines. Mobile SEO isn’t just about making sure your website looks good on smaller screens—it also involves technical elements such as page speed, responsive design, and ensuring content loads correctly.
The Shift to Mobile-First: Why Mobile Matters for Your Dental Practice
Why is Mobile SEO Important?
Over the past decade, the way people access information has radically changed. As of 2024, over 60% of all web traffic comes from mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. That means that a large majority of people are searching for business or services directly on their mobile device—intentionally. The days of patients researching dental practices from desktop computers are quickly fading and are being replaced by the convenience that mobile devices bring.
Why Does This Matter To You?
Patient Behavior
To start—patient behavior is the biggest reason why your website should be optimized for mobile search. When someone needs dental care and begins searching online for a practice, that patient behavior has the intent to schedule an appointment. When a potential patient is searching for a dental practice with a need for a service, they will engage with one of the top three practices that end up in the results of their search. To go back to the earlier statistic that was mentioned, more than half of these searches are conducted on mobile devices. If your website isn’t optimized for mobile use, you’re likely turning away potential patients who are actively searching with the intent to schedule an appointment.
Google’s Mobile-First Indexing
Now let’s consider Google’s Mobile-First Indexing next. In 2019, Google implemented mobile-first indexing, which means the mobile version of your website is now the primary basis for how it ranks on Google. If your website is not optimized for mobile first and doesn’t offer a good user experience, your rankings will suffer. As previously mentioned, ranking highly in search engine results is crucial to your business. In fact, over two-thirds (68.7%) of all clicks go to the top three organic search results (First Page Sage, 2023)
Patients tend to choose practices that appear on the first page of search results, and if your site isn’t mobile-friendly, your competition may be pulling ahead of you.
1. Mobile Search is on the Rise
Mobile search is quickly becoming the dominant way people find healthcare services, and the dental industry is no exception. As patients increasingly rely on smartphones to look up immediate solutions, like finding a dentist nearby or booking an emergency appointment, mobile search is reshaping how dental practices attract new clients. This shift is particularly crucial in the healthcare sector, where patients often search for time-sensitive care on the go, statistics show that 82.8% of patients use search engines to find healthcare providers (Digitalis). For your dental practice to grow, your online presence needs to be mobile-friendly—otherwise, potential patients may not even consider your practice as an option for their oral healthcare.
Websites with mobile-friendly content, such as easy-to-read service descriptions, one-tap phone numbers, and streamlined booking forms, provide a seamless user experience that meets today’s patient expectations. If your content isn’t optimized for mobile, you risk losing business to competitors who are already adapting to this trend.
2. Mobile Content Determines Google Search Ranking
Now let’s consider Google’s Mobile-First Indexing next. In 2019, Google implemented mobile-first indexing, which means the mobile version of your website is now the primary basis for how it ranks on Google. If your website is not optimized for mobile first and doesn’t offer a good user experience, your rankings will suffer. For example, if a dental practice’s site is slow to load or difficult to navigate on mobile, Google will penalize it by ranking it lower, even if the desktop version is flawless. This means that when a potential patient searches for “dentist near me” or “cosmetic dentistry,” your practice may not appear on the first page of results, losing visibility to competitors. Mobile-friendly content, such as fast-loading service pages, tappable contact details, and clear appointment booking options, is crucial to ensure that your site ranks high and converts mobile visitors into new patients. As previously mentioned, ranking highly in search engine results is crucial to your business. Statistics show that over two-thirds (68.7%) of all clicks go to the top three organic search results (First Page Sage, 2023).
Patients tend to choose practices that appear on the first page of search results, and if your site isn’t mobile-friendly, your competition may be pulling ahead of you.
3. Mobile Search Drives Sales
Mobile searches have a powerful impact on driving in-person visits and appointments, especially in the healthcare sector. According to Google, 76% of people who search for something nearby on their smartphone visit a related business within 24 hours (Think with Google), and 28% of those searches result in a purchase or appointment. For dental practices, this behavior means that when potential patients search for services like “dentist near me,” they’re not just browsing—they’re actively looking for care and are ready to take immediate action. This highlights how crucial it is for your dental practice to appear in these mobile search results.
The theory of “near me” searches refers to users specifically looking for services close to their current location, and it’s a trend that’s becoming increasingly common in local search behavior. For dental practices, optimizing for “near me” searches ensures that your practice shows up when patients are actively searching for emergency services, routine procedures like cleanings, or specialized treatments. Local SEO is a major component for mobile optimization to ensure your practice is ranking for local queries. By prioritizing that your website is mobile-friendly, updating your Google Business Profile, and optimizing for location-based keywords, you increase the likelihood that local patients will discover your practice when they need it most-leading more patients to book an appointment with your practice.
4. Mobile SEO Affects Voice Search
Accessibility with voice search is another component in mobile optimization that is growing in popularity, especially in healthcare. Patients are increasingly using voice-activated assistants like Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa to find local services, including dental care. Queries like “find a dentist near me” or “emergency dental services” are common, and optimizing for voice search should be a key part of your SEO strategy.
To use voice search to your advantage, focus on natural language and conversational keywords in your website content. For example, optimizing for phrases patients might say aloud, such as “best dentist for teeth whitening” or “dentist open on weekends,” enhances your chances of ranking in voice searches. Additionally, providing clear answers to common patient questions on your site improves the user experience and voice search performance.
How to Check for Mobile Traffic
When building your mobile SEO strategy to improve your website’s performance and user experience, it is important to understand the number of visitors who are accessing your site through smartphones or tablets. Understanding this lets you know what your mobile traffic looks like. There are tools to monitor your website traffic, like Google Analytics, so you can determine how well your website is optimized for mobile users and find areas where your website needs improvements.
The key metrics to take into consideration are metrics like mobile vs. desktop traffic percentage, bounce rate, and time on site will give you valuable insights into your visitors’ behavior and will help you fine-tune your mobile SEO strategy.
Here are steps to checking your mobile traffic using Google Analytics:
- Log in to Google Analytics and navigate to your property (your website).
- In the left-hand menu, click on “Audience” and then “Mobile”.
- Select “Overview” to see a breakdown of web traffic by device (mobile, desktop, tablet).
- Compare the mobile vs. desktop traffic percentage to assess how many users are visiting via mobile devices.
- Pay attention to the bounce rate for mobile users (the percentage of visitors leaving without interacting) and time on site (how long visitors stay).
If you see that mobile visitors have a higher bounce rate or are spending less time on your site, it may indicate that your site isn’t fully optimized for mobile, leading to a poor user experience. These insights give you valuable information to make adjustments in your mobile SEO strategy helping to improve load times and simplify navigation that enhances mobile engagement and conversions.
How to Check If Your Site Is Mobile-Friendly
We know that mobile-friendly websites have better rankings and stronger website performance since Google prioritizes mobile optimization in their indexing and consistent statistics that show non-mobile-friendly websites have higher bounce rates. So how do you check if your practice website is mobile-friendly? You can check if your website is mobile-friendly by using tools that analyze your URL and user experience for mobile compatibility.
Here are two tools that we recommend using to check if your site is mobile-friendly.
How to Check If Your Site is Mobile-Friendly with Google Lighthouse
Google Lighthouse is an open-source tool for evaluating the performance and user experience of mobile-friendly websites. It will provide insights into key aspects like page speed, accessibility, and SEO, all to help you improve your dental practice’s site for mobile users. Here’s how to use it:
1. Open Google Chrome, go to your website and right-click anywhere on the page.
2. Select “Inspect” from the dropdown, then click the “Lighthouse” tab in the developer tools panel.
3. Choose the “Mobile” option under device type and click “Generate Report”.
4. Lighthouse will analyze your site and generate scores for Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices, SEO, and Progressive Web Apps.
The mobile-friendliness score reflects how optimized your site is for mobile devices. A low score suggests issues like slow page load times or difficult navigation. The higher your mobile score, the better the user experience will be, ultimately leading to more patient engagement and higher conversion rates for your dental practice.
How to Check If Your Site is Mobile-Friendly with SEMrush
SEMrush offers a comprehensive mobile-friendly test as part of its suite of SEO tools, making it a good resource for evaluating the performance of mobile websites.
To use the tool, simply log into SEMrush, navigate to the Site Audit section, and run an audit on your dental practice’s website by simply providing your website URL. In the results, you’ll find a detailed Mobile Usability Report, which shows mobile-specific issues such as viewport configuration problems, font legibility, touch element sizes, and page loading speed.
Compared to other tools, SEMrush provides more in-depth insights by also analyzing the mobile SEO performance of your competitors and offers data on keyword rankings, backlinks, and mobile traffic. This allows you to benchmark your site’s performance against competing practices in your area, giving you a wider view of where you stand in local search rankings.
To improve your mobile SEO using SEMrush’s insights, focus on resolving any usability issues, such as ensuring your text is readable without zooming and optimizing for fast loading times. As well as, using the competitive analysis feature to identify underperforming keywords you can target to capture more mobile traffic and improve your site’s overall user experience on mobile devices.
Mobile User Experience
The user experience (UX) is a key element of both SEO and patient retention. If a patient lands on your site via a mobile device and experiences slow load times, poor navigation, or broken elements, they’ll likely leave quickly. This leads to higher bounce rates, leading to fewer conversions, and can negatively impact your rankings.
Enhancing the user experience on your dental practice’s website can significantly impact patient engagement and conversions. The four areas you should address to enhance your user experience are speeding up your site, making your site responsive, creating a seamless experience, using mobile-friendly popups. Let’s look at those elements individually.
Speed Up Your Site
Reducing loading time is extremely important. Studies show that if a website takes more than three seconds to load, users are likely to leave and Google prioritizes websites that load quickly, especially on mobile devices. If your site takes more than 3 seconds to load, you risk losing potential patients.
Images are usually the most common contributor to slow loading times and that normally comes down to file sizes. Tools like Canva or Photoshop can help you compress your images without sacrificing quality. The best file format for saving images is .jpeg or Webp and should remain under 100 kilobytes each. For example, by compressing images and optimizing your site’s code, you can ensure that patients looking to book an appointment or learn about your services won’t bounce due to images slowing down your site loading. Additionally, minimizing code by removing unnecessary characters, spaces, and line breaks in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files can significantly improve performance. Another key tactic is leveraging browser caching, which stores site data in a visitor’s browser, so your pages load faster on return visits.
You can measure your site’s speed and identify problem areas with tools like Google PageSpeed Insights. They provide detailed reports on load times and offer specific recommendations, such as reducing server response times or enabling compression. Use these insights to systematically address speed issues, ensuring that your mobile users enjoy a fast, efficient browsing experience that keeps them engaged and more likely to book an appointment.
Make Your Site Responsive
Responsive web design is a development approach that ensures a website adjusts smoothly to different screen sizes and devices, offering an optimal viewing experience whether the user is on a desktop, tablet, or smartphone. For a dental practice, ensuring that your website has a responsive design will help guarantee that patients can easily navigate your site, read content, and book appointments no matter what device they are using.
The benefits of responsive design extend to both SEO and the user experience. Google prioritizes mobile-friendly websites in search rankings, making responsive design an essential part of your SEO strategy. From a user perspective, a seamless experience across all devices improves satisfaction, encouraging patients to stay on your site longer.
All of our websites (from pre-designed to custom) have responsive and mobile-friendly options so current and potential patients remain on your website longer and don’t hit the “back” button.
Create a Seamless Experience
Dental websites that create a seamless user experience well, often feature easy-to-tap buttons, simplified navigation, and clear CTAs like “Schedule an Appointment” prominently displayed on mobile devices—ensuring a smooth, engaging experience across the board.
Clear calls to action (CTAs) are essential for guiding patients to take the next step. A prominent, easy-to-spot “Schedule an Appointment” button on every page can streamline booking, increasing your practice’s patient flow. Lastly, ensuring that forms, buttons, and menus are touchscreen-friendly makes it easier for patients to navigate your website on their mobile phone. For instance, making your appointment request form simple and finger-friendly (with large, tappable fields) ensures mobile users can quickly complete it without frustration, leading to more booked appointments.
Use Mobile-Friendly Popups
Google has taken a firm stance against intrusive interstitials—popups that negatively impact the user experience—particularly on mobile devices. In 2017, Google began penalizing websites with intrusive popups that block a significant portion of content, as they frustrate users and lead to higher bounce rates. For mobile-friendly websites, it’s essential to ensure that popups don’t interfere with the user’s ability to access the primary content, especially on smaller screens.
To create mobile-friendly popups, use a timed delay or trigger them based on user actions (e.g., after scrolling 50% of the page). Ensure the popup is small and easy to close and avoid covering critical content. Exit-intent popups or banners that slide up from the bottom are less disruptive while still assisting in driving lead generation. For example, a dental website could use a bottom banner offering a special discount on teeth whitening or a limited-time offer on new patient exams, which is less intrusive but still effective.
Balancing user experience with lead generation is crucial. Effective mobile popups should capture user interest without detracting from the browsing experience. Keep the message concise, include a clear call-to-action like “Book Now,” and ensure the popup is easy to dismiss. This approach improves patient engagement without compromising the overall user experience.
Mobile Content Optimization
Content optimization for mobile is different because mobile users have unique behaviors, preferences, and limitations compared to desktop users. On smaller screens, content must be more concise, easy to read, and quickly accessible, with clear navigation and minimal distractions. Mobile users typically want fast, on-the-go access to relevant information, making speed and simplicity the foundation of mobile content.
Ensure your text, images, and videos are all optimized for mobile users. Overly large images and tiny text can create a poor user experience. Your website and website content should be focused on the overall experience your patients have when they visit your site, whether that is on a desktop or mobile device. However, with a larger majority using mobile devices for search, your website and content should be built with that at the forefront of your mind. For example, when building your “Meet the Team” page, you will likely include images of the Doctor and staff with a short bio right next to the image. Ensure the images and text on the “Meet the Team” page are optimized for mobile use.
To optimize your content for mobile you should do specific keyword research, optimize titles and descriptions, and connect any social media that your practice uses.
How To Do Mobile Keyword Research With SEMrush
Keyword research should be considered in your overall SEO strategy but when looking at mobile SEO it’s important to research search behavior on mobile devices since it often differs from desktop searches. SEMrush provides mobile specific keywords to help your practice target patients who are searching for dental services on their smartphones.
Here’s the steps to using SEMrush for mobile keyword research:
- Log in to SEMrush and navigate to the Keyword Overview tool.
- Enter a keyword relevant to your dental practice, such as “teeth cleaning” or “emergency dentist.”
- Switch the device type to “Mobile” in the dropdown menu to see data specifically for mobile users.
- Review the Search Volume, Keyword Difficulty, and related Mobile Keyword Variations to understand how people search differently on mobile.
- Use the Keyword Magic Tool for further exploration of long-tail keywords, focusing on terms likely to be used in voice search or local searches (e.g., “dentist near me” or “best dental care for kids”).
Mobile keywords often differ in length and intent than keywords searched through a desktop browser. Mobile users tend to use shorter, more direct questions, or conversational phrases, especially when using voice search. Dental practices should focus their mobile keyword research on phrases like “find a dentist near me” or “quick teeth whitening options” to help drive more local traffic and boost mobile SEO.
To take mobile keyword optimization a step further, you can focus on localized keywords that include phrases that address immediate needs like time-sensitive services. That should give your practice an additional boost and help you rank higher in mobile searches, putting your practice in front of more patients who are actively looking for immediate care.
Optimize Titles and Descriptions to Improve Mobile SEO
Optimizing title tags and meta descriptions will improve mobile SEO and your site standing out on SERPs. On mobile devices, users often see shorter previews of titles and descriptions, making it essential to craft concise, compelling content that quickly grabs attention. Titles and descriptions serve as your first impression, directly influencing whether a potential patient clicks through to your website or chooses a competitor.
To optimize for mobile, keep your title tags between 50-60 characters and meta descriptions around 120 characters to avoid being cut off in mobile SERPs. A dental specific example of a title tag would look like “Family Dentist in [City] | Same-Day Appointments Available,” which is both keyword-rich and clear about the services offered. In the meta description, focus on highlighting a unique selling point or immediate benefit, such as “Affordable dental care with flexible hours. Book your appointment online today.” Keep descriptions actionable and patient-focused to increase click-through rates.
Mobile users are looking for quick, relevant information, so keep it short and sweet. Refrain from keyword stuffing and focus on making your titles and descriptions user-friendly and informative. Use local keywords, like your city or neighborhood, to attract nearby patients searching for services such as “emergency dentist” or “teeth whitening near me.”
Social Media and Mobile SEO
Social media and mobile SEO are connected because both platforms drive traffic and improve visibility, especially on mobile devices. Social Media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and X are primarily accessed via smartphones, which makes them a primary source of mobile traffic. When a patient engages with your content through social media and clicks through to your website, that activity can send a signal to search engines that your site is relevant, active, and valuable, positively impacting your mobile SEO.
Promoting content through social media and gaining social signals-such as shares, likes, and comments-can improve your practice’s visibility in search results. While social signals aren’t a direct ranking factor in Google’s algorithm, they contribute to increased traffic, which can improve user engagement metrics like bounce rate and time on site, both of which improve mobile SEO rankings.
If you can integrate social media into your mobile SEO strategy you can ensure that your website is optimized for patients who reach your website through social channels.
Technical SEO for Mobile
Technical SEO is the foundation of a well-optimized mobile website, ensuring that search engines can effectively crawl and index your pages while providing a seamless experience for users. In the mobile-first world, Google prioritizes mobile performance, meaning if your technical SEO doesn’t meet the current standards, your site could struggle to rank, despite how great the content is. For dental practices, optimizing the technical elements of your site enhances visibility, ensures faster loading times, and improves overall mobile SEO performance, helping attract more local patients.
One mobile-specific consideration is implementing AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages), which is a framework designed to make web pages load almost instantly on mobile devices. Another important factor is creating a mobile sitemap, which ensures search engines can easily index your mobile content. Optimizing page speed is another critical element to the technical SEO structure needed when optimizing your site for mobile.
Here’s a quick technical SEO checklist for mobile:
1. Ensure your site is fully responsive and adapts to all screen sizes.
2. Use AMP to improve page speed and user experience.
3. Create and submit a mobile-specific sitemap to Google.
4. Optimize page speed by compressing images and minimizing code.
5. Implement structured data to improve mobile SERP visibility (e.g., rich snippets).
6. Ensure that your website’s SSL certificate is active for secure connections.
By implementing these technical optimizations, your dental practice’s mobile site will be more user-friendly and better positioned to rank higher on search engines boosting your patient acquisition.
Getting Ready for Voice Search
Voice search is growing in popularity, mainly due to the introduction of smart speakers and voice assistants like Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant. People are moving away from typing fragmented sentences into search engines and are gravitating towards using more conversational language with voice search/voice assistants. With queries becoming less fragmented and more conversational, content and optimization of websites must consider that and start implementing a more conversational tone into their SEO strategies.
What does a conversational tone in content and optimization look like for dental practices? It looks like natural dental-specific questions that you might see in the “People May Also Ask” sections of SERPs. For example, someone using voice search to find a local practice would naturally say “Where’s the nearest dentist?” or “Who offers emergency dental care near me?” Or in service-related queries it may sound like “How do I relieve tooth pain at home?” or “What are the signs of a cavity?”
During your keyword research, focus on long-tail keywords and translate those into more conversation questions throughout your website and content. Implementing structured data helps search engines better understand your content, while optimizing for local SEO ensures you appear in location-based queries. For example, include phrases like “affordable dentist in [city]” or “best pediatric dentist near [neighborhood]” improves your chances of being featured in voice search results.
58% of U.S. smartphone users use voice to search for information about a product or service. Indicating people use voice search when considering a product or service and like other search updates in the past, voice search will continue to change quickly and affect what SEO strategies are considering voice search and which ones are not. It’s important to be at the forefront of change in optimization rather than constantly playing catch-up.
Conclusion
In today’s world of websites and digital marketing for a dental practice, mobile SEO is necessary to have in your overall SEO strategy. When over half of search queries are done through mobile devices, if your website isn’t optimized for mobile SEO, your practice website will be hard to find and negatively impact your patient acquisition.
However, if you follow through with this DIY guide to mobile SEO and begin building a strategy that focuses on mobile-first indexing, local SEO for mobile search, voice search, understand your mobile traffic, put out a mobile-friendly design that prioritizes a good user experience, optimize your content for mobile, and build a technical SEO structure that is mobile specific you will be on your way to ranking higher in mobile search engine results pages.
If you want assistance in building your SEO strategy and need a mobile-friendly website that has the foundation we presented here, connect with us today and we’ll schedule a strategy call with you to get your practice website moving in the right direction-ahead of your competitors.
