Last Updated on January 12, 2023 by Mike
As a dentist, you know that having an online presence in Google search results is essential to attracting new patients, so staying up to date on the latest strategies for dental SEO is key.
Adding structured data to your dental website is easy to implement and can have an immediate impact on your organic search engine traffic. However most dental websites do not make the most of this opportunity.
Below we will outline several types of structured data that dentists should focus on to ensure they’re optimizing their website for better search engine visibility.
What is Schema Structured Data Markup?
First, it’s important to understand what schema structured data markup is and how it works.
Schema structured data markup is a type of coding language used to help search engines better understand the content on your webpages. The code exists in the HTML source data of your website and is not visible to someone who is browsing your website, and it currently works in JSON-LD, Microdata, and RDFa formats.
Structured data makes it easier for search engine crawlers to read and understand key information contained on a webpage. This helps crawlers better understand the information that it is crawling and essentially makes Google more comfortable with displaying your website in front of its users (people using Google to find dental services).
Since its inception in 2011, Schema structured data markup has become an integral part of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), as it can have a positive impact on both website traffic and helping your website stand out from others in search results, resulting in higher Click Through Rates.
Over time, Schema has grown in popularity among webmasters and businesses alike as more people become aware of the advantages this type of code offers them. As it stands now, there are more than 600 different types of schemas available for webmasters to use, making it easier than ever to add semantic richness to your content without having to spend hours writing custom code.
Types of structured data useful for dental websites
Now that we know a more about how structured data works, lets look at a few types of structured data markup that are particularly useful for dental websites.
LocalBusiness
Every dental website with a name, physical address, and phone number should use this type of structured data markup on their website. LocalBusiness markup helps search engine crawlers better understand the type of business your website represents, and also provides important information like address, contact details, opening hours, fax number, whether the location is accepting new patients etc. This information is often used by Google to help populate its knowledge graph box, which appears when someone does a search for your brand name.
LocalBusiness structured data allows you to select your business type (in most cases this will be Dentist) and add additional details about your business including hours of operation, latitude and longitude, logo, and more.
BreadcrumbList
BreadcrumbList structured data helps search engine robots better understand the structure of your website and how it’s organized. This type of markup is critical for dental websites that have a large number of pages, as it allows crawlers to quickly determine which pages are linked together, and their their place in the hierarchy.
Google uses this data to create a breadcrumb trail in search results for your website, which helps users understand where the individual page fits within the overall structure of your site.
This type of structured data can be particularly useful for multi-location practices with multiple locations, as it helps search engines distinguish between the different pages and understand how they are related.
FAQ
FAQ structured data allows webmasters to take a list of Frequently Asked Questions that already appear on their website and provide markup data for Google to display it as a drop down list in search results. This makes it easier for users to access the information they are looking for without having to actually visit your website, and can help improve user experience and click through rates.
This type of structured data is especially useful for dental websites, as many potential patients have common questions about services offered, insurance acceptance, payment options and more.
Article
Adding structured data to your news or blog posts can provide Google with specific details about the content such as the article title, images used, publish date, revision date, and author. Using author schema as a part of your Article structured data markup may also help establish E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) with Google, which is itself a ranking signal and may help separate your content and your website from competitors for competitive search queries.
There are many plugins that make it easy to set up Article structured data for your blog, or you can manually add the code snippets to each page of content.
Testing Structured Data Markup
Before deploying structured data on your website, we would recommend testing it using the validators provided by Google. This will help ensure that your code is written correctly, and allows you to see how Google interprets your markup before it goes live on your site.
Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool and Rich Results Test are the two most commonly used tools for testing structured data markup. These tools allow you to run specific pages of your website through the validator and view any errors or warnings that may be present.
Adding structured data to your dental website is an important part of improving your site’s visibility in search engine results, as well as improving user experience. It provides a way for search engines to better understand what type of information is on your website, which can help them determine if it’s relevant for a given query.
While there are many types of structured data that you can use for your dental website, we recommend focusing on the most important ones first: LocalBusiness, BreadcrumbList, FAQ, and Article. And as always, be sure to test your structured data before deploying it to ensure accuracy.
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