Most of the SEOs and internet marketing people are aware that Google is currently using around 200+ ranking factors to determine a ranking position for a query that is typed into Google.
With 2021 being considered one of the most “algorithmic-updated years,” our team of dental marketing experts decided to do a massive case study about Google ranking factors in relation to dental industry websites.
Dentistry is our niche of choice, and we’re climbing to the top in order to dominate the dental market. At this moment, DreamChasers is working with over 15 dental offices around the United States. This case study was designed to ensure total superiority of the SEO rankings for our current dental clients, stay ahead of the competition, and permanently establish number one rankings for our clients in regards to both organic and map positions.
It would be impossible to evaluate each website with around 200+ ranking factors, so our dental marketing specialists decided only to use the ones that are the most critical at the moment (based on our experience).
Here is full list of what each website was evaluated on:
Is the homepage or a specific URL ranking for the query?
How old is the domain, what year was it registered?
Does the domain contain the keyword “dentist”?
How many referring domains does the website have? (ahrefs.com)
How many backlinks does the website have? (ahrefs.com)
What is the authority of the URL (ahrefs.com)
What is the authority of the Domain (ahrefs.com)
How many pages/posts/other have Google indexed under that domain? (using site: as an operator)
What kind of content management system is the website on?
What is the page speed on Desktop and Mobile?
New Criteria that has been evolved based on this study (cross two data points)
Think of ways you can analyze and combine data pieces
Based on the findings above, dental marketing experts have decided to extend the case study and look at data that includes the length of the title, meta descriptions, and other observations we found interesting.
For the last couple of years, our dental marketing pros noticed that the Homepage of a website is still one of the site’s strongest pages. Naturally, this depends on the SEO strategy for a given website.
Looking over the data, we can see that out of the 1,000 websites we analyzed, 999 of them ranked with their homepage. This means only one page ranked with a landing page.
Our recommendation is to optimize your homepage by using “Dentist + City” as the main keyword - the profile Google demands.
A recent article from the Search Engine Journal stated that domain age is not a ranking factor. While we agree with this 100%, it is important to review the data and what was being done with the domain over the years.
When considering the graph above, you can see the majority of the domains are older than 10 years.
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Again, it can be seen that having an older domain can help with a higher ranking, but the correlation is uneven and very close between rankings. Ranking 5, for instance, has less days on average than ranking 6.
The importance for the age of the domain is relatively insignificant until it gets to the point of being over ten years. Even then, those that are over ten years have less representation the further down the rankings go.
The average domain age of each domain URL was 11 years. Only 39 domains on the first page of Google were younger than 3 years.
Google itself has denied that domain age is a ranking factor. While we agree with this statement, looking at our data we can see that domains that are older tend to rank better. This is primarily related to SEO and not because they have been active and purchased for years.
For years, it has been a common strategy to buy domains with keywords you want to rank for. Depending on the niche, companies used to buy thousands of exact domain matches (EDM’s). I myself was managing about 1,000+ domains in the garage door repair niche where the strategy was to simply buy a domain and create a new website for a specific city, such as: garagedoorrepairchicago.com.
Google did pick up on this and devalued lots of websites that were simply spamming Google with domains like that. John Muller himself that keywords in the domain are not needed.
As can be seen above, less domains contain the word “dentist” than don’t.
While more include the city name, a slim majority does not.
There is a large majority of domains that do not contain both the word “dentist” and the respective city name.
Broken down individually above ^ in Pie Chart or Combined below v in Bar Chart.
Above shows the search engine ranking, and whether or not the URL contains the word “dentist.” The majority do not contain the word “dentist.” The word “dentist” does not seem to make a significant difference in ranking, if any at all.
Those URLS with the city appear to have better results with ranking. As can be seen, the top SE rankings have a majority containing the city in the URL.
As with the word “dentist” by itself, using the word “dentist” seems to kill the momentum when using the city in the URL. Having both seems to create diminishing returns.
We wanted to see if this is tactic still holds any value, or was it applied in dentistry so we’ve scanned all the domains against the following criteria:
Backlinks and domains are still the hottest SEO topics and ranking factors. In our opinion, they still have a tremendous amount of value and might be in the top 3-5 ranking factors. For this particular observation, we’ve used one of the most popular backlink analysis tools (ahrefs.com).
The majority of referring domains is between 20-100, with a slim majority being around 20-50.
The graph above explains the same data as the pie graph. The majority of referring domains being 20-100.
The information above is where things become a bit more interesting. The search engine ranking position seems to correlate with having a larger number of referring domains. The top three ranking positions have a slim majority in either the 100+ or 50-100 range, with 20-50 not being far behind. Those ranking highest seem to have at least 20, but often 50 or above.
Having backlinks/domains or simply link mentions on other websites is crucial for your organic and local rankings.
A big factor with Local SEO (ranking in the local map pack) is NAP. NAP stands for Name, Address, and Phone Number which needs to be listed on other websites and directories.
For Referring Domains, the higher a URL ranks the more referring domains it will be associated with. The top 3 ranked results consistently have over 20 referring domains.
Here is the breakdown of what number of domains linking back to each dental office website are needed…
The average number of referring domains was 98.
Link building and having your website listed on other
is very important. The link clicks that you get should always be acquired in natural ways…by simply producing amazing content that is worthy of other websites linking to it.
The most successful link-building strategies that we offer utilize our “Power Page” techniques. We create amazing pieces of content and reach out to potential clients that will find it very beneficial.
This is what Google wants, and they will reward you with higher rankings if everything is done naturally and without breaking any Google rules.
What was the average DR?
Can the data be grouped into averages DR?
DR (Domain Rating) is a metric that is used to measure the strength of a website backlink’s profile. It was developed by Ahrefs and involves the use of a scale that goes from 1-100.
Domain rating measures the quality of the source, as well as the quantity of backlinks that the URL has. It is a scale of authoritativeness and helps determine the trustworthiness of a URL. In terms of SE rank, the majority of URLs in the top 10 had a rating between 0-10.
The graph above refers to the sum (number) of domains that fall within their respective grouping. There are 674 that rank between 1-10 in regards to domain rating. The average DR is 6.9. As the DR goes up above 10, the count in turn goes down.
The results indicated that there were significant diminishing returns after achieving a Domain Rating of 1-10, while 15.6% of all URLs studied had a DR score of 0.
Indexed pages are pages that have been discovered by search crawlers and determined to have enough relevant content to be added to its database.
Pages aren’t immediately indexed by search engines like Google. If your pages are very new, it’s likely that Google hasn’t gotten around to crawling and indexing your pages.
In order to speed up the process of your pages being indexed, you can request for search engines to index your pages.
The amount of pages indexed is correlated to the number of pages on a website.
The data above shows the search engine rankings of sites in relation to indexed page count. The top 3 pages have a majority count of 150 or more pages.
What was the average DR?
Can the data be grouped into averages DR?
A CMS (Content Management System) is software that allows you to build and develop a website without having to build it from scratch. With a CMS, you’ll be able to build an entire website without having to code at all.
Below is more information about which CMSs are the most popular and their correlation with search engine ranking:
It’s not even close. The most popular CMS by far is WordPress.
The highest search engine rankings belong to WordPress pages. With that said, WordPress is also the most popular CMS, so this isn’t much of a surprise.
Again, the majority of the top 10 search engines rankings are WordPress. Even when compared with the other top competitors in the space, WordPress wins out by a mile.
WordPress is by far the most popular choice amongst CMSs. It has become an almost industry-wide household name.
Additionally–when search engines scrape websites in order to obtain a URL’s ranking factors–the easier it is for that SE to scrape through your website, the better off you will be.
WordPress most likely meshes with SE scrapers and collaborates more efficiently with them–giving their owners a slight edge compared to other CMSs. This can be seen more in-depth when looking at the top 5 most used CMSs for ranked dental websites.
Page speed is a pretty simple concept–it’s how long a page takes to load. This involves the complete render of the page, though, not just the page opening.
The real question is whether page speed is an important metric for the top ten spots on Google.
On mobile, lower speed has a lower count.
On the other hand, on desktops, higher speeds seem to win out.
The speeds vary when it comes to search engine ranking, with units of 25-50 being predominant (only slightly) across all 10 top search engine ranks. With that said, the consistency suggests that it isn’t a major ranking factor.
When it comes to desktop speed, the top count is in the 75-90 category. With that said, it is so spread out among the top ranks that it doesn’t seem to make a huge difference.
In terms of the average lifespan of a google ranked search result URL, there is a slight correlation between the average age of a website and its google rank:
However, this data can be biased as the websites themselves can change over time. Thus, these changes would have a greater effect on SE rank than age specifically.
For help with your Dental SEO and marketing needs, reach out today! We’d be happy to speak with you about how we can get you to the first page of Google and other search engines.
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