Dental Website Traffic Grew from 10 to 4,500 Visitors in 12 Months

Established in 1978, Dietrich & Kelso Orthodontics (DKOSmiles) is a multi-location dental practice in Florida. They are a friendly, family-oriented team that provides personalized care for each patient. 

They offer a whole range of orthodontics for people of all ages. For teens, they also provide teeth straightening options like invisalign, clear, and metal braces.

Client’s Challenges

When the client contacted us for the first time, the client had only 10 – 30 organic visitors per month.

It happened because the website didn’t have a strong SEO foundation, localized content, or consistent local SEO signals.

Here’s a list of the issues we noticed after a through audit: 

• Low Organic Traffic

As said before, the website was receiving only 10 to 30 visits per month, which meant there was poor keyword visibility and weak search engine presence.

• Lack of Location-Based Pages

The website did not have properly optimized local landing pages to target city-specific dental searches.

• Weak SEO Foundation

Google Search Console and GA4 tracking were either missing or not configured correctly. There were also indexing and crawlability issues.

• Technical SEO Issues

In short – page speed was slow, images were not optimized, Core Web Vitals needed improvement, and schema markup was missing.

• On-Page SEO Gaps

On top of that, many pages lacked optimized title tags, meta descriptions, structured headings, and internal linking.

• Limited Local SEO Optimization

Their Google Business Profile (GBP) was under-optimized. Not only that, significant NAP inconsistency is a serious issue that we found on their site, along with limited  local citations.

58 keywords achieved Top 3 rankings on Google

Our SEO Strategy

We created a personalized, 12-month long SEO strategy that mainly involved technical SEO, on-page optimization, content development, local SEO, and off-page link building. 

Here’s a quick look at the actions we took throughout the project timeline: 

1. Analytics and Tools Setup

First of all, we wanted to set up analytical tools to measure our performance. That’s why we did the following: 

• Google Search Console & Bing Webmaster setup and verification
• GA4 analytics implementation for traffic and conversion tracking
• Preferred domain (www / non-www) configured 

2. Location Page Strategy (Local Landing Pages)

Next, we created a total of 15 unique, city-specific landing pages to target local dental searches:

• South Lakeland
• North Lakeland
• Bartow
• Winter Haven
• Brandon
• Riverview
• Palm Harbor
• Trinity
• Town ‘n’ Country
• South Tampa
• Wesley Chapel
• Spring Hill
• Dunedin
• Clearwater
• Westchase

Each location page included:

• Unique, original content (no duplication)
• City-based keywords and services
• Local relevance signals
• Internal links to service pages
• Optimized titles, meta descriptions, and headings

What was the result of this strategy? It allowed the website to rank organically for several “dentist in [city]” and service-based local searches.

3. Technical SEO Improvements

To improve the website’s crawlability, performance, and rankings, we then worked on technical optimization, So we:

• Created and submitted XML sitemap 
• Configured Robots.txt for proper crawling
• Enabled HTTPS for security and SEO trust
• Fixed crawl errors (404 and server issues)
• Implemented canonical tags
• Improved the URL structure
• Made the site mobile responsive 
• Optimized page speed and Core Web Vitals 
• Compressed iImage and lazy loading
• Implemented Schema markup:
  • Organization Schema
  • Local Business Schema
  • FAQ Schema
  • Service / Product Schema

4. On-Page SEO Optimization

In that stage, every important page on the website was optimized using on-page SEO’s best practices for local businesses. We added:

• SEO-optimized title tags
• CTR-focused meta descriptions
• Proper H1, H2, and H3 hierarchy
• keywords throughout content naturally
• Internal links between services and locations
• External authority links
• Image alt texts
• Keyword-friendly URLs

5. Content SEO Strategy

Next came content –  an important SEO factor. Here are the things that were included in our content strategy to make the content suitable for Google’s EEAT protocol. 

• In-depth, original content created for services and locations
• Content written to match local and commercial intent
• FAQ sections added based on “People Also Ask”
• Clear introductions and conclusions added
• Content updated regularly
• EEAT signazls strengthened:
  • About page optimization
  • Clear business information
  • Contact and trust signals

6. Off-Page SEO & Link Building

As you know, link building is essential for improving authority and trust. Here’s what we did:

• Earned quality, niche-relevant backlinks
• Performed guest posting on dental, healthcare, and local websites
• Built local directory and citation backlinks
• Monitored brand mentions 
• Analyzed all toxic backlinks and disavowed where required
• Added social profile links for brand authority

7. GBP Optimization

Finally, our SEO team created and optimized the GBP profile by doing these: 

• Verified the Google Business Profile 
• Fixed primary and secondary categories
• Optimized GBP description, services, and images
• Created regular GBP posts
• Checked all reviews and provided responses when necessary
• Ensured NAP consistency in all directories

Results & Impact

• Before SEO: 10–30 organic visitors per month
• After SEO: 4,500 organic visitors per month

The most significant result was several location pages ranked organically with steady increases in impressions and clicks. There were also improvements in keyword visibility across all targeted locations.

The site’s location pages began ranking for competitive local searches, such as:

• “Dentist in [City]”
• “Dental clinic near me”
• City + dental service keywords

Also, a good number of keywords moved from beyond page 5 into page 1 and page 2 positions.

Aside from that, the client began getting more and more phone calls and direction requests from GBP.

Conclusion

As you can see, this 12-month local SEO campaign worked wonders for DKOSmiles. The client wasn’t expecting such a dramatic improvement when they first teamed up with us. They were super delighted and informed us that they would never hire another agency for their local SEO needs.