Dental Marketing Direct

Digital Marketing for Dental Offices

Blog

Custom Dental Websites vs Cookie-Cutter Design Templates

by Leave a Comment

When reviewing website design options for your dental office, most website design companies will ask you to choose between a custom design and a pre-built template website. While both types or websites can be successful, following are some useful points to consider when deciding between these two options.

dentist-website-template

Cost

Custom dental websites will always cost more than a pre-built design. If you are on a budget or just starting out, then template design may be the way to go. You can always revisit the design after a few years. Then again, if you will get a custom website in future anyway, then why not get it now.

Time

Custom websites will take longer to complete since everything will have to be approved by you and there is going to be a lot of back and forth until everything is exactly how you want. For a template design only the color scheme will be changed to your logo and your website would be ready to go. You just need to add content to make it live. Again, if you are pressed for time, a template design may be the better option.

Customization

A custom website is personalized to your exact preferences and satisfaction. On the other hand a template design will only allow for basic changes. You will rarely find a design template to match your exact needs because templates are designed to cover all/most audiences. If you find yourself wanting too many changes to a template design, you should consider a custom website.

Uniqueness

While a template website does undergo some basic customization, it is possible that two or more dental practices have the same color scheme. In such cases, their websites can look identical or very similar. Obviously, no dentist wants their website to look the same as another local dentist, particularly if they offer the same services. It can damage your brand and cause confusion among patients. Ideally your website should be unique to your dental practice and only a custom website will achieve that.

Marketability

A custom website can be tailored to your target audience and therefore provide better conversion rate than a template design. For e.g. If your dental office is located in a minority dominated area, you will need your website to reflect that. If you want to attract young professionals, your website should be built to do so. In short your website should speak to your patients (whether they are blue collar workers or corporate executives or middle class families) instead of the general population. This is where template designs suck big time and the main reason why we recommend custom websites.

Ultimately, the choice between a custom website and template design comes down to how committed you with online marketing. If you are serious about getting dental patients online, then your website has to be professional and marketable in terms of both design and content. Template websites usually fail to deliver on both counts. If you want to get a custom website for your dental practice please contact us for a free consultation.

12 Questions Every Dentist Should Ask Before Hiring an SEO

by 1 Comment

Dental SEO is a long term investment that can bring dozens of new patients every month to your office. SEO is not a regulated industry – there is no license requirement and search engines like Google keep their algorithm secret. Therefore, this field can attract scams and fly by night operations who can ruin your website with outdated and outright shady SEO tactics. Before trusting any individual or company with SEO, you need to make sure they are qualified to do this job. We have prepared the following list of questions you may want to ask before hiring an SEO for your dentist website.

Dental SEO

1. May I have a list of current and past clients?

When you hire any SEO vendor always ask for current and past clients just like you would do when hiring a designer. Any reasonably experienced SEO should be able to provide 2-3 references upon request and if not, you better find another vendor. After you received a list of clients you may want to verify the current rankings of the clients. Another follow-up question would be to ask for their longest running clients. A large list of long running clients indicates that the company has been providing consistent results over a long period of time. If an experienced SEO has all their active clients for less than a year ago then they may not be the best choice for your website.

2. What type of SEO activities will you do?

SEO work can be categorized into 3 broad categories – Technical, On-Page and Off-Page. Make sure you get details about what work will be performed for each type of SEO.

Technical SEO is concerned with fixing website errors and crawl issues and ensuring that google bot and other search engine crawlers can read the website without any problem.

On-Page SEO work includes all activities related to optimization, categorization, internal linking, addition and deletion of the website content.

Off-Page SEO activities include everything done to promote your website to other web-masters and bloggers with an aim to develop citations and back-links to your website. Most of the SEO work done will be Off-Page so you should inquire about citation and back-link building strategies being employed by the SEO firm you wish to hire.

3. What changes if any will you make to our website?

Since any changes made on your website will reflect on your dental practice and brand name, it is important you know exactly what changes will be made to the website. If they wish to add content, make sure it is accurate and written well. If they want to add images, make sure you have the copyrights. If they want to add call tracking make sure it doesn’t mess up with your NAP consistency. Ask them to take backup of your website before making any changes.

4. Can you guarantee my website will achieve a number-one ranking on Google, Bing and Yahoo?

This is actually a trick question. Since nobody actually knows how the search algorithm works (except for Google, Bing and Yahoo for their own respective search engines), it is impossible to guarantee a particular spot i.e. 1st, top 3 etc. However, most experienced SEO’s can spot weak SERPs and should be able to tell you how long it will take your website to break through the first page listings. Nevertheless it is impossible to guarantee such results since nobody knows how the algorithm works.

5. What are your fees and payment terms?

Most SEO companies charge by one of the 3 popular methods – fixed price, monthly retainer and hourly rate. You should work out all applicable fees and inquire about late payments and any interest on them. Ask for a copy of the contract (if there is any) and go through each item to confirm all items and there are no hidden charges.

6. What happens when we part ways?

It is important that you know this beforehand so that there is no surprises when the contract/project ends or you have to fire the vendor. Make sure that you will own and keep all the SEO work performed during the length of the engagement.

7. How do you measure the success of your SEO campaigns?

This is critical question that will ensure both you and your SEO have the same understanding of what you require. As a dentist, your goal is to get more patients and increase production. Make sure that your SEO’s goal is aligned to that fact as well. Accordingly you need your SEO vendor to report on the KPI’s you are most concerned with eg. number of organic site visitors, number of form submissions, number of calls, number of appointments, number of subscribers. Getting a report on your website ranking movement for certain keywords is not enough. You have to know how many appointments these rankings are actually generating.

8. How often will you report on your work, and what will it look like?

You should get at least a fortnightly report on all SEO work performed in the past 14 days along with a ranking report and traffic report. Ask for a sample report and go through it with your SEO vendor to make sure you understand the various metrics. Ask them to include specific KPI’s that you wish to track.

9. How will your team adapt your strategy to dental industry?

As a dentist you are not looking for SEO agencies that does well with eCommerce sites. You want to hire firms that have ranked websites for other dentists before and are aware of the dental industry, its consumers, their fears and their jargon. Hiring a dental SEO expert should be preferred over a generic/all round SEO firm. But if an SEO vendor can prove they can adapt their strategies to your industry then they could be worth a try.

10. Why should we hire you over other SEOs?

This is probably the most difficult question to answer and one that you should always ask. The answer will often make or break the deal. There are thousands of excellent SEO companies in the world and you may be interviewing a handful of them. This question provides the SEO firm an opportunity to differentiate themselves from the other candidates. What extras do they provide which you as a dentist value most. It could be anything from excellent customer support to money-back guarantees. If they respond with anything involving:

  • we’re cheaper than other options
  • we can build you more backlinks (instead of better quality)
  • we don’t know
  • we can get you faster results,

then you need to proceed cautiously. High quality, long term SEO results take time and definitely do not come cheap.

11. Describe 3 updates to Google’s Algorithm in the last 2 years

This question will let you know if an SEO vendor is up to date with the latest industry trends and news. Ask your SEO to describe a 2-3 updates in the last couple of years such as the ones given below.

Google Updates

Then confirm that they know what they’re talking about by reading through those links here.

12. Describe 3 factors that affect local business rankings in Google

Like the previous question, this one is designed to test some basic SEO knowledge to weed out salesmen from real SEO experts. You should get answers like number of back-links, page title, page speed, citations etc. You can see a much large list of local search ranking factors here.

How Google My Business Helps Grow Your Dental Practice

by 2 Comments

google-my-business-welcome

Last year Google launched Google My Business, a single platform for managing all of Google’s services for businesses. With the new integrated platform, you can work off just one screen to manage how your dental practice appears on:

  • Google Maps: Update valuable practice information, add photos or virtual tours of your office
  • Reviews: Manage your Google reviews and view other reviews around the web
  • Google+: A social platform where you can post photos, text, videos, events and links
  • Insights: After verifying your practice, you can view insight into your Google+ analytics to manage metrics such as visibility, engagement and audience
  • Google Analytics: Check your analytics and learn more about your practice website’s visitors
  • Hangouts: You can start a video chat with your patients right from the platform

Here’s the video from Google introducing the new service.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCzri4tXuF0

How Google My Business Helps Dental Offices

Improve Online Visibility of Your Practice

Through Google My Business, your dentistry will gain visibility on Search, Maps, and Google+ across all devices. These are all very important channels for getting dental patients online.

Share Updates and Offers with Your Followers

Google My Business will help you interact with your followers on Google+ by sharing useful content and updates about your dental office. You can introduce new products and services to your followers on Google+. You can also run promotions and giveaways to get more appointments and referrals.

Get Valuable Insights into User Behavior

The analytics feature inside Google My Business helps you understand how visitors are finding you on maps, search and Google+, what content is being viewed the most and how many visitors your dentistry profile is attracting. This will help you optimize and improve the performance of your clinic’s Google+ profile.

Manage Patient Reviews

Online patient reviews are very important to the success of your dental marketing efforts. Patients trust what other patients have to say about your practice. Google My Business makes it easier to manage patient feedback, request reviews from new patients and respond to negative reviews left by unhappy patients.

Communicate with Followers through Hangouts

Google Hangouts is a cool video chat feature introduced in Google+ but you can now access it directly from the Google My Business dashboard. Hangouts can help you interact with patients online to discuss various procedures offered by your dental office. You can also use Hangouts to educate patients about oral hygiene and how to prevent tooth decay through regular dental checkups.

As more people turn online to educate themselves about various dental procedures and to find a local dental care provider, you have to ensure that your dental office is not left behind. If you need help with setting up or managing your Google My Business, just submit a free consultation request and we will get back to you asap!

3 Types of Search Queries Patients Use to Find a Dentist

by Leave a Comment

Modern search marketing, both paid and organic, requires you to understand searcher’s behaviour and intent. Since the Humming Bird update, Google algorithm has moved on from keywords and now looks at the overall intent of a search query to rank pages and websites that best answer the query. Google’s paid search advertising program, Google Adwords has been using quality score for many years to reward advertisers with ads that best answer’s the searcher’s query. Therefore, it is very important to understand patients’ search behavior to promote your dental practice successfully with search engines.

3 types of search queries

Dental patients use one of 3 types of search queries to find information about dental treatments and local dentists. Before researching and selecting keywords for SEO (or PPC), you must understand each of these 3 types of search queries to attract maximum number of dental patients to your website.

Navigational Searches

These search queries are done to reach a certain website, address, phone number, product name or practice name. A patient received a post card by mail. The post card contains the dentist’s website so the patient searches on google for this website. Many patients also search for their dental insurance company to get some information. Here are some examples of navigational queries a patient might do

  • invisalign.com
  • aetna dental
  • 7 Day Dental website
  • yelp dentist reviews
  • zocdoc dentist

It is not possible to rank organically for navigational searches since they contain branded keywords that refer to existing websites. However, you can show your ad for these searches by bidding on these keywords in your Google Adwords campaigns as shown in the screenshot below.

7 Day Dental Ads Screenshot

If you are a local competitor of 7 Day Dental then it makes sense to pitch your clinic’s offer to somebody searching for their website. Also it is recommended to bid for your practice name, website and branded keywords to avoid other competitors from ‘stealing’ your patients.

Informational Searches

These type of searches are done to learn more about a dental problem, treatment procedure, risks and benefits, comparisons and other information of interest to a patient. Most patient search queries fall into this category and therefore cannot be ignored. However, since these patients are still seeking information and not really interested in seeking professional help it is best to target these keywords in SEO rather than using them for PPC advertising. Here are some examples of navigationalinformational searches made by patients

  • how long does teeth whitening last
  • is root canal safe
  • my crown just came off
  • metal braces vs invisalign
  • swollen gums treatment

You should research informational searches related to the various procedures offered at your dental office. Then create content like articles, videos, animations, blog posts, infographics on each major topic and publish this content on your dental website. Over time you will develop a content rich website that gets thousands of unique visitors looking for information about various dental topics. Many of these visitors will become your patients.

Transactional Searches

This final category of searches is the most important since the user intent here is to seek professional dental help. Once a patient has researched their dental problems have come to the conclusion that they need to see a dentist, they will search for a local dentist. Here are some example searches they may type into Google

  • cheap dentists near me
  • dentists that accept medicaid
  • emergency dentist miami
  • teeth whitening in 77450
  • dental implants san jose

As a dentist, targeting these searches should be your top priority using SEO, PPC, Local SEO and anyway possible. You should optimize your website to rank high for these type of searches and also run PPC ads for them so you have at least 2 listings (1 website + 1 ppc ad) showing up whenever somebody uses that search on Google.

Dental Web Design Checklist – Is Your Website up to Scratch?

by Leave a Comment

Good dental websites can cost upwards of $4,000. But before you write that check, why not go through the following checklist to see if you are getting your money’s worth from your website development company.

Website ChecklistEssential Features

  1. Start with a great looking header with a clear, high quality logo at the top of your website. The website color scheme should be consistent with the header graphic and logo.
  2. Have a simple and consistent navigation with relevant pages categorized in suitable sub menus. Ensure that visitors can reach all of your main website pages within 1 click from your home page.
  3. Add an easy to find phone number on all pages that is “Clickable” on mobile devices.
  4. Add an easy to find contact form to encourage phone-shy patients to contact you.
  5. Implement a mobile responsive design or create a separate mobile website since majority of local searches are now taking place from mobile devices. Google is now favoring mobile friendly websites in its search results for mobile devices.
  6. Add your street address and operating hours on every page.
  7. Create a comprehensive “About” section covering the dentist and staff with their professional qualification, photos and bios, vision/mission statements, press coverage and awards that your dental practice has received.
  8. Add high quality images of the actual office to the main pages of your website to avoid unpleasant surprises for patients. Check out Google Street View if you want to create a virtual tour of your dental office.
  9. Integrate social media to your website by adding sharing buttons and social network profile links to your website. You may also want to include the latest status updates in the footer or sidebar.
  10. Create a comprehensive contact page that includes a map with directions, including opening and closing hours, public transport routes, amenities available at your office, payment options, new patient discount information, new patient forms.
  11. Create a separate page for each treatment offered at your office with useful information and resources to educate patients about the various treatment procedures.
  12. Improve your dental website’s credibility by incorporating Dentist Association membership logos, years you’ve been in business and license numbers.
  13. Incorporate at least one video (ideally more) about your practice on the main sections of your website (either on the home page or about page).
  14. Make sure that your website content is easy to read and comprehend for the average high school graduate. Avoid technical jargon where possible and use high quality graphics and animations to explain complex procedures.
  15. Implement Schema.org markup on your website to help search engine crawlers identify NAP (Name, Address and Phone) information & patient reviews published on your website.
  16. Create an XML sitemap of your website and link to it from all pages.
  17. Add price information where possible. Create a separate section for discounts offers and promotions where patients can download and print coupons.
  18. Add website Privacy Policy and Terms of Service and link to them from all pages.
  19. Add patient reviews and testimonials on your website. Also embed or link to reviews on 3rd party sites like Yelp.com. Video testimonials are gold!
  20. Add web analytics software like Google Analytics to your website to track and record user behavior for analysis. Pay special attention to KPIs related to conversions actions like phone calls and form submissions.
  21. Create an FAQ page and answer the most common questions you get from patients.
  22. Create a comprehensive payments and financing page to inform patients about all the various financing options, insurance plans and payment plans your dental practice accepts.
  23. Ensure your website loads correctly in all modern browsers and devices.
  24. Ensure your website loads quickly because a slow website annoys visitors, resulting in high bounce rate and low conversions
  25. Add downloadable new patient forms and make them available from the main navigation.

Optional but Recommended features

  1. Add a before and after patient gallery to demonstrate your expertise in conducting various dental treatments.
  2. If you have pricing and specifications of competitors, create comparison charts and graphics to explain why patients should choose your office.
  3. Implement live-chat feature on your website to engage patients and answer their questions on the spot. You can also use the live-chat as a feedback tool by looking at what common questions people are typing in. Then make sure you address those questions on the website.
  4. Add online appointment feature and link it to your practice management software.
  5. If you have the resources to publish an article at least once a week, consider adding a blog to your website. Alternatively hire a freelance writer to update your blog at least once a week.

Having a solid website is necessary for generating new patients online. If your website is missing some of many of the above features, you may want to contact your webmaster to address to these issues. If you are looking for a new dental website do not hesitate to contact us for a free consultation.