Dental Marketing Direct

Digital Marketing for Dental Offices

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How Google My Business Helps Grow Your Dental Practice

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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.

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

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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?

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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.