Dental Marketing Direct

Digital Marketing for Dental Offices

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Google My Business Page Best Practices for Dental Offices

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Google is the central hub of all online marketing activities you conduct for your dental practice. In this short guide, we list the best practices you need to follow to optimize your Google My Business profile for better visibility in local search results.

Google My Business

Keep your personal profile separate from local business page

Many dentists still have no idea how to bring their traditional style of business to the online space.

Personal Page is the profile used by the person who owns or manages the Google My Business account, and is generated automatically after a person creates pages on Google My Business. Anyone can create a personal profile on Google+ to interact with their friends on the platform so how will you differentiate between your friends or social network and your patients or followers.

As a dentist, it’s easy to think, “I’m the person my practice is named after, so using this account should be fine.”

No. Never use personal pages to represent your dental office on Google My Business. For that, you need a local business page.

The local business page is what appears on local search results, providing information on reviews, address and contact information. To validate the data on this page, Google My Business requires verification, usually through a letter sent to the official business address or a phone call.

Claiming Ownership

Only business owners or authorized representatives may verify and manage their business information on Google My Business. If you wish to share management access to your local page with others, you can add a manager. Examples of authorized representatives include: a third-party SEO/SEM company; a friend of the business owner; an online ordering, scheduling, or booking provider; and an affiliate network provider.

Before you can start promoting your page, you need to verify that you are in fact the owner of this business. While this verification process protects you from duplicate and bad listings, it can be a headache for dental practices, which have several front-facing people representing the business. Therefore, make sure that all your receptionist/staff know that you are expecting a call or letter from Google.

Make sure the business information is complete and accurate

Name: Your name should reflect your practice’ real-world name, as used consistently on your storefront, website, stationery, and as known to patients. Any additional information, when relevant, can be included in other sections of your business information (e.g., “Address”, “Categories”).

Adding unnecessary information to your name (e.g., “Google Inc. – Mountain View Corporate Headquarters” instead of “Google”) by including marketing taglines, codes, special characters, hours or closed/open status, phone numbers, website URLs, service/product information, location/address or directions, or containment information (e.g. “Chase ATM in Duane Reade”) is not permitted.

Address: Use a precise, accurate address to describe your office location. PO Boxes or mailboxes located at remote locations are not acceptable.

Phone Number: Provide a phone number that connects to your dental office as directly as possible. Use a local phone number instead of central, call center helpline number whenever possible. Do not provide phone numbers that redirect to phone numbers other than those of the actual office.

Website: Provide one website that represents your individual office location. Do not provide URLs that redirect users to landing pages other than those of the actual office, including pages created on social media sites.

Choose the most appropriate, specific categories for your dental practice

Categories help your patients find accurate, specific results for services they’re interested in. In order to keep your business information accurate and live, make sure that you:

  1. Use as few categories as possible to describe your overall core business from the provided list.
  2. Choose categories that are as specific as possible, but representative of your main business.
  3. Do not use categories solely as keywords or to describe attributes of your business.
  4. Do not use categories that pertain to other businesses that are nearby or related, such as a business physically contained within your business or an entity that contains your business.

Establish a strong, accurate presence on the web

  1. Google improves search results by aggregating information about your dental practice from all over the web. Make sure information about your office on third-party sites (like Yelp.com) is accurate, and try to contact the respective site directly to correct any inaccurate information.
  2. Encourage customers to review your business by clicking “Write a review” on the local Google+ page.

If you need help with optimizing the Google+ Local page of your dental practice, just submit a free consultation request and we will get back to you asap!

5 Simple Ways to Improve Your Dental Website SEO

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Google Search algorithms take into account some 200 factors to rank pages and websites. However, some of these factors are more important than others and ignoring them will not help your website rank. In this post I have listed 5 things you can do to make your dental website rank higher in Google.

website seo factors

Quality and Quantity of Inbound Links to Domain

Links are by far the most important factor for ranking in Google and other search engines. Now before you start any link-building, just keep in mind that quality is better than quantity. It is better to have a few high quality links then many low quality links. Any link that is public and you can show to your patients is a good link and any link on a page that you do not want your patients to see is spam.

As a dentist, you have many easy opportunities to build high quality links. Just think of how many directories, review sites and insurance sites there are for dentists. In addition, you can get links from most local business directories and chamber of commerce website of your city. Approach your vendors to add your website link on their clients/testimonials page. I am sure your janitor, office designer, website designer, marketing company, dental equipment supplier and others would love to get a testimonial from you.

Once the easy links have been created, try approaching local churches, charities, schools, meet-ups and sports teams. See if you can get a link in their sponsor section by donating or sponsoring their work. Then move on to the local press. See if you can get a column or an interview done on a local news paper or radio website. And it doesn’t end here. You can approach any legitimate local or national website for links as long as it gets your website in front of real people.

City, State in Most/All Website Title Tags

By adding the city and state in title tags of your dental website you want to emphasize the local nature of your website pages. This is very important since all your patients are local and every page on your website is meant for local residents. Therefore, you do not want Google to conclude otherwise by excluding the city and state from the page title.

Topical and Geographic Keyword Relevance of Domain Content

Make sure that all pages of your website have the target keywords and city and state in the content. Again this is done to make the page relevant to the topic as well as your local area (City/Neighborhood). This will ensure that Google sees your content as both locally and topically relevant. e.g. if you have a page about dental braces, you need to talk about braces in your city. So any cost and treatment options you discuss on the page should be relevant to your town/city.

Product / Service and Geographic Keyword in Domain

Have you noticed that many of the top ranking dentist websites in Google have a domain name containing the city name or dental related word or both? It is not a coincidence but in fact Google does prefer keyword rich domains because of their relevance. Now since most local searches contain the city/location name e.g. ‘dentist nyc’ or ‘dentures nyc’, having a domain name like familydentistnyc.com or cheapdenturesnyc.com is advantageous than having a general domain like beautifulsmiles.com.

HTML NAP Matching GMB Location NAP

By coding your Name, Address and Phone (NAP) information using schema.org/dentist markup format, you ensure that this information is separately identified and readily available on your website. This prevents confusion for search engines if they find any other numbers and names mentioned on your website or page. In addition, you need to ensure that your website NAP information matches your Google My Business page location NAP information exactly. Inconsistencies between the two may in fact send a negative signal and decrease your website rankings in Google search results.

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.