Due to the widespread use of social media networks and the internet in general, online dental marketing now plays a major role in the marketing campaigns for successful practices. The information in the following paragraph will highlight the major types of online dental marketing:

1. Dental SEO or Search Engine Optimization:

SEO for dentists includes techniques that will increase a website’s position in the search engine results which comes from the top search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo. Google drives most of the traffic but the others shouldn’t be ignored either. For dental SEO to be successful, one must have experience in the dentistry industry as well as knowledge of innovative technology.

2. Dental Marketing Online on YouTube:

Using videos for dental marketing online can be extremely effective. The videos on YouTube can be used as a powerful marketing tool when it comes to attracting new patients, especially if there are clips with testimonials from satisfied clients recommending the dental practice as well as others showcasing the clinic itself.

3. PPC or Pay-Per-Click Advertising of Dental Website:

Whenever users search for a particular keyword, they will get two different search results. The sponsored results, often appears on the top and top right section on the page and the organic results, comes after the sponsored results. The dental PPC campaigns are designed to make the dentist website visible on the sponsored search results from Google, Yahoo and others in order to attract more clients.

It’s worth mentioning that PPC dental marketing can also be done on FaceBook. To achieve success, the marketing will target Facebook users in a certain demographic. Dentists can make use of this feature when advertising their practice in local areas as well as to target certain customers.

4. Dental Marketing Online on Twitter:

Increasingly more dental practices are using Twitter to communicate with patients and keep them updated with the latest news about their services and practice. Check another comprehensive published blog post on the success factors of Facebook Dental Marketing and Twitter Dental Marketing.

5. Dental Marketing Online on Facebook:

This type of dental marketing online is different from the PPC Advertising method mentioned above. Dentists are able to capitalize on Facebook’s functionality and create a professional page for their dental practice. This page can then be updated regularly with new information and a fan page can be created for satisfied patients. This will help to attract prospective patients and encourage existing ones to return. Check Facebook for Dentists for more information.

6. Yelp Dental Marketing:

The ultimate goal of dental Yelp marketing is to attract more clients by leveraging the positive reviews and any other information that is available on the Yelp page. With the help of Yelp marketing efforts, dentists will get reports in regards to page visits as well as the opportunity to set-up a slideshow or video profile. Besides that, when prospective patients search for a particular dental practice on Yelp, the results will highlight special offers and deals. Check more information about Yelp for Dentists as part of your Dental Online Reputation Management strategy.

If you want to improve your practice and attract more clients, you should take advantage of these mediums for dental marketing online. Keep in mind that these campaigns will be different for specialists and general dentists.

At DDS Strategy, dental marketing online is an inseparable part of our marketing campaigns for dentists tailor-made for success of a dental practice. Contact us today for more information about our dental marketing services.     

Dental SEO or Dentist SEO is mainly referred to SEO for dentists and dental practices.  In other words, Dental SEO is referred to the techniques that are used as part of SEO process customized for dentistry. SEO stands for search engine optimization and it is a series of techniques, processes and routines that is used to rank your website higher in the search results from Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines when people search for terms that may be of your business interest.

Considering dental website marketing as an important part of dental marketing strategies as a whole, dentist SEO is how you benefit from having a dental website. Without search engine optimization, dental websites are just showcases that nobody visits. What is the use of having a website that you can’t benefit from for driving more patients to your dental office? Right dental search engine optimization is how at times your competitors get 5, 10 or more new patients each month from their dental websites and hence it may be the answer to your prayers for more patients.

Search Engine Optimization in its core can be considered as a popularity contest. In other words, similar to real life, search engines tend to rank the websites with more, better and more relevant votes higher. In real life if you want to establish yourself as an authority in an area, let’s say “orthodontist in Chicago” for the sake of example, the more votes you get from fellow specialists the better. The more dentists endorse you and the more authoritative they are; you get more business. Similar rules apply for SEO in general and more specifically for Dental SEO. The more votes your dental website gets from other websites and the more authoritative those referrers are the better your website gets ranked.

Dental SEO needs years of experience to be performed properly, but to over-simplify it; the content of dental websites and their backlinks are the two major elements that affect their rankings. Backlinks of a dentist website are the referrals that site gets from other websites. When another website links to your dental website, it is a backlink. Both content and backlinks are important in your website’s ranking. The fresher more relevant search engine optimized contents, the better ranking. The more number of backlinks, the more relevant referrers’ websites and the better backlinking structure, the better ranking.

This article was just an introduction but you can read other articles from our dental blog to learn more about Dental SEO. At DDS Strategy, Dental SEO is one of our popular services. We would love to help you improve your dental website’s ranking and get more patients. Call or email us today for more information.

Are you looking for new dental marketing ideas that dramatically increase the number of new patients to your dental office? They might not be that hard to find after all. Here’s a checklist of some easy to implement dental office marketing ideas:

• Have creative Dental Goodies. People love dental goodies and they can be durable and a reminder of your practice for some time. Stuck for ideas? Come up with a list of items that can be used as gifts, such as piggy banks, dolls, etc., Think outside the box to combine them with dental elements such as making them in the shape of a tooth, etc., Add some fun to it and there you go: you have a creative dental gift.
• Make sure you have proper dental print material such as dental flyers, dental brochures, dental post cards, etc.
• Have you ever used dental mail marketing? Why not? Too expensive to start and long investment commitment? Still, it is worth looking further into.
• Dental Website, Dental Website, Dental Website… Why I am repeating this so much. Because if you are one of those dentists who is still wondering about it, you are just far behind. Many other online dental marketing ideas have emerged and people are into social media and review websites. Your dental website is just the start. There are many companies out there that design dental websites. We are there for you as well. Don’t just think about it. Act today.
• Join social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter. That’s the first step to benefiting from social media for dental office marketing. A lot of work? Well, social media are not only part of everyday life, they are becoming part of basic literacy. Just do it.
• Get a Google Places listing for your dental clinic. If set up correctly, it counts as a second dental website and hence brings twice as patients. Don’t know what that is? Read more about in this blog post: …

O.K. Those were some dentist marketing ideas for you and there are much more. Read other blog posts on our dental marketing blog and you’ll get a good grasp of old and new trends in dental practice marketing. Limited time? Call or email us as easy as clicking a button here and we will be happy to help you out at DDS Strategy.

Strategic Dental Marketing is the application of strategic thinking and planning for dental practices. It goes without saying that the first step is will be development of a unique strategy for the dental practice based on internal factors, environment and competition.

Internal factors are the strengths and weaknesses of the dental practice compared to fellow practices. As an example length of time in practice could be considered a strength for a dental office that has been in business for a long time and a weakness for a start-up practice. The goal from internal analysis of the practice and identifying strengths and weaknesses is to emphasize the strengths and stay away from weaknesses in your dental marketing campaigns. As an example, for a start-up practice, the credentials of the dentist could be one possibility to emphasize as the main point in dental marketing campaigns.

The other major element of strategic dental marketing is external factors. External analysis of the dental clinic revolves around identification of opportunities and threats in the environment, in this case mostly the local neighborhood, finding strategies to benefit from opportunities and to be shielded from the threats. The important element of the external analysis is competition and the important step is competitors’ study.

The outcome of strategic dental marketing planning is the roadmap of the growth of the practice. That roadmap will be translated to dentist marketing campaigns, tactics or activities including a timeline and goals. The goals could be an increase in the number of new patients, increase in retention ratio for the patients or could be defined in financial terms such as collection or revenue.

The benefit of strategic dental marketing over jumping from medium to medium and tactic to tactic on a trial and error basis is that it provides a better ROI (return on investment) for the dentist. Eventually, dental practice marketing is a necessary factor of a dental practice’s growth, and not planning properly only means more investment with less results. There are numerous dentist marketing tactics that can be conducted for a dental clinic and planning will facilitate identifying the ones most worthy of investment.

Strategic Dental Marketing is the best approach toward a continuous and stable stream of new patients for a dental practice and it is our approach at DDS Strategy. We help dentists define what dentist marketing campaigns bring them the most patients with the least investment and while educating the dentist about possibilities, we implement the most effective ones. Contact Us today for more information.

Heard about dental marketing in Facebook recently? Thought about using Facebook for Dental Marketing? Getting more fans for dental page? All true, it is the new trend.

Studies show an average user spends an average 15 hours and 33 minutes on Facebook per month. Also, an average user has 130 friends on Facebook.

There are about 100 million Facebook users in the US. It means one out of three Americans is in Facebook (Now, think about potential of Dentist marketing in Facebook!) This number is even more in Tech Savvy areas. In California, almost 52% have Facebook account (one out of two). In some cities such as New York, Chicago and San Francisco, this number is above 90%! And finally: Over 80% of Facebook users are 18 or more.

Facebook has turned to a major communication channel and it is a mistake to keep it out of your dental marketing. You have to have a Dental Facebook Marketing strategy and we can help you with it. Here are some Dental Marketing Tips for you to get the most out of Facebook:

Dental Marketing on Facebook, Tip 1: Use Facebook as your second Website

Average Facebook user visits the site 40 times per month and spends more than 20 minutes in each visit. Can’t you get a slice for your dental fan page? Easier than you think!

One of the good Facebook dental marketing strategies is to promote your dental page on Facebook as your second website. Put all information of your dental practice on Facebook page and make your information is available on your dental Facebook Fan Page. You gotta be their cool dentist.

Dental Marketing on Facebook, Tip 2: The ultimate internal marketing tool for your practice

There is no argument that if not the most effective dental marketing strategy, Internal Marketing is one of them. Dental Marketing on Facebook can serve it too!

By internal marketing, your ultimate goal is:
1) to get more patients by referrals
2) to make sure your present patients come back.
Sure enough, they all are in Facebook. You have to make them like your dentist Facebook page and then, by producing relevant and engaging content, bring them back to your practice.

Dental Marketing on Facebook, Tip 3: Keep it casual

Facebook has a casual environment by definition. Yet, there are formal pages on Facebook, but most of the successful pages have casual spirit and tone. Your Facebook Dental Page shouldn’t be different. You are not supposed to give a lecture on your dental fan page. Your fans will be bored and never come back, or never like your dental page on Facebook!

Dental Marketing on Facebook, Tip 4: Content is the King

Content, Content, Content! You are supposed to generate content, couple of times a day! Are you busy with patients and don’t see much importance of Facebook Dental Marketing? No problem, you will not see the results!

Seriously, you can ask your front desk or someone that is familiar enough with your dental practice to reveal the potential of Facebook marketing for dentists for you. A weekly schedule of posts may help. You may use the following as a suggestion:

Monday: Post something about the past weekend (Something that Facebook audience can be informed about. J)

Tuesday: Post a link or news, along with your comments (The most effective dental marketing on Facebook happens when fans or likes see you as an authority in the field)

Wednesday: Post a funny or inspirational quote or clip

Thursday: You may get a day off from posting on Facebook and review what others say about you, essentially, what is your reputation as a dentist on Facebook

Friday: Post about upcoming weekend

I don’t know where I originally found this schedule. It is not my contribution, but still useful and valuable.

Dental Marketing on Facebook, Tip 5: Facebook Paid Marketing

Facebook has information of its entire users. That is the reason that Facebook can pinpoint users based on your needs! Interesting? That is the reason that Facebook is the major rival of giant Google in paid advertisement.

There is an area on the right side of each page on Facebook. If you want to utilize it as a part of your dental advertisement of Facebook, you can order ads and pay between $1 to $3 or even less to Facebook for each click. Suppose that you are a cosmetic dentist and want to advertise Veneers or invisalign on Facebook. You can design an ad or a promotion and ask Facebook to show it to potential patients in your geographic area, with a certain income, determined age group, interests, race and sex. It is the reason they call it “highly targeted”. If you pay attention to details and target the appropriate group, it could be a very successful part of your Facebook dental marketing strategy. If you think you need help, please feel free to Contact Us at (415) 944-7317 and we will help you setup your campaign.

Dental Marketing on Facebook, Tip 6: Claim your Facebook Dental Page

If you didn’t, do it! It is impossible to do all other Tips without having the control and administration of your page.

How you can claim your dental practice Facebook page? It is easy. First look for your page on Facebook, using your personal account (If you don’t have one, it is the time to start one). Then search for your practice on Facebook with your name or your practice’s name. As soon as you found your page, there is a link on the bottom left side of the page that allows you to claim your page. Facebook will call your office to validate you are calling from your practice and you are the actual owner of the Facebook dentist page. As soon as you claim your page, you will have chance to modify it and enter your information there.

If you have any question or feel you need help about it, feel free to Contact Us at (415) 944-7317. At DDS Strategy, we are here to help you will all of your social media dental marketing needs, including dental marketing on Facebook.

Dentists Marketing can be referred to many different tactics, campaigns or activities that are used by dentists to attract new patients to their dental practices or sometimes make more money from existent patients by having them in the dental practice on a regular basis. By effective Marketing, Dentists not only can fill the empty chairs by patient acquisition but also can increase their revenue by patient retention. So in essence, Dentists Marketing can be categorized to Internal Dentist Marketing and External Dentist Marketing.

Regular visits are an essential part of dental hygiene which are often ignored by patients and one of the goals of internal dentist marketing is to assure patients are present at the dental office when they should be. The other goal of internal dental marketing is to ensure staff is well-trained to handle the day-by-day tasks properly. One of the important implications of internal dental marketing is making sure any incoming call is handled properly. It may not seem significant at first, but we have had many clients that used to lose many prospective patients to their competitors by ignoring basic principles before we trained their staff.

When it comes to external dentists marketing, the environment has become more complex than it has ever been. You may have gotten confused by dental marketing companies about what works and what doesn’t. Typically what a dental marketing company presents to you represents their interest based on their expertise and not your benefit as a dentist based a holistic view. The truth of the matter is there are new mediums out there such as social media that have taken a significant market share in marketing and the same goes for dental practice marketing, however our experience shows that even the recently hated dental practice marketing campaigns such as Yellow Pages Ads still work pretty well depending on the area and the right conduct.

Dentists marketing campaigns can be categorized based on the marketing mediums as follows:

1- Print Dental Marketing

One of the most common forms of print dental marketing is mail marketing. Effective mail marketing, depending on the neighborhood can bring many prospective patients to a dental practice. Yellow Pages Ads and Flyer Marketing are some of the other popular forms of Print Dental Marketing. As explained earlier, if conducted under the right circumstances, Yellow Pages Ads still can be effective but the right conditions should be met, otherwise they can be a huge waste of money.

2- Online Dental Marketing

Online or Internet Dental Marketing forms a large part of dental practice marketing campaigns. It has many different forms that each one if implemented correctly can be very effective. Owning a dental website is the very first step for many of the dentist marketing campaigns. So, dental website development is one of initial steps of putting your foot in the door of internet dental marketing. Some of the most common forms of online dental marketing tactics are as follows:

• Dental SEO:

Dental SEO or Dental Search Engine Optimization makes your dental website visible on search engines. I am sure you have heard of “be on first page of Google”. Dental SEO is the key to that.

• Social Media Marketing for Dental Practice:

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube are just some of the emerging social media that shape today’s marketing for dentists. Why Social Media mediums are important? Because people are there. Facebook has passed 700 Million users, Twitter has over 200 million users and LinkedIn is being used by more than 100 million professionals. YouTube videos are being watched over 2 Billion Times/day! Because your patients are on Social Media, you should be there too and as much as it may seem annoying, having a presence is just the first step of many others.

• Dental Online Reputation Management:

Online Reviews are becoming more important almost on a day by day basis and the worst part: they are highly sticky. It means if you get good reviews you may benefit from them for years and the same goes for bad reviews. Yelp and Google Reviews are just some of many local review websites that are being highly trusted by an average user and hence, not paying attention to them on-time may literally take you out of business in a few years.

3- Mobile Dental Marketing

If you have your print and online dental marketing campaigns all figured out, then it is time to go mobile. Smart phones are the next big thing and lots of your prospective or existing patients check the dental practices while they are on the go. Having a dental mobile website or a dental app such as DentiApp for iPhone and Android smart phones is just the beginning.

So, there are many marketing options for a dentist to benefit from and there is limited marketing budget. The question then goes to who to work with and what campaign to choose. The answer is you should select a dental marketing company that explores different options based on the real characteristics of your dental practice and your neighborhood and tells you which ones are working the best for you based on ROI (Return on Investment). That means they should have the knowledge and experience of implementing different types of campaigns for dentists to be able to strategically advice you on the campaigns that suit your dental practice the best based on your practice and local factors. That is called strategic dental marketing approach. The ultimate goal of strategic dental marketing also referred to as smart dental marketing or intelligent dental marketing is to identify the campaigns that bring the most patients with the least investment, initiate the implementation there and move toward less effective campaigns based on the dentist’s marketing budget.

At DDS Strategy, we conduct Print, Online and Mobile Marketing for Dentists with a heavy focus on ROI and from a strategic viewpoint. Dentists Marketing is what we are experienced in and passionate about. Contact Us today for more information.

Dental Online Reputation Management is changing the context of marketing for dental practices similar to what ORM does for other small businesses. When it comes to dentists, managing online reviews on websites such as Yelp (Known as Yelp marketing for dentists) and utilizing their capacity are getting more and more buzz every day and play a vital role in success of a dental practice and attracting new patients. Specifically talking, Yelp review management has turned to an essential part of dental practices’ reputation management efforts and consequently, it has become increasingly important for dentists to understand what role Yelp plays in today’s dental practice marketing. But first, what is Yelp and how one can conduct dental marketing on Yelp? To explain that I review some history:

Birth of online Reviews

Long before the emergence of online reputation management systems, online review was born. Online review started as early as the Internet emerged. Amazon.com started allowing its customers to leave reviews on books from 1995. As per Los Angeles Times (1999), a study performed by Forrester Research suggested that half of the retailers’ websites reported that customer reviews had important or extremely important role on the perception of their customers back then. This trend was a continuous trend and based on the report of ComScore.com (2007), one of the major companies in measuring internet’s data and trends, almost one out of every four internet users read reviews on services delivered off-line, prior to their purchase. In the same report, they suggested that buyers were willing to spend around twenty percent more for services or products that had five star rating in scale of zero to five.

For dentistry specifically, researchers suggest that patient generated contents (such as dentist reviews on Yelp), are perceived more credible than dentist generated information (such as content of dentists’ websites). It is partly because reviews are more patient oriented and focused on performance of a dentist in comparison with the official content on dental practices’ websites, brochures, advertisements and essentially dentists’ claims. There is one exception here: dentists’ credentials. Because dentist credentials are seen as third party opinions, they tend to carry a higher weight in getting the trust of prospective patients. In general, because third party reviews carry a higher weight, it is essential for each practice to have a Yelp Dental Marketing Strategy.

History of Yelp

Yelp launched its website initially for San Francisco market in October 2004. Several years later, Yelp expanded from its San Francisco roots to open an east coast office in Manhattan in the first half of 2008 and introduced a Canadian-focused version of the site in 2008. Yelp now has international sites in Spain, France, Germany, Austria, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. As of 2008, Yelp’s page view count overtook its predecessor and early rival, Citysearch.

Yelp.com had over 58 million unique visitors as of September 2011 and is now one of the major online review sites and reputation channels. As a result, more and more patients check dentist reviews on Yelp and consequently, Yelp Marketing for dentists has become increasingly important.

How to take control of your dental practice’s page on Yelp?

Yelp provides online local search capabilities to its visitors. Each practice listing result contains a 5-point rating, reviews from other site visitors, and details such as address, hours of operation, accessibility, and parking availability of the practice. The ultimate goal of Yelp Marketing for Dentists is to drive more patients by leveraging positive reviews and other information people may find on their Yelp page.

For all businesses listed as well as dental practices, Yelp has a designated page (available through biz.yelp.com) that allows you to take partial control over your practice’s page in Yelp, which is the first step of your Yelp dental marketing campaign. After Yelp verifies that you are the actual owner of the practice, it allows you to add practice history, your profile and your practice photos. It will allow you to communicate with your reviewers and leave public comments about reviews. It is crucial for you Yelp Marketing Strategy to have a well-written and informative content on your practice page on Yelp.

If you advertise with Yelp as part of your Yelp dental marketing efforts, in dental practice’s page you can get reports about page visits and you will have the option to set up a slide show for your practice. Also as an advertiser you have the opportunity to add a video to your profile.

Some of the other powerful tools on Yelp that you can take advantage of are “offers” and “deals”. If a prospective patient searches for your practice on Yelp, they will see the offers on top of the search results. Deal is a new concept in Yelp dental marketing strategy. You can run a deal and patients will pay Yelp to get that deal. Yelp will collect 30% and will pay you the rest. Suppose that you post a coupon of “$100 for $200” for a given service. Yelp will collect $100 from the buyer, retains $30 for itself and pays you $70. As the seller you are then obligated to deliver equal to $200 of the designated service.

As a dentist or owner of a dental practice, whether if you have a strategy specifically for Yelp or not, patients look online for dentists and check your reputation to see what others express about your practice. It is very important to take control of your practice’s page and be informed about the reviews. If you find it complicated to deal with so many online marketing channels including but not limited to Yelp or simply you are very busy, we are there for you. At DDS Strategy, we consider Yelp an important medium and therefore we have a specific “Yelp Marketing Strategy for Dentists”. Contact Us today for more information.

As you may have noticed, I am one of the search engine optimization experts for dentists and dental practices and that’s the reason I want to share with you one of the biggest mistakes SEO consultants make on a regular basis. If you have a dental SEO guy and you have been paying him for years without seeing enough patients through the door, there is a possibility that he is making the same mistake. Oh! And believe me! I know many dentists that are doing it, simply because they don’t know what to expect from dental search engine optimization.

Before I explain about the biggest mistake or better said biggest fatal error, I should explain that search engine optimization is not just anybody’s work. It needs expertise, years of practice, following Google and other search engines closely and regularly for changes they make in their search algorithms and the most important one: Dental SEO expert should be familiar with Dental and Dentistry industry and preferably have experience working in the industry. There are many aspects to SEO and there are many mistakes that can prevent you from having a successful SEO and enough patients through the door, but I will concentrate on the one that is specifically because of lack of knowledge about dentistry and dental practices.

O.K.! Here you go! The biggest fatal error is “wrong keyword search”. What does that mean? Search Engine Optimization is a pull marketing campaign. It means you make your site visible for specific searches and by that I mean specific keywords that people search. So when people enter specific search terms in Google, Yahoo and Bing they find your dental practice website as one of the top results. As an example, your website may be visible via search when people search for “New York Dentist” or “New York Dental Implant” or “New York Implant Dentist”. Those are three different searches coming from three different strategies and one of the main factors for a successful SEO is selecting the right choice of Keywords.

Depending on your area, local Long-Tail keywords are some of the best keywords to optimize your dental practice website for. Long Tail keywords usually are keywords consisting of two to five words and representing the exact search when a searcher looks for something. In search for dentists and dental practices, it translates to a combination of “Area: City, Zip-code, etc.” and “Specialty: Orthodontist, pediatric, etc.”. What makes the keyword search increasingly important is the areas are different so depending on the area, competition and population, the right choice of keywords for dental practices vary.

Let me give you an example. In our New York example, unless if you have lots of money to invest and lots of time to wait, “New York Dentist” is not the right keyword for you. Why? Because there are other dentists that have spent lots and lots of money over the years to increase their visibility and winning the competition over them for a new comer, is close to impossible at least for the short-run. Now, you may want to target one of the zip-codes or neighborhoods instead and have your keywords concentrated on specialty. That way you target less number of people but if you choose the right set of keywords, with the right SEO, you still will have enough searches and enough visibility to bring you a decent number of new patients every month.

On the other hand if you are living in a small city, let’s say “Moraga, California”, then it may be a wrong choice to pick “Moraga dental implant” as your keyword. Why? Because the competition is less so with the right investment and the right consultant, there is a high chance for you to be on top of Search Engine Page Results (SERP) for better keywords because of limited competition. And here is the reason for fatal error in this case: Being concentrated on the first results on search engines for local keywords with very low search volume doesn’t bring enough new patients. What is the use of being the first result for the search term “Moraga Dental Implant” in search engines if rarely anybody ever searches for it? In an area like that you might be better off with concentrating on more general keywords such as “Moraga Dentist”

To summarize, if you choose the wrong keywords for your Dental SEO efforts, they might fail when 1- Because of high competition in highly populated areas, you will have a low chance of being on top for general keywords. 2- Because of low volume of search in low populated areas, you will not have enough website views even if you are on top.

At “DDS Strategy” we help dentists for search engine optimization among many other dental marketing campaigns. We take our own advice and deeply analyze the keywords before starting the dental SEO process. Contact us today for a free no-commitment consultation session.

[plus1 count="true" size="standard"][/plus1]

Dental SEO is the key to be more visible on the internet. SEO, or search engine optimization, is a series of techniques that help your website rank well on search engines. Before I explain further about the techniques I would like to take a moment and emphasize that search engine optimization is the key to your dental website marketing. I explain why:

Owning a domain name or website URL (…DentalPractice.com) is similar to having a piece of land. Depending on your domain name address it may have some value on its own or not, similar to having a piece of land in the middle of desert versus having it in the heart of New York City. When you ask experts to develop a dental website, they basically build a commercial center on this land, again similar to the day you opened your practice. If you go back to when you opened your practice, you’ll remember that just opening an office was not enough to get patients pouring in. You had to do dental marketing. Whether it was asking for referrals, mail marketing or whatever other dentist marketing campaigns, you had to do marketing. Obviously, you may have been one of those rare lucky cases that opened your office in a location with so much demand that it alone was enough to bring lots of new patients in without advertising. Back to the application of a dental website; having a dental website is just the first step. Similar to having an office, it will bring you some visitors but not enough. Dental SEO is one solution.

When people search for a term in search engines – let’s say “Los Angeles dentist” – as an example, they see a lot of results. They normally trust the order of ranking so they believe a website listed higher on search engine has more credibility. In the real world, does it mean they have better service? Absolutely not! It means they have invested more money in Dental SEO. In an ideal world, your rank in search engines should represent the quality of your service. It is a criterion for how much people have mentioned you on the internet and have referred to your website. In search engine optimization literature, that is called backlinking. Backlinks are referrals from other websites to your website. It means somebody has mentioned you on the internet and has linked-back to your dental website. Since we don’t live in an ideal world, not always these backlinks are organic. It means SEO professionals have worked to get some of those referrals. So far, you know backlink building is an essential part of dental search engine optimization. It is called off-page SEO.

Another important element of Dental SEO is the content and structure of your dental website. Remember that search engines are robots that crawl your website and gather whatever they understand. Obviously they can’t assess your credibility or the quality of your service from the content of your website. They only understand the relevancy of your content to specific keywords. They also understand a good or bad website structure. So the other element of Dental SEO is giving search engines what they need in a way they understand. That is called on-page SEO. To over-simplify, this means embedding the keywords that represent your interests in an organic and natural way in the text of your website and structuring them via different codes, tags, titles, etc. in a way that the most important elements, from your point of view, will be perceived as the most important from search engines’ points of view.

To summarize so far, dental website marketing starts with dental SEO, and dental search engine optimization has two key elements: 1- off-page SEO; 2- on-page SEO. It is important to know that search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing have been developed by geniuses who have tried to design every possible means to find out if a website is organically popular or if the popularity is artificial. I will give you an example: if you build lots of backlinks in a short period of time – for example, let’s say two months – and then stop the process, it will be easy for search engines to figure out it has been an artificial rank increase, versus having backlinks built every month that could be a measure of continuous popularity. Think about it. If you are a popular person, you get referrals all the time, and the same goes for your dental website. That’s why “one time SEO efforts” barely work and as with any other dental marketing campaign, persistence and continuous investment are the keys to success.

Knowing that Dental SEO needs continuous investment, one important question remains: “Is it worth it?” To answer that question you need to calculate the Return on Investment (ROI). A patient that finds your practice through your website may never come back after the first treatment. On the other hand she/he may become a regular patient and stay with you for 20 years. Depending on the area your practice is located and the competition in your neighborhood, the average length of stay of a patient may vary from 3 to 10 years. Remember that dentistry is a residual income industry, so expectations of getting the money back right away are unreal. At the same time you should know that not investing in dental practice marketing is opportunity loss. You are paying for the fixed costs of the office anyway, so whether you get more patients or less, you will be paying those costs. That means your profit comes from the last patients and not first ones. The more patients, and the less empty chairs, the more profit will come in. And the last thing you should ask is the efficiency of Dental SEO. The question is “How many patients should I expect from Dental SEO?” The answer depends on what dental marketing company is conducting it.

Dental SEO is a complicated process that needs a long-term plan. The results also depend on your location but in almost any area, there are strategies that will bring a good number of patients on a monthly basis. That is the reason behind so much competition between dental clinics to rank better for various keywords. The ones that have done a proper Dental SEO know the outcome and they continue investing on it to block the others from being ranked higher. The main reason is, they know they can have a reliable stream of new patients through dental website marketing every month.

At DDS Strategy, Dental website design and development and dental website marketing via search engine optimization are our main services. We have conducted those services successfully over and over and that’s the reason we have so many clients that have stayed with us for a long time. They have seen that it pays off; hence they continue the investment. Contact us today for more information about dental website marketing and dental SEO services.

[plus1 count="true" size="standard"][/plus1]

Have you wondered why you have lost some of your patients to the dental practice two blocks away recently? Maybe they know something that you don’t. They know the importance of Google Places and you don’t. To explain the importance I will first explain the anatomy of Google’s search engine results.

When a patient looks for a dental practice he/she typically types a search term similar to “dentist walnut creek” in Google’s search bar. Patients used to see two types of results: 1- the sponsored search results on top of the screen and right side of the screen when an “Ads” term is displayed; 2- Organic search results which was every other result on the page. Most visitors used to click on organic search results and some on sponsored search results.

Recently, Google added the Google Places Listing. Now after ads, but before organic results, patients see a list of dentists in their area (7 to be exact), their address, their map information and their ratings. If patients click on the Google Places Pages, they can also see reviews, photos and videos of the practice, as well as more information. That’s what makes the difference.

A high percentage of the visits that used to go to sponsored and organic search results now go to Google Places Pages. So here is what you should do:
1- Have a proper Google Places Page set up.
2- Search Engine Optimize your Page.
3- Get good reviews for your page.

If you do all of three steps right, you will see your practice listed for your targeted keywords in one of the 7 results showing on the first page of Google. If you don’t, you will lose your patients to those who have done it. By the way, you don’t need to have a website to have a Google Places’ Page. It is fast, it is far less expensive than any other dental marketing campaign and it is effective. Be ahead of the game and act now. If you don’t know what to do or where to start, we will help you.

At “DDS Strategy” we will claim the page on your behalf, develop the page for you, search engine optimize it for specific local keywords and help you establish systems that bring you more positive reviews and minimize the effect of bad reviews. Contact us today to set up your page.

[plus1 count="true" size="standard"][/plus1]