Modern Dental Practice Marketing

Our client dentists keep asking, How do I get people to check in on Facebook when they’re at my dental office?

The answer is ridiculously obvious. Tell them to!

We’ve created this “check in while your here” Facebook poster for dentists to display in their offices. You can print the pdf or jpg version, or customize the Word version with your unique Facebook URL. Tack the posters up, or frame and matte them, if you want a classier appearance. Display the posters where patients will see them and have time to check in, like in your lobby and operatories.

Last night, Google rolled out new changes that will affect Google Places and Google + accounts. If you happened to take a look at your dental practice’s Google Places page, you probably noticed the new configuration. In fact, Google Places, now called Google + Local slightly resembles Facebook’s Timeline. Google did not announce these new changes and as of now has not currently published a user manual on the new integration of Google Places and Google +. Your friends at Modern Dental Practice Marketing are currently researching the impact these new changes will have on your Google Places accounts and will keep you up to date with latest changes through our blog.

Below is a picture of how our Google Places account at MDPM appeared before the changes.

The Basics on Google + Local

Formerly known as Google Places, Google + Local is essentially an integration of a Google + account and a Google Places page. Google announced that it hopes to create a more social environment for engaging members of a community.  Like Google Places, you can upload photos of your dental practice, write an “about us” section, and add contact information. Your patients may also still leave reviews on your Google + Local account just as they did with Google Places.

Below is a how the public will view our Google +Local account with the new updates.

Google + Local and SEO for Dentists

Google will continue to change and update Google +Local in the coming months. We speculate that these changes may impact SEO and our clients’ web presence because reviews may appear in search engine results. As seen with other Internet marketing trends, local opinion of a business is becoming increasingly important. Stay tuned with our blog for the latest news on Google + Local and how it may affect your dental marketing strategy.

Below is an internal view of Google + Local when logged into our iGoogle account.

On Tuesday, we discussed how Facebook delivers information to newsfeeds via its algorithm called EdgeRank. Like Google, Facebook wants its users to have access to statuses and updates that are most relevant to their needs and activity on Facebook. If you plan on using a Facebook business page to promote your dental practice, understanding Facebook’s EdgeRank is important for maximizing your reach to potential new patients through social media. The three most important elements of using EdgeRank to your advantage are affinity, recency, and Edge weight.

Social Networking for Dentists on Facebook

Affinity – This term refers to the score Facebook’s algorithm gives you for each person or page you interact with. This score involves how often you communicate with a particular page or user and their communication with you in the form of “likes”, comments, and profile/page views. In simple terms, Facebook’s EdgeRank scores the level of interaction between two parties to help discern which items appear in each user’s newsfeed. Read the rest of this entry →

You have probably heard about the importance of search engine optimization at a dental convention. You, as a dentist, might be aware of how important keyword-rich dental websites, blogs, and microsites are. If you have done research on SEO, you might be facing some confusion, too. The Internet is full of contradictory or irrelevant speculation about which SEO tactics produce the best Internet marketing results. To add to the confusion, SEO blogs and web publications typically use verbiage you may not be familiar with. To help our clients and readers understand what SEO is really about, your friends at Modern Dental Marketing have composed an easy-to-understand SEO glossary for dentists.

Modern Dental Marketing’s SEO Glossary

Sitemap – An index of the pages of a website, a sitemap helps users navigate to specific pages. When your dental website goes live, we submit a sitemap to Google so that your site can be indexed by spiders for SEO.

Backlinks – This term refers to an external website embedding a hyperlink to your dental website or blog as a reference. Backlinking from your blog to your dental website (or vice-versa) is especially useful for receiving higher search engine rankings. Read the rest of this entry →

In the past, we have blogged on the importance of social media in building a web presence and attracting SEO attention. Major corporations and high-profile public figures utilize Facebook to connect with their consumers and audiences. As Google uses algorithms to determine a website’s page rank, Facebook also employs similar technology for generating what types of objects show up in newsfeeds and searches. This technology is called Edgerank. Facebook posts, pictures, and comments are analyzed into data which ultimately affects how your business page will appear on other’s newsfeeds.

Engaging Your Patients on Facebook

For our clients with Facebook pages, we want to ensure that your business page shows up in your clients’ newsfeeds. In layman’s terms, you want Facebook’s algorithms to acknowledge your page. Below are a few tips to help promote your Facebook business page and increase your Edgerank.

• Build followers. When your patients come in for treatment and dental checkups, encourage them to “like” your page on Facebook.
• Encourage interaction! Aside from posting oral health articles or blog posts, provide status updates that encourage your clients to comment. For example, post a status update asking them to tell you what their favorite brand of toothpaste is. The more interaction and activity on your page the better. Read the rest of this entry →

Have you noticed a drop in your dental website’s traffic? Perhaps a competitor in your area has slightly better SEO than your dental website and blog. In addition to our packages for dental websites, blogs, and dental microsites, we are now offering an SEO booster package. This package is perfect for regaining your competitive edge or to help boost traffic when a new dental website is launched. Although a SEO booster package can help improve site traffic or increase page rank it is not intended to replace the need for a dental website, blog, microsite, or active social media accounts.

Dental Marketing SEO Booster

An SEO booster package for dentists includes:

• We submit your blog RSS feeds
• We provide comments that link to your blog from other dental-related sites
• We use social bookmarks to promote your site or blog
• We utilize Google+ to draw attention to every page on your dental website and dental blog
• We write and post articles to various sites, and the articles include backlinks to your website

Who Needs an SEO Boost?

The simple answer is this: any dentist can benefit from an SEO booster package. These packages are especially helpful to new dental website launches, dental websites that may have seen a drop in SEO due to the latest Google algorithm updates, or dentists who want to rank higher than a local competitor. Dentists may also purchase the booster package as many times as they feel necessary. Read the rest of this entry →

Have you heard about guest blogs and backlinks? Both are great for SEO. Here’s the scoop:

Backlinks: The best backlinks for search engine optimization (SEO) are hyperlinks to your dental website from another dental-related website…or blog.

Guest Blogs: Guest blogs are blogs written by a friend or expert, then posted on your blog. The most beneficial guest blogs have original text that isn’t and will never be published elsewhere online.

It’s All About SEO

The benefit of having guest blog posts on your blog are twofold. 1) Your blog gets more content for Google to index, and that’s always good. 2) You can swap guest posts, so that you get to be a guest blogger and reap the benefits of backlinks to your website or blog. At MDPM, we want to help you maximize online marketing so that you get lots of traffic, and as a result, lots of new patients. Read the rest of this entry →

SEO techies are still speculating on the impact of the latest and ongoing changes with Google’s algorithms. While some information on the impact of these changes have yet to be determined, SEO experts agree that original content on websites and blogs is becoming more important than ever before. Modern Dental Marketing offers a deeper insight into beneficial characteristics of website and blog content.

Write with Authority

As a dentist, you’re an expert in your field. You have the degree and experience to prove it. Your dental website and blog should reflect this concept. Dental website copy should convey to your readers and to search engines that you possess expert level knowledge in the information you are presenting.

Compose Content with Value

Each page of your dental website should offer specific information to your readers. For example, a dental web page on porcelain veneers should contain enough information to give your readers a good idea of how porcelain veneers can improve the appearance of their smile. The information you present also must be seen as valuable by search engines. Search engine spiders will index your dental website based upon the relevance of your website’s copy. Read the rest of this entry →

The video below, by Google, reviews five mistakes common to SEO techs. I’ve outlined the five problems so that you can quickly skim them, but you might also take time to watch the video. It’s great for dentists who manage their own SEO.

Include your value proposition: Your value proposition is the page description, in technical terms. This should be a statement that is highly attractive to potential site visitors/patients. This should separate you from your competitors!

Don’t take a segmented approach: Consider the entire user experience – for patients and returning patients. You should integrate all marketing into your overall marketing strategy. This means, your print, radio, and television advertisements should be aligned with your websites, blogs, videos, and online articles.

Read the rest of this entry →

If you’ve been reading our blog or if you’re a current client of ours, you have probably noticed that we talk about Google—a lot. As the most respected and widely used search engine across the globe, Google truly is the gatekeeper to having great SEO and traffic to your dental websites, blogs, and microsites. Since we discuss Google so much, we found it fitting to provide a brief history of Google and some facts about this intriguing company.

Google Trivia and History

• Google was founded in 1996 by Stanford University graduate school students.
• In 2010, Google had over 450,000 servers across the globe.
• Over 600 million people use Google each day.
• The corporation refers to their employees as Googlers.
• Almost all of Google’s revenue is brought in by their advertising services.
• Google possesses the largest index of web pages in the world.
• In most cases, Google delivers search engine results in less than one second.
• In 2006, Google purchased YouTube.com for a whopping $1.65 billion.
• Over 90% of web searches and 95% of mobile searches are conducted through Google. Read the rest of this entry →