Modern Dental Practice Marketing

Why blog on a domain that’s not my main website?

Many of our client dentists rank multiple times on page one of Google for specific, popular keyword phrases, and we attribute this to not only having a blog, but also making the blog act as a microsite by being on a separate domain. Microsites are becoming intensely popular as a new avenue to improve SEO. At MDPM Dental, we’ve been creating blogs that act as microsites for three years now! Some of our client dentists hold 70-90% of the page-one Google real estate for a keyword phrase. Generally, Google shows 10 organic listings on page one, so I’m saying that some of our clients have 7-9 listings on a page one search result. It’s amazing how content can truly enhance a dentist’s SEO strategy.

What does a blog site include?

What does blogging include?

A study by HubSpot tells us that businesses with active blogs get 55% more website traffic, 434% more indexed pages, and 97% more inbound links than those without blogs. The study is based on 1531 HubSpot customers, of whom 795 blog and 736 do not blog.

These statistics make great headlines for marketers to attract new clients, but I want to go a little deeper. My clients are dentists, and they are smart. Dentists will want to know how the study applies to their industry, what factors are important, and how many blog posts are needed to optimize effectiveness.

MDPM’s Case Study on Blogging

How many times a month should a dentist blog? Will more blogs reward you with more traffic, and ultimately, more patients?

In comparing Google Analytics data, our clients who have us ghostwrite dental blogs 5 days a week, 4 weeks a month (20 blogs per month) have significantly more traffic than those who have us blog once a week. To determine what more blogging can accomplish, I randomly chose a client, a female family dentist in the Denver, CO area. Her blog was definitely drawing traffic, but not as much as I’d like. We had rewritten her website content with a solid SEO strategy about four months prior. That had helped with traffic, but not significantly (yet – these things do take time). I decided that, instead of blogging once a week for her, we would increase her blogging to daily throughout November.

When we went from 1 to 5 posts per week on this dentist’s blog, within a few weeks,

• blog traffic increased more than four times. The traffic wasn’t shabby to begin with, so this jump was significant.
• website traffic nearly doubled. Read the rest of this entry →

Most health care professionals prioritize patient education, because an educated patient makes wise, informed decisions for treatment. This translates into higher case acceptance rates for your practice.

While personal consultations, combined with videos, images, and print materials, are important in patient education, don’t overlook the most convenient and customized tool in your arsenal: your website and blog.

The Nucleus for Patient Communication

Your website should be created to A) reflect the brand and philosophy of your office; B) increase your visibility to potential patients by appealing to search engines; C) provide a resource for new patients to find your contact information and location; D) provide a resource for current patients to find post operative instructions, office news, and emergency contact information.

You can also integrate your blog, newsletter, and patient recognition program into your website. In some states, and for some medical disciplines, a website also creates an opportunity for patients to share testimonials. In addition to all of this, your website should also provide a custom library of patient education materials, including text, diagrams, images, and/or video. Read the rest of this entry →

I’m taking a break from the SEO Piece by Piece series to bring you some news about Google Analytics.

Keyword Results Data Visibility Tweaked

Google is working to increase security for its users. One new change they’re implementing involves sending signed in Google users (if you’re signed in to Gmail, YouTube, Google+, or any other Google-owned company while online) to an https version of Google Search. The “s” indicates secure server. What this means to dentists is, when reviewing Google Analytics data for your dental website or dental blog, you will no longer see individual user data about the keywords sent potential visitors to your website.

That said, you WILL still see the top 1000 keywords that people clicked to visit your site, and that’s really all a dentist needs. Don’t be scared about this change, and don’t let anyone mislead you into thinking Google Analytics will not be accurate. That’s just crazy talk.

This is straight from Google’s blog:

When you search from https://www.google.com, websites you visit from our organic search listings will still know that you came from Google, but won’t receive information about each individual query. They can also receive an aggregated list of the top 1,000 search queries that drove traffic to their site for each of the past 30 days through Google Webmaster Tools. This information helps webmasters keep more accurate statistics about their user traffic.

Read the rest of this entry →