North Texas Dentistry Volume 2 Issue 5

Page 18

10

practice marketing

Internet Marketing Initiatives for Every Dental Practice 1.

Make sure you have a mobile-friendly website.

In 2012, it’s expected that approximately 65% of all local searches will be made on a mobile phone or tablet. Have you checked your site’s appearance on your iPhone? If you can’t conveniently read it and find your office’s phone number and directions, chances are your patients can’t either. It’s becoming increasingly critical for businesses which depend on local traffic to have their websites optimized for mobile search. And speaking of mobile search... 2. Claim your Google+ Local listing and optimize it.

Your Google+ Local listing is important for you in two ways: First, local listings now receive prime space on Google’s results page. Completing your listing is a great way to move into a highvisibility position for your office’s primary search terms. This entails claiming your listing, adding photos, keywords, customizing the description, etc. Not only will your listing rank higher, but patients who visit your local listing will now see photos of your office and smiling staff instead of a generic listing. The other important component of your local listing is its’ role in mobile search. The top local listings receive a prominent place in Google’s mobile search results, and they feature push-tocall and push-for-directions buttons. One other feature of local search may have you wondering about is...

by Neil Rudoff

3. Requesting user reviews, and then monitoring and following up.

You may have noticed user reviews on the Google results page when looking up restaurants, CPA’s, or plumbers. Of course, dental practices have user reviews as well. In fact, there are dozens of review sites on the internet, from Google to Yelp, to FourSquare. Again, there are two key benefits to encouraging user reviews. First, there is strong evidence that a listing receives a significant bump in Google+ Local rankings when it receives five Google reviews (keep in mind that this also helps your visibility on mobile searches). Second, it gives you and your staff the opportunity to strengthen ties with your patients, address issues and concerns, and generally interact with people in your area who are looking for dental services. Another element that Google considers when indexing websites is original, updated content, best delivered by...

4.

A company blog.

Many of us think of blogs as being reserved for fashion, sports, or political commentators. While those are all useful applications, there is a practical reason why your practice benefits from a blog as well. When Google ranks a website, an important factor is how often the site is updated with original content. Gone are the days when a website could be launched and then forgotten. A blog is the perfect tool to deliver dynamic, relevant content to your website. Just remember that your content should be original, not copied or mass-distributed. Informative blogs have an additional benefit: your peers may link to your article, boosting another component of Google’s algorithm, the... 5. Number of quality inbound links to your site.

18 NORTH TEXAS DENTISTRY | www.northtexasdentistry.com

Google’s mission is to promote “authoritative” websites in their results, i.e. pages that are original, trustworthy, high-quality, and generally providing value to the internet audience. One important measure of this is the num-


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