Let’s not waste any time. If you’re not implementing these digital dental marketing strategies in 2022, you’ll be losing new patients to your competition.
Start with the end in mind. Your goal is to rank as high as possible in the Google map, focusing on Google My Business, not your website. I know that this sounds crazy. Concentrate on the Google map 3-pack, which is where more than half of new dental patients will find your practice, will save you a lot of time and money.
Many of the tactics involved in traditional website optimization are similar to GMB optimization. Still, suppose your SEO strategy begins with ranking in Google maps rather than in organic website results. In that case, you’ll end with a different road map for the campaign. It’ll take less time to see positive results.
What most dentists are not familiar with is that you can optimize your GMB listing independent of your website. Google maps optimization is a new SEO strategy that forward-thinking practices are implementing in 2021 and 2022. Use this SEO for dentists step-by-step guide to kick you off with your local SEO optimization.
Where do you start with dental custom content? The best place to start is to focus on the following: service pages, posts to your GMB account (see # 3), location pages (see #4), blog articles, and other pages on your website describing your practice like your about-us page.
A great place to start is to add a blog to your website. Blogging can be fun, educational, provide an excellent internal linking strategy (see #5), and double as a patient newsletter.
Another way to add custom content to your site would be to rewrite original services pages. Shoot for more than 650 words per page or article. If you do this you’ll see better local search rankings from Google maps. If you’ve already got original content, add more content. One idea would be to add a Q&A section to the bottom of the page. The more content, the better.
Tip: Be consistent. Write new blog articles and service pages on a monthly, if not weekly, schedule. The practices that are outranking you in Google maps are likely doing this. If you can’t stay consistent with custom content, then hire someone to do it for you. The new patients that will come from higher rankings will dramatically increase your practice net profit.
Adding more information to your GMB profile will increase your rankings for local keywords in Google Maps. We recently worked with a scratch practice that ranked number 4 for the keyword ‘dentist’ in the Google map within a 4-mile radius around his practice. Ranking number 4 four is a problem because Google maps first page results only show the top three listings. He wasn’t getting any calls from Google maps.
We began posting original content to his GMB account every week. Within eight weeks, we had bumped up his Google maps rankings to the second and third positions. As soon as that happened, the phone started ringing.
Posting to your dental practices GMB account is a necessary dental SEO tactic. Most dental practices, and dental marketing companies, are not doing this because they don’t even know it’s possible. You’ll get the jump on your competition if you start now.
To rank higher in local SEO for dentists, ensure your website has location pages to show Google where the practice’s GMB account should rank in its map. A location page describes areas near your practice that you want to draw new patients.
For example, if you want to attract patients from a specific area, write a location page about neighborhoods in the area and post it on your website. You can get as detailed as you’d like.
When writing location pages, be sure to link to local businesses or attractions. An example of an excellent local outbound link would be to the city-county building website or a local newspaper site.
Another essential tip: Add an embedded Google Map at the bottom of your location pages. An embedded map sends a specific signal to Google about where your practice is concerning the location page. I like to use the driving directions embedded map.
To get started writing location pages, you’ll want to know where you’re already ranking well and where you’re not ranking well. I suggest running a local SEO radius report. This report will show you where your practice ranks on Google’s maps and what areas need a location page.
Google reviews contribute little to the Google Maps ranking algorithm. I estimate that it’s less than 10%. If you have more reviews than your competitors, it doesn’t mean that you’ll rank higher than them. Don’t worry about ranking number one. As long as you’re on the first page, which is one of the top three listings, you’re good to go.
The listings on the first page of search results with the best and most reviews get the most new-patient phone calls. We’ve seen this in our Google maps optimization reporting time and time again.
Please ask your patients if they would be willing to post a review on Google! Make sure you take the time to remind them about reviews on other platforms, especially Facebook. It cannot be stressed enough how important it is for your social media rankings and social proof.
To avoid being left behind, purchase a texting software that allows you to ask for reviews from patients via text. There are many software’s out there that can do this.
When looking for a solution, make sure that you purchase a service that is not gated. A gated reviews service is a two-step process. Here is how it works; the patients request to review the practice on a 3rd-party system. The patient leaves the review, and if the review is positive, it sends a second request to post the review to Google.
The second step has to be done by the patient. The problem is, they hardly ever do it. If you use a gated review system, you’ll not get bad reviews, but you won’t get any good ones either. Gated systems sound good, but they don’t work to help you find new patients.
About: My Social Practice is an award-winning dental marketing company based in Salt Lake City, Utah. They work with dental practices throughout the United States and Canada providing social media management, SEO, website development, reputation management, and custom content creation.
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