The Plain-English Guide to the Best SEO for Dentists

We hear a few common questions about SEO for dental practices. “Is SEO good for dentists?” “Does it really work?” “How do dentists choose an SEO company?” This blog post walks you through exactly how SEO works and what a great SEO strategy can do for your dental practice.

Dental SEO (search engine optimization) focuses on optimizing a dental website for increased visibility on search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo! The best SEO companies for dentists are companies that set the dental practice apart from competitors in the area and maximize website visits.

The good news is, dental professionals can follow several guidelines to gain an advantage over their local competition. Check out these elements of a dental website that are essential for great SEO.

Dental Website Optimization

When it comes to finding a new dentist or orthodontist, almost every new patient is looking for a local practice that is close and convenient to get to. If your website is not targeting your specific geographic area, you are missing out on patients looking for a new dentist.

Ensure that the name of your town and nearby towns and cities are incorporated into your website copy. This same concept applies to patients looking for specific When it comes to health and medicine, people look for local service providers. You’re missing these prime prospects if your SEO plan doesn’t target specific geographic areas.

The easiest way to improve your results is by adding the name of your town and nearby towns to your website copy. However, don’t forget about other areas of your site—don’t only improve your copywriting. You should also add locations to your page titles and URLs.

Ensure you’ve registered your business on Google Maps and local directory sites, which will help improve your visibility in local searches even further.

High-Speed Website

Why is an ultra-fast dental website so important? Well to start, 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load. Not only that, but your website speed is the first impression many patients are getting from your practice.

If your dental website loads quickly, your practice is considered professional, reliable, and efficient.

Your patients will equate their experience on your website to their trust and confidence in you as a medical professional. It’s simple psychology.

In today’s world, patients are looking to get answers fast. As soon as your patient is confused or frustrated they are sure to abandon your website, and few things frustrate online users like slow loading times.

“Google will reduce the number of crawlers it sends to your site if your server is slower than two seconds.” – Google My Business Page. This suggests that Google, and other search engines, are not as likely to detect your blog posts, website updates, and keyword matches.

Blog Posts (With Keywords!)

The best dental SEO companies make sure to focus on their client’s blog content. As dental blog content has evolved, it has become more important than ever for practices. When the blog content on your site is useful and interesting, your potential patients view you and your practice as a trusted source.

Further, helpful blog content illustrates to patients and future patients that you care about people, not just teeth.

Your blog content shows your website visitors that your practice cares about more about providing valuable advice and guidance than you do about merely selling your services.

Patients in your area are searching for a dentist using phrases like “teeth whitening dentist” and “dental implants near me”. Including frequently used searched keywords in your blog boosts your SEO by positioning your website a website that answers relevant questions! (My Social Practice can take SEO off of your plate.)

In the video below, My Social Practice’s Vice President, Adrian Lefler talks about how Google My Business helps dental practices be easily searchable. Check it out below!

Local Listings

The most useful SEO strategies for dentists include local listing clean up. Local search engine optimization is a piece of your overall SEO strategy that concentrates on getting your dental website found in local searches done on sites such as Yelp, Yellowbook, and Google.

New patients are most likely looking for the easiest way to find information about your practice like location, phone number, and online reviews. When it comes to finding your practice and making an appointment, your dental SEO strategy can assist in making you as accessible as possible for prospective patients.

If dental SEO sounds overwhelming, don’t worry, you are not alone. Most dental professionals have a lot of questions about the best SEO for dentists, the best SEO companies for dentists, and how to know what is right for their practice. My Social Practice has served dentists and orthodontists for over ten years. Our team of experts has helped hundreds of dentists boost their search engine ranking through dental-specific SEO services.

If you are ready to drive more people to your website and attract new patients but don’t have the time or staff to get going, we’re here to help. Fill out a form to get a personalized no-obligation dental SEO summary and quote. Your SEO strategy can be one of the best marketing investments you’ll make for your dental practice. We can’t wait to get you started.

Ready for a quick demo of our social media service? Fill out the form below.

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Promote Your Instagram Page With This FREE Instagram Frame Download

Instagram is one the best places to grow your social media presence! With its skyrocketing number of highly active users, putting your practice on Instagram is a smart move. Joining and posting is so simple – you do it all from your smartphone. Just download the app and go!

Whether you are just starting your account or looking to gain more followers, this free printable Instagram frame download will help you promote your page in 6 easy steps:

1. Download and print the 18″ x 24″ or 11″ x 17″ file. We recommend that you go to your local print shop for a better quality print.
2. Use a marker to write your practice’s Instagram handle at the top of the poster. For example: @DrEvansNYC
3. Mount poster on a thick white foam core board or card stock.
4. Cut out middle area along dotted line with scissors or X-ACTO knife.
5. Take photos of team members and patients showing their beautiful smiles through the square “insta-window”.
6. Post the photos to your social media accounts where you are currently getting the most traction. Remember to include a link to your Instagram page in all posts!

Fill Out This Quick Form To Download!

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Dentists Are Using Social Media To Be More Profitable— Here’s How

Everything that My Social Practice does for dentists and orthodontists is built on the same question: “How will this help a practice be more profitable?”

Social media return on investment is one of the most debated topics in dental marketing. For the dentists and orthodontists, social media marketing includes aspects of the business that aren’t easy to quantify. Measuring top-of-mind awareness, patient relationships, and reputation in the community can feel like a vague science at best. However, we have seen hundreds of practices examine new patient acquisition attributed to their social media efforts.

There are two sides to thinking about social media return on investment.

First, the knowledge that even if the numbers aren’t definite, building your practice’s brand and strengthening patient relationships online will lead to a more profitable practice through word-of-mouth, higher visibility, and better patient retention.

Secondly, if your team puts in a little bit of effort to track it, you can measure how social media marketing leads to referrals, positive reviews, more social media Likes and shares, and ultimately more new patients.

Encourage your dental team to ask patients how they found your practice. Make sure Facebook, Instagram, and Google Reviews are possible answers for “How did you hear about us?” on your new patient intake form. If a new patient explains that one of your existing patients introduced them, ask them if they were introduced because that patient shared or liked one of your social media posts.

As you work to get your entire dental team participating and involved in your practice’s digital marketing, there may be questions about how exactly a dentist’s social media contributes to real growth.

Keep in mind that a part of dental social media marketing includes “intangibles”. Intangibles cannot be clearly quantified yet considerably impact new patient acquisition and patient retention. As you use social media to build your reach, reputation, and relationships, remember that the most important return on investment of any dental marketing effort is a lifelong patient who is happy to introduce your practice to their family and friends.

When making a decision as important as choosing a new dentist, your current patient’s friends and family will also search for your practices social media pages, your dental website, and read through your online reviews.

Your prospective new patients are becoming smarter and much more tech-savvy. They do their own research now, and they’re much less likely to trust traditional mass advertising messages. That is why these days, a strong online presence is absolutely essential to growing your dental practice.

An active, engaging online presence is not just something “extra” in your dental practice marketing. In today’s world, social media marketing is a must for practices looking to grow their practices in significant, tangible ways.

“Our patient relationships have changed tremendously since utilizing social media. Everyone can now see firsthand how we care about them wholeheartedly. Patients generally do not like to visit dental offices, including ours, and our presence on social media has changed the way patients feel about us before they even meet us. They feel like part of the team before setting foot in the door.” – Michelle Gault, Office Ambassador at Columbus Center for Periodontics and Dental Implants

“The love from patients once we started with social media has been amazing. Our motto is, we strive to create a relationship with our patients based on mutual trust, honesty, communication, and respect. We are able to fulfill this with the help of social media.” – Allie Widenhouse Office Manager Oak Ridge Dental Arts Rockwell

“Since familiarity breeds trust, we are now a practice that comes to potential patients’ minds when they need to look for an orthodontic provider. The patients enjoy staying informed of what is going on in the practice, as they want to make sure to participate and win prizes in our campaigns and contests and have fun at their appointments. It also helps them feel connected to the practice, and to the Team members.” – Judy Paschen Social Media Manager at Paschen Orthodontics

Social media is also an excellent platform to create interest in your products and services. We’re all being bombarded by marketing messages all the time. Most of it we ignore, but some online advertising causes us to unsubscribe or unfollow to stop further communication.

It’s understandable when our client dental practices are worried about posting anything that could be seen as an annoying advertisement, and by consequence, lose fans for it.

Promoting your services and products requires a smarter approach. An approach based on empowering patients and personal connections. This can be even more powerful than conventional promotions because when you sell something through education and building trust, you not only create business for your practice, you increase the likelihood of that patient becoming an advocate for your practice.

Dental Social Media Is Crucial To Growing Dental Practices

When your potential patients see the great experiences patients have you with, your connection to your patients even outside of the office, and how much you care about building relationships, your social media pages become a powerful recommendation that’s more effective than any ad you could ever create.

We at My Social Practice have spent years refining our dental marketing strategies to make sharing about your practice as simple and intuitive as possible for both patients and team members. New patient acquisition is more than possible through dental social media. Find out more about our Photo Idea Boxes, MSP Reviews, and Member Site! Build a customized service that fits your practice by requesting a free demo!

Ready for a quick demo of our social media service? Fill out the form below.

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What Are The Benefits of Dental Marketing Bundles?

What are dental marketing packages?

Bundling refers to packaging your dental marketing services together. These services include wrapping your dental website, SEO, social media content, blog, and online reviews into one package deal. Typically, bundling your dental marketing package means significantly decreasing the cost.

Bundling also means much less headache for you and your dental team. Having numerous providers means keeping track of multiple points of contact, invoices, websites, and phone numbers. The last thing a busy dental practice needs is more to keep track of.

Is bundling your dental marketing worth it?

Not only does bundling save you valuable time and energy, but it also will save your dental practice money. A la carte dental marketing pricing is typically much higher compared to dental marketing package prices.

When it comes to making decisions for your dental practice, we know cost and value are crucial. Bundling your marketing will save you time and money without sacrificing quality. However, there can be cons to traditional bundling.

Package pricing sometimes includes contract requirements or a promotional price that expires after a certain amount of time. Lack of transparency and changing prices have caused wariness toward package deals. 

My Social Practice will never raise your price or charge you hidden fees. We work hard to ensure you are familiar with every detail of your service. What you see is what you get with My Social Practice’s dental marketing packages.

Why should dentists invest in digital marketing?

Digital marketing is a powerful way for your practice to reach new patients and build awareness and trust. A common question we hear is “How do you attract more dental patients?” Dental practices now have the ability to reach and attract new patients right in their area using digital marketing. It has given dentists the ability to target new patients and create a reputable name for themselves without breaking the bank.

At My Social Practice, we stick to this belief: “Treat people, not teeth.” What better way to “treat people” than to be active and helpful on social media? It’s no secret that people like to do business with people that they like and trust.

Social media is the ideal place to build that like and trust with your patients and fans. Your platforms allow you to show your followers that you are an expert and an active voice in your healthcare community.

Your online presence also gives people a place to find important information about your practice. For example, where your practice is located, your hours of operation, and how to contact you.

Questions about your dental practice can be answered right on your website, local listings, and social media pages. Dental social media marketing lets your practice be accessible to your patients at any time. To be successful, it is critical that dental practices have an engaging and consistent online presence.

What kind of bundled services does My Social Practice offer?

My Social Practice understands that although there is a recipe for online success, every dental practice has different needs and strengths. That’s why My Social Practice customizes your dental marketing package. Your marketing bundle will include all the essential tools and still be customized to fit your practice’s specific needs.

My Social Practice has been helping dental practices develop community awareness, improve patient loyalty, and get new dental patients online for over ten years. Find your dental marketing fit in one bundled price!

How much should a dentist spend on marketing? 

Costs for dental marketing ranges from nearly nothing to thousands of dollars a month. Some patient management services offer a social service as an add-on to their services, which typically consists of pre-made images posted once or twice a week. While this approach is certainly cheap, we have seen that these impersonal, canned posts do not help to reach new patients or build community awareness.

The other end of the dental marketing scale includes full-service marketing agencies. Dental practices can hire agencies to create and promote custom content on their social media pages and dental website. Although, the monthly cost regularly crosses into several thousand dollars.

Focusing on dental practices has allowed My Social Practice to provide dental-focused, innovative marketing solutions at a low cost. Depending on your practice growth goals, the total cost of your dental marketing package will vary, falling somewhere in the middle of the scale.

We have everything you need to grow your dental practice online, in one affordable bundle. Let’s customize a plan for your practice.

Ready for a quick demo of our social media service? Fill out the form below.

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The Secret to Powerful Social Media Marketing for Dentists

Believe it or not, today’s dental patients are most effectively reached through social media. Patients use social media to build and maintain relationships with both people and businesses. And they make decisions about who they trust based on social proof.

We live in a world where social media has taken over a large part of our lives. That is why it is so important for dentists and orthodontists to have a digital marketing and social media marketing strategy. If your patients don’t find you online, you won’t find them in your chair.

Your dental team wants a social media marketing solution that requires minimal time and effort, but still attracts new patients and creates a great reputation for your practice in the community. The truth is, most dental teams are so busy running the practice that creating dental social media content falls to the bottom of the long to-do list.

Many dentists wonder, what would it require to reach new patients through social media? How can I strengthen relationships with current patients and improve my reputation and practice culture using social media?

My Social Practice has solved this dental social media puzzle.

We like to call our dental social media strategy “the three R’s.” What are they? Reach, reputation, and relationships.

Reach

To reach more people online, you’ve got to have a healthy content mix. There are three types of content that we have seen work again and again for dental and orthodontic practices. The three types of content are team content, patient content, and informational content. We have come up with a content rule of how much of each category you should be posting.

When it comes to social media for dental practices, here is the secret formula: 50% of your content should be team content, only 20% should be patient content, and 30% of your posts should be informational content.

Team content is a dental social media post that has team members in it. This could be just for fun posts, posts that highlight things that your practice is doing to support causes, or giveaways that you are running on social media.

There are things that you do in your practice every day that could be great content for your social pages (Hint: My Social Practice will give you ideas on what to do here.)

Patient content is content illustrating what your patients are doing in your practice and the relationship that you have with them. Patient content shows that your patients are comfortable with you and that they enjoy their experience in your practice.

Lastly, informational content. This content ranges from current events to clinical posts about dentistry.

Although the majority of your dental Facebook posts should be focused on your team, it is still essential that you establish yourself as an expert on your social pages.

Informational content will not get as much engagement as your team or patient content. However, posting informational content is how you will be able to post consistently and build your brand.

Consistency is vital to your success on social media. We encourage all of our clients to post at least 3 times a week.

 

For practices that don’t have a plan in place, posting frequently is nearly impossible. You never know what a day in a dental or orthodontic practice will look like! That is why we, at My Social Practice, provide monthly calendars for practices to know exactly what they are posting ahead of time.

The graphic below shows the difference between an “unhealthy mix” versus a “healthy mix” of content.

Some dental social media marketing companies encourage dentists to post graphic after graphic of impersonal content on their pages. We’ve seen many dentists give up on social media after seeing zero results with this strategy.

That is why My Social Practice developed the “50%, 20%, 30%” rule. We have witnessed this formula work again and again for dental and orthodontics practices all across the country.

Relationships

A well-known neuroscientist, Antonio Damasio, said “We are not thinking machines that feel; rather, we are feeling machines that think.”

Connection comes before conversion. Most dentist marketing their practices using deals and discounts to attract new patients. The problem with this type of marketing is that it does essentially nothing to build a relationship of trust. If you want loyal patients, you need to foster emotional and personal connections with them.

Dental practices can improve relationships by showing team unity, being human and relatable, sharing dental advice, being optimistic and charitable, and supporting other local businesses in the area.

During the 2020 pandemic, dental and orthodontic practices used social media to show empathy and connect with their patients during a difficult time for everyone.

“Content builds relationships. Relationships are built on trust. Trust drives revenue.” -Andrew David, best-selling author and keynote speaker.

Reputation

To be successful on social media, you need to be authentic and transparent. Here is a great example of being honest and transparent from Lake Oconee Dentistry.

Dr. David is both professional and genuine in the video. When Dr. David talks about feeling uneasy about reopening their practice, even though the state has allowed them to open back up, he is expressing open communication with his patients. This shows patients that this practice is honest, which translates to honest clinical care and billing.

This kind of content illustrates to your patients that you truly care about their well-being and the kind of experience that they have in your practice. Your patients will feel more confident in you and your team when you are honest with them.

Enable your patients to build your reputation for you! If you foster a culture of honesty in your practice, your patients are sure to share their experience with you with their friends and family.

However, there is only so much that you can say about how awesome your dental or orthodontic practice is. For instance, collecting online reviews. How much better is it when you can get a patient to talk about how great you are? Having postive online reviews on sites like Google and Facebook is critical to your reputation. Here are the tricks to getting more dental reviews.

Before you post on your orthodontic or dental Facebook and Instagram pages, think: Does this content fall under reach, relationships, or reputation? If your social posts fall under one of these three categories then you can be sure that you are posting good content. If not, you might want to think again about what you are posting.

My Social Practice provides dental and orthodontic practices with the materials, tools, skills, and knowledge to build their practices using social media. Talk to one of our marketing experts to get an idea of what your practice needs to grow.

The post The Secret to Powerful Social Media Marketing for Dentists appeared first on My Social Practice - Social Media Marketing for Dental & Dental Specialty Practices.