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| Issue #54-9.16.08 |  Forward This Newsletter To A Colleague |
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What Is SEO?
I know that you dentists have a lot of responsibilities that fall outside the realm of marketing and technology. In my case, website design is as important to me as cutting the perfect crown is to most dentists. Hopefully, this short article will give you a basic understanding of one of the most important frontiers in dental marketing today. It's called SEO. If you're confused, keep reading.
Search Engine Optimization (usually called SEO) is the science and sometimes art of optimizing a website to increase traffic from search engines. And, as I've already mentioned, it is a very important aspect of dental marketing. Here's why.
There’s nothing like free traffic to your website. But to get free traffic, you have to first get listed in the search engines and achieve high ranking with the keywords that will drive people to your website. Getting listed is just the first step. Once the search engines know you exist, you must then convince them that you are important enough to be ranked at the very top of their listings. To do this, you must understand how search engines work and how to “negotiate” with them to make them understand, “Hey, I should be at the top of your search listings!”
The majority of web traffic is driven by the major commercial search engines—Yahoo!, MSN, Google and AskJeeves. (Although AOL gets nearly 10% of searches, its engine is powered by Google's results.) If your site cannot be found by search engines or your content cannot be put into their databases, you miss out on the incredible opportunities available to websites provided via search—visits to your site from people who want what you have. Whether your site provides content, services, products or information, search engines are a primary method of navigation for almost all Internet users.
Search engines are always working towards improving their technology to crawl the web more deeply and return increasingly relevant results to users. The online environment is becoming more and more competitive. Dentists who utilize the principles of SEO will have a decided advantage in attracting visitors and new patients. The right moves can net you many visits from prospective patients. The wrong moves can bury your site deep in the search results and make it nearly impossible to find your site with a search engine.
Here are a few suggestions to help you get started:
1. If you don't already have a website, get your own domain name and register it for several years. Spending $50 to register your domain for the next five years is a no-brainer.
2. Get a decent host. For dental websites you can find many reliable hosting options for less than $20 per month.
3. Set up an email address using your domain. Your hosting plan will come with a minimum of one free email address and your host should have instructions on how to set up and configure your mail client to check that email. drjones@westcoastdental.com looks much more professional than molarguy25@yahoo.net.
4. If you don’t know how to develop a great dental website, hire a reputable firm that specializes in dental websites. Remember, your website will make the first impression of your practice on online users.
5. Make sure the titles tags on each page are unique and include some keywords you think people would type into a search engine while trying to find your site. For example, if you practice in Clearwater, Florida, your homepage title tag might be: “Professional Dental Services in Clearwater, Florida—Southshore Dental.” Every page on your site should have a title tag that reflects the content specific to that page.
6. Make sure the meta description tag on each page contains a sentence that serves as a mini-advertisement for your practice that makes people want to find out more. It may appear at times under the title of your website in Google and other search engines. Be sure the description is not only promotional but also informational about your practice and dental services.
7. Make sure the designer doesn’t use flash (for the entire website) or JavaScript links to navigate your site. For a myriad of reasons you don’t care about, I assure you this is very bad if you have any hopes of people finding your website in the search engines.
8. Make sure you have links coming in to as many pages as possible. What does it tell a search engine when other websites are linking to different pages on your site? You obviously have lots of worthwhile content. If all your links are coming in to the home page, this tells the search engines that you have a shallow site of little value, or that your links were generated by automation rather than by the value of your site.
9. Link to articles from local publishers that archive their content. These links often stay live for many years in the archives.
10. A big site needs a site map, which should be linked to from every page on the site. This will help the search engine robots find every page with just two clicks. A small site needs a site map, too. It's called the navigation bar. Make sure the structure of your site is easy for the search engines to analyze and index.
Joel Harris is CEO and Co-Founder of Intelligent Dental Marketing, one of the nation's leading dental marketing companies focused exclusively on dental practices. Intelligent Dental Marketing provides powerful marketing tools to help dentists grow their patient base increase their profit and improve their image. Joel can be reached directly at 877.942.8855.
Interested in speaking to Joel about your marketing concerns? Email him at joel@thedentistsnetwork.net.
Interested in having Joel speak to your dental society or study club? Click here.