LINKS:
Online scheduling info
Social media statistics
Video marketing info
Facebook Ads info
Google Ad info
Info about claiming and optimizing your Google Business Profile (GBP)
Anna L. Davies info
Whiteboard Marketing info
By Whiteboard Marketing
Every dental practice website needs a blog. Blogging helps improve the overall quality of your website and increases opportunities to rank or show up on search engines when a patient is searching for a dentist in your area. Outlined below are the five most important reasons why your practice website needs a blog and some tips to get started writing a blog of your own.
1. Blogs improve your overall website content by focusing on key search terms for your practice.
The goal of your overall website content is to attract new patients and make it easier for them to discover you when searching on Google. Good website content strategically incorporates important keywords while covering who you are, why you’re different from other dentists, services and procedures, and how to contact you.
Adding a dental blog to your content strategy provides an opportunity to:
For example, a Florida periodontist who wants to attract All-on-4® patients may want to write a blog on the difference between All-on-4® dental implants and traditional dental implants. Or, a general dentist who wants to attract more hygiene patients may want to write a blog about the five reasons why you should schedule regular dental cleanings. Blogs are an opportunity to increase the number of keywords that you appear for in search results. More impressions lead to more clicks onto your website, more clicks lead to more conversions, and more conversions lead to more patients scheduled.
2. Blogs are a great way to add internal links to your practice website.
Internal linking is an on-page search engine optimization (SEO) strategy that links one page on your website to another. The goal is to create a structure where Google can easily understand the relationship between different pages and the content. Blogs help highlight the most relevant content by linking certain words to pages. For example, if you write a blog about the most commonly asked questions about teeth whitening, you would link your first mention of teeth whitening to the practice whitening page. High quality blog posts demonstrate authority through topic recency, inbound external links and user traffic. “Link equity” is then passed to key pages through an internal linking strategy, meaning that links are able to pass authority to the pages they link to.
3. Blogs help generate important external links to your website.
An important part of building a website that ranks well in Google is “off-page optimization.” The goal of this strategy is to build links from other websites that link to your site. Links from other sites, such as the Florida Dental Association, American Dental Association, or even your local chamber of commerce or high school boosters website, convey to Google that other websites see your website as important or valuable. If your practice donates custom mouthguards to your high school football team, write a blog about the importance of wearing mouthguards for contact sports. Ask the school to post a news article on its website and link back to your practice website.
Writing guest blogs also is a great tactic to acquire external links. Write a blog for a local pediatrician’s office about the best age for a baby’s first visit to the dental office and ask the pediatrician to link to your practice website in the post. External links are still one of the most important ranking factors in Google’s algorithm.
4. Blogs highlight your expertise and credibility.
You are a dentist who stays on top of trends, you attend continuing education and you are considered an authority in the industry. Google’s uses E.A.T. (Expertise, Authority, Trust) to display high quality search results. By communicating your expert opinion throughout your blogs, you can elevate your authority to Google and your patients. Consider adding a quote from yourself or an associate dentist in your blogs, and explain your expertise.
5. Blogs are perfect to post on social media and in patient emails.
Blogs establish you as a knowledgeable leader in the dental industry. Where better to highlight your experience and expertise than on social media and via regular patient emails? Reposting your blog on social media allows you to create consistency across digital media platforms. As you build your practice’s brand, this allows you and your practice to build trust and brand advocates among your most loyal patients.
Social media also is a great place to repost charts, images and videos contained in your blogs. Social media is a visual medium, even more so than your website. Charts and images can be real attention grabbers.
How to Get Started Blogging
Getting started is always the hardest part of blogging. We’ve outlined some steps below to help you along the way.
1. Decide how frequently you will blog.
Ideally, we recommend posting twice a month if possible, but start with a goal of one blog a month. Then, if you think you can post more consistently, go for it.
2. Identify the services, procedures or treatments you want to show up when a patient searches for a dentist.
Before you start writing, determine what procedures will increase your practice revenue. If you want to focus on attracting more fee-for-service patients and you have a dental membership plan, then you will want to write blogs on dental membership plans and cosmetic dentistry procedures. Developing this initial treatment list will help keep you focused on the end-game of your blog strategy — to rank during a search and acquire new patients
3. Create your blog topic list.
4. Write your blog.
Take the time to sit down and write your blog. Plan to spend one to two hours writing, so block this time out on your calendar to write.
Overall, adding a blog to your practice website will boost your online presence and build trust among current and potential patients. The effects are seen, not just on your own website, but in other media across the web. Take advantage of the opportunity to share your knowledge and improve the visibility of your practice. Read more about how to add a blog page and blog to your WordPress website.
Written by Whiteboard Marketing team members Jon Cahen, Director of SEO, with input from Sara Wehrle, Local SEO Specialist, and Kristi Simone, CMO. Whiteboard Marketing is a dental practice marketing firm that partners with 200+ dentists nationwide to develop and implement practice marketing strategies that increase new patient acquisition and build brand awareness.
By Allison Doyle, Demandforce
Whether your dental office is staffed by two or 20, in order to maintain growth and profitability, you need to keep your chairs full with a steady stream of new and returning patients. Yet according to a Health Policy Institute study released by the American Dental Association, the projected growth rate of dentists per capita between 2015 and 2035 is 7.9 percent. This means that your practice will soon be (if it isn’t already) immersed in a competitive marketplace.
The modern Florida dental practice knows its patients and markets to them.
With more options for your patients to choose from when it comes to their dental health, it’s now more important than ever to know who your patients are, and what drives them to book an appointment. You not only have to attract new patients to your practice, but you also have to nurture relationships with your current patients to keep them coming back — and to keep referring you to their friends and family.
You may already be sending email marketing to your patients like recall promotions or referral rewards. You could even be actively posting on your Facebook page and running ads. These are all great ways to get your dental practice to stand out among the crowd, but how do you know which are the most effective, and which you could do without?
Call Tracking removes the mystery from your marketing campaigns.
Call Tracking is the ability to assign unique, trackable phone numbers to specific marketing campaigns, so you know exactly what’s driving your inbound calls. In some Call Tracking portals, you can even see helpful data such as call duration, caller name and a recording of the call itself.
Having this data not only helps you gain valuable patient insights, but also allows you to identify your most effective campaigns and make data-driven marketing decisions. For example, if you see that a certain email promotion has had success in bringing in new patients, you might try sending it to your inactive patient base as a recall campaign.
If you’re looking for a way to track campaign performance, or learn more about Call Tracking and other marketing tools designed specifically for Florida dentists, visit demandforce.com. Call Tracking is available to all Demandforce customers, and Florida Dental Association members receive special pricing on the Demandforce platform. For more information, or to set up a live demo, visit demandforce.com/FDA.
By Jackie Ulasewich, Founder, My Dental Agency
There are a lot of reasons to want to bring in new patients. Maybe you want to expand your practice enough to hire an associate, maybe you want to open a second location or maybe you want to make sure your practice is established enough for you to have a healthy retirement when the time comes. Whatever the reason, you need to remember the people who have already helped you grow your practice: your current patients. Bringing new patients through the front door is useless if your current patients are sneaking out through the back.
Why They’re Valuable
If you’re lucky, your patients are loyal to you. With patient loyalty comes regular visits, more involved treatments and those sought-after referrals. If you are not loyal in return, then what’s to stop them from switching to another practice?
How to Create Loyalty
Your patients have tons of dentists from which to choose. Some of those dentists may offer discounted treatments, some may be closer to home or work or some may have a stronger marketing game. What makes your practice unique is YOU, but you have to be willing to remind your patients that you’re there for them beyond their semi-annual appointments and you have to let them see who you are when they’re not in your chair. The following ideas will get you started.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to grow your practice. In fact, the same tricks that help your current patients feel connected to you also help potential patients know why your practice is unique. But instead of putting all of your efforts towards bringing in new patients, remember that you have current patients who need a reason to stay loyal.
With over a decade of experience in corporate dental laboratory marketing and brand development, Jackie Ulasewich decided to take her passion for the dental business and marketing to the next level by founding My Dental Agency. Since starting her company, she and her team have helped a wide variety of practices all over the nation focus their message, reach their target patients, and grow their practice through effective marketing campaigns. When she isn’t helping dental practices reach their full potential, she can be found at the beach with her three dogs or immersed in everything food-related with her large Italian family. For more information, call (800) 689-6434.
This article originally appeared on DentistryToday.com
Beyond the Bite 