Aug 5, 2022 | Dental Marketing, Google
Dental PPC Guide to New Patients
Do you have the right digital marketing plan in place? A system that drives new patient phone calls and increased search volume. Every dental practice needs the right tailored plan. Let’s explore dental ppc advertising.
PPC advertising differs from SEO in that it is much quicker to see results from. While SEO can take several months to show any measurable results, PPC can be set up almost immediately to bring visitors to a site.
This guide is for you if you’re looking to learn about PPC for Dentists and how to get started on a successful campaign. We’ll introduce you to the basics of PPC and its benefits, so you can make the most of this marketing tool.
Google Ads for Dentists
Dental PPC advertising is an affordable solution that could bring you more attention online. You’re only charged for the advertisement when someone clicks on it, so it’s uniquely affordable.
PPC ads can help your dental office market your services by reaching more prospective patients online. Here are the top 6 reasons PPC advertising can help:
- Increased visibility – PPC advertising is the quickest way to appear at the top of search engine results pages. Paid ads will place your website at the top of the results almost immediately, rather than waiting weeks for organic ranking.
- Beat the competition – Reaching the top of the search engine results can be difficult, especially if your website is new. Paying for top placement with PPC ads can give you exposure above your competitors.
- Targeted website traffic – Studies show that only 5% of searchers click paid advertisements, but that 5% is also much more motivated to enlist services than the average Internet user. If you’re running ads for a term searched at least 400 times per month, this highly interested 5% could equate to at least 20 new patients each month.
- Control over spending – When running PPC ads, you set your maximum daily budget, so you never spend more than you want. You can also stop the ads immediately if you determine they aren’t as lucrative as you hoped.
- Keyword management – When creating an advertising campaign, you can select which keywords you want to target. This makes onsite optimization easier and allows you to control which terms you want to be known for.
- Trackable success – PPC ads have a clear ROI, unlike traditional SEO. With SEO, you have to wait for search engines to index your site, and even then tracking results can be difficult. With PPC, your entire campaign is tracked, so you can see exactly how it impacts your web traffic and marketing efforts.
Dental PPC Pros & Cons
There are pros and cons to every method. Before you make any decisions you should know them.
PROS
Immediate Visibility – PPC ads offer immediate visibility when you choose your keywords well. They appear on the top and next to organic results, on the first page of search results, so your audience can see them without having to scroll down. Organic SEO can take up to months to generate traffic to your site, while PPC ads can offer fast results for timely offers.
Qualified Target Audience – PPC ads give you the ability to target specific individuals who are interested in finding a dentist or getting a dental procedure within a certain location. With PPC, you can geo-target your ad based on a certain radius, which is important if you’re pulling in patients from several towns. It is very hard to optimize your website for a town other than the one your practice is located in, so PPC is a great solution to capitalize on business from surrounding towns.
Budget Conscious –PPC ads allow you to target potential customers interested in dental services near you. Geo-targeting lets you show ads to people within a certain radius of your practice, making it easier to attract patients from several nearby towns.
CONS
PPC ads can be expensive if you don’t know what you’re doing. Smart Insights recently did a study that found PPC conversion rates averaged around 3%. If you pay for 100 clicks at $50 per click, you could end up spending $5000 with only a 3% conversion rate.
Campaign Management – It’s not enough to just make a PPC ad and hope for the best – someone needs to manage them effectively in order to see results. This means testing keywords, messaging and target preferences, and being able to quickly analyze and adjust the ads for maximum impact.
Lack of Conversions – Ad clicks don’t necessarily mean conversions. Someone clicking your ad may not necessarily result in a call to your practice. Having great ad copy that drives searchers to a landing page on your website is extremely important. Qualified internet marketing companies will review and create landing pages when developing your PPC marketing strategy, which is a key factor in making a successful PPC campaign.
Internet users have become accustomed to seeing ads in various forms, such as banner ads, remarketing messages, and PPC placement in search results. Therefore, it is important to carefully select keywords, messaging, and testing in order to grab your audience’s attention. Each internet marketing channel works in conjunction with the others, so it can be difficult to find the right combination of channels and messages if you are busy running your own practice.
Interested in learning more? Harris & Ward is a leading dental ppc agency. Let’s talk!
Jul 19, 2022 | Search Engine Optimization
In a survey on online health searches that the Pew Research Center conducted, 72% of internet users said they looked for health information online in the last year. Of those respondents, the vast majority started at a search engine like Google.
This group represents a massive pool of potential clients. But to capture any of them, you need to show up in those search results.
Proper search engine optimization, or SEO for dentists, can help. There’s no mystery in how Google creates these results. It’s a science. With a few small tweaks, you can reap the benefits of a better ranking.
Dentist SEO Starts With Link Building
Search engines build their results pages based on two factors: relevance and importance. Relevance is simple: it is the degree to which your content matches a user’s search terms and the intent of their search. Being relevant is the first step to showing up.
Importance is more complicated. Search engines determine how important a site is in the same way academics determine how important someone’s research is: through citations. But online, citations are links, so search engines rely on link analysis.
Link analysis can get complicated quickly, but for the purposes of dental SEO, you can boil it down to one key strategy: get authoritative or important sites to link to your site.
The more prestigious the site that links to you (that is, the more incoming links that site has), the more that link will help your SEO ranking. All links (with one exception to come) will help your SEO, but these links give you the biggest boost.
How and where those links are implemented also matters. Ideally, you want the anchor text (the blue text that makes up the hyperlink) for links to your site to include your most important keywords. Also, the links should be in relevant content and on a relevant site.
The one exception to the more links are better rule is link farming, or paying people to create fake links to your site. The suspicion of link farming is one of the fastest ways to get your site demoted in Google rankings. But link trading, or publishing a link on your site so someone will publish one on theirs, is fine. What does dentist seo success look like? It’s a combination of link building, content creation, and user experience. Finding a digital marketing agency that specializes in seo for dentists can help.
So, how do you get people to link to your site?
Publish Great Content
Search engines make their money, and a lot of it, by bringing in more users. They have an incentive to deliver content that people want to read. That means you have an incentive to provide them with the best content.
The most important part of your SEO strategy should be to think about what a human user would want, instead of trying to game the search engine. If you create good content, users will seek you out on their own, and other sites will link to your content.
In other words, the best way to get ranked by Google or other search engines is to create content that is rankworthy.
That kind of content will also help with your user interaction measures. When they rank pages, search engines look at how users behave once they find a page.
- Do users hit the back button and pick another result?
- How much time do users spend on the site?
- How many other pages on the site do they visit?
One of these important measures is the bounce rate or the percentage of users who only visit one page on a site before leaving. Creating compelling content will lower your bounce rate. Local content, for instance, can help draw users.
Users will also visit more spots on your site if you create internal links between your pages. These internal links also have another key benefit.
Make Your Site Crawler-Friendly
Search engines build their database of websites by crawling the web using automated spiders. These spiders start with seed sets of high-quality sites and then follow the links out from there to discover other pages.
If these crawlers can’t find your pages, the search engines cannot include you. If you want to remove all doubt, you can always submit pages to Google manually. But there are ways you can structure your site that should make that unnecessary.
One thing you want to do is create a flat site to minimize link depth. Link depth is how many clicks it takes to get from the homepage to a given page on the site. Both crawlers and human users assume pages close to the homepage are more important.
Cross-links between your content can also help the crawlers. Once they find one of your pages, these cross-links will lead them to the rest.
Also, crawlers have trouble reading images. That is why you always want to include an alt attribute for all of your images. Otherwise, the crawlers will ignore any of your relevant pictures.
Think Carefully About Your Domain
Your website domain sends a signal to your potential customers. There are certain tips you want to follow to pick the best one possible:
- Make it unique: never pick one that is just a plural, misspelled, or hyphenated version of another one
- Choose only .com domains
- Make it easy to type and remember
- Avoid hyphens and numbers
For search engine rankings, you want to avoid subdomains as much as possible. Search engines will treat these as separate sites, so you will be competing with yourself for link authority and rankings.
Instead of subdomains, use subdirectories instead. Then, your single domain will build link authority instead of splitting it between subdomains.
Proper Keyword Placement
Search engines have gotten sophisticated enough that keyword stuffing won’t work anymore. In fact, keyword stuffing can indicate to search engines that your pages are low-quality, which will hurt your rankings.
Instead of forcing in as many keywords as possible, you’re better off writing naturally and using synonyms where appropriate. Again, think about what a human user would want.
Still, keywords are important to show that your content is relevant to a user’s question. As such, it’s important to include your most relevant keywords in a few key places:
Include keywords in the body content as well but, as we mentioned, write naturally rather than trying to shoehorn in more keywords.
Grow Your Business Traffic
No matter how small an area you are targeting, there are too many other dentists online for you to leave things to chance. The right SEO for dentists can bring in more business with only a few small changes to your present site. If you don’t grab those results, your competition will.
If you’re ready to maximize your traffic, online and off, browse some of our marketing services. The other posts on our blog can offer more tips to enhance your marketing.
Jun 22, 2022 | Harris & Ward
The Basics of Google Analytics for Dentists
The number one priority of dentists that own a dental practice is to provide high-quality dental care to those in their surrounding community. Our digital marketing experts understand that in order to achieve this goal, there needs to be traffic driven to the practice’s website.
Increasing your website’s traffic can help increase your domain authority, which allows you to rank higher on search engine results. This may leave you wondering how exactly you can boost your traffic, and hopefully increase your amount of dental patients.
That’s where Google Analytics can help by providing website analytics for dentists. In this article we will introduce you to a data tool that can help you create a strategy for increasing traffic to your site.
What Is Google Analytics for Dentists?
Google Analytics is a data collection tool that can be used to track the performance of your dental practice’s website. This data includes the amount of visitors to your website, along with the amount of time spent on each page. It also collects data on the user visiting the site in order to track the amount of new and returning traffic is being generated.
All of this information and more can then be generated into reports that allow you to gain a better understanding of your online presence. The different report types are as follows:
- Real-Time Reports: This is a live report that shows you the user data from your site during the time you are viewing it. This is a great way to get an overview of your site traffic at any given time.
- Audience Reports: These reports give you insight on the demographics of your website users, including age and location. You can also learn the type of device they are using to view the site. User information like this will help you to cater your web, social, and advertising content to those specific audiences.
- Behavior Reports: This gives valuable insight over how users are interacting with your website, detailing which pages they view and the page they were on when they left the site. This can help you decide which of your website pages has the most engaging content, and determine areas for improvement.
- Acquisition Reports: This report type tells you how your website visitors came across your website. Having this information can aid you in determining your ad spend budget, and if you need to invest in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services. The acquisition methods include:
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- Organic – by searching on Google or other search engines.
- Paid Ads (CPC) – when a user clicks on a paid “cost per click” ad.
- Referral – a user clicks on a link to your website from another website.
- Social – a user clicks a link from a social media platform.
How Does Google Analytics Benefit Your Dental Practice?
These reports along with other Google Analytics features enable you to analyze and monitor your website data and give you the means to visualize that information into deliverables you can easily digest. This allows you to take control and create an effective strategy to market your business and continue building an online presence.
No matter the size of your practice, people are using google analytics for businesses large and small.
Implementing Google Analytics for Your Website
In order to get started with Google Analytics, it is important to become familiar with one of their companion tools, Google Tag Manager. This tool works as the link to connect your website to your Google Analytics dashboard.
Within Google Tag Manager you can create an account for your business that holds the tags for your website within a container. For each container, a unique set of code is created (referred to as GTM code). When the container tags are properly set up with your Google Analytics properties and your GTM code is added to the backend of your website, you will then be able to start collecting data for your site.
Although the details for this process seem a tad complicated, we can assure you that it is well worth the time and effort. There is nothing more valuable than the opportunity to understand the needs and interests of our customers and patients.
Taking control of your online presence doesn’t just increase your amount of website traffic, but it also improves the overall user experience for those navigating the site.
Experts in Google Analytics and Digital Marketing for Dentists
We understand that your number one priority is providing the best possible dental care to your patients. That can sometimes mean that your experience with digital marketing tools gets left on the back burner. At Harris & Ward, we help dentists just like you remove the burden of digital marketing for your dental practice.
Our team is experienced in SEO for dentists and dental websites. We can even help you set up your own Google Analytics account. Sometimes it can be difficult knowing where to start, but we can guide you along the way.
Your focus should be on building relationships with your current patients and catering to their unique dental needs. That’s why you can trust having our marketing professionals in your corner to help find potential patients to help your practice grow.
Interested in learning more about Google Analytics and the services we have to offer? Don’t hesitate to visit our website for more information on dental marketing.
May 11, 2022 | Search Engine Optimization
About 70% of all online activity begins with a search engine. Unfortunately, most people (75% of search engine users) never check the second page. Without a strong search engine optimization (SEO) strategy, you might not reach clients online.
In order to develop a strong med spa SEO strategy for your business, you first need to learn how to do keyword research. Choosing the right keywords will ensure your med spa business appears in front of ideal clients online. Then, you can start booking more appointments to boost your ROI.
Not sure how to find the best SEO keywords for your med spa’s content strategy? Read on for the tips you need for beautiful SEO today!
Research Your Target Audience
Google looks for content that aligns with the search engine user’s needs. In order to create content your clients want, you need to understand who they are first. Before you can learn how to do keyword research, you first need to gather audience research.
For example, what beauty or health problems are your med spa clients currently facing? How can your services satisfy those pain points?
Understanding their needs, problems, and expectations can help you create high-quality, personalized content. Personalization can help you better appeal to your target audience. Otherwise, you might struggle to connect with consumers through your SEO and content marketing strategies.
In fact, generic content is now considered a turn-off. About 52% of consumers will switch brands if a company fails to personalize communications. Another 74% get annoyed when web content fails to meet their interests.
If you want to attract new clients to your med spa business, you need to understand who your clients are. Consider their:
- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Marital status
- Household income
- Buying behaviors
- Interests
- Hobbies
- Pain points
- Education
- Career
Your clients will likely fall into multiple demographics and psychographics. Consider creating distinct buyer personas as you research your target audience. Creating personas will help you create personalized content for each group.
It will also ensure you find the best SEO keywords based on each group’s distinct needs.
For example, a 21-year-old college student likely has different needs than a 50-year-old man. These two consumers will likely consider different med spa services, too.
Understand the Search Intent
Understanding who your clients are can also help you better understand their search intent. Search intent indicates what the consumer expects to find during an online search. Usually, search intent is:
- Navigational
- Commercial
- Transactional
- Informational
Understanding the user’s intent will help you better understand the keywords they use during a search.
For example, perhaps the consumer wants to learn about your services. Maybe they need answers to their beauty questions. About 8% of all search queries are phrased as questions.
Answering the consumer’s questions can prove you’re able to provide them with the experience and expertise they need. It could also help you rank for featured snippets and voice searches. Featured snippets appear at the top of search engine result pages (SERPs).
Ranking at the top of SERPs can help you experience the benefits of SEO like generating:
- Brand awareness and recognition
- Website traffic
- Brand credibility and authority
- Brand trust and loyalty
- Leads and sales
- A higher ROI
In fact, over 40% of all voice searches come from a featured snippet. About 75% of these search results rank in the top three for a query. Meanwhile, nearly 50% of consumers use voice for general searches.
If your content doesn’t match the user’s search intent, it won’t appear for that search. If a consumer does visit your site and finds the content doesn’t meet their needs, they’ll leave. Your bounce rate will rise, which can hurt your search engine rankings.
Check Out the Competition
You can also find med spa SEO keywords by checking out your competitors. Review their blogs and consider what keywords they’re targeting for each post.
Think about the topics they’re covering and the types of content (blogs, videos, infographics, etc.) they’re creating.
Choose Your Topics
Select three main topics that suit your med spa business or niche. Then, consider what subtopics you can cover within each one.
For example, your med spa might specialize in skin rejuvenation, injectables, and vein treatment.
Under skin rejuvenation, you might focus on chemical peels, skin tightening, and sunspot correction.
Choosing topics and subtopics can help you organize your SEO research as you move forward.
Select Long-Tail Keywords
Once you know what topics you want to cover, you can start finding the best SEO keywords for each category. You can use tools like:
- SEMRush
- Answer the Public
- Moz
- Keyword Planner
- Google Trends
When gathering keywords, look for long-tail keywords (which feature four or more words). Focusing on long-tail keywords can help you better understand the user’s search intent. One-word keywords, on the other hand, are broader.
For example, keywords like “skin” or “beauty” won’t help you determine the user’s search intent. The user might want content about:
- Skincare products
- Beauty magazines
- Foods for beautiful skin
You likely won’t want to appear for these searches. Instead, focus on longer phrases that are relevant to your med spa business.
Choose Secondary Keywords
As you begin selecting primary keywords, consider adding secondary keywords to your list as well. Using the same keyword within a post too often could lead to keyword stuffing. Google might penalize your site as a result.
Instead, look for related keywords (synonyms or related terms) that are relevant to the primary keyword and topic.
Understand Keyword Placement
Once you’ve learned how to do keyword research, you’ll need to learn how to add the primary keyword to your content.
First, let the keyword inform the post. Don’t write a post, then add the keyword in after the fact. Otherwise, the keyword might sound awkward within the context.
Instead, add the primary keyword naturally as you write. It should appear in the:
- URL
- Page title
- Opening and closing paragraphs
- Body text
- SEO title
- SEO meta description
- An H1 header
- Image file name
- Image alt text
If you need help gathering the best SEO keyword for your med spa business, consider working with an experienced agency. They can help you gather research, write content, and optimize your posts.
Keying In: Gather Keyword Research for Your Med Spa SEO Today
If you want to experience the benefits of SEO, you first need to learn how to do keyword research. Use these tips to gather the med spa SEO keywords you need. Then, start writing with your target audience in mind.
Give your med spa business a boost with these tips today.
Need help? Get ready to grow your business!
Contact us to get started.
Mar 3, 2022 | Social Media, Dental Marketing, Search Engine Optimization
Marketing Mistakes to Avoid
With 199,486 dentists working in the dentistry field as of 2018, being competitive to attract more clients is a crucial responsibility of your dental practice. The average retirement age of dentists is increasing, which means more of your competition is sticking around longer.
1. Having a Weak Website
You need a dental website that looks visually pleasing and is functional. If the visuals are outdated, poor quality, or unappealing, potential clients may click away before they get past the first page. Making the website pretty only gets you so far if visitors can’t find the information they’re looking for.
A well-functioning website is one with easy navigation where patients can clearly find the info they want immediately. It also loads quickly and is secure.
Updating your website regularly also helps. If you haven’t changed anything in years, potential clients may wonder if your practice is reliable and current on other things, like dental techniques.
2. Not Understanding Your Target Audience
Who are your typical dental clients? Your marketing strategy should change depending on your target audience, whether you’re a pediatric dentist, orthodontist, or general dental practitioner. If you cater to low-income families, your marketing will look different than a cosmetic dentist targeting wealthier clients.
Fully understanding your target audience helps with your branding, which is the image you create through your graphics, wording, and all other portrayals of your business. Including your branding in your marketing to fit your audience makes it more effective. Your clients respond better to marketing when it appeals to them or addresses their pain points.
Social media connects you with current and potential patients in ways you can’t achieve with a website alone. You interact directly with the people who follow your page, which builds a relationship that makes your dental practice different than the competition.
You can also use social media channels to have your loyal patients spread the word about your dental practice. Seeing engaged followers, likes on your post, and shares of what you post builds a positive image of your dental practice.
Social media also allows for stronger industry relationships and cross-promotional opportunities. If you specialize in pediatric dentistry, you might share information or a post made by a local orthodontist. Building those relationships and sharing referrals can help grow both businesses.
Trying to use all social media platforms takes too much effort and often isn’t effective. Choose social media platforms that match your target audience best to maximize your time. Master one or two platforms to avoid spreading yourself too thin.
4. Ignoring Local Search Potential
Your online presence is only effective if people can find you. Search engine optimization helps people find you through searches. SEO incorporates complex factors, including keyword usage, formatting, and quality of your content.
As a service provider, you want to attract local traffic. Massive web traffic doesn’t help grow your business if visitors aren’t local and won’t use your dental services.
Including local keywords and clearly incorporating contact information into your website helps Google figure out where you’re located. This allows you to show up when people search for local dentists.
5. Failing to Adapt Your Strategies
Dental marketing strategies change frequently. If you stick with the same dental and orthodontic marketing strategies, you’ll get left behind.
Incorporating several different marketing strategies helps broaden your appeal. Content marketing, such as blog with helpful dental information, can draw in more web traffic. Email marketing lets you communicate directly to current patients and prospects.
You don’t have to use every possible strategy, but being open to new options can make your marketing more effective. Working with a marketing company that specializes in helping dental practices can help you stay on top of the latest marketing techniques.
6. Not Managing Your Online Reputation
Word of mouth is changing from telling your neighbor about your experiences to blasting your opinions all over the internet. One unhappy patient can drag your dental practice’s online reputation through the mud. But online reviews also help SEO, which makes your dental practice easier to find.
Your online reputation can affect a potential patient’s decision on using your practice. Statistics show that 90% of people go online to look for reviews on businesses. Online reviews hold as much credibility as personal recommendations for 84% of consumers.
One or two negative reviews may not hurt your reputation too much, but be aware of repeated complaints and negative feedback. Monitoring your online reputation can alert you to issues you need to address in your practice.
Increasing the number of positive reviews you have can help overshadow one or two rogue negative reviewers. Providing the best customer service increases the chances of positive reviews. Don’t be afraid to ask satisfied patients to leave positive reviews for your practice.
If you decide to address negative reviews, keep in mind HIPAA regulations and patient privacy. You can’t reveal any personal information or anything related to the care received. You can post a general response acknowledging the situation, but word it carefully and avoid an emotional response or an escalated argument with the unhappy reviewer.
7. Ignoring Data
Trying all the latest trends in dental marketing doesn’t help your business if you don’t analyze its effectiveness. Not every strategy works the same for every dental practice. Simply using various strategies doesn’t mean you’re implementing them effectively.
Google Analytics helps you see your web traffic to see if your marketing campaigns are working. Looking at the sources of traffic and which pages on your site visitors use can help you focus on the most effective practices and improve those that aren’t as effective.
Effective Dental Marketing
Effective marketing makes your practice more visible with potential clients. When done well, it establishes you as a local expert in the dental field.
But simple marketing mistakes can turn away potential clients or make your practice difficult for prospects to find. Since your area of expertise is dentistry, you may not even realize you’re making common mistakes.
Improve your Digital Marketing Strategy Today
Strong dental marketing keeps your practice competitive and helps you attract new patients. Plan a well-rounded marketing strategy to reach prospects via different avenues. If you’re ready to improve your dental marketing, explore our services for more details of what we offer.
Drive Leads with Paid Search
Digital advertising, such as PPC, can be an excellent way to help your business stand out in a crowded marketplace. Contact us today to discuss how PPC can help small businesses like yours!
