Dentists and Search Engines

Search engines drive traffic to your website or to your competition. Below are a number of secrets to get ahead in the search engine race:

• Search engine results are individual and determined by a number of factors
• Search engines are not perfect
• Search engine results can change constantly between the different search engines from Google, Bing or Yahoo
• You can suppress bad search results
• You can promote positive search results

Author: Janet Thompson, www.dentist-websolutions.com
Email questions to info@dentist-websolutions.com
Visit us at www.dentist-websolutions.com today!

600 Davis Street

Evanston, IL 60201

Tel: 847-864-4229

Facebook for Dentists

Did you know that Facebook can be a great tool to generate more traffic. We assembled some interesting statistics and facts for Facebook. Did you know that Facebook

• was founded in 2004?
• has more than 845 million users?
• has more than 483 million active users on a daily basis?
• has 3,000 employees in many countries around the globe
• has more than 62 million ‘Likes’

Author: Janet Thompson, www.dentist-websolutions.com
Email questions to info@dentist-websolutions.com
Visit us at www.dentist-websolutions.com today!

600 Davis Street

Evanston, IL 60201

Tel: 847-864-4229

Google Privacy and Dental Website

A number of dentists asked us how to avoid the changes in Google’s changed privacy policies. We put together a number of simple steps that every dentist can use to circumvent the changes and keep as much information as possible private.

Below are a number of action you can take:

1. Deactive the setting that records your web browsing history. It is very easy to do, simply go to www.google.com/history and follow the instructions.
2. Use other search engines, such as Bing or Yahoo!
3. The majority of the changes take effect when you are logged into your Google account, which then integrates a number of different Google services under a single sign-on. Hence don’t log into your Google account when using some of these services.

Author: Gene Greiner, www.dentist-websolutions.com
Email questions to info@dentist-websolutions.com
Visit us at www.dentist-websolutions.com today!

600 Davis Street

Evanston, IL 60201

Tel: 847-864-4229

Dental Website and Google Privacy

One of the more newsworthy announcements this week comes from Google. Specifically, Google switched on its controversial privacy policy this week on March 1, 2012 after pre-announcing the new terms  on January 24, 2012. We analyzed the new terms and here is our synopsis. Google is winnowing down its privacy policy from 60 distinct and different Web services into one overarching policy. Google’s main objective is to streamline the user experience and cut through a lot of the privacy policy legal jargon that Internet companies have become infamous for in the minds of privacy advocates and lawmakers. As part of this paring process, Google is also sharing data between those services, and here is where it may get a little dicey. When users are signed into their Google accounts, Google combines identity information users provide from one service with information from other services. The goal is to treat each user as one individual across all of the different Google products, such as Gmail, Google Docs, YouTube and other Web services. This has a number of advantages for the individual users; however also some potential dangers.

Author: Gene Greiner, www.dentist-websolutions.com
Email questions to info@dentist-websolutions.com
Visit us at www.dentist-websolutions.com today!

600 Davis Street

Evanston, IL 60201

Tel: 847-864-4229

Dental Website Search

As we have explained in previous blog posts and newsletters, it is very important to have a Sitemap for your dental website. In today’s blog
post we are going to discuss how to get web pages indexed quickly, especially if you have created new dental web pages or an entirely new dental website.

Getting your pages indexed in search engines is important – without being indexed, your website will be almost impossible to find.

In this blog we are going to cover some useful strategies for getting your website indexed fast. These include:

• Social bookmarks
• Submission of articles
• The linking of internal web pages
• The pinging of your website
• Responses or comment on blogs with high authority
• Updates to your own content on a regular basis

Before we start, here are two important points to consider:

Number one, you should be building links to the new dental web page you want indexed, and not just your website homepage. It is important
to build ‘deep’ links to all the content pages on your website, but many web designers and web developers seem to ignore this and just build inbound links or back links to their homepage.

For instance, if you have the website www.dentist.com, and your new page (that you want to have indexed) is at www.dentist.com/new-page,
then make sure you build inbound links to that specific page.

Number two, you should monitor your progress as you have these new pages indexed. This could be done in your analysis tools.

Author: Janet Thompson, www.dentist-websolutions.com
Email questions to info@dentist-websolutions.com
Visit us at www.dentist-websolutions.com today!

600 Davis Street

Evanston, IL 60201

Tel: 847-864-4229

GooglePlusOne

3 Ways Google+ Can Help Your Dental Practice

In February 2012, Google+ surpassed 100 million users. In addition, a number of internet and IT analysts predict that by the end of this year the number of Google+ users will exceed 400 million. These are obviously very impressive numbers. Now, who are these people? As you might expect, many of them are your dental patients. With Google+ for your dental practice, Google is attempting to make it easier for you to connect with these Google users, which could either be your existing patients or potentially new patients.

You might say: Why should I try Google+ — since I am already using Facebook and Twitter for social media marketing? Here are the top three reasons why Google+ can help your business.

1. SERP or Search Engine Ranking Page improvement. Which dental practice do you think is going to get ranked higher on Google’s search engine, the one using Google+ or the one just using Facebook? Search for a dental practice in your town and you will see the Google+ icons next to the dental practice website having already embraced this concept.

2. Dental Focus Groups. You can use Google+ to provide answers to dental questions or elicit patient feedback. A fellow dentist recently used their Google+ dental page to host an hour long Q&A session covering dental topics. The result was a lively conversation on Google+ with more than 100 comments over the course of an hour. Think about how many potential new patients this might generate.

3. A powerful PR tool. By using Google+ circles, you can target your public and media relations. Your public relations message can easily be picked up by a number of potential patients.

Author: Gene Greiner, www.dentist-websolutions.com
Email questions to info@dentist-websolutions.com
Visit us at www.dentist-websolutions.com today!

600 Davis Street

Evanston, IL 60201

Tel: 847-864-4229

Dental Marketing and SEO

Our education journey on search engine optimization continues…

Today we want to look at the following three important terms and how they relate to dental websites and dental website design.

Title Tag: The title tag is literally the title of a web page, and it’s one of the most important factors inside Google’s search algorithm. Ideally your title tag should be unique and contain the main keywords of your page. You can see the title tag of
any web page on top of the browser while navigating it.

Meta Tags: Like the title  tag, meta tags are used to give search engines more information regarding the  content of your pages. The meta tags are placed inside the HEAD section of your  HTML code, and thus are not visible to human visitors.

Search Algorithm:
Bing’s, Yahoo’s or Google’s search algorithm is optimized to find the most relevant web pages for any search query conducted by an end user. Google published that the Google algorithm considers over 200 factors, including the PageRank value, the title tag, the meta tags, the content of the website, the age of the domain and so on.

Author: Janet Thompson, www.dentist-websolutions.com
Email questions to info@dentist-websolutions.com
Visit us at www.dentist-websolutions.com today!

600 Davis Street

Evanston, IL 60201

Tel: 847-864-4229

CEO Terminology for Dentists

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is an important area of internet marketing today and will become ever more important given the long term trend of marketing activities and marketing spend moving from off-line traditional media to on-line internet media.

We want to continue in explaining SEO and online marketing terms. Here the next three:

Anchor text: The anchor text of a backlink is the text that is visible and has the underlying link to the web page. Having keyword rich anchor texts help tremendously with search engine optimization, since Yahoo, Bing and Google will associate these keywords with the content of your website. If you have a dental health blog, for instance, it would help your search rankings if some of your backlinks had “dental health” as their anchor texts.

NoFollow: Nofollow is a link attribute used by website owners to signal to the search engines from Yahoo, Bing and Google that they don’t endorse the website they are linking to. This could happen in one of two cases. Either the link is created by the users themselves (e.g., blog comments), or the link is a paid link from advertisers or sponsors. When Bing, Yahoo or Google see the nofollow attribute it will not count that link within the formula of its search algorithms.

Link Sculpting: The link sculpting practice is no longer effective as Google recently changed how it handles the nofollow attribute. By using the nofollow attribute webmasters were able to channel the flow of PageRank of each web page within their websites, thus increasing the search rankings of desired pages.

Author: Janet Thompson, www.dentist-websolutions.com
Email questions to info@dentist-websolutions.com
Visit us at www.dentist-websolutions.com today!

600 Davis Street

Evanston, IL 60201

Tel: 847-864-4229

Facebook IPO and relevance for dental websites

Facebook filed for an IPO on Wednesday, February 1, 2012, which then kicks off the roadshow process and subsequently the launch of one of the most anticipated IPOs (Initial Public Offerings) in the history of public stock markets. A few numbers that show the relevance of Facebook as a profitable company and internet powerhouse:

- Revenue for 2011 is $3.71 billion, about twice the 2010 number and about five times the 2009 number

- Net Income for 2011 is published at $1 billion, compared to $606 million for 2010 and $229 in 2009

- Estimates attribute Facebook (ticker symbol FB) a valuation of $100 billion and plans to sell shares to the public in an estimated range from $5 billion to $10 billion

Those numbers surprise most dentists and should convince every dentist that Facebook is much much more than just a playground for children.

Author: Janet Thompson, www.dentist-websolutions.com
Email questions to info@dentist-websolutions.com
Visit us at www.dentist-websolutions.com today!

600 Davis Street

Evanston, IL 60201

Tel: 847-864-4229

Search Engine Optimization for Dentists

More and more patients look for more dentists on the internet. They research their reputation, check feedback from other patients and review their websites, looking for bio information, location and address data, specific dental procedures or treatments.

The big question is: Is your website found by potential dental patients?

The answer is an internet term: Search Engine Optimization or SEO. I want to explain some of the most importants terms related to search engine optimization.

SEM: Stands for Search Engine Marketing, and as the acronym implies, it involves marketing products or services found by search engines. SEM is split into two main pillars: SEO and PPC. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it is the practice of make sure that websites appear in the organic search results. PPC stands for Pay-Per-Click, and it is the practice of acquiring internet user clicks from search engines.

PageRank: PageRank is the numeric result between 0 and 10 as defined by the Google search engine algorithm. The algorithm is used to estimate the relative important of pages on the web. The simple idea behind the algorithm is the fact that a link from one web page to another web page should be viewed as a vote of trust between these web pages. The higher the authority and the number of links (weighted to their value) to a page, therefore, the higher the probability that the web page is important.

Backlink: Also sometimes called in-link. It is an internet hyperlink on another website pointing back to your own website. Backlinks are important for SEO because they have positive influence on the PageRank of any web page, influencing its search rankings.

Author: Gene Greiner, www.dentist-websolutions.com
Email questions to info@dentist-websolutions.com
Visit us at www.dentist-websolutions.com today!

600 Davis Street

Evanston, IL 60201

Tel: 847-864-4229