Opening a new dental practice?

The effect of the Internet on your choice of location – local SEO

This may sound rather an odd topic but what I hope to illustrate quickly in this article, is that you really must consider patient acquisition from the web when deciding where to build, or buy, a dental practice. The key factors to consider are Google local search and also the level of existing competition in the main search index. These two elements alone can have a huge bearing on how easy, or difficult, you will find it to acquire new patients who are searching on the web for dental services.

Many new practice owners neglect the effect of the web and fail to evaluate it properly, if at all. They tend to fall back on the traditional means of evaluation; the number of practices in the local area, physical prominence of the practice, exposure to local footfall, population demographic etc. Of course all of these factors need to be taken into account and matched to the ambitions and objectives of the owner, but it’s also absolutely critical to evaluate the effect of the web and how you will use it to attract new patients.

Why the web, particularly Google, matters

The big misconception held by a lot of dentists is that they believe they can still rank prominently on Google for locations where they aren’t actually based. So for example, trying to rank for “dentist York” when you are actually based in a small village 7 or 8 miles away. Whilst it may be reason to think that people will travel a relatively short distance to acquire high quality dentistry, particularly non-routine treatments, unfortunately Google isn’t going to help much in achieving that. This is because Google localises searches – so for the example just given, potential new patients looking for a dentist in York, are going to see results from all of the businesses in and around the centre, not really much from the peripheral villages. Whilst you may see the odd case where this doesn’t follow, those examples are in the vanishing minority.

This is not just for the local (map) results you see on page one – there is now evidence to suggest that the physical location of a business also affects how Google ranks it for all of the positions on page one (excluding paid ads).

An example

One of the dentists we provide digital marketing and website services for owns three practices, two in dense population centres and the third in a small village some way away from the nearest large towns. The first two practices have very prominent page one search results for the respective towns and get a lot of new patient enquiries from the organic search results (un-paid). However, the third practice, whilst top of Google for its own location and small surrounding villages, gets much less traffic and consequently far fewer enquiries. This is not because of a poor website or bad Google results – it’s simply due to fewer people searching in the location where his Google results are prominent.

To support the third practice, we’ve implemented alternative mechanisms to help make up for this as discussed below.

Adapting your web strategy to suit your business location

For dentists based in larger towns, a diligent, appropriately resourced SEO campaign, focused on the traditional and local results should, in time yield great results and a steady stream of new patients. This can be supplemented by targeted, small scale paid ad (AdWords) campaigns as needed to “top up”.

However, where the practice doesn’t benefit from being in a large population area, other marketing mechanisms are required to help:

• Paid adverts i.e. ‘AdWords’ – these are not bound by location as with the free results and so you can target whichever locations your like. However, you will need a sensible budget and the services of an experienced AdWords practitioner to ensure best results. It is likely that AdWords will feature as a significant part of your marketing moving forwards if you are determined to attract patients from further afield. You can also try Facebook advertising too.
• Broaden your SEO strategy – whilst you are highly unlikely to penetrate the Google results in prominent positions for the bigger, distant town, you can still target the smaller villages around you where there may only be one or two incumbents. Location targeted pages on your website and blog will help you to gain good Google results not just for the local area but for the smaller areas around you too. So whilst you may struggle to rank for the big town results several miles away, you can broaden your web footprint in other ways.
• Don’t forget the traditional marketing channels – whilst some commentators decry the use of adverts in the local paper, you can still get good success very affordably if you know how.

Summary

When evaluating where to set up your new dental practice, you really must consider the relevance of the Internet and how search results can work for (or against you). Google localisation is a big issue for any business and not one to be taken lightly. One one hand you may benefit from setting up in a quieter location with limited existing competition i.e. “out of town”, but on the other hand, your scope to penetrate the search results for larger population areas even just a few miles away, can be significantly curtailed. However, there are ways to mitigate this as noted above.

The issue is a serious one and it’s understandable if you need help to evaluate your choice of location in the context of Google and how search results work. Dental Media are acknowledged dental search experts and we can help you research and evaluate – simply call our team on 01332 672548 and we’ll be pleased to discuss in more detail.