by AdminPosted on Posted in WordPress

Be cautious or end up with a broken or hacked website!

If you’ve ever researched website design you’ll probably be aware that there are systems available which allow you to update the content of the website directly, without referring back to the original designer.

These tools, known as content management systems (CMS), are useful for making small changes to your website e.g. text in a staff biography, but are not so easy for larger modifications such as adding a new image gallery or a new treatment section. For these types of more complex changes, you will almost certainly need to ask your dental web designer to intervene, as skill and experience is still required.

There are other issues associated with CMS too, for example the need for regular security updates to prevent hacking. So a clear understanding of the pros and cons of CMS is required before you opt for it.

One of the most popular CMS platforms is called WordPress which originally came to the fore as a blogging platform. Over the years, the system has been wrangled into a full-blown CMS and is now widely used for website design, not just blogging. However, to use it as a valid website CMS, you really need to add certain “plugins” to WordPress to extend the core functionality; for example to add contact forms, sitemaps, SEO features and more. But using these plugins requires care, experience and ongoing maintenance if you want to avoid having your website broken, or worse, hacked.

The problem with WordPress plugins

The concept of plugins to extend your website’s functionality is great, but unfortunately it’s a bit of a free-for-all when it comes down to the development of them. This is because the plugin library is vast and not managed directly by the core WordPress team. Anyone can contribute a WordPress plugin and as such the quality of them varies significantly, from those which are diligently managed and updated, to those which have huge, inherent security risks.

The problem is that you don’t have any guarantees which is which – indeed even the most popular plugins with regular support, still periodically get compromised by hackers causing all manner of grief for WordPress website users.

Another serious problem with plugins is that you just can’t guarantee ongoing consistency and support. Developers may start out with the best of intentions and contribute a great plugin, then over the years they get distracted by other projects and move on. Unfortunately you’ve already used that plugin and your website relies on it, but you’ve lost the support and also the security updates which will invariably be required. This can cause you website to break as the core functions of WordPress update; or worse, you get hacked.

What can you do to minimise the risk associated with plugins?

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by AdminPosted on Posted in seo

Why you need more than just a couple of keywords on page one of Google

There is too much hang up about keywords when it comes to dental SEO these days, particularly when considering how far Google has moved on when it comes to evaluating where websites should rank.

As we’ve discussed elsewhere in this blog, SEO is no longer about adding a bunch of keywords to a page and keeping your fingers crossed, it’s a good deal more complicated than that.

However, that said, keywords are still very useful for getting a quick idea of the prominence of a website and a likely indicator of how much traffic it will get. Plus you still do need to include a few keywords and associated phrases on your website pages to help Google understand what they are all about. Ultimately though, this is just a starting point and you will need to invest in some of the other digital strategies discussed in this blog, e.g. links, content generation etc, to secure great positions in search engines.

But today let’s take a quick look at how you can use keywords to evaluate (and boost) the prominence of a website and get a quick idea of how it is likely performing in the search results.

Wide keyword profiles

Quite often, we find that dentists get fixated on single keywords or perhaps a very small set of them. For example, it might be “dental implants Trumpton” and then the dentist focuses on this term and searches for it regularly, using it as an indicator of how well their website is doing. In their head, they want this term to be at position one, but unfortunately there’s far more to the story than just the position of a single search term.

If you look in Analytics and Search Console, the free website data tools from Google, you will see lots of information about the various types of traffic which arrive on a website, for example from free searches, paid searches, third-party link clicks etc. The traffic which primarily comes from search engines, (free or organic) is made up of traffic which originates from hundreds if not thousands of different searches. So in the case of implants, it could come from people who search “dental implants” “teeth implants” “new replacement teeth” or many other associated terms. So not just one or two terms. Of course, some terms will carry more weight, but the spectrum is huge.

The same can be said for all other treatments and services, i.e. lots of varied search queries, hopefully resulting in traffic to your website.

What I’m trying to illustrate here is why it is important to avoid being fixated on a few search terms, but instead understanding the importance of appearing prominently for multiple different phrases across the spectrum of treatments you provide. The key is to develop a wide keyword profile which delivers traffic from lots of different search queries, not just a narrow range of super competitive terms. Ultimately, traffic and conversions (enquiries) are the key success factors and ranking at number one for just a couple of phrases doesn’t necessarily deliver this. You may also wish to read our blog which covers “long-tail keywords” for supporting information.

How do you achieve a wide keyword profile?

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Branding

Respecting dental branding and copyright

Understandably, dentists have numerous associations with 3rd party suppliers to their businesses and often want to showcase these relationships on their own dental practice websites.

This is usually a good initiative in that it helps to build credibility; for example, use of the latest equipment such as scanning technology or offering treatments using appliances from leading orthodontics or implant manufacturers. It also shows willingness from the dental practice itself to invest in the latest technologies and services; indeed we actively encourage this when we are designing websites on behalf of our clients.

This may all sound straightforward but there are some guidelines and rules which need to be understood and followed. One of these golden rules is the observance and preservation of third-party branding as well as seeking written approval to use it. This may sound obvious to some, but very frequently we will be asked by clients to do things (e.g. edit the NHS logo!) which are clearly forbidden and would only serve to cause problems if we did.

Brand identity is very strict, particularly for larger companies, and they will issue rigid brand guidelines indicating what you can and what you can’t do with their brand identity once they’ve approved you to use it. Even small businesses, i.e. most dentists, should strive to maintain consistency with their branding and ensure that is used in the correct way.

With the above in mind, here are some essential guidelines on questions to ask and how to use third-party branding on your own website:

  • identify which suppliers/associations etc you want to showcase on your website and what advantages this might bring – do this strategically
  • seek their permission to use their branding, typically a logo, where appropriate. Get it in writing where possible
  • don’t attempt to modify their brand assets – unfortunately we see attempts to do this too regularly!
  • use the correct branding assets in the correct situation e.g. we had one client who insisted on using the Invisalign corporate logo rather than their provider logo
  • review regularly – are logos you are using out-of-date or are there new assets which you can use to your advantage?

Most of this is common sense to us in the design world, but perhaps not so much to those who are at the front-line of providing dental services.

Check to see if there are other supplier marketing assets you can use

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Advice

If you’ve been approached to have a dental microsite built – think twice! Here’s why….

Microsites, i.e. small websites focused on a single topic, used to be a prominent technique used by SEO companies to gain advantage in the search engines. However, these days the technique is essentially defunct and more often than not, disadvantageous.

A good example of this was recently covered in the national press where the online retailer, Asos, had developed a number of regionalised microsites to try to increase search positions and web traffic, but the effect was hugely negative. We’ll explain more about that in a moment.

The negative aspects of microsites have been known about in the more educated echelons of the search marketing community for some time, and so I was somewhat surprised to see a large invisible aligners company actively pushing the technique for their clients, apparently unaware of the possible problems. This is rather disappointing as the dentists likely assumed they were getting something advantageous, whereas the likelihood is that they were actually diluting their existing websites and search rankings.

So why is?

The dangers of microsites

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by AdminPosted on Posted in pay per click

Can you continue to ignore paid advertising? Pay-per-click is here to stay, like it or not.

A prominent web footprint has always been a huge component of successful dental marketing campaigns and this is now accepted by most.

It used to be the case that a good website and solid organic (free) Google rankings were pretty much all you needed to secure a flow of new patients, but the current situation is somewhat different.

The web landscape has changed markedly over the last 4 or 5 years and now other channels are firmly in play, not just organic SEO. Google Ads (formerly AdWords) have been around for quite a while now and more recently, dental Facebook advertising has really taken off. These two “paid channels” are now very much a part of successful online marketing campaigns for dentists and can be used very effectively alongside a solid organic search ranking campaign.

Why consider paid advertising?

It’s fair to say that some our dental clients have historically shunned paid advertising, primarily because they don’t like the thought of paying out to Google and Facebook to get traffic and enquiries. But if you need new patients and are struggling to get them from other sources, as long as your investment in pay-per-click (PPC) pays back well, then surely it shouldn’t be discounted?

The other very important consideration is that Google and Facebook have made it much harder to use their services free of charge. This “pay to play” scenario has arisen as the Internet giants have pushed hard in the effort to monetise their platforms.

With Google, you now see far more ads appear in the search results than ever before. Particularly on mobile devices, ads take up a large proportion of the screen every time you search which understandably continues to push up the amount of website traffic from paid ads (and boost Google’s revenues!) For Facebook, the “organic reach” of your posts is now less than 4% – so for every one hundred people who liked your page, fewer than four will see the content you post, unless of course you pay!

So here we can see how and why Google and Facebook have progressively pushed businesses into advertising on their platforms.

What about return on investment?

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Video

Consider carefully before using video as your web page background.

One of the popular trends in web design at the moment is the use of a video as the main background feature for the home page of a website. This can be quite appealing but it is not something you want to implement without careful consideration. So why is this?

It’s always been important to consider ‘form’ and ‘function’ when it comes to producing beautiful and efficient websites, but this is even more important now than ever before. And using video backgrounds on websites always involves a compromise.

The pros and cons of background video

In the introduction above I mentioned ‘compromise’ when it comes to the use of video for this technique. What this actually refers to is that video files are very large, particularly at a quality which gives a good viewing experience. However, large files and web design aren’t ideal partners, particularly now that we have to be sure that sites can be viewed easily on mobile devices on slower networks as well as desk-top machines and fast networks.

Indeed Google is strenuously pushing fast web experiences and rewarding sites in the search results which achieve this. Websites which are slower and deliver a poorer user-experience, typically see their Google rankings fall away over time.

To give an example, we were recently asked to build a website which used a full practice tour video as the home page back-drop. Unfortunately we had to explain why this isn’t practical, simply because the size of the file needed to achieve it would be prohibitively large and load very slowly, particularly on slow networks. This is exactly the scenario you need to avoid if you want to comply with Google’s web guidelines (and you really should!)

What compromises are needed to use video in this way?

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Advice

The evidence suggests yes!

Another frequently asked question from dentists to the team here at the Dental Media office is “do reviews on Google affect where my website appears in the search results?”

Before we go into detail, let’s break this down a little bit more. When we talk about “organic” search results, we essentially mean the index of results which appear on page one of Google which are not from the paid channel i.e. not Google Ads. This can then be broken down a little bit further into the “map/local” results (the 3 results which appear with extra annotations e.g maps etc) near the top of the page, and also the “traditional” free search results (typically 10 although this can now vary).

It has long been known that reviews do influence whether a business appears in the “local/map” results and just how important this is; but more recently, there is increasing evidence that reviews also influence the rest of the traditional ranking results as well.

Whilst Google has neither confirmed or denied this, the evidence suggests that it is indeed so. The SEO team at Dental Media looks after search marketing for lots of dentists across the UK and as part of this remit we regularly check search positions, number of reviews etc and try to correlate what we see. And what we see is that, in general, reviews can indeed influence traditional search ranking as well as the local/map results.

Is this definite?

As with all things associated with Google, unless they confirm it directly, we can never be 100% sure; we can simply report trends and apparent correlations. Consequently we cannot guarantee that lots of good (or indeed bad) reviews will definitely affect your search positions. However, we can say with a degree of certainty, that in most cases, this does appear to be so. Those websites/businesses which accrue lots of positive reviews do seem to fare quite a lot better with their organic search positions.

There is also some logic to this. If you consider that Google is trying to surface the most appropriate results to satisfy a user’s queries, why wouldn’t they use reviews as a quality signal?

That said, there are also the usual anomalies which crop up from time to time. For example we have seen businesses steadily gain reviews over time and fail to get into the local/map positions for a long time. We have also seen dental businesses accrue reviews very quickly (contrary to advice) and been apparently red-flagged by Google for doing so. More of this below.

A recap on managing the Google review process

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Advice

Dental marketing agencies come and go – don’t get left in the lurch

You may have seen the large increase in the number of marketing agencies trying to get into the dental space over the last two or three years.

These typically range from single-handed freelancers to digital agencies from other sectors who decide that dentistry *must* be lucrative and hence they’ll try to get a piece of the action. More often than not they fail, leaving their clients in a mess and without support.

There is a case at the moment where a new company appeared a few years ago and made a big splash at dental shows and and all over the web. This gained them a number of clients quite quickly, albeit the fees they were charging, on the back of huge promises, were significant. However, it would appear that the promises they made regarding huge influxes of new patients, didn’t materialise, resulting in clients slowly slipping away. Today, the company has ceased to exist with the bits and pieces being picked up by others. But as often happens in these cases, clients are being cherry-picked and lots of the smaller businesses are being cast aside.

You might think that this would be relatively easy for a dentist to recover from, after all business fail all the time. However, in this circumstance, significant assets such as websites, had been built using non-industry standard tools which made it nearly impossible for other marketing companies to step in with immediate support. This meant that those businesses which had been cast aside, needed to start from scratch with new websites etc. Time-consuming, costly and potentially disrupting for their businesses too. All considered, not a good situation at all and with lessons to be learned!

Do your homework before starting out with a new dental marketing company

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Customer Relationship Management

Why it’s time to consider CRM for your dental practice and how to choose.

One of the big frustrations we have as dental marketers is the apparent lack of comprehensive systems for capturing and nurturing leads at the practice level.

So where we are generating new enquiries for dentists, whether through organic SEO, paid advertising or other channels, we know that some of those useful patient leads are not being captured or acted up effectively.

We’ve discussed previously how it’s reasonably straightforward to record how many new patient enquiries come via website contacts, from social media and even from telephone enquiries where the right technology is employed, but thereafter, the patch to actual treatment becomes somewhat murky and outside of our remit. That said, discussions with various clients suggests that all is not always well at the practice side when it comes to capturing and nurturing these all important new-patient leads.

The need for CRM – Customer Relationship Management

Whilst a lot of dentists rely on anything from scribbled notes to a suite of spreadsheets to try to capture enquiries, fortunately there is another far more coordinated approach. Enter the CRM system. CRM allows you to record all of your leads irrespective of which channel they came from and then follow them up appropriately. The system will then keep a real-time track of all of your enquiries and exactly where they are in their evolution – and hopefully right through to the completion of treatment!

How does CRM work – is it straightforward?

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Branding

Your logo is a key part of your business identity and needs to come first!

An issue which is raised quite often when we are planning new websites for dentists is that of the business identity i.e. the logo and overall branding.

On quite a few occasions we’ve been asked to start work on a website design before a logo is ready or even started.

There is a belief held by some that a logo can simply be “plonked” on top of a new website design either when it is well underway or in fact finished – but this would be a fairly big mistake. We’ll discuss why this is in today’s blog.

Your branding as a foundation for your business identity

The visual elements which represent your brand e.g. your logo and the colour palette you adopt for various features throughout your business, are extremely important. This “visual identity” is what you want your patients to associate you with, so for example when they see your dental logo, they identify with it and know exactly who they are dealing with. Of course, this is on the simplest level and a brand is much more than a logo or colour scheme for the waiting room or staff uniform. The business culture, service levels, reputation etc are all huge factors in building and maintaining a brand.

That said, if your visual identity has no cohesion or is just generally poor, then it does not form any sort of solid foundation on which to start building all of the other elements. Consequently, key branding elements such as a logo really should come first before you start developing other key assets such as your dental practice website, signs, stationery etc.

Get it right first time

Having established that a good logo is a key part of your overall visual identity and needs to be done very early on in your development as a business, it pays to invest some time and money to get it right. Very often we are presented with logos which have been “home spun” or purchased for $50 from the Internet and which don’t really make the grade at all. They are typically either very generic, bland or just amateurish.

Trying to use such a logo to set the “look and feel” for a great website can be really difficult indeed and often ends up with a frank discussion with the client about a logo re-work or full redevelopment. So it really does pay to get it right first time before you start using the logo on your stationery and signs etc – switching after the event can be a chore and expensive!

What does a high-quality logo development cost?

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