by AdminPosted on Posted in seo

Why regular updates to your website count for SEO

reviewing website contentOne feature of a website which is accepted to affect search engine optimisation is “freshness” i.e. the age of the content. This doesn’t mean that all new content will rank better than old content – there is much more to it than that of course. Indeed Google has advised that older pages which are still popular and engaging for users, can continue to rank just as well as new content which is of a similar quality.

However, what it does mean is that pages which are still useful but less than stellar in popularity (many dental website pages to be frank) may see slips in search positions as new content on competitor websites is published. Lots of other factors play a part, for example the number of other websites which link to the page, but, all other things being equal, fresher content usually ranks better than content which has become stale. So why is this?

One of Google’s stated objectives is to deliver the most relevant content to users and it does this by surfacing what it considers to be the best pages higher up in the search results. Logically, one of the factors it uses to evaluate this is the age of the content. Whilst new isn’t always good, the fact that content is relatively new is an indicator that it may deserve to rank higher. Google uses many other signals to determine where the page ultimately lands in the search results, but “freshness” is considered to be a strong indicator.

This is perhaps why we regularly see new blog posts get relatively high ranking fairly quickly before dropping away slightly over the following months. Another good reason for a practice blog!

What does this mean for your dental website?

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Copywriting

Does the quantity of text on your blog posts or web pages influence SEO?

user-engagement-seoA questions we are regularly asked by dentists concerns the length of content needed for their websites and blogs and if more words on a page equals better opportunity for SEO.

The answer is….. it depends. Contrary to what you may have been told, the number of words on a page is not the primary driving factor for SEO, rather that the page is compelling and useful for your users. There is no golden rule which says 100 words is bad, 200 – 500 words is adequate and 1000 words is great. Google doesn’t work like that these days.

You have to remember that Google is now extremely adept at measuring how users interact with your web page or blog article and consequently if they find it useful or not. So a page with 200 words or maybe even just a short paragraph and compelling video, can rank much better than a page with 1500 words which users find boring and bounce off straight away.

Rules of thumb for content length

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Google AdWords

Making the most of your pay-per-click adverts.

Extending AdWordsIf you are one of the increasing number of dentists who runs AdWords (pay-per-click) to draw new patient enquiries from Google, you may or may not be aware that small changes in how your advert is configured, can make a big difference to the success, or otherwise, of your advertising campaigns.

You may have noticed that some adverts stand out much more than others in that they occupy more screen space and have extra features in addition to simple text? This is because the ads have been configured to use something known as “ad extensions” which are useful add-ons to really help your ads to stand out and catch the eye.

So what are the main ad extensions and how are they configured?

There are actually quite a number of ad. extensions but unless you are a really experienced advertiser, it is likely that you will not use all of them. The ones you will normally see employed in better dental AdWords campaigns are as follows:

Call extensions

This is pretty much as it sounds and it’s a technique whereby you can add a unique telephone number to your advert which is linked to your main number. This allows a person who has seen your ad. to click the number to call you directly. Call extensions can be configured in a few different ways, including scheduling i.e. you can choose to display the number only when you have someone on hand to answer during regular practice hours. This type of extension is very important for analytics too, as it certainly helps to show how many people got in touch via ‘phone as well as by completing your website contact form. This can really make a difference when calculating the ROI for a PPC campaign.

Call-Out extensions

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Tools

Call tracking as part of your marketing ROI calculation.

telephone call analyticsMeasuring the return-on-investment for your dental marketing campaigns is essential and yet many dentists often neglect it completely, or at best, do it half-heartedly.

This may be down to a lack of understanding of how to do it, reluctance by your marketing partner to provide full visibility, or failure to have a full set of tracking tools in place.

It’s the latter aspect we will cover in this blog, in particular the data “black-hole” associated with telephone calls to the practice and how those potential new patients were stimulated to call you. Understanding how many calls you received and where they originated, is very important in the overall return-on-investment calculation.

Website analytics

It’s quite straightforward to measure and report on the visits to a website and the enquiries (conversions) that result when a user completes your web contact form. These conversions can then be factored against the marketing spend to derive a “cost per acquisition” for the particular marketing channel used. However, data tells us that 3 – 4 times as many new enquiries to a dental practice come via the telephone versus website contact forms. If these calls are missed in the cost-per-acquisition calculations, then you can get a very skewed view of how a particular marketing channel is working.

Whilst most dentists run web analytics for websites, the majority don’t go the extra mile to measure ‘phone calls accurately and this can make a marketer’s job more difficult when it comes to calculating the true ROI for a particular marketing channel.

So how can ‘phone calls be tracked?

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Advice

What does it mean and why you need to know.

g-smallI think it’s fair to say that the majority of dentists now understand the importance of good search ranking positions (i.e. Google) and most have also heard the phrase “search engine optimisation” or its abbreviation, SEO (albeit we also have a fair few clients who regularly confuse the abbreviation with “SOE” after their preferred dental practice management system!)

Another theme appears to be that many dentist believe that SEO is “a minefield” and I can understand why they might say this. Undoubtedly their inbox will be bombarded with spam emails offering SEO for $150 per month through to services offering it at 20 times this fee. All claim to be the route to Google success. As well as the email spammers, there has been a proliferation of dental marketers who have jumped on the SEO band-wagon over the last couple of years; all professing to have lots of experience with boosting their clients ranking results. In truth, few actually have any worthwhile experience and, when pushed, can’t demonstrate credible, long-term success. Most of them are simply outsourcing the service, adding a nice premium and then keeping their fingers crossed.

On top of the mind-boggling array of self-proclaimed SEO experts, there are also numerous cases where bad SEO performed on behalf of dentists has resulted in Google penalising their websites with significant adverse effect on their business. Indeed a couple of larger UK dental marketing companies who made their name through focusing on SEO for dentists 5 or 6 years ago, messed up on a large scale when Google began to introduce website penalties for over-zealous, poor quality work.

So against this backdrop it’s easy to see why dentists are confused and even scared by the prospect of undertaking a dental focused SEO campaign to improve the performance of their website.

To assist with any decision, it is useful to understand the terms “white-hat”, “grey hat”, and “black hat” SEO and the techniques falling into these categories which a company may use to try to promote your website. Employing the wrong techniques *will* land you in trouble with Google, with near-irretrievable penalties which can completely exclude your website from the search results. As we’ve mentioned elsewhere on this blog, Google is very strict with web authoring standards and anything which falls outside of their guidelines can easily land you in trouble.

So let’s make a quick review.

Black Hat SEO

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by AdminPosted on Posted in seo

What’s most important for your website?

Google ranking or website traffic volume and quality – what wins? The answer is it’s all important. However, what I’d like to address in this blog is the apparent fixation of some dentists purely on how they rank in Google. Whilst it is a solid objective to get to number one for key search terms, actually more important is to get *lots* of terms to prominent positions as this will typically lead to higher traffic volumes in the mid to long term.

So really your key metrics should be traffic levels (differentiated by source) and the conversions resulting from it. Of course it’s also sensible to keep an eye on where key terms are ranking as this is a great indicator of the overall SEO strategy success, but traffic and conversions should be the ‘go-to’ measures.

Let’s take a closer look….

This chart shows the typical search demand curve and the relative levels of traffic resulting from keyword searches. What we can see is that in terms of overall searches, the contribution from the “chunky middle” and “long tail” is significantly more than the “fat head” terms. So it’s a big mistake simply to focus on the obvious dental search terms whilst ignoring the longer tail.A breakdown of search terms by category and quantity

The implications of a very narrow SEO campaign

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Advice

Lots of web traffic, but the wrong quality? Don’t expect good conversion rates.

rising Google positionsPerhaps the most important factors determining the success of dentist’s websites are the volume and quality of traffic received by it. Other factors are also very important such as the quality of the website and its ability to convert the visits to tangible enquiries, but without the visits in the first place, the rest is incidental.

Website traffic can originate from multiple different sources; from search engines, clicks on your link on other websites, direct visits where the user enters your www address in their browser, social media channels and more. However, whilst getting traffic to a site is a primary objective, the type and quality is extremely important – some traffic is good, other types of traffic are less good and can actually be detrimental. So it’s important to understand the various types and sources of website traffic and whether they are likely to result in useful new patient enquiries.

For the purposes of this discussion I will keep to fairly generic categorisation and try not to go into too much technical detail. However, it will serve to give the dental business owner and manager sufficient appreciation of the topic so that they can have an informed discussion with their chosen marketing partner during performance reviews.

Organic (free) search traffic

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Website

Why some dental web designs under-perform and what you can do about it.

mistake signA well-designed, engaging website with good search positions is undeniably one of the best ways to acquire new patients. Even a long-established practice with exceptional word-of-mouth referrals, still needs a good quality website even if only to maintain business credibility and to provide a reference source for patients, old and new.

However, the performance of websites varies hugely, with the worst delivering very little at all, through to the best which can deliver several new enquiries per day. But what are the main reasons for this huge variation in performance and what can you do about it if you are unfortunate enough to be on the wrong end of the scale?

The old versus the new

This one may seem obvious but it’s perhaps not quite so clear cut as you might imagine. Whilst an outdated web design which simply looks stale and boring is never likely to perform well, new websites can also under-perform too. This is generally because the architecture of the site is simply too cluttered or the navigation so unfriendly that the user simply heads elsewhere. There seems to be a trend of over-complex websites at the moment where the designer threw in all the “bells-and-whistles” simply because they could but forgot about clarity of information and ease of use.

So whilst old, outdated websites are typically quite grim; new but poorly conceived websites can also perform badly. New does not necessarily mean good.

Incorrect targeting

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Advice

Keep your core files and plugins up-to-date – don’t get hacked!

WordPress hack riskWordPress is a popular, free content management system (CMS) you may see used for dentist website development.

However, with the upsides of WordPress, there also come some significant downsides, the most obvious of these being how frequently the system gets hacked.

You may know that Google is now identifying hacked websites with a warning in search results and more often than not, when you see these warnings, it’s a WordPress website which has been the subject of the hack.

Why does WordPress get hacked?

This is due to several reasons, the main ones are as follows:

  • WordPress is popular, primarily because it is free and easy to set up. There are also numerous templates which can be purchased for less than £50 which allow you to get online with a reasonable looking website very cost-effectively. Whilst these websites are all pretty “samey” (frankly it’s easy to spot a WordPress template site) they are better than no site at all. This popularity has unfortunately attracted the hacking fraternity who spend their time looking for the weaknesses in WordPress. As a slight aside, the unwary also need to be cautious about dental marketing companies who purchase such templates, add images and text to make them “dental” and then sell them on for thousands of pounds – so an expensive, “samey” website and potentially vulnerable too.
  • WordPress is regularly being updated with new “bells and whistles” many of which are unnecessary for average users. This leads to lots of outdated versions littering the web, often with unaddressed security flaws. In time, these sites get picked off by the hackers who search them out using automated scanning tools.
  • WordPress can use lots of “plugins” which adds to its functionality – typically a WordPress site might use 10 or more of these plugins to perform all sorts of tasks which come as standard in other content management systems. However they are not all written by the WordPress core coding team as you might think, but typically by third parties and consequently the quality and robustness of some are highly questionable. Often is the case that complete WordPress websites have been hacked via outdated or low-quality plugins. What you also see is wide use of plugins which start out being well-managed but then get abandoned by the developer. So even if you are updating the WordPress core files, are you still vulnerable due to an outdated and unsupported plugin? For many sites, the answer is “yes”.

Recommendations

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Advice

Understanding what managed review services offer – and what they don’t….

request for reviewSeveral of our clients have approached us recently to add “review widgets” to their practice websites.

These are supplied by companies who claim to offer full management of the review process, for example those placed by patients on Google and Facebook. To the layperson, this sounds absolutely excellent and seemingly the universal solution to the important but logistically difficult issue of managing patient reviews.

But all is not quite what it seems, particularly when it comes to the all-important and fundamental aspect of how those reviews actually get on to Google and Facebook in the first place. In this blog we look at how managed review services actually work and what they can and can’t do for you. This way you can make an informed decision before subscribing to their services.

A quick recap on Google reviews

There is increasing awareness about just how powerful Google reviews are, not just for providing independent validation of your services but also for helping your website rank in the three local search results which appear on page one of Google. This latter aspect is particularly important and a great way to help acquire new patients.

However, it is very important to understand that you simply can’t place your own reviews on Google or even place bona fide patient reviews from the same PC at the practice. Your IP address and location is known to Google and they simply filter out multiple reviews placed from the same location. In fact they are particularly rigorous about this and you can be penalised irretrievably if they suspect you are trying to game their systems.

The cons

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