by AdminPosted on Posted in Advice

….and your digital marketing analytics too!

UK pound signIf you run your own business, whether dentistry or something else, you will be very familiar with the phrase “know your numbers”. However, whilst most practice principals are generally conversant with their overall numbers, smaller, but still very important elements, can still elude them.

This often happens when there has been delegation to a nominated team member but where that team member does not have sufficient training or experience to really understand what they are being tasked with.

We regularly see this where a practice tries to manage digital marketing in-house – but without the necessary training or mentoring to actually make it effective. Typical examples are where AdWords (pay-per-click) is set up badly or where a superficial understanding of Google Analytics is used to drive incorrect marketing decisions. And the budget leakage which results from this can be very significant.

But digital marketing is easy right?

As an example of what can go awry, a few days ago we were approached by a practice which had been running a “hotch-potch” of digital marketing programmes but with limited success. Latterly this included Facebook marketing as they’d heard that it was “all the rage”. Frustrated at their lack of progress, they finally contacted our team for assistance. It wasn’t actually the principal who got in touch, or indeed the practice manager, but instead a dental nurse who had been tasked with the digital marketing for the practice “one afternoon per week”. She was actually quite upset and was clearly struggling. Her practice manager had basically implied that “it can’t be that difficult” (digital marketing) and that “there must be some tutorials on the web”. Not ideal.

The practice already had Google Analytics on their website and they had a superficial understanding of overall traffic figures – however, little else, and certainly no idea of how to segment data to understand where traffic originates and what leads to conversion. So essentially they were flying blind and spending in a very haphazard way – some AdWords, some Facebook and so forth.

What can go wrong?

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by AdminPosted on Posted in seo

What are they and how can they affect a dentist’s website?

It’s now accepted that a dental practice website is one of the most important vehicles for new patient acquisition, typically falling just behind word-of-mouth recommendation when it comes to gaining new clients. It’s also accepted that a good Google position is critical to this process and every practice principle or dental business manager needs to keep a close eye on just how the search ranking positions are doing.

When a website’s search positions fall away, new patient enquiries will fall away extremely quickly too.

So it’s worth understanding which factors can play a part in how Google determines where your website should be ranked as this will have a significant, material effect on your business. There are many factors which dictate Google ranking positions and, despite what some self-proclaimed dental search “gurus” would have you believe, they are all secret – only Google knows exactly what they are and to what extent each factor plays a part. All we do know is that there are over 200 different ranking signals which Google takes into account when evaluating a website.

However, whilst we cannot be sure exactly how the Google ranking system works, experienced search marketers can get a very good idea of the process through testing, experience and evaluation. At Dental Media we are fortunate enough to manage several hundred dentist websites which gives us a clear insight into what works (and what doesn’t) when it comes to improving search ranking.

What is the Google Algorithm?

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by AdminPosted on Posted in email

Huge email storage in an ISO 27001 approved data centre now available.

Dental Media are pleased to announce a new, high-capacity email service for dentists who prefer to use web-based services rather than download and store email locally. This is also ideal for practices who wish to use IMAP services rather than “pop” i.e. leaving mail on the web server to allow synchronisation across multiple devices.

Whilst we have always provided similar services to this, our new email cluster provides much greater capacity than previously at low cost and in an ISO 27001 approved data centre (this is the ISO standard for information security management).

Features of the service

  • 5, 10, 20 or 50 gigs of storage starting at £100 per year. To give an idea, 5 gigs of storage should be ample for several years for an average user.
  • Secure storage in a leading, ISO approved UK data centre
  • Seamless operation alongside your professional web hosting
  • Web access 24/7/365
  • Nightly back-ups to a secondary system on site. Weekly back-ups to a third system off-site
  • Use your own domain name – much more professional than a GMail or Hotmail account
  • Split the storage capacity across multiple mail accounts
  • Class-leading “anti-spam” appliance – this will remove 98% of all spam from your inbox
  • Ability to handle encrypted connections

Why is this better than a GMail business account and remotely hosted “Office” accounts?

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Advice

Why stale and sterile dentist websites don’t work.

We recently completed a new website redesign for a dentist who already enjoyed good ranking positions at the top of Google. In spite of this, the practice was not getting many new patients via the website, even though it was only around 18 months old.

The client approached us to help and to make recommendations for improvement. Our initial audit found the following reasons why the website was not performing:

  • cold and unappealing branding – a very clinical, unwelcoming colour scheme
  • over-use of “stock” images with lots of “false smiles” in evidence
  • a confusing navigation structure
  • no attention-grabbing calls-to-action (CTA)
  • text content written too technically for the average user
  • no clear targeting for the type of patients the practice wanted to sign-up
  • not mobile friendly
  • a general lack of “personalisation” across the whole site
  • the site had been designed by a general web designer with no experience of dental marketing – this was abundantly apparent in the very basic design

Whilst the website content could have been completely reworked within the existing framework, the lack of a mobile optimised design dictated that the website would really be better started afresh.

How we redesigned the website to promote better user engagement and patient enquiries

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by AdminPosted on Posted in seo

A quick overview of how Google finds a new website and determines where to rank it. And how quickly.

One of the regular questions we are asked by dentists and practice managers after their new website is launched is “why can’t I find my site in Google?” Whilst we explain how Google works at the start of every new project, during the excitement of the launch, some of the key factors are often forgotten.

Sometimes new site owners forget that you need to do a bit more work to help Google find a new website and then, depending on how competitive your environment is, quite a lot more work to gain a good ranking position on page one. So even if you have great new website with lots of good content and a Google-friendly configuration, you should expect to do more work to fully realise its potential to acquire new patients.

Stage 1 – getting Google to find and index your new website

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by AdminPosted on Posted in seo

And if not how can your team help with the digital marketing programme?

The answer here, perhaps unsurprisingly, comes down to the level of resource available, the extent of training and willingness/competence of those involved.

Some larger practices are starting to incorporate marketing staff as part of the team, whereas smaller businesses are exploring the opportunity to leverage on the skills of existing team members to help with the web marketing initiatives; for example social media and blogging.

So for larger teams, with the scope to employ an experienced marketer, it is reasonable to assume that some of the initiatives can be managed in-house. Indeed we work with a number of practices to provide mentoring and training services but with the “leg-work” being carried out by members of the dentist’s team. This can work very well and very cost-effectively as long as the correct training and structure is in place. Some of our larger clients now manage their pay-per-click, social media, blogging and (to a degree) SEO, in-house and get great results.

But what about the smaller/medium sized dental teams?

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Advice

The chase/don’t chase conundrum. When dental CRM goes too far.

I’m prompted to write this particular article after meeting up with personal friends for a social catch-up the other day. They know I run a dental marketing business and are always keen to tell me about their latest dental encounters.

So I sit and smile as they inundate me about their latest treatments plus the good (and bad) aspects of the service they’ve received from their local dentist.

It’s actually quite useful for me as it serves as a “grass roots” view of what the local dental community are doing as well as what I know from my day-to-day marketing work.

One particular topic that struck me was how one of my friends had been on the receiving end of a “targeted” marketing campaign after expressing an interest in a dental implant for her husband. She had received an implant e-newsletter which she’d taken interest in as it seemed to offer a fair price. However, a few days later she received another e-newsletter from her dentist, again about implants and all of the associated benefits. A week after that, another one came through together with a more traditional leaflet which was posted out to her. And then another….

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Advice

Aggressive versus natural website optimisation – what results can you expect?

up arrow and Google symbolMost dental business owners are likely aware of Google’s ongoing purge on websites which have used manipulative methods to improve their search ranking. Whilst Google have actually been chasing down manipulative practices for many years, it’s since 2012 that the real clamp-down has been in play.

As we’ve noted previously on this blog, unfortunately lots of dentist’s websites have come to grief over the last couple of years as Google progressively caught up with digital marketers who had used suspect tactics to optimise their client’s sites. Invariably this resulted in an irrecoverable ranking penalty where the business owner had to give up on their compromised website and start afresh with a new version on a new domain name. Of course this is a huge issue with fairly disastrous consequences for the business overall.

With this in mind, it’s quite surprising to see that some dentists are still entrusting their new websites to SEO companies who continue to use risky techniques to establish good Google positions. What follows is an insight into what can happen in such a circumstance.

Aggressive SEO – why you don’t want to risk it

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by AdminPosted on Posted in seo

Why you need it to help boost enquiries *and* for SEO.

It’s no secret that you need to capture a website user’s attention within just a few short seconds of them landing on your page. It’s also no secret that you then need to provide engaging information to encourage them to read more and to get in touch.

Some dental marketing companies spin “engagement” as though it’s a revolutionary new technique to make your website more effective, but in fact it’s common sense and nothing new at all. There are numerous books and studies about website usability and engagement spanning back nearly ten years and all good designers should have this firmly in mind when developing a new dental website.

Another “buzz” word in the world of dental website design is “storytelling”. This is another technique which has been around for a long time but seems to be resurfacing again as marketers try to convince you that they are inventing new methods to help your website work better than the dentist’s just down the road. Here you use images and narrative to tell the user how your services have made a dramatic difference to someone’s life – this is an important technique but again, not revolutionary.

However, there is another facet to user engagement and experience which is equally important but less well understood. In fact you won’t hear many marketers talk about it because they aren’t aware. This additional, critical aspect is all about SEO benefit i.e. how a website which holds a user’s attention can actually fare better in Google search rankings.

user-engagement-seo

User engagement and SEO

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by AdminPosted on Posted in responsive

Why choosing a separate mobile website over responsive design was probably the wrong choice for your practice.

Back at the end of 2011, a new technique called responsive design was introduced to the world of website development. This facilitated full optimisation for all types of viewing devices without the need for a separate mobile website.

Progressive web design companies, Dental Media included, quickly adopted this new technique as it brought significant advantages for clients including ease of maintenance, consistent information and much lower cost of ownership versus building and managing two separate sites.

The development skills needed to use this technique are quite advanced but the steep learning curve was well worthwhile and early in 2012, we started to offer the new technique for clients – the first dental web design company to do this. Today, all of our websites are offered with responsive design.

With over 40% (av.) of all website visitors now coming to sites from mobile devices, it’s easy to understand why web “savvy” businesses want a responsive website design as their core online marketing tool.

Google loves “responsive” too!

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