by AdminPosted on Posted in seo

Dental websites with poor link profiles relegated again

Google rolled-out the long awaited update to it’s search ranking algorithm over the week-end just passed. The update, named “Penguin 3.0” is targeted at websites which have used poor quality links as the foundation of their SEO campaigns.

Penguin first rolled out back in 2012 and decimated lots of dental sites and whilst this latest update is a little less punitive, many more websites have followed, disappearing down the rankings.

A quick recap – what is the Google Penguin update?

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Advice

What is it and why is it important for your dental practice marketing?

There is a lot of jargon and hype in the world of marketing, much of it developed to make common sense principles sound clever, so consequently best ignored. However, once in a while, ideas and concepts arise which are useful and need to be understood by anyone who is undertaking on-line marketing for their business, which of course includes the dental community. One such concept is “social proof”.

Over the last 18 months or so, leveraging “social proof” has become increasingly important for businesses, so today we will take a quick look at what it is, why it’s so useful and how to incorporate it in your dental marketing.

What is “social proof”?

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Website

What works and what doesn’t, image licensing and more….

Great quality images are extremely powerful as an engagement tool. This is perhaps unsurprising and has been proven in a number of studies.

Whether on a website, blog or social media post, using good images will grab your user’s attention far better than a few simple lines of text.

So when developing a new dental website, what are the key things you need to consider when it comes to image selection?

Good quality pays

The first interaction a new patient has with you is often via your practice website. As such, you must present a professional, user-friendly image and much of this will come via the photographs you display. Remember that old adage “an image paints a thousand words”? Well that holds for websites too. So ideally if budget allows, try to secure the services of a professional photographer to shoot a selection of images for your website to include the team, facilities and, where appropriate, to support patient testimonials.

If your budget does not run to the services of a professional photographer, please try find someone in the team who has decent camera equipment and can use it. Be consistent with the backgrounds and lighting and ensure that there is no clutter in the shot.

Put your designer in touch with your photographer

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Advice

Avoid wasting cash on unnecessary domains

At a recent scoping meeting for a new practice website project, the dentist advised that he held over 30 domain names and that he was looking forward to using them to help propel his new site up the Google rankings. It was not easy explaining that this wasn’t going to help at all – I’ll explain why it doesn’t in a moment.

This practice owner is not alone and there seems to be a popular misconception that lots of domain names will help you establish Google dominance – however this is very misguided. What is worse is that this lack of understanding is being readily exploited by unscrupulous domain vendors who dupe unsuspecting clients by claiming how “useful” lots of domains can be for internet marketing. It’s also common for the domains to be sold at way over market value.

So why don’t lots of domain names help you to rank better in Google?

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Website

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should….

eliminate mistakes signPeople who follow the Dental Media blog will know that many of our articles are borne out of our own experience as designers or discussions we’ve had with members of the dental community.

This article is no different and comes about as a result of recent contracts we’ve won (and why we won them) and also a long discussion we had with an existing client a few days ago.

It relates to the subject of web design and recent trends in the industry; particularly whether it’s all going OTT and whether some designs are slipping into “form over function”.

Sometimes it’s easy to get sucked into the “next best thing” and distracted from the fundamental principles of your trade – in this context what I’m talking about is implementing “bells and whistles” into latest dental website designs to the point where they become distracting and the user just ends up confused.

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by AdminPosted on Posted in pay per click

PPC campaigns set up haphazardly or by the inexperienced will waste a lot of cash – it pays to get it right.

AdWords set up check listWhether you’ve used AdWords before or are just setting out for the first time, a handy check-list will help you avoid mistakes and get all of the essential set-up parameters right first time.

Like lots of Google tools, AdWords changes regularly, so even for the very experienced, it can be quite easy to mess up unless you have a template to work to.

Making mistakes when setting up can become extremely costly very quickly, so it really does pay to know what you are doing and check diligently.

Here’s a quick check-list of the main settings for your dental pay-per-click campaign that you must get right….

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Advice

The correct way to change a practice domain name

Whilst changing the domain name for your dental website is far from a regular occurrence, there are occasions when it becomes necessary. For example, where a domain name is not portable e.g. based on a specific location and the practice moves address, a change would be likely. Another scenario might be where a website is in the name of a practitioner and then the business (and website) is sold on.

Because an established and successful dental website is a very valuable asset and source of new patient referrals, it is sensible to preserve it even where a change of domain name is unavoidable due to the circumstances noted above.

Not just a case of publishing the same details on a new www address

On initial inspection many might think that moving a website would simply be a case of re-publishing the information on the new name. This is actually a large part of it but there are other elements which are absolutely critical – for example, preserving your Google ranking and also ensuring that anyone who clicks on existing web results, gets through to the new site.

The role of the ‘301’ re-direct

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Announcements

New cloud servers commissioned

In our ongoing drive to deliver the best web systems for our clients, we are pleased to announce the roll-out of a new generation of faster, bigger and ultra-secure servers.

With our customer base growing to 300+ websites and our old network starting to approach capacity, the time came to invest in the next generation of cloud servers.

To meet the new requirements we have invested in new server capacity with the following features:

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Advice

New practice with a tight budget? Which marketing elements come first?

I’m prompted to write this article following many discussions with dentists who were just starting out and wanted to know how they should prioritise their marketing spend. I’m loosely labeling it “incremental dental marketing” to try to illustrate that you don’t need to do everything at once and can build up steadily after the basic framework is in place.

Whilst there are many marketing/advertising tools and techniques available, experience suggests that there is a fundamental set which need to be in place first.

Getting this “start-up” framework in place will start to attract the new dental patient enquiries which all practices, not just the new ones, rely on. So let’s take a closer look….

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Advice

Your domain name is extremely valuable – make sure it’s yours!

There are some well documented stories about businesses who failed to renew their domain names in time, resulting in their websites going off-line. Fortunately this is a rare event as the large majority either set their domains to auto-renew at the registrar or leave it to their marketing company to look after.

However, failure to renew is not the only problem to watch out for. In some cases, a business makes the mistake of allowing their domain name (their www address) to be registered in the wrong name. This may be the personal name of a staff member e.g. an IT support guy, or maybe the practice manager. Whilst to some this may seem like a trivial administrative error, it could actually present some quite serious difficulties. This is because the person who is recorded as the registrant of the domain, is, in effect its legal owner – at least for the duration of the registration.

There are some legal cases (fortunately few) where ex. employees have used the domain registration, in their name, as leverage in disputes with their former companies. Whilst these may be quite extreme cases, they have happened and serve to illustrate the importance of getting your dental business domain name registration correct.

Who should the domain be registered to?

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