by AdminPosted on Posted in Financial

How much do I need to spend to promote my dental practice on-line?

I’m prompted to write this particular article after reading a useful web review which proposed baseline metrics to measure the performance of typical dental practices. These elements were shown as spend as a percentage of the practice turnover, for example, lab fees, staff costs, marketing etc.

I’d like to expand further on the web marketing cost element and how this factor can vary significantly based on practice location, strength of the local competition and the growth aspirations of the business. Here are just a few examples of typical web marketing budgets and the elements a practice should consider based on their particular circumstance.

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Tools

What’s the difference between these important Google properties?

Google properties for dentistsGoogle is constantly evolving the tools it makes available to businesses to help them advertise on the web – so-much-so that the ever-changing formats can get quite confusing and often frustrating!

This is particularly the case for the local business listings and the newer, Google+ business properties. In this article we will try to explain what these two important properties are and why a dental practice needs them. Oh and please bear with me – even for those who are web “savvy”, Google’s naming conventions can be a little weird….

Google+ Local (formerly Google Places)

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by AdminPosted on Posted in seo

What to do if your dental website is relegated by Google

In early 2012, Google really started to get tough with websites that were “over optimised” – this typically happened where thousands of low quality links had been built by SEO companies in an attempt to drive the website higher in the search ranking. This huge change by Google, affectionately called the “Penguin” update, followed close on the heels of the earlier “Panda” updates which penalised low-quality websites, for example those with “thin” or duplicated content.

Google followed up the initial Penguin update with further penalties which resulted in many, formerly prominent dental websites, falling off the search radar together with a dramatic fall in new patient enquiries.

How do you recover from such a penalty?

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Advice

Identifying the good and the bad in modern web design

The web moves incredibly quickly; what was relevant in web design 18 months ago may no longer be valid today. However, whilst accepting that some future modernisation is inevitable, any business developing a new website needs to be sure that they get as much useful life as possible from their investment.

This means researching the subject carefully and choosing a web design partner who will guide you ethically every step of the way. By avoiding the latest design “fads” and adopting a solid, practical approach, it is still possible to build a website which will not become obsolete too quickly and serve well for several years.

Avoiding shallow, short-lived design trends

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by AdminPosted on Posted in pay per click

…and how they hit your dental marketing budget

Avoiding basic errors in your dental PPC campaignOne area where dental practices consistently waste money is the use of Google Adwords which have not been optimised correctly or worse, not optimised at all.

Typical dental pay-per-click (PPC) budgets run from a few hundred pounds per month through to several thousands – some large practices in highly competitive environments spend *very* significant amounts of money in the race to attract clicks to their websites.

Irrespective of the spend, the same rules apply – each and every Adwords account should be optimised to deliver the best traffic for the least spend. You’ll notice that I didn’t say “most clicks for the least spend” – getting clicks is easy enough but those clicks need to be high quality i.e. targeted for your services and likely to deliver results.

Setting up and running PPC properly is a time consuming task and requires experience – a well-run campaign can save 40 -> 50% versus the same campaign run badly.

Here are 6 Adwords mistakes that we see regularly….

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Advice

Website and email communication of sensitive patient data

New GDC guidance, due to come into effect at the end of September 2013, incorporates a new clause covering the transmission of confidential patient information, whether via email or from a contact form on a dental practice website. Here is the wording of clause 4.5.2:

“If you are sending confidential information, you should use a secure method. If you are sending or storing confidential information electronically, you should ensure that it is encrypted”

At Dental Media we have been researching this subject for the last 6 months given that we had some prior knowledge of the pending standard. As with all “standards” there is an element of interpretation and in this case, the key appears to be what is considered to be “confidential” or sensitive information. Also what constitutes a reasonable and proportionate response to the perceived problem?

GDC clarification

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Website

Checking the load speed of dental websites with Pingdom Tools

waiting for a website to loadHave you ever looked at a flashy website on your fast broadband connection and desk-top PC and, later, tried to load the same site on your mobile ‘phone over 3G or slower wi-fi connection? Quite often the experience you get on your desk-top is a long-way away from that on your mobile ‘phone – so often that same website with the huge background images and clunky coding under the bonnet, just doesn’t load.

Let’s take a closer look at the issues….

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by AdminPosted on Posted in seo

Primary html data tags and how they are used for SEO.

In another back-to-basics article, we will take a look at the some of the key data tags used within the html code of a website and how they contribute to search engine optimisation. Just a basic knowledge of these tags will allow you to see if your website designer has an eye on how you will fare in Google as well as just making your site look pretty.

What are html data tags?

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by AdminPosted on Posted in seo

Search optimisation – why package deals don’t work

Poor dental website SEO leads to a drop in rankingsMany of us will have seen the spam emails that hit our inbox advertising SEO deals, typically promising page one results for a few hundred dollars or less.

Similarly you may have seen packaged SEO services offered by dental marketing companies in the UK promising similar success for a set monthly fee?

Here we will take a quick look at why such packages don’t make the grade and can never deliver the success of a bespoke SEO service…..

Beware of the following….

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by AdminPosted on Posted in social

A single administration interface to improve efficiency

In a recent blog post we discussed how dental practices who use social media most effectively, tend to have at least some involvement with the process. This is often a team effort whereby Dental Media assist with the technical infrastructure, some posting and support whilst the practice staff complement this with practice orientated material. It is these personalised posts that are proven to be the most effective for empathising with, and engaging, clients.

Whenever any new systems and procedures are introduced into an organisation, it’s vitally important to ensure that everything is planned to be as efficient as possible – this is equally the case for your dental social media activity. Facebook, Twitter and Google+ are the recommended baseline social channels and whilst these can all be managed via their own interfaces, there are tools available which allow you to manage all three (and more), extremely effectively through a single interface. The tool we recommend for this is called ‘HootSuite’.

using HootSuite to manage social media for dentists

HootSuite – an overview

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