Google Business Profile and Dentist: Search engine optimization (SEO) has been deemed the top set of strategies for any establishment to follow. These techniques and tips collectively are the key to getting your website higher on search listings.
Learning and using generalized Dentist SEO to boost your rankings is great for any organization or establishment’s web pages. However, your dental practice should take marketing a step further and make sure to take advantage of Google Business Profile and everything that it can do for your practice.
To learn more about how to use Google Business Profile to generate more patients for your practice, keep reading. We’ll let you in on the secrets of dental marketing that you need to know to grow your practice.
Take Ownership of Your Listing
If you aren’t registered on Google Business Profile yet, you need to be. By registering with this platform, you’ll be able to provide more information about your practice for potential patients to find. You can also interact with patients using Google Business Profile.
Registering your practice doesn’t take that long. In fact, you could probably do it in just a few minutes.
All you need is a computer and some basic information about your practice. Follow these steps if you’re looking to register your practice quickly:
- Open the Google Business Profile page in a browser on your computer.
- Click “Get on Google” and log in.
- Type in your practice’s name or address so that Google can identify what practice you’re looking to claim on your Google Business Profile.
- Fill out the form that pops up. Make sure to fill this out correctly and be intentional about which category you place your practice in because this can affect your practice’s SEO.
- You can now officially register your business as yours after making sure that all of the information that you submitted is correct.
- Finally, you’ll verify your business using a postcard that Google will send you in the mail.
Show Off Your Dental Professionals
Your patients want to see pictures of your team. It’s nice to see friendly faces and be able to recognize those faces when they come into the office.
Don’t be afraid to post pictures of your dental family on your practice’s page. These can be professional or not. They can be in the workplace or not.
You should have a professional photo for your main picture, but you shouldn’t shy away from candid pictures or even silly ones. You want to come off as professional but not too serious. Find the balance.
It’s especially important to find some balance between the two if you’re representing pediatric dentistry. No parent wants to take their child to a scary dentist.
Show team pictures in the waiting room. You could even include a video introducing the team.
Make Scheduling Dental Appointments Easier
Don’t make your patients go to a million different pages to make an appointment with a professional in your practice. You’re less likely to get repeat patients or even any patients at all like this.
With Google Business Profile, you can create a link for patients to use to make appointments. They’re more likely to do so if you make the process easy.
Think about how many potential patients are going to come across your practice. Many of them may simply see your practice (and your amazing pictures) and sign up immediately. You have to make the process easy to get these quick patients.
Then, you just have to keep them drawn in with your amazing personalities and work ethics.
The easier you make it to schedule an appointment, the more likely it is that patients will create one. This means more patients for you and better care for them. It’s a win-win.
If you’ve already created an easy process for patient appointments and you’re looking for something else to help boost patient sign-up, you should think about creating provider pages. You could use these to help patients match with providers they’ll like. If you have extra time, you could even make a matching quiz.
Just get creative with it. Make every part of the experience one that your patients won’t forget.
Interact With Reviews
Patients can leave reviews about your practice whenever they want to on several different online platforms. If they leave these reviews on Google, they can show up on your Google Business Profile page.
You should not only read these reviews and take them to heart, but you should also interact with them. Leave a ‘thank you on nice reviews and offer a solution for those patients who didn’t have a great experience.
If potential patients see that you’re taking the time to leave comments on reviews and fix problematic situations, you’re more likely to draw them in. With this, they can rest knowing that you’ll be able to help them even if they do have a poor experience. Although, we do hope that the positive reviews will outweigh the negative reviews so much that your patients won’t be worried at all.
Keep in mind that interacting with reviews doesn’t just apply to those reviews left on Google Business Profile. There are all kinds of reviews on several different websites that patients choose to leave.
Take a look at all of the different reviews that are left across different platforms and respond to them. It takes a little bit of work, but this little bit of work can go a long way.
Do a quick Google search on your practice and see what sites have identified you as an establishment. These are the places where patients could leave their reviews. In fact, they may have already.
Go through each review and get a feel for how patients are feeling. Just remember to actually make changes when there is an issue. That’s how you can get negative reviewers to come back despite a poor experience.
Engage With Your Audience
Overall, you need to be engaging with your audience. We just discussed how you can engage with your audience using reviews, but you should also apply this to any social media pages that you may have.
It’s important that your patients know and understand that your practice has a friendly nature all across different platforms. You should respond to comments, whether they’re positive or negative, on every platform.
The hardest part about this – just as with reviews – is addressing negative reviews that are legitimate. You might have had a rude staff member or a long waiting time or some other issue that you’ve already resolved.
When addressing negative comments about already-resolved conflicts, be sure to respond in a friendly, inviting way. You should ask them to come back and check out your new staff or your new system. You could also put in a sentence or two about understanding how they feel and wanting them to have a better experience with your dental office because you would want a better experience too.
The number one rule to keep in mind is to relate with your patients. Keep their point of view in mind and think about how you would feel if you were set in their situation.
Would you settle for the situation happening to you? Would you go back to the dental office that made you wait for three hours?
As long as you keep things personal, you’ll be able to build a successful and meaningful relationship with your patients.
Keep Your Branding Consistent
As you’re creating a great online presence, you need to keep your branding consistent. This may sound complicated, but it means that a patient should see the same qualities in your dental practice in one location as another.
If a patient sees your dental practice on Instagram, the branding there should be consistent with that found when the patient finds your dental practice on Google. The easiest way to do this is to build a mission statement or a set of qualities that you want your dental office to exude. Then, apply it to all of your platforms.
Most companies can do this fairly easily by posting the same content across all of their platforms. If it’s all the same, it’s automatically consistent.
While we do encourage you to gear your marketing towards whatever platform you’re posting on, posting the same content is safe. It’s also a great idea to do if you want patients to be able to recognize your dental practice because of the kinds of pictures that are shown.
For example, a patient may find a picture of your staff compelling. They’ll know that they’ve found your exact dental practice on Instagram when they see that picture on your feed.
As you’re building your brand, be clear. Each patient should understand what you’re trying to convey with your brand, from intelligence and professionalism to kindness and caring.
Educate Your Community
Use your knowledge and educate your community. This is one of the best strategies that businesses use for building a community on various social media websites.
Make a variety of different posts about dental topics. Teach your audience about when to go to the dentist or when their pain is too much to handle on their own.
The great thing is that dentistry provides a variety of topics that you can hone in on. You can post questions, polls, true or false questions, and other kinds of educational posts.
The more interactive the posts are, the more people are going to want to like, comment, and get to know your practice. The more they do this, the greater a relationship you’ll build with them.
Get creative. You could even make a giveaway or another kind of contest that could get your audience geared up.
The point of this is to get more people following and engaging with your practice. This is how you make lifetime patients.
Use the New Features Available on Google Business Profile
Google Business Profile is constantly updating to provide new features for the businesses, practices, and other establishments that use the platform. You should always be up-to-date with these new updates.
Most recently, Google Business Profile has released support links and virtual appointment capabilities. Both are useful for your practice.
Support links allow your practice to ask patients for donations. If you’re having a rough year, this is useful for getting things back under control.
You could even offer gift card purchases through these links. Consider offering gift cards for teeth whitening or some money off of teeth straightening.
Virtual appointments are becoming more and more popular across the entire medical field. Using this virtual appointment setter can help your practice drum up more patient appointments.
Among these two updates, there are also more photo and video capabilities as well as posting options. You can let your patients know about any time-sensitive updates through these means.
There are also attributes that let your patients know if your practice is wheelchair accessible or accepts credit cards. You can also list your treatment offerings here. List the surgeries you perform or the treatments you offer here to draw more patients in.
Google will also now allow your practice to post temporary hours. If you have a schedule change or a holiday pop-up, you can let your patients know via Google’s posted hours.
All of these updates make the experience better for you and your patients.
Get Help With Your Dentist SEO
If you’re looking to bring in more qualified patients to your dental practice, the answer is clear. Use Google Business Profile.
Gearing consistent dental marketing techniques to potential patients is bound to grow your practice. Use Google Business Profile to interact with those patients more and create a clear brand for your dental practice.
If dental marketing isn’t your strong suit or you just need help getting started, you can count on us at Search Business Group. We can help you strengthen your dental SEO practices and get more qualified patients for your practice.
Get a quote today to get started on bettering your website and taking advantage of keen dental marketing techniques. We’re happy to help you grow your practice and bring more patients into your doors.
