Google’s latest “medic” update has certainly affected your search engine rankings, if you own a dental practice in Syracuse, NY. In fact, about one quarter of all dental practices have experienced negative effects from this update. This means that going forward, you must change your perspective about using the most popular search engine for building your dental practice. Whether you are buying a dental practice, selling one, or simply building your dental practice to increase your market share, the search engine marketing landscape is quickly changing.
About Google’s 2018 Medic Update
Google’s August 2018 broad core algorithm update is called “medic” because one writer noted the changes broadly affect the healthcare and fitness industries. From Google’s perspective, the update makes the cream of search results rise closer to the top. But you must review your SEO strategy and overall online business goals, to ensure you properly use the web for building your dental practice.
Overall, Google makes periodic updates to ensure search results match the searcher’s intent and query. To determine the best search results going forward, the algorithm now also looks at the intent of your pages.
Let’s say, for example, someone is looking to learn about dental veneers. The algorithm feeds page results with quality educational information about dental veneers. But if they seek to find a local Syracuse dentist who provides dental veneers, the results feed pages about dentists selling those services.
In essence and toward building your dental practice, you must ensure your pages meet your end business goals. Do you want your website to provide broad information about dentistry? Or do you want to acquaint your searcher about your services and capabilities as a local dentist, to book an appointment?
Clarify your goals in all you do, for the reader’s sake and your search engine placement. Ask yourself, “Do I want to provide a WebMD-style information portal?” Or, “Do I want to show potential patients that I am expert in what I do, as a dentist?”
Building Your Dental Practice As an Extension of Yourself
Site reputation is one of the biggest points of Google’s recent changes. Instead of just finding quality information on your site, a searcher must have access to who that information is coming from. Building your dental practice through your website now means making that website speak in the voice of your experts. It also must share the identity of those experts.
The reputation focus comes down to searcher safety on the internet. The biggest of search engines seeks to feed quality content from an identifiable, reliable and safe source. For most dental practices, the safest of sources are the primary dentist, dental associates and other key members of the team.
To meet your reputation needs, to satisfy Google and promote greater return on your search engine medical marketing work, consider some key updates to your website. Suggestions include:
- Clearly identifying your “experts” who author the content
- Posting a bio and photo for each expert
- Linking expert bio and name to reputable external content about that person
- Linking experts’ and the practice’s social media pages
- Ensuring safety and accuracy of provided blogs or educational information through expert endorsement
When you consider that building your dental practice comes down to the quality of the dentist or dentists, these changes make great sense. Unfortunately, the methods used for search engine optimization by many practices until now only come down to word counts and “more pages.” This means you must change your SEO strategy, integrating reputation to truly reap rewards.
The Simple Approach to “Fixing” Your Search Engine Ranking Problems
There is no longer a “quick fix” approach for website search engine ranking. Google’s algorithms and quality standards only get smarter over time. So you must put aside the “toolbox” and “tricks” approaches of the past, to truly provide a website with quality, clarity, reputation, authority, safety, trust and information the searcher wants.
Keep doing things like providing content of 350 words or more, as a minimum per subject and page. Ensure you continue providing quality headlines that make sense and are not clickbait. If you use research or study results in your content, link to that scientific data as a source. Also continue providing alt tags for images and using standard SEO best practices.
But more than anything, ensure that you become the master of your web domain and build your reputation as an expert. Know about the content your website delivers and endorse it as your own. Make yourself a prominent part of your overall dentistry brand. Show your potential patients who you are and provide them information about you.
Many dentists prefer to remain behind the scenes, when it comes to marketing a practice. But when a patient is in your dental chair, you are the dental practice. The same must be true on your website and overall web presence.
Doing these things does not promise quick results in building your dental practice. But the changes do establish you as reputable and worthy of long-term traffic, from Google’s perspective. More and more, website ownership and search engine optimization are a long-term marketing strategy. Start doing these things today, to increase your reputation and traffic for years to come.
Guidance and Support You Need During Dental Practice Transitions
Building your dental practice is a lengthy process. But the rewards certainly pay off, particularly when you decide to sell your dental practice or expand into a new market. To understand your market position and potential for selling or buying a dental practice, talk to the experts who understand your Syracuse, NY business. Call Encompass IHC at 919-395-0444 for a free consultation.
