Are You Leveraging the Internet to Attract More Patients?

In today’s competitive marketplace, not having a strong online presence for your practice puts you at a major disadvantage.  Statistics show that nearly half of all Internet searchers visit local businesses after first researching them online.  With data like this, it’s clear that you need to be doing everything you can to maximize your visibility on the Web.

As an example of how important proper online visibility can be for dentists, let’s look at how many Google searches took place last month in Indianapolis for a few dental related search terms:

Dentist: 12,300, Dentists 3,900, Dentistry 3,600, Teeth Whitening 720, Cosmetic Dentist 480, Sedation Dentistry: 170

This is just a sampling of the search terms that were typed into Google by people in Indianapolis looking for a new dentist or a dental procedure.

It is the dentists who are showing up on the first page of Google that are getting the calls from those prospective patients.

Let’s face it, for the majority of consumers today, the internet (and Google in particular), has replaced the yellow pages when searching for local products and services.  As a dentist, when someone searches for you they are going to use a geographic modifier – for example:  Rather than typing in “dentist”, they’re going to search “dentist Denver”.  You want to be sure you are listed on the first page because most people don’t go past the first page.

So, how can you be on the first page of Google when consumers search for dental services in your area?

There are a few ways to do this, but the one that will bring you the highest return on investment and best results over the long-term is search engine optimization (SEO).  SEO is the practice of optimizing your website for your target keyword phrases and getting links from other websites to yours so the search engines find and rank your website.

Get started by signing up for a free Dental Website Marketing Audit and find out if SEO is a good fit for you.