Thus, being visible online can have a robust impact on your practice. If you haven’t had a website yet, you should start now. Once you’ve set it up, the next important thing to do is to get it on Google and Bing – two of the largest search engines online.
Why Utilize Google & Bing for Your Dental Practice?
When people look for products or services they need, one of the first things they do is to ‘Google’ it. They use local searches to find matching businesses in their area, get the directions to a local store, obtain their telephone numbers, check their store hours, and so on. According to a study conducted by Google, 4 in 5 consumers use search engines to find local information, using either their smartphones, tablets and other devices. 50% of these consumers who conducted a local search visited a store within a day. Additionally, 18% of local searches via smartphone led to a purchase, compared with just 7% of non-local searches.
With 90% of consumers today using search engines to find a local business, you should take the opportunity to bring your dental practice online. Once you’ve set up your professional practice website, the next thing to do is to optimize it for the search engines. This is where the complexity begins because Google and Bing have varying ways to rank websites.
Marketing is one of the most expensive parts of running a dental practice. Without enough marketing efforts, it can be difficult to scale your business. The good thing is that internet technology offers a more affordable alternative to traditional marketing approaches. It only takes minimal investment and there are many financing opportunities online cash advance, bank loans, or credit cards that dental practitioners can resort to if they lack enough funds.
How to Get Your Practice Website Up on Google
While Google can make your site available to millions of people using the search engine without you doing anything, you can speed up the process of getting listed by submitting your site to Google. There are two ways to do this. One, you can add an updated sitemap to your Google account and submit an indexing request for your desired URL through Fetch as Google tool. Two, if you already have a website, you can add an updated sitemap to your Google account.
How to Get Your Practice Website Up on Bing
This Microsoft-owned platform accounts for 9% of search traffic worldwide. It also has a 33% share in search traffic in the United States. Bing and Google work in many similar ways. To get your website listed on Bing, you should set up your business in the Bing Business Portal, which is similar to Google Places. You will need to input your business details, just like when you’re signing up for an online directory. To get indexed, you need to submit your website URL to the Configure My Site in the Bing Webmaster Tools. This process allows you to submit 10-50 URLs per month for immediate crawling and indexation.
Tips to Rank Your Site
After submitting your website to these two major search engines, the next step is to optimize it so you have a better chance of ranking high. Here are some important tips to increase your online visibility:
- Incorporate the right keywords
Keywords are words and phrases that represent what your website is all about. They commonly appear on your content, from the title to the headings, body, etc. It is important to choose the right keywords for customers to find you when they search on Google or Bing.
- Add meta tags.
Meta tags are “snippets” or short texts that describe your web content. Unlike keywords, these little descriptors don’t appear on your page content, rather, on the page code. They help search engines know what your web page is all about.
- Get social.
Aside from local search engines, people also look for businesses via social media. Make sure you create an account on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and don’t forget to link your website to your social media profiles.
- Publish fresh contents regularly.
Make sure your website is updated. Add a ‘blog’ section so you can provide helpful information to your potential customers, such as the latest in dental care, how to care for their dental health, etc. Such contents also help drive traffic to your site.
- Sign up to local directories.
Link your website to already popular sites like Yelp, Angie’s List or Thumbtack to drive additional traffic.