News & Announcements (Our Blog)
- 5 Things Dentists can do to improve Social Media Marketing Efforts
A few things for Dentists to keep in mind if you are trying to outsource some of your social media efforts:
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1) Make sure that if you hire a company to post content to Facebook/Twitter/etc that it is 100% original, and not simply posted for every single one of their clients with some minor changes/customization.
2) Even if you don't have time to be involved completely, be involved a little. Responding to comments is one thing that is a pretty low time commitment ( < 5 min per day?) and your receptionist could take care of.
3) Don't use personal accounts to create social media profiles. We create a new Google Account for each one of our customers before we create any other online presences. Its awkward if you have to share your personal facebook/gmail/etc account with an outside firm who would then have access to your email or personal messages.
4) Make sure your patients know about your social media accounts. Put QR codes on your business cards or letter head. Post something like this in your waiting room: http://www.greatdentalwebsites.com/news/promote-your-dental-website-facebook-page-reviews-etc-in-your-waiting-room-with-this-handy-template/.
5) Ask for reviews. If a patient had a positive experience and it was obvious, have your front desk send them a personalized email followup and ask for a positive review. Give them a direct link to your Google Places page or Yelp page.
These are all little things you could do today!- Comments(0)
- Adding a link/icon to your Google Plus business page on your dental website
Google now seems to be favoring Google Plus content over other social networking content, so it's probably about time you created a Google Plus business page for your Dental practice and linked it up to your Dental Website. If you're one of our customers, this shows you how to do it, step by step.
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- New Features: Improved days/hours open, faster sites, phone call tracking
New Features
- Vastly improved hours/days open system. It's now way, way easier to setup your days/hours open. Plus the new system places nicely with the way Google expects to find your data!
- Improved page load time for all websites by 1.6% - Blog post: http://www.greatdentalwebsites.com/news/caching-improved-all-dental-websites-now-load-16-faster/
- Improved the aesthetics of the "pods" that appear around the site which show related content.
- Made it easier to delete records while editing them if you please. If you're editing a record, you can delete it on the same page.
- Live online chat support now integrated into all accounts! If you're ever feeling stuck live help is a single click away!
- Dynamic Phone number switching - if you want to track how many calls you get via your dental website or from adwords campaigns or anything else, we'll help you setup "Dynamic phone number switching": A different, tracking phone number for each source of patients that helps you calculate ROI.
- Pagecontent now on testimonials - embed testimonials from 3rd party souces like Lighthouse360, etc
- New Themes - We've hired a new designer to make some awesome themes for us. They'll be rolling out next week.
Bug Fixes
- Smile gallery before & after gallery images are displayed with more variety in the services section. Before sometimes there was unnecessary duplication
- Video testimonials can now handle the new style of youtu.be links (and anything else youtube throws at it)
- Smile Gallery images always display at the right size now
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- Caching Improved, All Dental Websites now load 1.6% faster
This is one of those "under the hood" type of upgrades that we're churning out every month for our customers that I thought I would highlight and share. We made some minor tweaks to our caching system that is designed to speed up page load times. Fast dental websites = potential patients who are not frustrated waiting for stuff to load.
The short version is we were able to speed up pageload time on average by 1.6%. It's a small improvement, but we try to do something like this each month. Over time our customers websites have seen a marked uptick in performance, and will continue to see it.
Here is the raw data for those who are curious:
www.drgladnick.com Homepage About Us Services 34931.00 18852.00 34732.00 Before 34283.00 18601.00 34291.00 After 1.89 1.35 1.29 % Difference 1.51 Average % Difference www.northestdentist.com Homepage About Us Services 12838.00 10739.00 19159.00 Before 12586.00 10575.00 18857.00 After 2.00 1.55 1.60 % Difference 1.72 Average % Difference www.thelancasterdentist.com Homepage About Us Services 14431 12044 18307 Before 14153 11881 18068 After 1.96 1.37 1.32 % Difference 1.55 Average % Difference 1.59 Total % Improvement
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- Screencast Video for new releases & Walkthrough: Better footers, Pod changes, privacy policy, bug fixes
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- Better footers, Pod changes, privacy policy - January Update
Quick Announcements
Special Offer: 2 Months of FREE service for your youtube video OR a FREE Microsite for a year
We're giving away 2 months of our standard website hosting or one of our new microsites for a full year! All you have to do is:
- Upload a video testimonial to youtube about Great Dental Websites
- Send us the link
- The video must be at least 45 seconds long
- You must be an existing customer. But once you are, you can enter this promotion immediately.
Suggested talking points:
- Why you chose us over other companies
- How many patients you've gotten from your website
- Compliments you've received about your website
- Your ROI
- Customer service / responsiveness
- Specific features about GDW that you love
Improved Footers for Better SEO
You may have noticed we've improved the design of the "footer" that is on the bottom of everyone's website to make your dental website "more crawlable" by search engines. It also puts all the major items in one place to make user navigation a little easier too!
Online Forms: Better Integration w/ 3rd party services
We've updated our online forms so that they can link to off site 3rd party services like Denticon.
Pod System on Homepage Improved
You can now add video testimonials and "custom content" (any HTML) as pods on the homepage. The pod system will be getting a complete overhaul soon so that it is fully sortable and easier to manage.
Privacy Policy
We've added a privacy policy page on everyones site with a very generic, non-specific privacy policy that complies with the basic requirements for Google Adwords and other PPC services. It can be found at www.yourwebsitehere.com/privacy-policy.
Bug Fixes
- We fixed a bug in "Edit Mode" that could cause you to get stuck on a page.
- We fixed an issue where a user took too long to edit content and would get logged out when they tried to submit the data.
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- December 9, 2011
- How Dentists can promote their Dental Website using Youtube videos
More and more dentists are beginning to post video testimonials of their patients extolling their virtues online. We believe that the best place to post these videos is on Youtube, and no where else. Here's why:
- Youtube delivers videos fast, so visitors to your dental website won't have to wait
- It's free
- Youtube is the largest video website, so you may get traffic from people browsing/searching
- Youtube videos appear in Google search results
Read that last point again. This is the real strength. When patients are searching for a dentist on Google, if you have correctly labeled your youtube videos with the correct keywords, you will see results like this:
See the video at the bottom here? Sort of stands out out doesn't it? Here is another example query of a patient searching for "dentures" in Fort Collins, CO.
How to write youtube video titles & Descriptions for your dental videosThe key here are the keywords associated with your youtube video. You need to have the following keywords sprinkled in both your title and description:- Location information (ie Wilmington, DE). Ideally use both forms of this (Wilmington, DE and Wilmington Delaware).
- The name of the dental procedure the testimonial is related to, if applicable. Again use several forms, like "Orthodontics" "Orthodontist" "braces".
But don't spam and overdue it by just repeating the keywords over and over and over. Google will figure it out, and it doesn't impress human beings who see it.
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- October 31, 2011
- New website launched for Lafayette, LA Dentist - Dr. Jerome Smith
Today we were pleased to launch our latest website, http://www.acadianadentistry.com/, for Dr. Jerome Smith DDS of Lafayette, Louisiana. Dr Smith did the bulk of the copywriting himself, and we helped tweak it a little bit and are doing the SEO. Congrats Dr. Smith!
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- October 25, 2011
- New Release: staff page, spam detection, featured FAQ & SEO improvements
List all staff on the same page
Due to a customer request, you now have the ability to list all of your staff on a single page. This will be the default in the future for new customers. To make this change (and change it back) goto the "Site Settings" link in your admin menu and find the staffdisplaytype setting. Then change it if you like!
You can now choose the homepage FAQ
Previously, an FAQ was randomly selected and displayed on the homepage. Now, you can mark a specific faq as featured and it will always appear on the homepage.
Improved SPAM detection for contact page
Unfortunately, some of you have been receiving spam emails via the contact/appointment request form on your website. We've improved the spam catcher to hopefully block these out. Please let us know if this improves your situation if you were previously receiving spam.
Minor SEO Tweaks and updates
Some slight changes to the underlying metadata that search engines crave to boost everyone's performance.
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- October 24, 2011
- How to do SEO yourself on your Great Dental Website (Simple version)
I got the following email today from one of our do it yourself customers:
"Everything is working well so far...Now, I'm struggling to find a way to make it visible. Is there anything you can help me with to make it visible?"
A dental website is of course, much more effective if lots of people are visting it - so how can we go about making it more "visible" to search engines?
Search Engine Optimization
I should mention that we offer a more robust version of what I am about to describe as a service: Search Engine Optimization for Dental Websites. But for our intrepid users determined to do it yourself, read on. The short version is SEO comes down to two things on dental websites: 1) Tweaking the content on your website a little bit, 2) Convincing other people to link to your website from their website.
Tweaking your content
One every public page inside of your great dental website there is an option to "Edit Meta Data". You're going to want to change the default metadata (title and description are probably enough and you can ignore the "keywords" field) to have the following information:
1) Title: 70 Characters or less. Contains the location of your practice (ie Denver, CO). Contains the main "keyword" for this page. If it's a service description of dental implants, then you want "Dental implants" in there. One time only. You can add additional info as you please, but these items are vital. It also can't hurt to add the relevant "professional title" you had, so Dentist, or Orthodontist, etc.
2) Meta Description: 150 Characters or less. This should be one sentence about the page, and should again contain the main keyword term, or perhaps a variation of it. So if the page is about "Tooth whitening", use "teeth whitening" here. Or Bleaching. Alternate terms. Also try to add your location in again (once) in the short form - so just the city.
3) For Both: These need the keywords, but don't spam them over and over again. Google is smarter then that. Plus, this metadata must be human readable because this is what will be displayed to users in search engine results on Google. So try to put yourself in the user's place and write some human-friendly meta data.
Here is an example of well written metadata (For a crowns page):
Title: Wilmington Dentist: Crowns : Protect weakened teeth : Dr. Gladnick,DDS
Description: Also called a "cap", Dental crowns is a tooth shaped covering that is placed over a dental implant to restore it's natural beauty
Getting links to your site
So now that you've gone through your entire site and improved the metadata, it's time to build some links to your dental website. Start calling anyone and everyone you know who has a website, especially dental related ones, and especially dental related sites in your area.
Here are a few ideas:
1) Friends from dental school
2) Local dental lab
3) Other dental specialists you refer patients to
4) Business who supply you
5) Insurance companies (they have directories)
6) Patients who love you who own a business.
Hit the phone, ask them in the office, but gradually start building up the incoming links to your website!
Conclusion
There are still other things to do, but this is the bulk of the work, and it's definitely the easiest/best bang for your buck (time) that you can do. Other things like Claiming your google places listing, setting up Google Webmaster tools, on page content optimization, keyword density, and other items will be discussed later if there is interest. However, if you follow this advice it will dramatically improve the search engine performance of your dental website. Of course, we also provide Search Engine Optimization for Dental Websites if you'd prefer to just have us do it!
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