News & Announcements (Our Blog)
- Why should I use Great Dental Websites instead of a WordPress system?
- We actually considered Wordpress (and a few other CMS systems) early on but rejected them for the following reasonsThe High Cost of Updates: We regularly update & improve our dental website system (last release: http://www.
greatdentalwebsites.com/news/ ) based on changes in the Google/Bing algorithms to improve our customers' website performance as a whole. Because each wordpress site is configured individually, this isn't really possible. This lets us keep our customers ahead of the competition for minimal cost (cost of improvements / total customers) and as you can imagine, it is always getting cheaper as we expand.new-features-improved- dayshours-open-faster-sites- phone-call-tracking/
Read MoreIf you have a custom WordPress site, you can of course make these changes too, but you'll have to pay a developer each time you want to make changes, or hope someone makes a plugin you can use. With our system, we just roll the changes out and your website is seamlessly upgraded.The analogy I like to use with customers is that with our service, it would be as if every time you took your car in for an oil change, they added 3 HP, 1 MPG, and a hookup for your iPhone or something like that.There are a one good reason to use a WordPress site and NOT use our system: You have a very exact idea of how the graphic design should be and you do not want to compromise. You will pay more for this in the long run (at least by our calculations, which is why we didn't go wordpress) but for some customers this is a must have. - Comments(0)
- The Importance of A Dental Website and SEO Presence
- What if we told you that you could expand your patient base for very little money?One of the best ways to expand your dental practice is to make it morevisible to potential patients. The quickest way to accomplish this is to improve your SEO presence.Studies have shown that 42% of men and 39% of women use search engines every day. In the nextdecade these numbers are projected to grow tremendously. Yet some small businesses have yet tograsp this trend. Approximately 27% of U.S small businesses have no SEO plan. Dentists thatignore the power of an SEO presence to generate interest for business risk being left behind. Searchengines are quickly becoming the most popular way to find local search needs. It is no longer a perk tohave an SEO presence; it is a necessity.In order to have a strong SEO presence, you need to have a great dental website. The ability of awebsite to transform a dental practice cannot be overstated. An engaging demtal website allows potential patientsto learn about your dental practice and its successes, to know the nature of your practice (i.e hours ofoperation, insurance providers accepted, etc.) and even can make it easier to make appointments.Having a place where customers can get these questions answered saves lots of time that you candevote to giving your patients better care. It also can add a personality to your business that will giveyou an edge. Patients want health Dentists that understand them and their needs and a websiteis a great way to communicate this in a unique way.A great way to get more patients is to become a valuable source of information to them. Forthis reason it may benefit you to answer some common questions on your website. Not only will thissave you the time of having to answer it in person, it will also create a sense of trust and reliability thatis crucial to any patient-dentist relationship. It will allow patients to look to you for valuable advice ontheir dental needs. It serves as a great ice breaker that can pay dividends to you down the line. Considerposting FAQs (frequently asked questions) as well as articles on common conditions that patients comein with. Also, you can survey some of your patients about information that they would like to knowabout if you are looking for the right topics to write about.Each of these steps is predicated on improving one thing: communication. In a world thathas become smaller from technology, consumers are looking for providers that are not only the bestcaregivers, but the most effective communicators. Increasing your SEO presence, building a greatdental website as well as providing valuable information to potential patients are all great ways to exhibitcommunication. Not only will this make your practice run more efficiently, it will give you a needed edgeon all of your local competition.Read More
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- Creating QR Codes for your Dental Practice's website - make sure to strip down the URL!
One of our customers had followed our handy QR Code Guide For Dentists, but ran into a problem generating a code for his Google Places page. This was the QR code he initially generated:
As you can imagine, this isn't easy to shrink down to a small size, and as a result, it was difficult to scan with a mobile phone. The problem here is that Google Generates giant URLs by default, with lots of worthless junk in there that you don't need. All you really need is something like this:
http://maps.google.com/maps/place?cid=13693662398849837547
Compare that to the URL string on the same Google Places page generated by Google:http://maps.google.com/maps/place?hl=en&safe=off&gs_upl=&ix=sea&ion=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.,cf.osb&biw=1680&bih=889&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=brentwood+dental+group+st+louis&fb=1&gl=us&hq=brentwood+dental+group&hnear=0x87d8b4a9faed8ef9:0xbe39eaca22bbe05b,St+Louis,+MO&cid=13693662398849837547&dtab=2&action=openratings&ei=4Y5GT5_QOK_-iQKz1enaDQ&sa=X&oi=local_result&ct=write-review&resnum=1&ved=0CEQQtwQwAA
Good Grief! After we got rid of all the junk, we had this nice little QR Code:
Much better huh?What about URL shortners:
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Avoid them - a lot of them are fly by night and might go about of business. Plus if the user scans the code and sees a url shortener, its anybody's guess where this might point to. Could be to your dental website, could be to malware. Better to just give them a link to the real thing.- Comments(0)
- 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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