Patience Is a Virtue

One of the things everyone needs to know from the outset of any search engine optimization campaign is this: establishing a dominant Internet presence for your website takes time. There's no avoiding it. Getting your website to the first page of top search engine results should be the fundamental objective of any dental practice that wants to fully leverage the Internet to generate new dental patients, but you simply cannot expect instant, first-page, listings. Run away from any SEO firm that tells you otherwise! No wonder that a solid SEO company will typically require a six to twelve-month contractual commitment.

You may have heard the saying, "A watched pot never boils." In reality, a watched pot requires the same amount of time to boil as an unwatched pot, but a watched pot seems to take longer because you are staring at it. Once you hire a solid, reputable SEO company, there is no getting around the time it will take for your website to leapfrog your competitors on the top search engines. It is important to monitor your positioning on a monthly basis (and any good SEO firm knows that you expect results), but you must allow the time it takes for the process to work. A truly excellent SEO company will share the risk of investment by guaranteeing a contractual number of first-page results as a basis for any SEO billing.

After you have done your research and chosen a good SEO company, expect success, but only with time. Let the process work for you and good things will come... just you wait and see.

Jessica Espinoza
Page 1 Solutions

Duplicate Content

One of the biggest problems that we see every day with prospective clients is duplicate content. I can't tell you how many dental practices’ websites have exactly the same content as one, two or hundreds of other websites. In most cases, the duplicate content can be seen on pages describing a specific type of operation or condition. Other practices’ websites use the exact same words to describe the same topic.

Why does this happen? First, there are a number of website development services that use database generated websites that use the exact same copy for multiple websites. In many ways, these firms are the worst. They know that the duplicate content is hurting their clients' ability to be positioned on the search engines, but they do it anyway.

The second reason for duplicate content is that the practice themselves wrote the content for the website and the dentists who wrote it took the easy way out and copied the content from another site - or many other sites - that they found on the search engines.

Why is duplicate content a problem? While this may not seem like a problem from the perspective of the consumer, it is a big problem from the perspective of the search engines. Consumers, who are looking for a dentist to handle their potential procedure, are not likely to do a careful comparison among several - or several hundred - websites to try to figure out which ones copied content from other websites vs. which ones researched and wrote the content themselves. Even if they found the duplicate content, they probably couldn't figure out who wrote it first. Anyway, they are looking for a dentist in their market and don't care if another dentist in another market has the same content on his or her website.

The search engines do care, however. First, the search engines index millions of web pages every day. The search engine algorithms specifically look for duplicate content and discount the websites and webpages that have it. Also, since they have so many pages relating to the same or similar content in their indexes, they know which one came first and they penalize or discount the pages that copied it.

So what do you do? First, don't hire a website development firm that does not promise to write original content for you. Does this mean that they need to be experts in your specialty? Not necessarily, but it doesn't hurt. It certainly means that they have to be aware of the problem and have content writers on staff.

Finally, after the website has been written. Try running the copy through CopyScape. In fact, try running some of the websites they show you through Copyscape. You'll quickly figure out if they know enough to avoid the duplicate content problem.

Dan Goldstein
Page 1 Solutions

Now I'm a Believer...In Web Video

Using video on the web isn't a new idea, but historically, it's been very problematic. Bandwidth used to be the biggest problem. It used to be that in order to put video on the web, you had to compress it until the picture was barely recognizable, and the viewing area had to be the size of a miniature post-it note.

As bandwidth becomes less and less of an issue, more clients are deciding to use video on their sites. I used to be a bit skeptical as to whether or not this was a good idea. Because of the conflicting platform standards out there, it's still possible that if you put video on your site, some people might not be able to view the video, which can mean that the viewer is prompted to download software and/or there's a gaping hole in your site. That can hurt credibility, and certainly means that, more than likely, someone who encounters these problems is going to leave your site and find the information they need elsewhere.

Having said all that; having presented the worst case scenario, it's now safe to say that the matters that made video risky in the past have settled enough to make video a worthwhile venture for a dental practice marketing itself on the web. The Internet has grown to embrace video, and some suspect that the Internet and television will eventually merge to the point that a website without video will seem archaic. But let's focus on the present.

Video can do so much more for you than just making your site look more high-tech. By adding more types of media to your site, you increase your exposure on the web. There are entire sites on the web that are dedicated to people looking for video. So, if you have a video about sedation dentistry, you could submit your video to all of those video sites in hopes of getting more incoming links, and therefore more exposure. Search engines like Google and Alta Vista have entire pages of search results dedicated to serving up video, audio, and images as search results. Those results won't likely generate new patients directly, but indirectly, this diversity in media can make your site more successful in the eyes of the search engines.

Video also increases your credibility. The public perception of video on the website is definitely that video is technically impressive, but it also sends the message that you know what you're talking about. Like it or not, if you say it on video, you're message is more convincing.

Lastly, video increases the time that the average person spends on your site. Not everyone will watch your video, and those that do watch your video are not likely to watch the entire video unless it's very short, but that's not crucial. A longer visitor session is more likely to generate an email than a brief, thirty second visit. If you can extend your average visitor session to four minutes or more, you'll find that you're getting more emails.

So, if you have a video that you send out to potential patients, consider putting it on your website. For example, if you're featured on the news, be sure to get that video out there. If you don't have any video, don't worry. Page 1 is now offering custom video production that will bring your practice to life on the web. Contact us today for more information and don't let a web marketing resource go to waste.

Jonathan Fashbaugh
Page 1 Solutions

Back to Fundamentals

Choose the Right Domain Name

Those of us in the web site marketing business spend countless hours testing and discussing what Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, et al consider being desirable web content in order to achieve the best search result positioning for our clients. This immersion in the latest search engine algorithms and nuances makes it easy for us to lose sight of the overall “marketing” component that is in our charge.

More savvy web site marketers recognize that once a prospect enters our dental clients’ web sites, the goal is to keep them there and ultimately to compel them to inquire about the products or services being offered. Relevant, informative and original web site content remains the best way to accomplish this.

But efforts on both counts are futile if despite achieving great search result positioning, prospects do not “click-through” to our clients’ sites in the first place. This is likelier to happen if a client’s competitor’s site’s domain name is more relevant to what a prospect is looking for as he or she is scanning even among the top search results.

One way to make the domain name relevant is to include the most desirable keyword (or key phrase) in the domain name itself. There is also an ever so slight optimization advantage to this approach.

If our client’s trade name is recognized locally or among likely prospects, or if it happens to be descriptive of the product or service our client offers, another approach would be take advantage of this “branding equity” by using it in or as the domain name. But there is a tendency for our clients to want to use their trade name as the domain name anyway, and we should advise against this if doing so does not make sense. The web marketer should put him or herself in the prospect’s shoes and carefully consider if he or she is more or less likely to choose a search result with a particular domain name.

Choosing the right domain name can be critical to the commercial success of a web site. This is reflected in what some domain names are being sold for in the domain name “resale” market. It is always a good idea to list and compare our client’s competitor’s domain names as part of our overall competitive research.

But we should not despair if our client is in a competitive market with apparently few remaining domain names, or with attractive domain names selling at prohibitive prices. First, there are many techniques to incorporate keyword(s) into a domain name, including the use of sub-directories, sub-domains, .net, .us or .biz extensions, and dashes (-‘s) in the domain name (as in www.santafe-dental.us). Please note that one common denominator in spam web sites (pills, porn and casino) is that they often have more than one dash in the domain name. From an SEO perspective, it is wise to share as few characteristics with such web sites as possible. Thus, we should try to refrain from recommending the use of more than one dash in the domain name if possible.

It also behooves a web marketer to encourage registering domain names a competitor may want to register, even if the names need to be purchased. This may seem somewhat aggressive, but is simply an investment in a competitive advantage, the lack of which could end up hurting our client’s business.

Choosing the right domain name is not a trivial matter. A poorly chosen domain name can clog the sales funnel resulting from even the biggest budget and otherwise skilled web marketing campaign.

Jessica Espinoza
Page 1 Solutions