Google vs. Yahoo

If your practice wants to generate dental patients through the search engines, which search engine is the best? The answer is you need to do well on both Google and Yahoo to be successful with your practice’s Internet marketing. In fact, you shouldn't stop with Google and Yahoo. MSN is a strong third choice and there are many other second and third tier search engines that also generate a lot of searches - and hence a lot of search results for cosmetic dentists who have a strong presence on them. The second and third tier search engines include AltaVista, AOL, Ask, A9, Lycos, HotBot, and more.

Now, getting back to Google and Yahoo. The consensus is that Google is more important, but it is close. The numbers vary depending on who you ask. I have seen numbers in the range of Google generating about 39% of the searches while Yahoo generates about 31%. That is probably close, but your guess is as good as mine. MSN comes in around 12%.

The latest battle seems to be about how big their indexes are. Yahoo just recently claimed an index database of over 19 Billion webpages, plus images, music, etc. Google, by comparison claims its indexed database is about 8 Billion webpages plus images, etc. Who really cares? There aren't that many dentists or dental practices in your market. The question is - are you indexed and how do you rank on both of these important search engines - to say nothing about MSN and the second tier search engines I mentioned above.

Dan Goldstein
Page 1 Solutions

Search Engine Optimization is the Foundation

Search engine optimization is the foundation for a successful web marketing strategy. Some dentists make the mistake of thinking that if they're doing search engine marketing, then they should be raking in patients from the Internet by the bunches. This can be true for some dentists, depending on their market, the competition and the website itself, but more often than not, search engine optimization is a platform from which a complete web marketing strategy will build.

So, if search engine marketing is a foundation, how do we know when and what to build? Ultimately, you'll need a search engine marketing company that specializes in the dental industry to help you, but it's important that you understand the basics.

Search engine positioning will make sure that search engines find your website.

Optimization (frequently used synonymously with search engine positioning) clarifies the subject matter of the website for the search engines. Websites have certain cues built into their guts that optimization can play upon to send the clear message, "This is what I'm about. If you're looking for a top notch cosmetic dentist, then this is the right place!"

Search engines judge sites by more than their first impression. They judge sites according to a multitude of criteria (this is why you should hire professional search engine marketers). To name a few:

1. Optimization
2. Depth of Content
3. Freshness of Content
4. Link Popularity

Of all of these, I would say that most cosmetic dentists’ websites lack link popularity the most. Just go to Google and type in dentist and then your state. It's highly likely that of all the listings returned by Google, the vast majority of the first page listings are dental directories. Why? Because they have an incredible number of incoming links, and their sites are typically massive.

In order to compete with directories on the search engines, you need to begin accruing incoming links to your site. When you start doing this, you'll notice that your results will begin to rise. This is because search engines view incoming links as votes for your site. If someone else is linking to you, then that must mean you have something good to offer.

Depth of content is actually very simple. Just write quality, informative content. Organize the content well, and keep it coming. Remember, a website is NEVER complete.

You can make sure that your website has fresh content by manually adding new sections and pages, or you can make it easy on yourself. Once you have the core of the site (a page focusing on nearly every key area of your practice), add a blog like this one. When search engines find that your site is updated three or four times per week, they begin to list your website as a search engine result more readily as a source of up-to-date information for a given subject.

When your web marketing addresses all of these criteria, you'll find that your site appears more frequently and consistently on the search engines, but bear in mind, search engine optimization is a foundation. Without it, a search engine marketing effort will falter, but a search engine marketing strategy consisting solely of SEO is just a doomed.

Always glad to help,

Jonathan Fashbaugh
Page 1 Solutions

Link Popularity

SEO is a foundation. If the site is well optimized, it will do well. However, in today's competitive search engine world, good optimization may not be enough. You also need regular content updates, lots of deep content, and lots of links coming into your website.

How do you know how many links your website has compared to your competition? There are link popularity tools that can help with this. Here is one - http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/. Try this and find out how your website stacks up. If your competition is doing better than you, find out where they are getting their links. Maybe you can get them too.

Ultimately, if you have good content, other webmasters will link their sites to you. You can speed up the process if you actively develop your own link building strategy. This is something we do for our clients here at Page 1. At its basic level it is part of the overall search engine optimization strategy. However, we can take it to a whole new level for our dental clients who want to get more aggressive.

Dan Goldstein
Page 1 Solutions