Dental Patients ARE Online

Don't think that dental patients go online much? Check out Twitter's search for "dentist". Twitter.com is a website where people post mini-blog entries about what they are doing (i.e. Drinking coffee with my mother). There are people practically every minute "tweeting" about being at or going to the dental office. Ask your patients to blog or Twitter about you to build your reputation online!

Flash Animation and Search Engines - Clearing Up Confusion

Many dentists have heard mixed messages about the use of Flash animation in a website. Flash is a program that imports moving graphics, text, and even video into a website design.

There is some confusion about whether or not including Flash in a website hinders search engine optimization. The truth is very simple.

Until recently, Google and the other search engines couldn't read a Flash file at all. Their ability to do so is still very limited. The main issue is the content. Traditional websites are built in a programming language called HTML. The search engines are programmed to easily read HTML websites. The main benefit of an HTML website is that it can be built with separate pages that the search engines can index. This gives focused pages of content that Google can send its users to, which is Google's main goal in life.

Take this website as an example. Go to the site and look at the address bar (the place where you type to go to a website). You'll see www.domain.com. Now click on 'Services'. It seemingly takes you to a new page, but when you look up at the address bar, you'll see that the www. hasn't changed. This is because there's really only one page of the website, and all of the text and images reside in that single page.

Now go to www.drwendling.com. Note the address bar that says, "http://www.drwendling.com/". Now click on 'Cosmetic Dentistry'. Notice that the address bar now says, "http://www.drwendling.com/cosmetic-dentistry.html". It changed because we were actually directed to a new page of the website.

Multiple pages allows us, your search engine marketing company, to optimize your website's pages for different keywords instead of cramming a single page with 'Veneers', 'Teeth Whitening', 'Dental Implants' and on and on.

At Page 1 Solutions, we actually do not take on websites that are built entirely in Flash.

Now, here's the confusing part: having Flash element embedded within a website is not bad. You should have noticed on www.drwendling.com that there were pictures fading in and out, and that there was a video playing. Both of those features were built in Flash, but the actual text and navigation was built in HTML. That's the way to do it.

Need help discerning whether or not your website is ready to go for search engine optimization. Email me here.

Reliable Website Maintenance

"It's hard to find good help these days..."


I hear from people all the time that are contacting me simply because their "web guy" is unresponsive or slow. Website updates are typically easy things and shouldn't take months or even weeks to accomplish (unless it's a complex update such as a full website redesign).

Still, when considering a new website maintenance provider, consider your overall dental Internet marketing strategy. If your web guy is simply hosting your site and dragging his/her feet on a simple update, they don't have your best interests at heart. They should be prompting you to be more active with your website, conducting search engine optimization, urging you to blog, etc.

Don't settle for sub-par service. In the end, it's not just an inconvenience. It's a sign that it's time to move on.