Dentists can attract patients to their practice through a variety of ways. Patients could refer their friends and family to the practice. For specialists, other dentists could refer their patients to them for certain treatments. While referrals greatly help dentists gain more patients and revenue, they could also advertise themselves through their websites. However, they must find ways to attract patients to their websites.
Dental practices could utilize many methods to direct patients to their websites. According to Ryan C. Vet, “a consultant, author, speaker, and serial entrepreneur,” “Studies show anywhere from 20% to 35% of the clicks go to the search result in the No. 1 spot, and there is an exponential decrease in click-through rates from there.5 In fact, the decline is so steep that if you’re even third on the list, you will rarely hear from any of the prospective patients searching for a new dentist” (2018). In order to effectively utilize Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to increase the practice’s website’s rank, dentists must know which key words people would type to find dentists (Kelley 2017). For instance, dentists should consider their location, specialty, treatments, etc. (Kelley 2017). They could also utilize longer and more specific keywords, such as “‘Female dentist Portland Invisalign,’” for patients that need certain treatments for their conditions (Pedersen 2016). In addition to key words, adding and updating excellent content, such as blogs, could help rank the clinics’ sites higher than their competitor’s (Goldberg 2013). Though, dentists also need to convince patient to spend more time on their websites with appealing site designs and well-written blogs about the dental industry if they want their site’s rank to increase (Goldberg 2013; Hutson and Vij 2014; “Search Engine Optimization Guide for Dentists” 2012). This information on their websites can cause people to “link back to [the dentist], which might just drive that next patient in [his or her] door” (Kelley 2017). These links to the site’s information could also be on “other ‘authority’ websites,’” such as “dental blogs, dental industry information websites, and even other dental practice websites in different cities,” contributing to raising the site’s ranking (Goldberg 2013). Social media, such as Facebook or Twitter, which can show how many people like the practice and share its website online, affect the site’s ranking positively, causing other people to see their site more frequently on the first page of the search engine (“Search Engine Optimization Guide for Dentists” 2012). Dentists can also attract patients with the search engines through paid search advertising, which utilizes “highly targeted ads using specific keywords, audience specific content, and ad extensions to help foster conversions and a high ROI” (Giroux 2014).
These methods, such as SEO and paid searched advertising, are the few ways through which dentists can attract people to their websites. Based on the site’s information, people could decide to go to the practice for their treatments. For dentists, this means potential patients that contribute to their revenue.
Works Cited
Dalin, Jeffrey B. “Search engine optimizationfor your Web site.” Dental Economics, July 1,
Giroux, Kim. “3 tips for dentists who want to maximize paid search advertising results.”
DentistryiQ, April 30, 2014. https://www.dentistryiq.com/articles/2014/04/3-tips-for-dentists-who-want-to-maximize-paid-search-advertising-results.html.
Goldberg, Charles. “Search engine optimization strategies for dentists.” DentistryiQ, April 22,
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https://www.dentistryiq.com/articles/2013/04/search-engine-optimization-strategies-for-dentists.html.
Hutson, Susan M. and Vikas Vij. “Key Mistakes that may be affecting the search rankings of
your dental website.” DentistryiQ, May 21, 2014. https://www.dentistryiq.com/articles/2014/05/key-mistakes-that-may-be-affecting-the-search-rankings-of-your-dental-website.html.
Kelley, Tim. “Getting More New Patients with Organic SEO for Dentists.” TNT Dental,
December 19, 2017. https://www.tntdental.com/blog/2017/12/19/seo-for-dentists/.
Pedersen, Mike. “What dentists need to know for constantly changing SEO landscape.”
DentistryiQ, December 2, 2016. https://www.dentistryiq.com/articles/2016/12/what-dentists-need-to-know-for-constantly-changing-seo-landscape.html.
“Search Engine Optimization Guide for Dentists.” DentistryiQ, October 4, 2012.
https://www.dentistryiq.com/articles/2012/10/search-engine-optimization-guide-for-dentists.html.
Vet, Ryan C. “The patient search-why you’re losing patients before they even call your office.”
Dental Economics, July 1, 2018. https://www.dentaleconomics.com/articles/print/volume-108/issue-7/practice/the-patient-search-why-you-re-losing-patients-before-they-even-call-your-office.html.
Ryan Vet
Great article. Thank you for the shout out and quote! Landing in that top spot or even spot #2 will drastically increase the likelihood of your patients selecting your practice.