There is a multitude of ways you can use digital marketing to increase traffic to your dental practice’s website and convert visitors into new clients. Having a clean, easy-to-navigate dental website design is essential for visitors to learn about your business, see what dental services you offer, and even schedule an appointment with ease. Using social media allows you to interact with your prospective clients, allowing you to answer questions and establish a connection, even before they become a new patient of yours. Of course, optimizing your website for search engines like Google will boost your rankings and make your dental practice easier to find.
However, one of the quickest, easiest steps you can take to increase your visibility and improve your dental practice SEO is by having a Google My Business (GMB) listing that has all the information potential patients are looking for. This free listing allows your practice profile to appear when your ideal patients are searching for a dentist either through Google Search or on Google Maps. Keep reading to learn more about how a Google My Business listing helps your dental website.
Dental Website Trends
One trend that our digital marketing company is seeing with our dental clients is a decrease in website visits but an increase in phone calls. When we look at client analytics, we see that people are calling directly from the Google My Business listing while a large number of people are visiting websites from the GMB link in Search or Maps. Because our clients had optimized, comprehensive listings, they were able to capture more leads they may have otherwise missed out on!
Let’s look closer to see exactly how a GMB listing is benefiting dental websites.
Your Google Listing Provides an Easy-to-Find Website Link
One of the first things added to a GMB profile is a link to your dental practice’s website. Not only is this a great way to easily steer potential clients to your website, but it also makes your website highly visible. For example, if your website isn’t part of the top listed organic search engine results, but you are in the three practices listed with your local map in search engine results (Called Google Local 3-Pack), you’ll still see traffic to your site.
Your Website Tells Google About Your Practice
Most likely, your dental practice’s website has a list of services you offer your patients (if not, you need to make that happen!). When Google crawls your website, its algorithms can pull information to add to your listing. This will benefit you because Google can make sure your practice is being shown to the exact people looking for your services.
Help Your Patients Schedule Appointments
Does your practice’s website have a link where your patients can schedule appointments? If so, add it to your GMB listing! It lets your patients bypass several steps so they can easily book an appointment with just one or two clicks.
Adding Reviews Attracts More Website Traffic
When someone is searching for a new dentist (or any service, for that matter), they want to learn more about their options, and while word-of-mouth used to be the go-to method, today, it’s online reviews. When people see a well-reviewed, highly recommended dental practice, they’re more likely to visit the website. Even a dentist with an average overall rating will get more traffic than a dentist with few to no customer reviews.
Your Google My Business listing is one of the easiest places to get patient reviews and, not surprising, it’s also the location where they’re most visible (compared to social media or off-site review sites, like Yelp!).
Google My Business Acts Like a Secondary Website
While your main dental practice website should be your primary focus, your GMB listing does act as a free site. You can even edit and customize it by clicking ‘website’ on the left-hand side of your listing dashboard. Here, you can add more information about your business, including photos of your building and staff, your services, reviews, and other information. This is a great way to get high-quality backlinks, which will improve your SEO for your main website!
Get More Leads with Google My Business
With just a few minutes of optimizing your Google My Business listing, you can set the stage for more traffic to your dental practice’s website and scheduling more patients. Check out your listing and see how you can leverage it to increase your business!
