Add photos and videos to humanize and personalize your
listing. Don’t miss the opportunity to allow your GMB visi-
tors to “meet” you, your team, and see your office. Google
recommends that videos are limited to 30 seconds or less.
A proactive patient review process to populate your GMB
listing with positive reviews will help your practice stand
out. Reviews not only improve listing visibility, positive
reviews increase the chances that a prospective patient will
call to schedule an appointment.
Citations are references to your business’ name, address
and phone number (NAP) online. Businesses with numer-
ous, accurate, and consistent citations are viewed as more
credible to Google. If you haven’t done so, you should con-
duct an audit of your citations to ensure your practice is
listed on the leading directory sites and that the information
is correct. How many citations you need largely depends on
how strong the competitors are in your area.
image tags, schema markup, and sitemaps. Google takes
this hidden information very seriously, using it to classify
websites while confirming content consistency throughout.
The Pay-Off
After ads, the Local Pack is the most visible section dis-
played on a Google search results page. Unlike ads, you
aren’t paying Google to appear in the Local Pack.
As evidenced by the screenshots of a few of our client’s
tracking dashboards (see below), prominent placement in
this valuable piece of online real estate can generate dozens
of additional phone calls each month from prospective
patients.
Business Descriptions are a feature Google added this past
March. Per Google’s guidelines, this should be a “brief
description of your business – what you offer, what sets you
apart, your history, or anything else that’s helpful for cus-
tomers to know. Focus primarily on details about your busi-
ness instead of promotions, prices or sales. Do not include
URLs or HTML code, or exceed 750 characters.”
Optimize Your Website
The authority of your website is a factor in where your GMB
listing ranks in the Local Pack.
While there are hundreds of factors that Google uses to
determine the authority of a website, here are a few of the
more important factors.
Inbound Links – other websites pointing to your website has
been one of Google’s key ranking criteria since they started
displaying search results. It’s important to note that Google
looks at both the quality and quantity of the links. The more
authoritative and relevant the websites are that link to your
site, the greater your chances of ranking well.
Quality Content – when Google’s search robots crawl your
website, they want to see robust, unique and relevant con-
tent. Content that is duplicated on other dentist’s websites,
is low quality or thin, can have a negative effect on your
placement and visibility on Google.
Page Speed – most likely the majority of traffic to your
website will come from visitors on a mobile device. Google
found that 53% of mobile searchers will abandon a website
that takes more than three seconds to load. If your website
loads quickly, Google will reward you with a higher ranking
over slower sites with similar content and links.
Technical On-Page Optimization – this is all the nerdy,
behind-the-scenes coding like page title tags, header tags,
Marc Fowler is the founder of
Bullseye Media, LLC. Since 2006,
the team at Bullseye Media has
helped over 375 dental practices
across the U.S. and Canada lever-
age the internet to achieve their
practice growth goals. Learn more
at BullseyeDental.com.
To receive a complimentary analysis of your Google
My Business listing, website, and competition, email
[email protected] or visit BullseyeDental.com/Call to
schedule time on his calendar.
www.houstondentistrymagazine.com
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