By now, almost every dental business owner has some idea of what search engine optimisation (SEO) is and why it matters. Having a well structured, regularly updated dental website that shows your expertise, experience, authority and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) is the cornerstone to ranking well on Google for your chosen keywords and ultimately getting your business seen by your potential customers.
An often overlooked area of SEO is the local listings, or map rankings. Your Google Business (formerly known as Google My Business) profile is key to being discovered on Google maps, as well as boosting your ranking on the search engine results page. Google Business profiles are completely free and have huge potential to increase your visibility, increase credibility through customer reviews, and allow you to quickly and easily share your business information with potential customers and patients.
It’s more important than ever to not only create a Google Business profile for your practice, but to make sure it’s fully optimised to rank ahead of competitors. Google ranks local listings based on 3 elements (source):
- Relevance: How well your Google My Business listing matches a search
- Distance: How far your location is from the search or searcher
- Prominence: How well-known your business is (based on factors like links, number of reviews, review score, and SEO)
There are more options than ever to add content to your Google Business profile, so here’s our checklist to ensure you’re making the most of this powerful, free marketing tool for your dental practice.
Making the most of your Google Business profile
Check your NAP
Start with the basics and make sure the name, address, and phone number (NAP) of your dental practice are all correct. It’s essential not only for your potential patients and people searching, but also for Google, which rewards consistency and accuracy where your NAP is shared across the web, so building citations is key. If five websites have you listed but with different opening hours or phone numbers on each one, Google won’t know which one is trustworthy and that can reflect badly on your listing. NAPs get picked up and used on directories and citations across the web, and there are tools that you can use to check and update these without finding each one individually.
Opening times
Keep your opening times up to date and relevant. If you’re going to be closed for a bank holiday or other event, take the time to update your profile and avoid disappointing or confusing anyone who is searching for you.
Pictures
Adding warm and friendly images to your profile can elevate it from the rest. Rather than the standard image of the external sign of the practice, upload images of your team and even before and after images. If you’re regularly taking photos for social media, this is another place that you can use that content.
Services
You may not be selling products but you can add a list of your treatments, with descriptions and prices, to your profile. This can help people to make sure they’re looking at the right listing and also entice people onto your website to find out more.
Reviews
Reviews are more important than ever as Google puts more and more weight on trust and credibility. They can also be a meaningful way of connecting with your patients, by replying to reviews with a ‘thank you’ or following up anything less than positive. In fact, Google finds profiles with a range of reviews more trustworthy, and thus gives more weight to them, rather than pages of 5* reviews. It may be scary to ask your patients to leave public reviews but if you’re confident in the quality of your service and treatment then there really is nothing to lose.
Blog snippets
Hopefully you’re already adding regular blog content to your dental website and you can get more use out of the content you’ve spent valuable time creating by re-sharing it across your Business profile. If you’re not yet writing blog posts, consider using an artificial intelligence tool to help save you time in a busy schedule. Our recent post explores the pros and cons of using these tools.
Offers
You can use your Business profile to share any special offers and events, such as an Invisalign open day or a new patient discount. This is another area where you can differentiate your profile from others nearby.
Social links
There is an area on your Google Business profile where you can add links to any of your other social media platforms, making it easy for people to connect with you in their preferred method. This is another way of making the most of your marketing efforts and ensuring that people can find you wherever they are on the web.
As you can see, there’s a huge amount of possibility to make the most of your Google Business profile and stand out from the crowd both on the search results page and on Maps. It’s worth spending a little bit of time to set up and optimise your profile, and include it as one of your marketing channels.
If you need further help with managing your Google Business profile and building citations, get in touch with the marketing agency here at Hive. We offer a Google Business package either as a standalone or part of a wider SEO package, where we can manage all of this for you on a one-off or ongoing basis to ensure that you’re making the most out of this powerful, free tool.
