It is estimated that up to 35% of searches in the UK return local search results, and with the smartphone revolution well under way this figure is likely to increase. Local optimisation is very important to businesses such as dentists and here at Dental Design we offer a number of local SEO services which can help to increase your local rankings.
Our clients can, however, be proactive and help increase their rankings themselves by garnering online reviews for their dental practices. It is considered that online reviews are one of the most important ranking factors in local search. A practice can get reviews direct through google places or they can be indexed through 3rd party review sites such as Dentist Finder (www.dentistfinder.net)
What is Google Places?
Google Places is a directory which lists your dental practice’s name, address, contact details, a positional marker on the map and a link to your website. Google Places can be optimised with pictures, videos and patient reviews.
To keep track of how your business listing is performing, Google includes a personalised dashboard within Google Places that shows visitor data, top search queries and how many clicks through to your website. Your Google Places business listing also allows patients to leave reviews along with an option for you to respond.
Google now displays an integrated (organic + Google Places) listing in the search results when a user searches with a local modifier (city/town location) so it is very important to optimise for both your website’s organic and Google Places listing. As mentioned above, online reviews are deemed one of the most important ranking factors when it comes to local search and there are 2 ways that you can acquire them; direct reviews through Google and reviews from 3rd party sites such as Dentist Finder.
What is Dentist Finder?
Dentist Finder (www.dentistfinder.net) is a dental search directory that enables potential patients to find a dental practice in their local area and read reviews before booking an appointment. The Dentist Finder directory has on average over 10,000 unique visitors every month searching for dental practices, so we highly recommend that our clients claim their Practice listing in order for potential patients to contact them. By claiming your listing, you can upload your business description, images of the practice and most importantly have the ability to send out patient review requests. This is done through the admin area of the site – all you need to do is gather a patient’s email address and enter it into the system. Dentist Finder will then send out a patient review request to the email address you have entered. It is as simple as that! The system will also automatically send out a reminder a week later if the patient hasn’t responded.
If you can get your patients to leave direct reviews through your Google Places listing, the reviews will be indexed and show up immediately. However to leave a review, the user my first sign in and create a google account which can be time consuming. The advantage of using dentist finder to increase online reviews of your practice is that no sign up is needed and that you can target patients who would be willing to leave a positive review.