Internet Dental Marketing Takes a Hit

I recently looked into some of the top cosmetic dental groups in my immediate area. As a direct response marketer I couldn’t help but notice how clueless some of them were when it comes to online marketing. One common problem that was obvious to me was the fact that many of these Dental web sites had come from the phone company.

These sites in particular offered many new challenges and several interesting problems. First, they were almost impossible to manipulate for the search engines. The HTML included in these sites are pretty basic and they were very limited when it came down to the nitty gritty.

Whats The Deal With Meta Keywords?
Are meta data keywords important? A lot of people in the know say they are not that important. I have seen negative articles written about this topic in tech publications such as, “Web Designer” magazine. We have tested the arrangement of this type of material in my studio and found some rather interesting points of interest. If you do not arrange them in a certain order you will botch up the description of your web page on the SERPS, (Google search engine result pages).

The search engine spiders will jump down and grab a hold of the first bit of text it can. If that bit of text happens to be, “Closed on Sundays” then your web site page will look rather unspectacular online. It will read something like, “Welcome to Smith Cosmetic Dentistry – Closed on Sundays”. There is very little chance that your page listing is going to get clicked on anytime soon. There would be the missed opportunity to truly sell your services.

Example: “Welcome To Smith Family Dentistry – Cosmetic Dental Surgery Is Here and Brings Relief to S.E. Michigan”.

I can list two sentences inside the description and this is my chance to REALLY sell the dental company. Sadly, a lot of dental practices do not do this because they lack the basic knowledge to do so. I honestly believe that the description section is the absolute best place to sell your services. In fact, it is important to treat this area like you would treat direct mail. This serves a double purpose. On one hand it is there to really deliver a preview to your online prospect. It should entice them enough to click on the above blue link, (Title of web page) and open your page.

You want your web page to get opened just like you want your direct mail to get opened. The whole purpose of being out there online is to get seen before your competition just like in direct mail. I do not see this to be any different because the objection is the same.

As Internet presence you need to exhibit some sense of control. And it is hard to get a grasp on Internet dental marketing when your formatting is limited. I actually prefer to either get a template to work out of that I purchase from a web company that I can upload myself to a blank hosting account. I want to be able to manipulate the HTML to have it speak directly to search engine spiders. I also would be open to manipulate the entire HTML pages from scratch if I had a choice. Buying a pre-fabricated solution from a phone company would seriously be my last choice in the world of Internet marketing. I would demand that I have this level of sophistication and control from my web site for one very simple reason.

Search Engine Spiders Travel Through Hyperlinks
To put things bluntly search engine spiders travel through hyperlinks looking for very specific keywords and conditions. I prefer to think of them as ticks hopping from one infected dog to another looking for a new host. This is the true nature of the search engines. There is a cohesive process involved that in dental organizations fail to recognize it. But that is their loss. Your customers are fickle and are looking for very specific things and do not necessarily want to do business with you. Your prospects are really in search for information.

I have come to the conclusion that nobody really goes online to buy stuff. We have become an information hording civilization and this is nowhere more true than the Internet. The sites that offer the least amount of information stand to lose on two levels. One, the search engines will give you a low page rank and not take you very seriously. Two, your customers will get bored with your online offerings and choose to find another online dental presence that will answer their questions.

In the end, nobody really cares that much about your staff or that you love people. I have found that your online prospects are really self serving characters after all. They want to know the big burning question and that is, “What’s In It For Me?”.

There are certain stop words that search engine spiders see and that spells out bad news for your web site. If you do not have the right structure in your site then it is not going to be able to be crawled through very effectively. In addition if you have to wrong long tailed keywords in your site you can pretty much forget about attracting traffic.
This stuff is so touchy.

But that is the what you need to know when you do Internet Dental Marketing.