SEO can be complicated, but it doesn’t have to be. Understanding the fundamentals can help you take your website growth to its next level.
Here are 5 principles to consider when doing SEO:
1. Avoid technical complications
Use a website builder, like SquareSpace and Shopify. That way, you can get a good-looking website launched quickly, then focus on growing your business.
Improving your website experience is important, but you want to avoid breaking it, taking too long to launch, and stressing over how to manage it.
<<Work-in-progress>>
2. Creating content leads to growth
You need to put something out in the world in order to get traction. When it comes to SEO, that is content.
Use your competitors to learn what commercial content they are making, and target the same by creating content that puts you on par with them or better.
Bolster your commercial content by considering your buyer’s journey, and creating supporting content that links to it.
SEO tools like Ahrefs and Semrush can help. They also have a lot of great beginner guides, like this and this.
3. Lean on winning clusters and fish for new opportunities
Reviewing your analytics and competitive research is key. Set up Google Analytics. Start using SEO tools for research.
You’ll also want a keyword tracker with daily tracking to monitor the performance of your key pages, too.
If a group of pages is winning, find other keywords in the same group.
If you don’t know, you might need more pages in that group first.
If you have enough, dedicated resources to exploring other groups.
4. Link your content together
We call this interlinking, and it’s the easiest way to win.
From a user experience, it gives people useful ways to continue their research.
From an SEO perspective, it builds authority to the appropriate pages.
The home page of most websites is usually the strongest in authority. Leverage this by interlink to your most important commercial content.
The navigation menu is another place to put key commercial pages.
Don’t forget to interlink from every other page, too.
5. Promote your content
Getting backlinks from other websites is a necessity to SEO. It’s time consuming, but is a must so Google knows which website is popular.
Look up email outreach tools and pick one that not only schedule email follow ups, but also makes researching who to reach out to easier.
When it comes to lead gen, many dentists and dental practices find their new clients coming from referrals, or word-of-mouth. However, there comes a time when you realize that more needs to be done. You’ve heard of SEO, PPC, and other forms of marketing. Which one is best for you?
There are two major levels of marketing:
Outbound marketing, where you push your marketing message out to a large audience
Inbound marketing, where you attract your best prospects
Most people are familiar with outbound marketing. If you have ever ran campaigns in a local magazine or newsletter, sent direct mail or leaflets to your surrounding community, or advertised on radio, you have done outbound marketing.
On the other hand, inbound marketing would include email capture, generating leads search engine optimization, and social media campaigns (Facebook, Twitter, etc.). Paid ads on Google also falls under this category as you can laser target keyword channels that have relevant traffic for your need.
Benefits of SEO for Dentists
There are a lot of benefits to SEO, which we will dive into in just a moment. However, the biggest drawback to SEO has to do with the time it takes to demonstrate results. The reason is that search engines need to prevent abuse, so slowing down the shifting around of search results is one of the many ways they prevent manipulation tactics from working before their algorithms notice. We wrote a blog post on how long SEO can take that might be of interest for further reading.
Aside from this drawback, search engine can yield a significant number of benefits. A large of it has to do with the comprehensive nature of SEO around growing your digital presence and the strength of your site.
1. Potential patients search for new dentists on Google
When someone needs a dentist and doesn’t have anyone to recommend one, their first step is to search online. Either by Google Organic Search or via Google Maps. The days of looking up a YellowPage catalogue for dentistry services is over. The immediacy of finding what they need at the tap of a few keystrokes on their smartphone gets them a list of top recommendations.
2. Skepticism for ads, trust in organic results
Although Google Ads will appear first, paid advertisements tend to bring a degree of cynicism to consumers. Some people enjoy buying, but no one likes to be sold. With SEO, your business and brand can come off as legitimate, proven by Google to be both relevant and clearly not trying to sell something. A degree of trust (and authority!) comes with appearing in the organic search results. You can learn more about SEO vs. PPC marketing (pay-per-click) at our blog post here.
3. Growing your digital presence in more ways than one
Part of SEO involves growing your digital presence by way of improving your site performance. Link building gets your site out to the world for others to find, while content production builds invaluable assets that will last for as long as they are up. The combination of the two can help acquire a variety of keyword channels along the different steps of the sales funnel that potential clients can look up.
4. Build a digital reputation across the web
Reputation is invaluable. Being visible online allows others learn more about your business while the additional content built for SEO demonstrates your authority in the space. For example, orthodontists do well to tackle topics such as braces, teeth alignment, and jaw health. As a result, they generate relevant traffic for people searching for more information, maybe compare different types of braces, prior to finding the best care in their area.
5. Think long-term and potentially support multiple locations
The long-term return on investment on SEO can be significant not so much at the level you need today, but when you begin expanding your practice to multiple locations. The “domain authority” that is built through SEO allows you to leverage the strength of your site to rank for visibility in other locations. This can generate immediate organic search leads for your new office locations.
Do SEO services work? Absolutely. One of the reasons to choose an agency is for many reasons. First, it’s cheaper than hiring a full-time marketing specialist. Second, they have the resources to take care of your marketing needs (writers, link builders, teams of SEO specialists, tools, platforms, etc.). Third, they have a great view of the SEO landscape with multiple clients. Fourth, they know how to focus their resources and work effectively to bring you results sooner than later. Lastly, they can act as your business partner to bounce marketing campaign ideas with you.
As for getting started with SEO, we understand not everyone has the means to do so. Our post on whether you need an SEO agency can guide you in your decision process. It also contains beginner resources so you can do SEO for your dental site on your own, if needed.
If you prefer to have someone who understands SEO and the nuances of it take over, we can help you get started with a free audit report. After which, we can walk you through the “what” and “how” to SEO, and maybe introduce you to a first month of service.
Internal serves many essential functions. Doing so correctly not only gives your site the topical relevancy and authority it needs to rank, but can also provide a fluent flow of link equity from one page to the next. This is particularly useful for pages that are alone (orphaned).
So what makes internal linking such a great SEO technique? From a high-level perspective, there are three specific reasons.
First, it can improve user experience by providing them opportunities to check out other related and relevant content from other pages. Second, it’s a highway for Google bots to crawl through your entire site so every page can get indexed appropriately. Lastly, it enables you to strategically share link equity across your entire site content so everything else can rank, too.
So let’s learn how we can capitalize on these points by following several guiding principles.
There are several guiding principals to keep in mind when conducting an internal linking campaign:
Leave no orphan page behind. Everything deserves a link. This ensures link equity passes through all pages, and bots can crawl to index everything.
Use relevant links and link naturally for the reader. Don’t force things in the body of the content. Relevancy for your readership is still important. Be mindful of this.
Use a reasonable number of contextual links. It goes without saying that you should not fill a page with blue links for the sake of getting the links in. It’s not sexy and makes you look terrible. (Unless it’s a resource/”start here” page!)
Have lots of content. Internal linking only works when your site has content. Cover a variety of topics pertaining to the categories of interest, and you’re on your way to building proper silos.
Think about how you want to build your content silos. This means having a particular category of content internally linked to each other. This helps with relevancy and provides topical relevancy that can translate to expertise, authority, and trust (E-A-T).
Link deep into your site. Smaller and more targeted content can bring in a lot of long-tail keyword channel traffic. Home pages and cornerstone guides tend to receive the most internal links. Don’t forget to share internal link love to content deeper into your site.
Reevaluate your internal links every few months. Or whenever you hit a new milestone. Find out which pages are the best performers. You will want to reevaluate how you distribute and structure internal links to and from these pages.
Install or run a text counting script. If you have a tool like Yoast Plugin for sites using WordPress, you can check how many inlinks and outlinks each page receives. This lets you ensure all pages have at least 1 inlink.
Prioritize top performing pages. Here are 3 questions to help identify these top pages:
What are the high-traffic pages? (To link out naturally from)
What pages have high unique referring domain count? (To pass out link equity from)
What pages have exceptional rankings? (To share authority from)
Apply a tactical approach. Here are 3 more tactical considerations to keep in mind:
Include a “related post” section in your content
Add navigational links from the home page or the top navigation to your cornerstone content
Don’t forget to link to taxonomy pages (categories and tags)!
There is no clearcut way on structuring your internal links. There are several principals you can follow to ensure all the pages work effectively and can be found. Either to be enjoyed by readers, detected by bots, and ranked by Google.
What better way to get free traffic than earning it through Google and search engine optimization (SEO). You can achieve great results through SEO with a highly-defined focus on a particular niche, and employing the basic principles of E-A-T. Here is how you can take advantage of Google’s favor for trusted and authoritative experts.
What is Google’s E-A-T?
E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authority, and Trust. These three are factors defined by Google on how much trust it would place in a brand or website. In order to give searchers the best experience possible, Google has defined for webmasters what they look for in a web page.
How is E-A-T measured?
Each of the factors have their unique criteria for evaluation.
Expertise
Expertise touches on the high level of knowledge or skill in a particular field. It is evaluated at the content-level, meaning Google rewards those who create content as a subject matter expert.
Though you don’t necessarily require formal qualifications to become the content creator, “everyday expertise” (Google’s words) can also be acceptable for earning traffic from the search engine.
Authoritativeness
Authority pertains to reputation, specifically how well or often you are mentioned by other experts and influencers in your space. The more others speak of you, the better Google views your authoritativeness.
Ratings, reviews, references, recommendations, and mentions from credible sources (other websites and individuals) can boaster your authoritativeness.
Trustworthiness
Trust deals with the legitimacy and accuracy of a website and its content. Google can determine a consensus on information across the website, supported by experts and known trusted websites.
Similar to authoritativeness, building a profile on websites such as BBB, TrustPilot, Homestar, RateMDS, or whatever major and popular business listing websites can be a starting point to build trust. Receiving backlinks and mentions from credible sources, with an overall sentiment of positive discussions can improve trustworthiness.
How to Boost Your SEO With Strong E-A-T
Knowing about E-A-T is not enough. Here are the 3 key ways to improve it, and boost your SEO.
1) Work to earn backlinks and mentions from other websites, especially from trusted sources.
Get published from news publication websites. Local, niche-specific, or from major outlets. This can help you begin building E-A-T for your website.
There are several strategies you can employ here. The best is to reach out to website authors, news publication reporters, and influencers in your space to begin a discussion.
Write valuable content that shed insights to what it is you do, what you specialize in, what problems you solve, or interesting facts about the work you do. That way, others can do their due diligence and can trust they can work with someone who knows their work.
2) Get good reviews, and get good at asking for reviews.
What people say or mention about your business matters. It ties to your reputation. Although the use of third-party rating sites wouldn’t directly account towards the SEO of your website, numerous negative reviews can be seen as negative reputation clues.
The reason we say it would be as clues because fake complaints exist, and Google understands this can manipulate rankings. Still, reputation management is important and you should work towards ensuring that your business can always be viewed positively online. The best way to do so is by asking for a review on Google and other websites.
Keep in mind Google does clearly state that business owners shouldn’t offer incentives to customers in exchange for reviews. However, it doesn’t mean you can’t remind customers to do so and respond to reviews so that customers may leave more reviews in the future.
3) Recognize that you as an author matters
Google isn’t just looking at your business brand or website mentions. They look towards individuals and how they are over the web. People also trust individuals as well, so it’s up to us to build reputations for ourselves and boost our authorship.
You can accomplish this by writing more, shooting more videos, responding to reviews, participating in relevant discussions elsewhere (forum threads, comments section of web pages, and social media). Doing what you can to showcase not only yourself, but also participating in your niche.
And when writing for yourself, focusing on content for your ideal readers can only benefit you from both Google’s eyes and your potential customers. Write with a purpose, showcase your expertise on the subject matter, and always work to provide valuable insights others can benefit from.
Concluding Thoughts
E-A-T guidelines make it clear what is important for not only Google, but for businesses. Customers love those who demonstrate their expertise, authoritativeness, and have trust to both their name and their business. Understanding how Google views E-A-T empowers us to focus on the right things that make a difference to your SEO.
The next steps now is to implement the right marketing strategies that employ E-A-T. You can do it yourself or start a discussion with an search marketing agency like us on what you can do to earn more traffic from Google today.
A jeweler with previous experience working with a not-so-reputable digital marketing agency was in need of new customers for their business. They understood that digital media is the way to go, but needed someone with reliable skills, expertise, and experience in their industry. From a quick call, we understood the services they wanted to offer, the highest profit margin products, and what they wanted to avoid.
What we found
Close inspection of their Google Ads campaigns found that it was poorly structured, with keywords dumped into a single campaign without topically relevant structuring that made sense for the services they provide. The campaign has also been paused for more than a year, with some conversions that brought in irrelevant traffic. Money was spent to acquire visibility from customers who aren’t the right fit.
We also found:
Traffic coming from areas from a nearby city they cannot serve
Incomplete tracking of all important conversion actions (website visits, calls from website, Google Maps direction)
Poor landing page design and optimization
How we improved our digital presence
In the best interest of time, as we gained access to the website and reviewed what has happened, our team went to work ensuring that the business’s best salesperson, their landing page, was well dressed well and can showcase all the right things to their ideal prospects. We designed the landing page off-site with the following touches:
Introduced the USP of providing on-site, same day services
Conveyed how other jewelers send their customer requests to their designers for work
Ensure the visitor what the page they landed on is meant to do (get them to call in for a consultation)
Added a form for visitors to fill
We also restructured the Google Ads campaigns to have multiple types of campaigns and a few setting improvements, including:
Re-optimized the smart campaign to focus on relevant services
Updated and narrow the search campaign keyword targeting
Excluded targeting from the other city and those who shown interest in the target area, but does not live there
Updated the previous service ad groups with fresh keywords with search volume
Added new ad variations with the best practices of ad copywriting
Set up conversion tracking for phone calls that come from the website
What came from our work
As a result of our work, we witnessed:
3x conversions coming from numerous campaign types and keyword channels
Clear conversion actions coming from the paid search channels, both from website visits and from additional conversion actions
Successful re-launch to a restructured Google Ads account and campaign
Client increasing their marketing spend and requesting campaigning efforts on the organic front (SEO)
50 calls per month to 200 calls and 50 form fills per month
Conclusion
Sometimes, it helps to get the fundamentals right. Following the guidelines Google Ads can be a strong start to a successful campaign. Though there are many ways to structure an account, when you structure it an optimal way, you are more likely to generate the attention you need for a lot less.
Having conversion-optimized landing pages and another means for visitors to contact you helps, too!
Interested in starting a conversation about your digital search? You can learn more about what we have to offer here, then reach out to us to discuss how we can help you.
A pandemic is looming and a client that’s been in the insurance industry for 10+ years now is in preparation mode for the drastic rise in online shopping for quotes. They understood that search marketing is the way, and investing heavily into SEO and content is essential in adapting to this extreme change in consumer behavior. This needed to be done while a new online ordering system service was in development.
Referrals, conferences, and cold calling worked before. Now, new digital avenues must be explored.
What we found
An inspection of their SEO campaign found that the website requires revamping in the way its structured. The home page ranks for a city-specific keyword channel.
There was also a lack of content for capturing numerous city-specific keyword channels. Insurance is searched at a local level, so a need for content catering to local search results is required.
We also found:
The website user experience was poor with navigation and page speed requiring attention
Optimization was incomplete, requiring data-driven work to each page
Restructuring of the virtual and physical silos of the website can go a long way to improve topical authority
Identified 15 cities we want to prioritize our focus
How we improved our digital presence
To obtain more leads, we needed to increase our online authority and increase the reach of our organic search campaign. We needed to understand where we are today and where we want to be in a 9 to 12-month timeframe. To achieve this, we:
Identified keyword channels of focus
Planned the ideal website hierarchy and structure to improve user navigational experience
Run a content gap audit to determine additional content needs and existing web page optimization goals
In addition, upon closer inspection of our landing page experiences, we made improvements to our website page templates, including:
Improving mobile friendliness and experience
Conversion rate optimization with clear call-to-actions throughout page content
Content optimization to improve contextual clarity for search engines
What came from our work
As a result of our work, we witnessed:
61% increase year-over-year in organic search traffic
Fully optimized website with 130 web pages, plus 35 additional landing pages
2x increase in new keyword visibility
Successful launch of online quoting system service with an immediately realization of a new revenue stream
Conclusion
There is a compelling reason why businesses invest in their SEO: You can reach a point where a well-written article can generate a tremendous amount of leads for as long as your website is live. Like having a sales person that never sleeps and in more than 1 place at a time!
When your website reaches “authoritative status”, any page you publish can take you to the top of the Google search results. You can get in front of your ideal prospects every day.
Interested in starting a conversation about your digital search? You can learn more about what we have to offer here, then reach out to us to discuss how we can help you.
The pandemic has hit, and patients are afraid. For all the right reasons. According to the American Dental Associations, patient volumes have dropped as much as 70% in 2020. However, there are always residents in need of a dentist, in need of specific dental services.
One of our U.S. client owned a dental practice saw an opportunity. They want to capitalize on the pandemic by continuing to pursue greater market shares in their local service areas. Where other practices pulled back or pause on marketing, they pushed on.
What we found
Several changes were required to adopt to the change in consumer behavior, both from a marketing perspective and from the staff’s own follow-up capabilities.
Provide a COVID-19 statement and information on website
Maintain updates on the website and social media platforms
Ongoing content marketing strategy
Lack of reviews in the past 6 months leading into the pandemic
How we improved our digital presence
It’s one thing to get people through the door and being found, but if there is one thing the pandemic has taught us, is that if a prospect does not like what they see, they leave and may never return again. The great thing, however, is that there are always new prospects.
We provided a one-pager PDF instructing office administrators on how to ask for reviews immediately after service and with a follow-up contact
Further expand on our reach for new keyword channels, creating new content catering to each and improving the site’s expertise, authority, and trust
Ongoing link building activities, such as appropriate local, national, and niche business listings, guest postings, and link insertions
Optimization of several pages that were incomplete, focusing on a complete SEO strategy to improve organic traffic.
Tips for asking for reviews as a healthcare clinic
There are strict rules from both the ADA and CDA on offering incentives, especially for reviews. However, there are ways you can train your staff to engage your patients leading up to the ask. Here are several steps to do so:
Understand how engaged your patients. Look over your patient management system, and begin tracking how often a patient comes in, how often they respond to calls and emails, and score them as such. You can also lean into these systems to send automated surveys, with links to Google My Business, Opencare, Facebook Review, etc. to help.
Start with “how did we do today?”. This gives your staff insights on whether everything went well for you to ask for a review at all. It also encourages an open conversation for important feedback and primes them for the ask.
Send an email or share a business card, where you provide a direct link to your Google My Business listing. You can also include the services they enjoyed that day, so they can mention it in your review (important!)
Make sure your systems and procedures are HIPPA or PHIPA compliant. Anything that pertains to patient information, including names and phone numbers, needs to be up to standard. Running a security
It’s also important to reminding your staff from time to time. Asking how they are doing in asking for reviews can help your clinic gain more positive reviews, and gain greater visibility on search engines and attracting new patients.
What came from our work
As a result of our work, the client’s dental practice enjoyed:
12 to 20 new patients per month from organic channels, up from 2 to 5 since the start of the pandemic
Top-page results for a variety of new local keyword channels, such as family dentistry, dentist for seniors, and periodontics dentistry
Growing improvements in local keyword channels such as dentist, emergency dentistry, pediatric dentistry, and dental implants
47% increase in organic traffic from 17 optimized informative content pieces (blog posts)
Satisfaction in improvements on increasing reviews through new follow-up procedures
Conclusion
The pandemic has been difficult for many local businesses, especially dental practices. Though patient volumes have dropped, marketing budgets from competitors have, too. When you can keep your feet on the gas pedal with your marketing, you can begin making significant progress in presence and market shares.
The fundamentals of search engine optimization still applies, too. You need:
Quality, well-optimized content
Technically sound website
Strong and numerous backlinks
There can be hundreds of competitors in your area. When you have these fundamental SEO practices in place, you can set your practice apart from your competitors and take the lead in search results as the top dental practice in your area. Add on an amazing follow-up on asking for reviews by yourself and your staff and you’ll be on your way to the first page of search engines with amazing results from new patient inflow.
Interested in starting a conversation about your digital search? You can learn more about what we have to offer here, then reach out to us to discuss how we can help you.
This particular client have seen exceptional results from their initial set of keywords for one of their dental practices, and wanted to expand further by ranking their second location for a more competitive area. Specifically, they wanted to rank for “dentist” and “orthodontics”.
Having been working on their site for months prior, we knew the site had a few things going on for them:
We’ve built a sufficient amount of backlinks over the past 6 months to help the site establish domain authority, making it easier to rank for keywords
Given a few weeks, any new target keyword can rank in the top 30 within 4-6 weeks (authority status)
We are ranking in the top 10 of the main set of keywords they signed up for SEO services to rank
So we went to work on them. Here are the ranking results:
Keyword #1 reaching first page within two weeksKeyword #2 hitting first page quicklyKeyword #3 reaching first page after few short weeksKeyword #4 reaching first page after few short weeksKeyword #5 almost reaching first page
When we analyzed the target keyword SEO competitors, we found many of the sites were ranking a dedicated page to the area. We also found the pages to be well-optimized for SEO (other SEO agencies/freelancers working on such competitive keyword cluster) and had a high domain authority (backlinks support).
Here is what we knew that we had to do for them:
Create a dedicated page with a URL structure, metadata, and heading tags optimized to signal visibility on our target area
Produced page content that were informative, clear, and compelling for selling and educating visitors on the dental services offered (~800 words)
Conducted an internal linking campaign connecting other service pages and the home page to this new page (pass link equity, improve topical authority, and helps the new page index quicker)
Conducted a link building campaign involving guest posts from sites that we have worked with previously and business directories (increasing link equity and presence in the area)
As a result, rankings overall has improved both for the target area keywords and for more competitive keywords.
The next steps from here is to continue increasing link equity and push for top 3-5 positions in the next 3-6 months.
Increasing organic search visibility
This client simply wanted to expand their reach across all of Ontario. They wanted more traffic, build greater brand awareness, and ultimately generate leads across the province.
After 6 months of campaigning, we have seen steady and progressive results:
Increasing total keywords visibility by nearly 70% within 6 months
We also find that their interested keywords have increased overall in ranking positions, although many more highly relevant, commercial keywords outside of our SEO plan have appeared.
We knew the site has achieved authority-status under Google’s eyes (any new content published ranks in the top 30 positions), so the strategy was simple. With an increased SEO budget and reallocation of resources, the strategy was to increase content production and publish as much commercial content s quickly as possible.
The results were phenomenal and the visibility was as expected:
The next steps is to continue publishing additional content, focusing more on informative keywords and optimizing the site structure (both the menu physical hierarchy and the internal links virtual siloing).
Making it to the top
A client enjoying exceptional SEO results wanted to take it all the way to the top and dominate their market. We evaluated the market, looked over what it would take to accomplish such, and produced this overall result:
Going all the way to the top
The site was in a prime position to shoot for top 5 positions. The site had no technical SEO issues, the content on-page SEO was well-optimized, and link building was going well. All they needed was a little push. The question was from where?
What we notice was from the addition of new content, we found further optimization for additional, relevant keyword signals. This advanced optimization was to be carefully executed, as incorrect optimization can lead to a drop in rankings, traffic, and leads.
Comprehensive and thorough keyword and competition research was conducted to identify new opportunity keyword signals
On-page optimization was conducted both within the content body and content headings
Conducted an internal linking campaign to reorganize the virtual structure laid out for the site, and better optimizing the flow of link equity achieved for the site
As a result, we were able to push to the top of the mountain with high-volume service+area keywords and keywords of interest.
High-competition keyword, to position 5Medium-competition keyword, to position 3Medium-competition keyword, to position 2Medium-competition keyword, to position 4Low-competition keyword, to position 3
The next step is to continue ongoing link building campaign, continue careful optimization tests for improvements, and dominate the market as the #1 ranking site for high-volume keywords.
Patients are getting smart when they pick a new doctor. They look up their doctors to see what others have to say about them, before deciding. This means health clinics need to have a positive presence online. Carefully managing reputation and asking for reviews is essential. They can mean the difference in winning a new patient online, or having them head down the street to your competitors.
In this guide, we show you how you can grow your practice with the best processes for getting patients to leave great online reviews.
5 Considerations For Getting Patients To Leave Reviews
It is never as simple as asking for a review. Proper timing, a good read of your patient, and a bit of flattery can go a long way. Here are 5 points you should consider before asking for a patient to leave an online review for you.
1. Patient satisfaction first
Many healthcare clinics have grown their practices through referrals. This is achieved by offering quality customer care and addressing your patients’ concerns in an excellent fashion. Listening to your patients, understanding them, and treating them the way they want to be treated is essential. Proper social etiquette and great bedside manners are a must to improve above all else.
2. Frame the ‘ask’ well
Timing and reciprocity can frame your ‘ask’ in the best light possible. Your receptionist, as they process your patients’ insurance or payment, can inquire how satisfactory their treatment has been. This allow them to gauge and decide whether to ask for a review or not. They can also offer the right swag for their need. When you know a patient is happy with their appointment and has received a gift afterwards, they are more likely to be receptive to the ‘ask’ and reciprocate the help.
3. Give them a good reason to help you
Sometimes, patients want to do something to help your clinic. The best way to ensure that they are properly motivated is not to only offer swag, but a good reason to do so. We instruct our healthcare practices to keep it simple with their explanation: If the patient can leave an online review, it would help us grow by making it easier for others to find and choose your clinic.
4. Make it convenient and easy
Not everyone is technically savvy, nor do they have the greatest consideration to do you a favor. It is important to remove as much friction as possible in having a patient leave a review, and it begins with providing accessible and easy to follow guidelines for your patient to use. A step-by-step printout, a webpage that outlines and offers screenshots of what to look for, and direct access to review platforms can ensure the likelihood that a person can leave a review for you.
You can also share some ideas as to what they can write about. For example, you can share the ideas like:
What made you come to visit Dr. ABC in the first place
What was it like scheduling an appointment
The experience when arriving at the clinic
The patient care that the staff offered
How do you feel about the outcome of their treatment or procedure
5. Follow up is essential
Life catches up with a person really quickly, so priorities can change the moment a patient walks out the door. Even when you have checked all the boxes with the above considerations, your staff needs a process remind people to leave a review. There are several ways you can do so:
Have your receptionists ask via email or phone call (such as when confirming a new appointment with a patient that has agreed)
Send a link in automated emails and text messages to thank them for choosing you
Occasionally ask on social media and in newsletters that get sent out
Postcards to remind of upcoming appointments, with a webpage address or QR code they can access on their computer or smartphone
Have a hyperlink in your email signature as part of all correspondence with patients
Every opportunity you can connect with a patient is an opportunity you can have to ask them for a review.
10 Ways to Ask for Patient Reviews
1. Ask patients when they are in the office, after receiving swags
People tend to respond positively after receiving gifts. Equip your receptionist with the best swags possible, and give them away after every patient appointment. They can then ask how their appointment went to learn more. If the patient responds well, your receptionist can ask if they are willing to leave a review online so that other people can find your clinic. For example, dentists often give away bags of goodies like floss, toothpaste, and a toothbrush. You can then follow up with the following scenario:
Front desk: “How was your teeth cleaning?”
Patient: “Good! Everything feels nice and clean now.”
Front desk: “That’s wonderful to hear, dear. We’d love for you to share your positive experience about your appointment on Review Platform ABC, so others in need of our healthcare services can find us, too.”
2. Send a personalized email or set up email marketing sequences
After a well-received appointment, an automated follow-up email sequence can be sent as a reminder for your patients to leave a review. An email sequence is a series of emails that follow up with your patients. The key point is to automate this process. You want to make this process as easy and simple as possible. For extra control, if your customer management system (CMS) allows for it, you can also enable an email sequence after approving it.
“We’re glad you came in! Could you leave us a quick review about your positive experience at our healthcare clinic, so others in need of oral care can find us?”
In addition, you can set up email marketing campaigns that run automatically for any new patient that register. You can get clever with how you set up sequences, depending on what type of emails your contact engages on. The gist, however, is that every so often, you can ask how they find your emails. If they respond positively, then a follow-up email can be sent asking for a review!
3. Print out the links for customers to take home
For those who may not use emails, you can offer a print-out that contains instructions on how someone can leave an email.
When you create an account on review sites, you may have set your business profile page URLs. Here are how those sharable links may look like:
Other platforms will have different ones. However, this can be intimidating and require your patients to have an account or access to these platforms. If they do not, Google My Business listing would be the most essential.
4. Ask for reviews on social media
For those who engage with your business on social media, you can ask if they can share their experience on Facebook or Instagram! For example, on Facebook, you can send invitations to friends or colleagues for them to follow your page. You can also send invitations to follow for anyone who engages with a post on your Facebook page.
You can ask patients who come into the office if it is okay to share their story on social media, whether using their (first) name and photo of their smile while you’re at it, too!
5. Send a postcard or direct mail to them
To the patients who do not respond to emails, print-out instructions, or social media, a postcard can do the trick. The caveat with this tactic is to consider whether they have written a review already. A simple message such as:
“We appreciate you, and look forward to you sharing your positive experience of your time at ABC.”
6. Make use of your website!
Instead of having a print-out of instructions for your patients, you can also send a link to a webpage that instructions patients on how to leave a review. That way, you can also track visits to your website and send them a convenient link to access.
7. Ask for it on appointment cards
Business cards with space to write a patient’s next appointment can also be used to ask for reviews. Though this requires a bit of graphic design work, you can include your webpage URL that has all your sharable links or to the one link that matters (such as your Google My Business listing).
Any printed set of instructions can be an opportunity to ask. You can include your review profiles and sharable links at the bottom of the page. As you walk your patients through the take-home instructions, you can conveniently make your ask right there and then as well.
9. Include in SMS messages
After an appointment is completed, an SMS can be sent in the evening to ask if they could leave a review to help other patients understand and find your clinic’s services. A proper healthcare practice management software can have an add-on feature for SMS follow-ups. This not only helps improve patient engagement but also allows you to give them a nudge for upcoming appoints and (of course) reviews.
10. Ask when you send a thank you email
Like SMS messages, an email can be sent to patients to build rapport and offer an opportunity for them to leave a review. The same also applies when you send a follow-up email with the next appointment date and time on it for your patient to have.
When you had your patients take-home instructions, this is an opportunity to ask for their email so you can send a digital copy for their safe keeping!
11. Include it on your invoice & receipt
When a patient pays their bill, you can print an invoice for services rendered and include it in the footer of your receipts. Invoices would be a simple tweak of the document template. However, the card terminals might require some coding. Contact your payment processor to ask how a custom message can be added.
12. Include it in all your emails (signature)
Why not make use of the email signatures at the end of all emails sent to patients? Besides having your clinic’s contact information and social media links, you can include instructions on how to leave a review.
Example of an email signature with instructions on how to leave a review.
What Your Patients Can Include in Reviews
Not all patients are sure about what to write about. You can suggest the following ideas for them:
On the friendliness and professionalism of your staff
The overall experience at the clinic
Cleanliness or appearance of your clinic
Quality of patient care or services (ask them to mention the specific service!)
Quality of communication
What wait times were experienced
How effective treatment has been (before, after photos!)
About the technology and equipment used!
Concluding Thoughts
Reviews won’t write themselves! Reviews not only establishes confidence and trust for future patients to see, they are signals to search engines like Google and Bing on how well your business best serves searchers in need of your services. Taking every opportunity to remind or ask your patients for reviews can help grow your business in more ways than one.
What’s the next step? Start implementing these ideas. Emails are the easiest way to start. Then work backwards from other communication channels such as SMS or printed instructions. You can also ask your staff on how to ask for reviews. Maybe send them this post for further reading. 🙂
Need help implementing the best strategy marketing for clinics? Our clients have always referred to us as partners, discussing new ideas and on how to implement them. Contact us today for a free consultation.
It could be an SEO agency. It could also be an SEO expert/freelancer. My biggest takeaway from my experience in doing SEO both for client sites and my own is that SEO is easy. As long as you don’t make critical errors.
There are numerous guides out there on the web that you can research. Tons of YouTube SEO resources available at our fingers. And as long as you have the time, life can be kept as simple as using a WordPress site, producing content with target keywords in mind, and building backlinks.
One of the major reasons clients from my previous jobs and the past choose an SEO agency is because they do not have the time or capacity to conduct their SEO campaigns. When you are growing quick, working on multiple fronts (building sales, developing products/services, managing operations), it’s a lot easier to hand the reigns of generating business for you to an agency with the skills and experience to do so.
As a sole business owner with limited resources, I would never recommend going the SEO agency route. Generally speaking, I’ve always known it to be best to focus on sales yourself and overdelivering yourself as you grow. It’s only when you reached a point in your day-to-day where you begin feeling overwhelmed do you consider an SEO agency.
Quick sidenote: For those who want to do things on their own, here are 3 resources I recommend studying to do your own SEO.
In an ideal world, you want an SEO agency or expert by your side as early as possible. Like before you build a site (i.e., launching a new dental practice) or begin a site migration of some kind (i.e., consolidating multiple dealerships under one corporate site).
The reason is when you build with an improper foundation, you might end up walking down a path with no results for months on end. Worst yet is ending up tens of thousands of dollars in the red for migrating a site only to find out the way it was done wrong, tanking your organic search visibility into no man’s land.
What makes an SEO agency suitable to step in to help you is that they have the technical understanding and resources to effectively improve your online presence. They have the expertise and know-hows on:
Site structure and architecture (physical vs. virtual silos)
How to do proper redirect and repair faulty ones
Identify, then resolve broken pages and links
Understanding of hosting solutions and CMS
Conducting comprehensive keyword research
Content development and content optimization for SEO
Build backlinks efficiently and effectively
Educate you in SEO; and
(For the really good ones) Expertise and insights to specific markets and geographic locations
If you have the resources and look forward to scaling or growing your business, that is the best time to begin searching for an SEO agency or expert. Otherwise, I highly recommend to start your SEO journey by studying the resources I’ve listed above!
