What is this issue? CONVERSIONS

Many people come to The SEM Firm in hopes of ranking #1 on terms such as ‘physician chicago il’ or ‘dental practice callaway county.” Others will insist that the problem is that they are not getting enough traffic. Most of the dental marketing materials and materials that I see for physician web marketing are leading people astray.

The truth is that rankings are just a means to an end.

The truth is that traffic is of secondary importance.

What is critical is that the traffic that you do have is translating into CONVERSIONS.

Rankings do not make you any money. Traffic does not put food on the table. Conversion from a visitor to a patient is all that matters.

What is a conversion for a dental practice or physicians office? An appointment. Your website should be capable of (at the very least) generating some leads of people that are interested in your services.

Do you make it easy for visitors to your website to do business with you?

If you really want to make it easy for your visitors to do business with you there are some relatively inexpensive appointment making programs available including a great one from Appointment Quest. If you are spending the time to get better rankings and traffic you must put yourself in a position to close the deal on your website.

Here are some tips:
1. Make it very clear what visitors should do to become a patient. This called a Call to Action (e.g. Click here to schedule an appointment)
2. The Call to Action should appear on every page and should link to your Conversions Page (You never know when the visitor will read something that makes them say “I need to see this doctor!”
3. Create a Conversions Page where visitors can fill out a form or make an appointment.
4. If you are using a lead generating form — Keep it as short as possible. Every extra field decreases conversion.
5. Consider a third party software that can book appointments for your Conversions Page.

Don’t: Obsess about your rankings and traffic.
Do: Obsess about converting visitors to patients.

Let me know if you have questions or comments by posting in the Comments section. I will be happy to help.

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dental web marketing; dental marketing materials

Your reputation could be challenged at any moment and this post is designed to keep you “in the know” about what is being said about you or your practice online.

Google Alerts

Google Alerts is a powerful tool that has many uses for online marketers but can also be used to manage your online reputation. I will include a link to Google Alerts at the bottom of this post.

Set up Google Alerts using keywords that relate specifically to you or your practice. Use as keywords:

• your name
• the name of your practice
• your address
• your telephone number
• names of your customer facing employees
• etc

For example:

• Hayden Dell
• Dell Family Dentistry

Dental Marketing Tips: Use “quotation marks” around these search terms or you will receive alerts on things such as family dentistry and dell family.

When Google finds these search terms it will email you and give you the location, so that you can investigate.

Look for a post on how to banish those disparaging comments next week.

Let me know if you have questions or comments by posting in the Comments section. I will be happy to help.

Don’t forget to sign up for my RSS feed by clicking on the orange RSS icon.

Here is a link to Google Alerts