Dental SEO or how Google has affected the dental industry

Dental SEO Google
Dental SEO or how Google has affected the dental industry

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We wrote last week on how the internet is changing with keywords like “Local orthodontist” that are displaying a consumer trend seen online.

But how has the emerge of Google and the internet affected the dentist industry?

Commercialization of the industry

The internet has transformed many industries and dentistry is not an exception. Dentists across the world can now find clients easier and the focus of the industry has become commercial rather than academic or scientific like it was during the last century.

commercalization-of-dentists
This is not a businessmen but rather a medical professional.

Places like India have seen discussions around this subject – ethics behind marketing medical services.

One thing is clear, it’s not turning around and as a dentist it’s your job to be sure that you have clients lined up for your services.

It’s just the dental marketing that’s changing

A research report concluded that the staff in dental practices did not know if the practice had a website or what was the address. This indicates that it’s just the marketing that’s changing for the dentist – the operations are the same.

This also indicates that dental practices around the UK are trusting the marketing operations to dental marketing professionals.

Google is giving the industry a bad name

With all of the innovation internet has brought us, it also started a wave of unseen unsolicited advertising, also known as spam.

People gaining the SEO skills can find ways to monetize them quite easily and the dentist industry with it’s high prices is a great target. The same research report says that 89% of websites promoted tooth whitening, despite legal unclarity of this service.

Highly competitive niche increases the prices

Some keywords are bidden for as much as £10 in the Google PPC networks. This has lead the dentistry and orthodontist niches to become some of the most competitive on the online advertising landscape.

The alternatives to PPC is of course organic ranking and even that can become quite pricey and reflects on the dentists prices too.

Differentiate against other dentists

For dentists around the world and especially in a developed economy like the UK, it’s incredibly important to remember one thing – you’re selling a medical service.

As the rumor goes, dentists are told that dentistry is not for those that want to become rich on the first day of the dentist school, but rather for those passioned about medicine.

While of course it’s incredibly important to have a good dentist marketing campaign and clients lined up, we advise to focus on the marketing side on the background of the business.

As the industry becomes more spamy online, for a very sensitive matter such as dental health, people will start to look for high quality dentists with great skills.

And this is probably the best marketing strategy for dentists – focus on maintaining your professional integrity and running your dentistry. While you could do the SEO and other marketing things yourself, it’s best to outsource them to other professionals so that you can focus on doing what you do the best.

Author Profile

Fernando BiZ
The Founder & CEO of ClickDo Ltd. Writes about digital marketing and SEO for local businesses in International corporation. You can read more on OM HQ blog for more of my writings.
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