Online Visibility for Australian Dentists
It’s Australia Day 2016, and Google knows that your practice is likely to be closed, and is making sure people in your location know it!
If you needed any evidence that Google is serious when it comes to making sure that users get the best possible experience from their search engine, here’s a piece that appeared today- January 26, Australia Day. [Read more…]
The term ‘Local Search’ describes the action when someone is looking for something in a particular geographic location. Google has determined that people will frequently do ‘searches with local intent’, and has adjusted its search algorithm many times over the years to make it easy for its users to find people, places and businesses in their location of interest.
So when someone in your area is searching online for a new dental practice, you’d probably expect that your practice would be one of those that appears on page one of their search results.
Trouble is, there aren’t many positions of the first page of the search results. And if there are a lot of other dental practices nearby, there’s going to be a lot of competition for each spot.
Like organic search, local search is complex, with scores of factors influencing which practices appear, and which do not.
So what do you do when your practice is in a particular location, but it’s not appearing in local search?
There are seven key factors to keep in mind, and I’ll be discussing them here in some detail.
Simply put, this acronym stands for Name, Address and Phone number which are the three most important defining pieces of information about a practice. Your own practice’s NAP will be found in many places across the internet:
Obviously this information is important as it allows prospective new patients to find and make contact with you.
But NAP has another very important function: it provides Google with trusted, third-party signals that demonstrate that your practice is a real business. While you obviously have full control over the information you put on your website and social profiles, you don’t control the directories, some of which have strict verification processes to ensure your information is from a bona fide business. Your NAP information (also called a ‘Citation’) should therefore be listed in as many relevant and trusted business and professional directories as possible as part of your marketing strategy. [Read more…]
Have you been noticing changes in the Google Local listings recently? We sure have, and it’s not just us here in Australia! There’s a buzz (and a great deal of hair-tearing) coming from Local Search forums all across the world about the weirdness that continues in Google Local listings. [Read more…]