[Webinar Recording] Valuable Training On Local Search For Dental Practices

Recently Blake Hadley the President of My Social Practice was invited to host a dental marketing webinar for Nexhealth that focused on how to find new patients and grow your dental practice.

Nexhealth is a company that has partnered with My Social Practice. Nexhealth offers an amazing set of software tools that integrate EHR platforms, real-time scheduling, patient communications, digital forms and more.

We were excited to spend time with Nexhealth and share this dental SEO training. It focuses on how to optimize your Google maps listing.

What You’ll Learn In This Webinar Recording

• What is Google My Business and why is everyone talking about it?
• Is your practice GMB listing essential to practice growth?
• Why are my competitors ranking above me in Google maps?
• Can you optimize your GMB listing to outrank my competition?
• A clear explanation of how your practice ranks in the Google map.
• Easy dental SEO tips to increase your new patient phone calls?
• Simple ways to generate more Google reviews?
• How can your dental practice be the practice of choice in your city/town?
• And give actual case study examples of local SEO success

Speaker 1:
All right. We’re going to get started here. I’m sure other folks will come in as we continue. So, first off, I want to say, thank you everybody for joining us today. I’m really excited to cover the topic at hand. So, welcome everybody to today’s webinar. How Do Patients Find & Choose You? The Secrets of Google My Business and Google Reviews.

Speaker 1:
So, really excited today to cover these topics. As I know, they really matter to folks that are joining or have registered as well as to our co-host. First, before we get into the main topic, I want to do a few housekeeping items. We want to make sure that everybody knows we’ll be sending you a recording of today’s session that you can share with your colleagues or review after if there’s any points that you may have missed, or you just want to go back and understand a few of the things that Blake covers, as well as if you have any questions, please make sure to send them along using the Q&A button below your Zoom dashboard.

Speaker 1:
So, you can click on the dashboard and you’ll see a Q&A button, please go ahead and hit that. And you can send in questions and we’ll moderate them and ask them to Blake as we go along through the webinar, as well as at the end with the Q&A session also.

Speaker 1:
So, a little bit about NexHealth and who we are. We’re actually a platform that allows you to track, manage, and grow your practice, using a single piece of software. A lot of our customers use NexHealth to actually grow the number of appointments they set utilizing our real-time online scheduling. And also, retaining their customers, using our communications, digital forms, and marketing tools that directly integrate with your PMS.

Speaker 1:
So, with that, I’d like to introduce you to today’s speaker, a NexHealth preferred vendor and partner, Blake Hadley, President and Founder of My Social Practice. A little bit about My Social Practice. The team of My Social Practice are dental social media and dental, digital marketing experts. They have over 12 years of experience working with dentists and dentals, and dental practices. And they have become known to be one of the most reliable cost, effective dental marketing companies in the industry that allow you to grow. With that, Blake, I’ll let you take it away.

Blake Hadley:
All right. Thank you so much. It looks like the video, it might be doing, you might have to make me host again for the video to work. But let’s see. Oh, here we go. All right. You see me okay?

Speaker 1:
Yup.

Blake Hadley:
All right. Thank you so much for that introduction. I’m looking forward to presenting on this topic that is so crucial for dental practices, and we’re going to chat a little bit about Google and how you can do some fairly simple things to help rank a little bit higher in Google, in the Google map section. And also, I hope you get some more dental Google reviews.

Blake Hadley:
I’m excited to do this with NexHealth. I’ve been extremely impressed by NexHealth’s software and what they’re doing for the industry. And I’ve seen the results in practices that we’ve worked with as well of what NexHealth can do to make that process so much easier of scheduling appointments, as well as getting new patient leads.

Blake Hadley:
So, our services and their services really work really well together. So, we’re going to talk a little bit about that later as well. As mentioned, we’ve been in the industry for about 12 years now. We really consider ourselves one of the top, most comprehensive social media marketing solutions for dental practices. We’ve partnered with some of the industry’s top leaders, including NexHealth to bring this message to the industry.

Blake Hadley:
And we have one of the largest social media following in the industry, it’s how we’ve built our businesses by using Facebook and Instagram and Google to get our name out there. And so, we really practice what we preach and we try to help practices understand these tools because it’s how we’ve grown our business.

Blake Hadley:
We’ve also expanded into more than just social media marketing. We can help dentist get more reviews and help you with your dental website as well as some Google maps optimization and SEO for dentists. And I’ll talk about that a little bit. We also host one of the largest dental marketing conferences in the industry. It’s called the dental digital marketing conference. If you’re interested in coming to this, it’s a one-day event. It’s in April 22, 2022. You can go to dentalmarketingconference.com to learn more about that. It’s going to be in Salt Lake City next year.

Blake Hadley:
So, we’d love to have you out. It’s all focused on digital marketing and how we can help your practice. All right. Let’s talk a little bit about how people find you, how potential new patients are finding dental practices online. And, of course, one of the biggest ways that people are finding practices is on Google.

Blake Hadley:
So, we’re going to talk a little bit about what Google My Business is. What this really is, it’s your listing in the Google database. It will show up in this map section. When people search, for example, dentist in Los Angeles, as we know on that first page, there’s a map section that will show up, that will show local dental listings. And this is your Google map’s listing that shows up within maps.

Blake Hadley:
This is your Google My Business page. It also shows up, if someone were to search you directly, just search the name of your practice. It will show up in that right hand column. This is called the knowledge graph of Google. And so, actually, I like to consider this a little dental website before your dental website. Dental marketing experts are finding that a lot of patients are getting all the information they need about companies or about dental practices from this section right here. Sometimes, they don’t even click to the website of the practice, because this section has the address on there. It has the hours. It has photos of the practice. It has directions.

Blake Hadley:
So, a lot of times it’s all they need to know from here to decide on if they want to call your practice. And of course, one of the biggest things that we’re going to talk about is this hosts your Google reviews. It tells people how many reviews you have in your average stars on your reviews.

Blake Hadley:
So, this is the knowledge graph section of the search results. Of course, if you clicked onto that, it would then show exactly where your practice is on the map. And it shifts the knowledge graph over to the left hand section with all the information about your practice.

Blake Hadley:
So, I want to tell you a little bit about the history of Google My Business to get you an understanding of what is Google My Business. A lot of times, there’s some confusion around this because people will say, “I know I have a Google listing or I’m on Google Maps or I’m on Google+, or there’s all these different names that Google has thrown out for Google My Business.

Blake Hadley:
So, let me give you a little history. So, in 2005, Google basically, did a scrape of the entire internet, all the yellow pages listings that were on the internet and they brought them into one place and this was called your Google local listing. And then, they asked practices to claim their listing and add info to the listing.

Blake Hadley:
So, they scraped it from online, and then they asked the business to go, and then claim that listing. There wasn’t really a map associated with it. It was just, if you could remember how the internet looked in 2005, it’s hard to remember. But it was just a lot of text and it just showed the listing. It had some information on it, but it wasn’t to the extent of what it is today.

Blake Hadley:
And then, in 2012, they incorporated the map more into it and they called it Google Places. So, they changed the name from Google local listing. They changed it to Google Places. And then, in 2013, they tried to become the next Facebook. They were seeing the success Facebook had of connecting with their businesses, connecting with their customers on Facebook. And they said, “Well, let’s try to change this listing into more of a social network and we’re going to call it Google+.”

Blake Hadley:
And as you might know, the Google+ icon still is floating around on the… If you do some searches or on people’s websites. But Google+ failed and is no longer exists. And so, in 2014, they changed Google+ for not being this social network to Google My Business. And that’s what it’s called now from 2014 to now, it’s called Google My Business.

Blake Hadley:
So, don’t be confused by all these different names. They’re all the same thing. It’s just how it’s evolved over time. Now, why is this so important? Because 90% of online searches are done through Google. We probably know that already Google is the 100-pound gorilla. It is the main way that people are finding what they need online, especially locally.

Blake Hadley:
So, we talked about what people see when they search on Google. There’s three sections to know about. First, there is obviously, what I talked about is this map section, and they have found through research that 68% of consumers say they trust these maps results.

Blake Hadley:
Now, if you look at the other sections of Google that show up, there’s that first top section. These are the ads, the pay-per-click ads, or the ad words that show up. They found that 10% of consumers say they trust those first top results. And that’s interesting, right?

Blake Hadley:
They show up very first, but people know that they’re ads, that companies are paying for that position. And so, a lot of times they just skip past those. I’m not saying there’s not value in those because you can still catch people’s attention with those ads. But when it comes to trust, about 10% of people trust those top results, which are the ads.

Blake Hadley:
And then, they found that 27% of consumers say they trust the organic results. So, the results that show up underneath maps, these are the organic, what Google is trying to figure out, what you’re searching for, and they try to give you what’s relevant to what you’re searching.

Blake Hadley:
So, organic results are a result of whether what your website says, the keywords in your blog posts, what other sites are saying about you. It’s a culmination of a bunch of different things that decide where you show up in the organic results. But 27% of people trust those organic results.

Blake Hadley:
So, that 68% in the maps of trust in the map section is so important. One-third of mobile searches are related to location now. So, when someone jumps on their phone and they’re searching for something, a third of the time, they’re trying to find something locally near them. Location related searches and maps are growing 50% faster than mobile browser searches.

Blake Hadley:
So, the app, Google maps app, or the Apple Maps app, for example, people are not going to the Chrome browser or the Safari browser on their phone, as much as they’re going to the actual app, the maps app or the Google Maps app improves your local search for dental practices. So, that’s something to keep in mind. Also, Google Maps, that app is used by 70% of monthly navigation app users.

Blake Hadley:
So, I mentioned Apple Maps. I use Apple Maps quite a bit because I have Apple phone, but 70% of navigation app users are using the Google Maps app. I know Google Map is automatically on Android phones. And I think a lot of people prefer Google Maps app, even over the Apple Maps app. So, that’s why it shows that 70% use that.

Blake Hadley:
So, how can a dental practice rank higher on Google? Google says, there are three things that determine how you rank in that map section. There’s relevance, distance and prominence. And I want to tell you exactly, what Google says about these three things.

Blake Hadley:
So, relevance. Relevance refers to how well a local business profile matches what someone is searching for. Add a complete and detailed business information to help Google better understand your business and match your profile to relevant searches. So, if someone searches for dentist, it’s going to pull up what they think is most relevant to what they’re looking for, the dentist in their area, right?

Blake Hadley:
Distance. Distance considers how far each potential search result is from the location term used in a search. If a user doesn’t specify a location in their search, we’ll calculate distance based on what we do know about their location. So, first looks, it looks at relevance, then it says, “Okay, where is this person standing or sitting? And let’s find the nearest dentist to them.”

Blake Hadley:
Now, how do they know where you’re standing or sitting? Many times, it’s just the IP address of the internet that you’re connected to, at that time. It will ask if you do searches on maps, you’ve probably seen that pop up that says, “Allow Google to see where you’re standing in the moment?” So, it can better determine what you’re looking for and what’s closest to you. And so, they’ll try to figure out where you’re standing, any way that they can, so they can give you what you’re looking for.

Blake Hadley:
And then, prominence. Prominence is based on information that Google has about a business from across the web, like links, articles, and directories. Google review count and review score factor into local search ranking, more reviews and positive ratings can improve your business local ranking. So, prominence is what other people are saying about your business.

Blake Hadley:
So, the more that people are talking about you and articles, and blog posts, the more your practice might show up. And, of course, the reviews count. It does say that the reviews and your dental practice reviews score does factor into your search ranking. It’s not the biggest factor. You might see that when you search for a dentist in your area, it’s not necessarily the practices with the most Google reviews‘ ratings or the top amount of reviews that show up at the top. It is a factor, but it’s not the determining factor. But it’s still important to have.

Blake Hadley:
All right. So, I want to show you how it works. We’ve taken those how those three factors play into how a practice might show up. So, I’m just going to show this dental SEO case study of VP dental, cosmetic, and family dentist. This is where it’s located. On our website we have another dental SEO marketing case study that you’ll probably want to read up on.

Blake Hadley:
So, if someone were to search or let’s take these two people, this woman here on the left and this man on the right, if they were to search dentist, and this is the location that they’re standing, in comparison to the practice. For the woman, because she’s standing so close, and if she were to search the term dentist, this practice might show up second in the maps section.

Blake Hadley:
All right. So, and for this man, because he’s standing further from the practice that distance factor plays into this, it might show up 13th in that list of practices. So, what we’re able to do at my social practice. We’re able to run a report to show people where their practice would rank depending on where someone is standing.

Blake Hadley:
So, this is an example of what a grid report looks like for the term dentist for this practice. So, you can see all the little green circles that are close to the practice there that say, two and three and eight and five. That is the position that the practice is ranking, if that person is standing in that location. So, you can see it’s green, really close to it with twos and threes, and then it starts getting yellow and orange.

Blake Hadley:
And then, when you get further away from the practice, you have a lot of red Xs, which means that your practice wouldn’t even show up. If someone was standing in that location and search dentist, your practice wouldn’t even show up in the map section. For this man out here, it’s 13th. So, he’s further away. So, you can see that little 13 orange circle next to him. It shows that practice is showing up 13th on the map. And it’s different depending on every search term.

Blake Hadley:
So, that was a dentist. This is cosmetic dentist. So, those two people were standing in the exact same location, but they were to search cosmetic dentist in maps, this practice shows up first for the woman and second for this man, even though he’s further away. Again, Google looks at all those three determining factors. And for the term cosmetic dentist, this practice is doing well. A lot of green around the area.

Blake Hadley:
This is for the term dental implant for this practice. Again, for the woman, the practice shows up ninth. And for this man, where he’s standing, it doesn’t even show up at all. So, people search a lot of different terms depending on what they’re looking for. But there are ways that your practice can rank for as many terms as you want and can rank better. Like this is a bad… This is not a very good example for this practice, because if they offer dental implants, they’re not showing up very high at all, for people that are looking for that in their area.

Blake Hadley:
So, these top results that we’re aiming for. They’re called the 3-Pack in Google. So, on the front page of the search results, there are four listings that show up usually in that map section. The top one is usually an ad, if someone’s running an ad in the area. And then, the three underneath there, what we call the 3-Pack. They have found that 92% of searchers will pick businesses on the first page of the local search results, so if you want more new patient phone calls you have to get onto to front page of Google.

Blake Hadley:
So, they will pick businesses in this 3-Pack or in the four-listing showing up. Also, the Google Maps pack gets 44% of total clicks. So, this is obvious where we want to be for multiple search terms. For our practice, we want to show up in that 3-Pack. And if we can show up in that 3-Pack, there’s a really good chance that we’re going to get those calls and those clicks.

Blake Hadley:
So, how can you take your practice from looking like this on the left, to ranking low in the area, to looking like this on the right for multiple search terms. So, I want to show you, I want to give you some tips of things that you can do right now in your practice. There’s a lot that take a little bit more time and more effort to get ranking better. But there are some things that you can do to check your Google My Business profile, to help you rank a little bit better.

Blake Hadley:
So, first, this one might seem obvious, but you’ll be very surprised how many practices have not done this. You need to claim and verify your listing. So, what I would do is go to maps.google.com and search for your practice. And you can scroll down, when you find your practice, click on the listing and click on the maps area in the knowledge graph there. And it’ll take you to a page that looks like this.

Blake Hadley:
And then, scroll down and see if there’s a little section there that says, “Manage this listing,” that might show up in there. When you click on that, it’ll take you to a page that looks like this, and it will ask you to verify the number that’s connected to that business or the email that’s connected to that business, to verify with that contact that you are eligible or okay to manage that business.

Blake Hadley:
If you are the dentist of the practice, I would highly, highly recommend that you are managing your Google My Business page. Someone on your team might be doing it, or maybe a while ago, someone claimed your listing, but it’s very important that you have admin access to your page, because if your team changes or we all know how this happens, this happens to… We hear this all the time. Someone doesn’t know the password of how to manage their page.

Blake Hadley:
So, if you’re the dentist, be sure you go through this process. So, you’ll see there’s a number associated with it that you can text, and then they can give you access. Or it will send an email to the email that’s associated with that business. And it will give you the first few letters of that email. And you might be able to determine that SEs, whose name that is that’s associated with that email. But it will send an email to that email address. And then, they can then verify and give you access to that page.

Blake Hadley:
Now, to know if you have access to that page, if you go to business.google.com, you should be able to see a page, a backend that looks like this. If you are an admin and have access to that page, you should be able to see this dashboard for your Google My Business page.

Blake Hadley:
So, you can see here, for me, on the top right, I know that I’m logged into my personal account and that I have access because I’m seeing all these options and settings and things I can change. So, you might need to change your, the Google account. If you have multiple Google accounts, you might need to change it to the Google account that does have access to that. But just look in that top right-hand corner and make sure that the email, that your main email does have access to it. And that you’re logged in under the right account.

Blake Hadley:
Another way to do this is to download the Google My Business app, which is a really powerful app. I’d recommend that you download it, just search it in your app store. And when you download it, it’ll look, if you’re logged in into your Gmail account or into Google on your phone, and it will say, “Do you want to continue with that login or with that account?” And you can continue as yourself or you can log in.

Blake Hadley:
And then, if you are an admin over that account, it will then show up in locations, your dental practice that you could then change the settings of it. One thing too, to check. Once you get into the app, if you have access, go to the more section on the bottom and manage users. And you can see all of the managers and owners of your account.

Blake Hadley:
Again, if you’re a dentist, be sure that you are the primary owner of your Google My Business listing. If the owner is somebody else, maybe someone that’s claimed it a long time ago, be sure that you’re made an owner of the account. And then, you can have managers underneath you. If you have a business helping you manage your account or whatever it might be, but be sure that you’re the owner.

Blake Hadley:
All right. So, that’s my first dental SEO tip. Hopefully, that made sense. SEO dental marketing can be a little bit confusing, but be sure that you claim your listing and you have management and owner rights to your page. Now, once you do that, always do what Google suggests that you do. And a lot of times, they’ll have little popups that will say something like complete your recommended task to reach your goals on Google. And it’ll give you a little plan of things that you can do.

Blake Hadley:
Check this, that notification area, where it says, “View plan at the top.” Any notifications that Google tell you to do, do it. This will help your, if you can… The more that you can add into your Google My Business page, the better it will rank and the more Google likes it. So, just do what they ask you to do.

Blake Hadley:
Also, add primary categories into your Google listing. This is really important. People will search for your practice using different types of search terms as we talked about before. So, you’re going to want to add maybe two or three. We don’t recommend you go past that primary category to your practice. For example, here, the primary category of this practice is cosmetic dentist. And then, additional categories are dentist or dental implants provider.

Blake Hadley:
There’s already some preloaded categories that are within Google that you can choose. This one, I’ve actually, it says primary category as cosmetic dentist. But I would recommend that 99% of the time, if you’re a general dentist or even a cosmetic dentist, put your primary category as dentist. Sometimes, by default, we’ve seen this a lot. It says, dental clinic as the primary category, I would change that to dentist, not dental clinic. Nobody searches dental clinic, especially in the US, but they do search dentist.

Blake Hadley:
So, I would recommend that’s your primary category. And then, you can add a couple other ones as your additional categories. If you provide implants, I would put dental implants provider. If you do some orthodontic work, or if you’re a specialist in some type, you can add that as an additional category. I think it lets you add quite a few, but I would keep this to maybe your two or three top categories of what you provide.

Blake Hadley:
And then, after you add those categories, you need to add your services. And you can see here for our practices that we work with. We add a ton of services into here. As we know, people search services. So, people will say teeth whitening in my area, or veneers in my area, or Invisalign near me, or whatever they’re looking for, they’re going to search that.

Blake Hadley:
And so, if you want to show up in anywhere in that map section, for one of these terms, you need to add that service into your Google My Business profile. And so, this is how it lets you do it. You can put the services underneath those categories. So, if your primary category is dentist, you can put dental fillings, dentures, tooth extractions, removals, dental implants, teeth cleanings. And then, it allows you to put a description as well.

Blake Hadley:
I would fill out those descriptions with as much information, custom information as you can. It’s better if this is custom where you can put in, you can see here, we put in the name of the dentist. We put in the name of the city. Anything that you can add into these descriptions that spec that’s better. It’s custom and specifies who you are and what location you are in. That’s better for people to find. So, fill this out and fill it out as much as you can. Here’s this another category, cosmetic dentist. You can see all the different titles. We have all the services and all the descriptions.

Blake Hadley:
Next. The next area is a service area. Many times, dentist just put one service area. They put in the name of their city that their practice is in, and they leave it at that. We recommend that you, again, add a lot of service areas into this section. So, when you click on that, you can add a ton. I don’t think there’s even a limit to how many service areas you can put inside of it.

Blake Hadley:
So, first, of course, think about all the cities that are around your practice. But something to do, that’s a little secret, go to the map section again and look at all of the… I don’t even know what they call them, if they’re regions or these little areas around your practice. It’s funny. When I looked at this in my area, and I’m pretty familiar with my area, I didn’t know what half of these names were. You can see it in all caps. You’ve got Crossgate, Durant Road, Sheffield Place, Bournemouth Heights. There are all these little regions, and Google recognizes these as areas around you. And even if you’ve never heard of them, it’s what’s on their map.

Blake Hadley:
And so, these areas are really important to put in. Google will recognize that when you go to your service areas. Type in, try to type in one of these Sheffield place, and it will show up and you can choose that as an area. So, then you can determine how, what area you want to rank in and pick all of those names within that area and put that into right here, search that area and it will show up and then you can click on it and add it. So, that’s a secret. We found that, that works really well for our practices is to put those in there.

Blake Hadley:
All right. Next, add photos and videos. This is that first impression when people see your listing in the knowledge graph. This shows who you are just as if someone were to go to your Facebook page or your Instagram page. You can add a whole bunch of photos into your profile. The two that are really important are your cover photo and also your logo.

Blake Hadley:
So, the cover photo shows up as that top photo in the knowledge graph, when people search you. By default, if you don’t upload a photo in there, I think it just takes a screenshot of the street view. If you’re familiar with Google Maps, the street view of your practice, and I think it just automatically puts it in there. So, this gives you an opportunity to whatever you want to put there, be strategic. If it’s to your team, if it’s your doctor, that’s the first thing that they’re going to see. And then, the logo just shows up next to your name down there.

Blake Hadley:
We have, for our clients, we provide this little checklist of what type of photos they should be uploading into this section. And let me just show you quickly what the checklist has in it. We recommend that there’s at least three exterior photos of the practice and show. This is to really, show how to get there.

Blake Hadley:
So, think about how people approach your practice from the different angles, the things that they might see when they approach your practice from the street or if they’re walking or whatever it might be, and take pictures from those different angles. So, it makes it easy for people to find your practice.

Blake Hadley:
And then, interior photos, you should have maybe at least five of those photos, try to make it open your windows and have it well-lit, so that these photos don’t look, dark and dingy and make your practice look light and upbeat and happy. And so, take at least five of those and put those in there. Put some photos there of your team to show a little bit of your culture, what you do, maybe charities you support. But you might even want to do some head shots of all your team members, and put it in there, so people can see their smiling faces to show that you’re approachable.

Blake Hadley:
And then, maybe put some patient photos in there as well. We recommend maybe at least three patient photos to show that relationship between your team members and your patients, and why they like to come to your practice. One thing that we provide at my social practice are these fun little… We call them social signs that make it really easy to take those patient photos. It’s a really easy way to spark and start that conversation of, “Hey, do you just want to take this picture with this sign?”

Blake Hadley:
And I think most people know that if you’re taking a picture, you want to feature them on social media or your Google My Business account. As a side note, just always make sure you get that HIPAA authorization, that permission if you’re going to post their photos to anywhere, whether it’s your Google My Business account or your social media accounts, be sure you get that permission from your patients.

Blake Hadley:
Let’s talk about dental video marketing for a moment. You can upload dental videos in there as well. If you have some videos that some professional videos of your practice, or even if they’re not super professional, but they’re just team members explaining different services that you have, or your doctor introducing him or herself. Put those videos in there as well.

Blake Hadley:
Posting. So, I talked about how Google My Business tried to become with Google+. They tried to become a Facebook. They still kept the component of posting inside of Google My Business. Google has something called the frequency of interaction formula. They like it when people can interact, the more someone can interact with the business, whether it’s leaving them reviews or interacting with one of their posts or the more that they click around in that knowledge graph, the better.

Blake Hadley:
So, posts are a way for you to get a little bit more content onto your Google My Business page. So, you can post your most recent blog post in this section with a little caption. Blogging is a big deal in SEO and you can link from that post to your website or to other areas of your Google My Business profile. That’s something that we do as a strategy to just create more links within Google. We’ve seen that helps a little bit with the Google ranking.

Blake Hadley:
So, I’m start adding your posts into there that, again, that link to your website, so that people… When they scroll down in that knowledge graph section, it’ll actually, your post will show up here at the bottom. They can click on that, and they can see all your most recent posts, just like if they were to go to your Facebook page or your Instagram page.

Blake Hadley:
Next tip is make a Google website. You may not know that Google has a really easy way that you can just make a website in seconds. And what it actually does is, it gathers all of the information that you’ve put into Google My Business. And it just creates this little landing page. It’s like a one-page little website. So, if you go into the back end of your dashboard, you can see there’s a section here that says website, and you can design it with the colors that you like. But it basically, just pulls in your images.

Blake Hadley:
So, this top image might be your primary image that I talked about, pulls it right in there. It’ll show all your posts in a nice little grid type of section here. It’ll show your reviews as testimonials. It’ll just automatically, bring in your reviews from your Google page. And then, it’ll have your description here at the bottom. It’ll have your photos that you’ve posted as a gallery. And then, it will have a little map section at the very bottom. So, people can contact you.

Blake Hadley:
Now, this isn’t probably, I guess this could be your website for your practice, your main website, if you want it to be. In most cases, it is probably, not going to be your main website. But it’s okay to have a secondary website like this. Even if you don’t link to it very often or tell very many people about it. It’s one of those things. Again, if Google comes out with something and they want you to do it, I would do it because it would somehow, it can help with your Google ranking. The more information you have out there. And if it’s on Google’s platform, that’s even better. So, I would recommend that you make this little website for your practice.

Blake Hadley:
So, that is Google My Business. So, there’s some tips that you can be doing right now to help that Google My Business page rank. That’s how people find your practice. Now, once they find your practice, why do people then choose your practice? Why do they decide to pick up the phone to choose your practice? I’m going to spend the last bit of my presentation on that.

Blake Hadley:
So, the famous psychologist, Robert Cialdini, he said this, he said, “We view a behavior as more correct in a given situation to the degree we see others performing it.” So, as humans, and this is why social media is so big. We look at other people’s behavior and we mimic that behavior, we see what other people are doing, and we want to do it ourselves. It’s just human nature for us to do that.

Blake Hadley:
But Robert Cialdini, he saw this and he termed it what he calls social proof. You may have heard of that term before. So, what is today’s social proof? Really, it’s these five stars. This is the social proof for businesses. We are familiar now with the five reviews stars. And this is what tells most people. What other people are thinking about the business?

Blake Hadley:
They found that 74% of consumers allow social proof to influence their purchasing decisions. And 67% of people say, they’re more likely to select a service after a friend or family member shared it via social media. Also, 64% of consumers say they check a business’s Google reviews before calling them. And 59% of consumers report checking out at least two review sites before calling a company.

Blake Hadley:
So, they’re not just going to Google. A lot of times, they’ll go to Facebook, they’ll look at your reviews there, or they might go to Yelp and look at your reviews there. But they’ll at least, visit too before they make the decision to call you. So, if you think about that, how many calls are you missing out on? Maybe, one of these review sites doesn’t have very many reviews or has some negative reviews.

Blake Hadley:
You should be thinking in multiple platforms, at least two, that you’re trying to build your reviews. This was a really interesting survey that I found. People were asked, which dentist would you most likely pick from a Google search? And the top answer was the one with the best online reviews. The next, the one closest to me. The next, the top ranked one in the search results. Next, was the cheapest one. And the last one was the one with the best-looking website.

Blake Hadley:
So, again, this is so interesting. The cheapest one was fourth on the list. I think a lot of times when dentists think of marketing, all they think of is throwing out discounts, right? Discounts are going to be the thing that get people to come in, if I can give them a good discount. That’s the fourth factor underneath all these other things that people are looking for. The top thing people are looking for is along with the best online reviews.

Blake Hadley:
So, who would you choose in this scenario? If this was a search result that showed up and you were looking for a dentist, who would you choose among these, that show up in this Google Map section? So, this first one here has 31 reviews. The average is 3.8. And then, these top two here have 688 reviews with an average of 4.9. And the other one has 808 reviews with the average of 4.9.

Blake Hadley:
I think, if you’re comparing these three, there’s a really good chance that you’re probably going to pick the one with more reviews and a higher average score. Here’s another example here. These are four. One of them is an ad. That top one is an ad. But even though that top one is an ad, you might not… It has 44, but the one underneath, it has 148 with a better average have 5.0 average.

Blake Hadley:
The two at the bottom, there’s a 52. They have 52 reviews. And the one at the very bottom has 24, and their average is 4.6 and 4.1. If this was a scenario, I would probably pick this one here, the second one, down, 148 reviews with an average of 5.0. Here’s one more just to show, I probably wouldn’t pick this one with 16. But any of these, this top one, it is an ad, but it has 259 reviews.

Blake Hadley:
Now, this next one, 133 reviews and the bottom 112 reviews. I probably, wouldn’t look at that. I’m sure this Widner Family Dentistry is a great practice. I mean, that’s still awesome, right? 4.9 average. But because of the amount of reviews that they have, I would probably call one of the other ones before I called them.

Blake Hadley:
So, this is your minimum review’s goal. They have found that the amount, 40 reviews is the number of reviews that consumers require to even trust the company’s star rating. So, if it’s under 40 reviews, a lot of consumers will skip over that just because it doesn’t look like very many people even care enough to want to review that business.

Blake Hadley:
And then, 4.0 is at least what you want to have is your average, 80% of consumers say they do not trust a business with an average review rating below four stars. So, just because it has that three in there as your average rating, at three-point, even if it’s a 3.9, 3.8, there’s a good chance someone might skip over that because it’s not in the 4.0 area.

Blake Hadley:
So, if you’re in the three-point area and you just have a… It’s because you don’t have very many reviews and maybe, the majority of them are negative, just get some more reviews in there, so that you can have some more positive reviews, so that you can bump up that average.

Blake Hadley:
So, here are some tips to help you get some more reviews. And I’m in a minute, I might ask NexHealth a little bit, maybe some of their ideas for how to get more reviews, because I’d be curious. I actually, talked to one of the NexHealth reps and they had a little different perspective on when you should ask people for reviews. So, I’d love to hear that.

Blake Hadley:
But here are some tips that we suggest of how to get reviews. So, we recommend that to have the patients review you before they leave your office. We have found a high success rate, if you can, when they’re checking out, if you can talk to them in that moment and have that personal connection with them and ask them if they wouldn’t mind leaving you review that the success rate goes up in that moment, if you ask them.

Blake Hadley:
And a lot of times, if you wait too long for when they get home, and if you just send them an impersonal email or something, the chances are that for someone to scroll into that email and find the little reviews thing and click on it and leave your review are pretty low. So, if you can make that personal connection.

Blake Hadley:
Something else that we have found is, if you can, before your day starts, excuse me, look at who’s coming into your practice and cherry pick the ones that love you, that you are positive are going to give you a great review and ask those people for, to leave your review. You don’t necessarily have to ask every single patient to leave your review, but just pick the ones that love you and would be happy to give you the review.

Blake Hadley:
So, yeah. Look at your schedule, pick Anne here, and ask Anne. Another way to do it is to have your team, of course, have your team members ask for those reviews. And one way to do it is, to talk about a goal that you have as your practice. So, for example, “Hey, Carl, would you mind helping us out? We’re trying to get more Google reviews. We have a goal of reaching 500 Google reviews by the end of the year. And if we do, the doctor is going to take us all to Disneyland,” or whatever it might be, right?

Blake Hadley:
So, if you have a goal among your team, and then if the team members ask the patients to say, “Hey, would you mind helping us out?” We’ve found that that terminology, helping us out, “Hey, would you mind helping us out? You’ve been our patient for a long time.” There’s not very many people that’ll say no, if you ask, if you can, if they will help you out.

Blake Hadley:
And so, that might be some terminology you can use. Also, create a team incentive. Like I mentioned, if that goal, if your team reaches the goal, they’ll get gift cards or you’ll take them all, everyone out to get their nails done, or maybe you make it a competition between team members to see who can get the most amount of reviews, make it fun for your team, and maybe give them a little incentive.

Blake Hadley:
And then, you’re going to want to make the process easy. And this is where My Social Practice and NexHealth can come in to help your practice, to get reviews by making it easy. And if you can tell your patient that you’re going to send them a text with a link directly to your Google My Business account, there’s a really high possibility that that patient will leave the review because it’s so easy rather than saying, “Hey, would you leave us a review?” And they have to search you on Google. And then, they have to scroll down and click on this, and you’re over their shoulder trying to show them how to do it. If you can make that process super easy, that’s the best.

Blake Hadley:
And so, in My Social Practice, we provide a software that sends a text to the patient that can click on the link and it’ll go directly to your page. NexHealth has the same technology, that technology is all around. But we have one, NexHealth has one to make that process really easy. Yeah, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Speaker 1:
Yeah. I mean, sorry, my video, for some reason, Zoom problems. But one of the things with reviews we found to be really effective is, as you said, one asking folks right after their appointment and sending them a reminder after they’ve had an appointment to fill out the review and using automated reminder system via either SMS or email. After appointment within 24 hours, we found that really works for our customers to get them to act and respond very quickly.

Speaker 1:
And at the same time, asking them to book their next appointment as well. We found those two things. A lot of our customers have said doing with a 24-hour period drive retention of the customer, as well as get reviews to be spiked up, which supports your point, Blake, of getting ranked higher and having people click on your links and book more appointments and generate more new patients. It’s just a flywheel that just adds to it and compounds. And so, we’re really excited for you to talk about this topic and how your software helps customers do it. And ours does as well.

Blake Hadley:
Yeah, I love that. I think that’s the rule that 24-hour rule while their appointment was really is fresh on their mind. And like you said, if you can get the review and have them schedule the next appointment, that’s even better, right?

Speaker 1:
Right.

Blake Hadley:
Yeah, and waiting over 24 hours for them to go home and get… Doing everything else they have to do, and then have to think about their appointment again through an email or something. If you can send them a text within 24 hours, that’s best.

Speaker 1:
Got it.

Blake Hadley:
Yeah, I love that. Thank you. All right. Just a quick little quote from one of our clients about this, Tali Kest from The Smile Spot. She said, “Don’t be afraid to ask people to participate. It’s all right if, occasionally, someone says, “No.” You’ll be surprised to find that most people enjoy being involved. And this, we share this quote about social media, about reviews, asking patients to follow you on Instagram or like you on Facebook. I know it’s hard sometimes to start that conversation. And a lot of times, teams forget to start that conversation.

Blake Hadley:
But if you can, if you can incentivize your team to do that, most people will say yes and they’ll say, “Hey, I’d be happy to help. I love you guys. I’d love to follow you on Instagram. I’d love to leave your review.” If once in a while someone says, “No.” That’s okay, right? I don’t think they’ll be offended by it. But people, most of the time enjoy being involved and they enjoy helping businesses and helping small businesses succeed especially the ones they like.

Blake Hadley:
One thing to respond to all of your reviews. When someone then leaves you a review, I see this all the time, practices don’t respond to their reviews or they only respond to the negative reviews, respond to all of your reviews, negative or positive. People expect if they’re going to take the time to write something nice about your business, they get a little bit of recognition. And a lot of businesses do not do that.

Blake Hadley:
And you’re small enough, you’re not the Apples and the Nikes of the world that get so many reviews constantly. You’re a dental practice and you can respond to reviews and people expect that. So, in Google My Business, there’s a good way to make sure you don’t miss any of those. You go to the left-hand section reviews and you can click on haven’t replied and you can see all the messages that you haven’t replied to. And then, it’ll allow you to reply to those messages right within it. Just a simple, thank you. Thanks for leaving your kind review is sufficient. Just so that they’re recognized.

Blake Hadley:
Something to make sure you don’t miss those reviews, go into the setting section of your Google My Business. And you can go to customer reviews. If you click on that, either on your phone or the desktop, this is the notification section in settings, and you make sure to turn on those notifications and make sure that the people, whoever’s in charge of your digital presence receive notifications once you get a review. So, then you can go in and then respond to those.

Blake Hadley:
Jay Baer, he’s a bestselling author and business strategist that I like and follow. He said, “My advice is to answer every customer in every channel, every time. Customers expect a business to respond to them in approximately 24 hours.” So, I would say, 24 to 48 hours is probably, okay. Twenty-four hours is ideal. If someone leaves your review, if they can get a notification that you said, thank you back. That just makes them feel a lot better about leaving that review for you.

Blake Hadley:
In the end, I know a lot of this takes time and effort and someone needs to be in charge and on top of it. We can help companies like us and like NexHealth. We’re here to help you. There’s a lot that we can do behind the curtain for your Google My Business page, different strategies on top of the ones that already shared with you, that can help you optimize that listing even more.

Blake Hadley:
And we can run these reports and we can check them and try different strategies to help you rank higher on the grid in your local area. Just, I’m going to just tell you a little bit about our service for SEO. We can help you optimize that. Google my business page. We can clean up your listings online. We can help optimize your website. And then, we give you a support member on our team to help you along the way as well.

Blake Hadley:
Just a couple of case studies and practices that have worked with us that have had a lot of success and what you can expect, if you were to work with us. Shady Grove Pediatric Dentist signed up with us and after 88 days, this was how their grid report looked on day one. You can see all the yellows and oranges for the search term. Children’s dentist that are pediatric dentists, and they wanted to rank higher for the term children’s dentist in their area.

Blake Hadley:
So, they only showed up five times on the front page, in that 3-Pack, when they started with us. And after day 88, they showed up 116 times. You can see all the green in their area for showing up. For the term pediatric dentist, the same results. Day one, they were 41 times on the first page. And by day 88, they were 110 times. They showed up.

Blake Hadley:
Their website visits from the Google Map section increased. After three months, it went up 97%. Their clicks to call from Google Maps, went up 54%. The views on Google search went up 134%. And the views on Google Maps went up 143% after three months. So, there’s a lot that we can do. And it’s pretty incredible what you can do within Google My Business to just get more phone calls and more views and to rank higher.

Blake Hadley:
Just another quick case study. This is VP dental. They wanted to rank for the term family dentist. And by day 88, there wasn’t as dramatic as the other one, but they showed up eight times on the front page. And day one, they didn’t show up at all.

Blake Hadley:
And then, for review, our review service, Connecticut Valley Orthodontics, their review spiked after they put in all these systems in place that I talked about. Their reviews just completely spiked for their practice on many different platforms. They said, “Our reviews have increased since using My Social Practice.” They are over 1,200 positive reviews across Google, Facebook and Healthgrade.

Blake Hadley:
So, that’s what our system can do for you. That’s what a system like NexHealth can do for you is if you put the things and the systems in place with your team with the right software, you can dramatically increase your reviews very quickly. One thing I want to offer for everybody is a free grid report for your local area. So, if you want to find out where you rank in the Google Map section in your local area for certain search terms.

Blake Hadley:
So, for example, if you want to rank for cosmetic dentists, if you want to rank for dental implants, if you want to rank for teeth whitening, whatever it might be. If you go to this page here, you can put in the terms that you want to rank for, and then we’ll send you a free grid report to show you… It looks like this here on the right to show you how you’re ranking in your area.

Blake Hadley:
If you want to just scan with your phone, this little QR code, this will take you right to the page. You can fill out that form, and then we’ll contact you and send that report directly to you. And then, I think we can put that in the chat box to that link. Let me see.

Speaker 1:
We just did that.

Blake Hadley:
Oh, great. Perfect.

Speaker 1:
So, one thing, I think we have a question from Rachel. Her question is, we started responding to reviews this year, but there are some reviews from over a year ago that we did not respond to, should we go back and respond to them still?

Blake Hadley:
That’s a good question. If you didn’t respond to those from a long time ago, it’s probably, okay. It might seem a little weird to have, or get a notification that you responded to a review that they left two years ago from the consumer side, the patient side, that might seem a little strange. But yeah, as long as you’re starting now to do that, I think that’s probably fine. I don’t know. Do you have any other thoughts on that?

Speaker 1:
I think you said it well, Blake. It’s fine if you haven’t responded, but if you wanted a place to start, it doesn’t hurt, even if it’s over a year ago to respond.

Blake Hadley:
Yeah.

Speaker 1:
No harm, no foul.

Blake Hadley:
You can use thank you or something. Sorry, apologize, it’s been a while, or I don’t know. Just say thank you, just quick thank you. I think that’s fine.

Speaker 1:
It never hurts, right?

Blake Hadley:
Yeah.

Speaker 1:
One more thing we did want to share as we’re wrapping up here. We have put together actually, an eBook on dental marketing strategies for practices to use. I’m sharing the link in the chat. It’s a free eBook. We put it together. Talks about a lot of the things that Blake has covered around reviews, ranking, locally, and why it all matters, combined with his free Google map analysis and this eBook. I think you’ll start understanding the direction that you may want to take your practice in, if you haven’t already done that. And getting Blake’s help also as well in getting practices started on this.

Blake Hadley:
Yeah, that eBook is awesome. I downloaded it, and has some great information in there. So, yeah, I agree. Couple that with this, and you will be well on your way in your digital marketing. I see one other question here, “Does a patient being on our WiFi influence the ranking reviews?” Yes. We’ve seen this, that if they jump on your WiFi, if you get a lot of reviews from one IP address that could negatively affect your Google My Business page, and your reviews, and you can be flagged for doing that because it almost looks like you’re trying to gain the system from having all the reviews from one location.

Blake Hadley:
So, yes, I would ask your patients to make sure they’re not on your WiFi, that they’re just on their LTE or their 5G on their phone when they leave the review. Great question. If you have any other questions, feel free, again, to put those in the question, the Q&A section, I’d love to address any questions in the last little bit that we have here.

Blake Hadley:
But if you want to email me directly with questions you have about our service, or just about Google Maps or SEO, whatever it might be, here’s my email address, or you can check this out in mysocialpractice.com. But here’s our contact information.

Blake Hadley:
And so that’s all I have, I don’t know if we have any other questions that might come in. But I appreciate the opportunity for letting me present. And thanks for tuning in.

Speaker 1:
Yeah. Thank you, everybody. I appreciate the time, Blake, really excited for you to go this presentation and share it with folks who attended as well as registered didn’t attend. And thank you for all the questions. We’re always happy to help. And yeah, let us know if there’s anything else from webinar perspective that you wanted, or they may not have gotten here, or any other follow up questions you have as well.

Blake Hadley:
All right. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1:
All right. Thank you.

Blake Hadley:
Okay, you have a great day. Thanks everyone.

If you’re looking to increase your new patient phone calls through dental SEO and Google maps optimization; here are some additional resources to help you out.

• See where your dental practice is ranking in this complimentary radius report.
• Update your Google My Business photos, using this easy photo shot list.
• Don’t miss this article on SEO for dentists.
• An informative blog post about how to get more google reviews.