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The Dental SEO 101 podcast is your ultimate resource for optimizing your dental practice's online presence! The host, Ross Dunn, simplifies the complex world of digital marketing, offering strategies explicitly tailored for dentists.
Each episode covers essential topics such as the fundamentals of SEO, local SEO strategies, and tips for enhancing your website's visibility. Learn actionable techniques to attract more patients and boost your revenue while maintaining exceptional customer service.
Whether you're a seasoned practitioner or just starting out, Dental SEO 101 equips you with the tools to thrive in today’s digital landscape. Subscribe now to ensure your practice is set for long-term success, and take the first step toward a profitable future!
Hello and welcome to the Dental SEO 101 Podcast
Episode No. 2 by First Dentist
my name is Ross Dunn
and I'm the director of SEO and co founder of First Dentist
and my co host is my friend and colleague Scott Van Achte
a 20+ year veteran of SEO
how's it going today Bud
it every day is a great day
that's that's awesome awesome yeah yeah
especially even the yeah especially in the SEO world right
absolutely even the bad days you find a silver lining somewhere good
I love it okay
well let's jump into some non SEO news
this is just
stuff that we typically share
because it has some impact on the digital marketing environment
and you might hear about it soon or may have already heard about it
however it's always interesting to hear a little more detail
so first of all Google is close to making its biggest acquisition ever
this is their owner of Google Alphabet
it's in advanced discussions
to buy a fast growing cyber security startup called WIZ
for roughly 23 billion
now that would be its largest purchase by far
easily surpassing its purchase of Motorola for 12.5 billion
about a decade ago which was the biggest takeover
and also a massive loss as they sold it two years later
now
buying WIZ the idea here is
we're guessing it's kind of a shot across the bar
shot across the bow at Microsoft
and Amazon
showing that Google's making a major bet on the cybersecurity space
to complement its flagship offering in the cloud
so
what was kind of shocking cause this is every
founder's dream if it gets finalized and closed
it would Mark a significant exit for the
4 founders
I'm not even gonna bother their names
I'm I will totally butcher them
I was wondering if you're gonna try yeah
I I tried on another yeah
didn't work out when I tried it last
so
the four executives met years ago when they were drafted into Unit 8200
the cybers intelligence division of the Israeli Defense Forces
pretty amazing
obviously these guys are bright guys and knew their stuff
so they're gonna be sitting pretty happy if this goes through
there's no certainty it will
but it is an advanced discussion so it might just happen
it's kind of cool
like I'm wondering if Google does acquire them and moves forward
I know that the focus is on cloud services and that sort of thing
but I'm wondering if they'll up security aspects to organic search
as a result I mean
I don't know maybe get their filtering a bit better
they're I don't know who knows
I mean I don't even know much about WIZ
it's interesting
I'm sure it does some pretty amazing things
but I've no idea what they are and I bet you a lot of people don't
it's probably one of those security systems
that work behind the scenes
that makes things better but you don't even know it
I don't know
that's pretty hard to sell though
so they're gonna have to do something to make it look impressive
it's probably for enterprise
okay next bit here is an interesting
an interesting take on an IAB
that's the Internet Advertising Bureau report
now this article is by Greg Jarbo on Search Engine Journal
and it's discussing the fact that video ad buyers
these are people who buy things on TV
they buy it on social networks where you see videos that appear
all these things
are now no longer all that excited about the frequency of ad views or
how long people have been watching
all this data that used to drive their purchasing
now they're finally focused on business outcomes
what is the brass tack
like how are they are they actually making money on this stuff
and which is about time I mean really
I can't even imagine how much money they were throwing away
when they weren't really looking at how much
it improved their bottom line
obviously they had the money to spend so they weren't doing badly
but now they're really focused on this
and the same goes for SEO for first dentist
you know we've always been focused on ensuring that our
our clients are making money off our business
the trickiest part
and this is being experienced by both industries is tracking
that is very difficult you know
we've called tried call tracking
we've got different analytics in place
we're asking the front desks
of each of the practices to take note of where people are coming from
but often times people will just say I
I found out about you guys on Google well
that's great
but there's a lot of different ways we're possibly sending traffic
yeah through Google
there's paid ads
which we are often doing for our our clients there's also organic
there's local SEO
maybe there's articles
it's just so many different things
but they don't care and they don't know
and they probably didn't even pay attention
the other one that's a real frustrating one is oh yeah
I got a referral and we've had clients to say you know
we just don't know how much business is coming
cause we get a lot of referrals
I'm like yes
but most referrals do a little research first
they're gonna go and check and see who you are and yeah
they'll check out your local business profile
see how many reviews you had
how well you show up all these things
but there's no way to track that effectively and know it was them
and I can only imagine that's even harder for these larger
enterprise level businesses that are doing video ads
anyway we're all trying to improve upon this
and it would be great if there was a single answer
whoever invents that's going to be set for life
we can only hope it will come at some point
but with all the privacy in in place nowadays
which is a good thing
it has downsides which we can no longer really connect the dots
because cookies aren't being kept
there's a lot of ways we don't even know what is visiting the page
it could be a bot it could be a person who knows
I I think if you eliminate privacy from the equation
tracking
each individual ad view to a sale would actually be really easy
yeah you know
like you've got IPS even if it's showing up on your TV
and then somebody from that residence buys
I mean all that data I'm sure is already being recorded and exists
but they
they won't access it maybe cause they they sell all our data anyways
so yeah what I obviously we don't do video ads very no
we've done it maybe once in first dentist
but really it's not a big focus
cause it's quite expensive for our clients
but
one of the things that they talked about was how these companies were
trying to
also consider the fact that they're off often viewing parties
where multiple people are watching the same episode on one TV
but there's no way for them to know like
oh my God I don't even wanna know how they're gonna try and find out
haha well
some TVs have cameras and exactly oh
that your phone will be listening okay
they're listening to that ad and then he goes home and makes the order
I bet I bet they can do it it's gonna be scary
it's gonna be like 1984 type stuff terrifying yeah yeah
I
I found that a really kind of creepy direction they were taking there
it's a really interesting article though by Greg and
do recommend it again it's on Search Engine Journal
the title is Business Outcomes are the Top KPI Video Ad Buyer
a top KPI of video ad buyers anyway
check it out if you get a chance now let's jump into SEO news
okay
what do you think Scott you wanna take this one
sure
yeah core update is on its way
so funny thing about core updates
usually what will happen is there is one
and then their basic recommendations after like
just be better and and then that's the result
now in this case it's a little bit different
because Danny Sullivan over at Google had said
this is a quote from Danny
we can improve in some of these cases
where creators with their hearts in the right places
and who are doing the real content effort behind that are rewarded
as we should be doing
so there's talks that this core update is going to focus on content
a little bit and where that's important is if any
any practices out there who were hurt by the helpful content update
which I want to say was in the fall of 23
but it might have even been before that I've lost track of time
any businesses hurt by that helpful content update
could benefit from this upcoming core update
so I think that's kind of exciting news if
if you are struggling since that previous update
this might show and bring you some relief so yeah
let's let's hope so
I I've we we personally know people who have lost a lot of traffic
due to this because Google just figured these are just small sites
they're probably faking it
I mean I don't know how they actually thought
it's just the way it makes it look
and they just were trumped out by these other great systems and
and that's really that's just sad cause on one instance it was a
a great this lady I actually did a little consulting for her
she's wonderful
and she had a fantastic blog that gave lots of excellent
dog care tips and training and all this stuff
and she was really passionate about it
and she had tons and tons of stuff sure
she made a little money on some affiliate links and stuff but hello
people have to make money thrive hello
yeah it's not a big deal
and it was valid personal experience and it was you know
she's not an
an approved dog trainer or have all these great qualifications
but she was certainly worth reading and I I Learned stuff from it
so Google's
throwing the baby out with the bath water
by really
canning a lot of these small sites that are doing affiliate work
and it perceives aren't providing really quality content
I really truly believe they many of them do anyway
hopefully they can improve that in this next core update
alright so next is an article by Roger Monty
the title is core web vitals
and Google Page experience ranking factor updated
alright so
this was a little bit bizarre
but essentially what happens is if you have the Chrome browser
Google can request that you opt in to tracking
now this tracking will measure when you are visiting websites
now what Google used this information for was to influence the page
they would use this information on how you acted on a page
to influence the page experience ranking factor
I know this all sounds good Garbo
Gobby Goop but the page experience ranking factor
actually impacts how well you rank
it's all about
are you providing a great experience from a user
experience point of view for anyone visiting your site
and one of them was interaction to next paint I N P
which is how long it takes for a webpage to become responsive
to your interaction
I don't know about you
but I find that really frustrating when I load a page and I'm like
waiting and waiting and I maybe even see stuff I can click on
but I can't actually do anything because something's loading
yeah and they were rightly
counting that as a negative
I don't want to say punishing
but they won't
they're just counting as a negative against that website
when they found these but what they've discovered though
was there were some legitimate reasons for it
such as alerts
confirmation requests
and print buttons that would appear that were harming these websites
that because it looked like
the interaction in X Paint was a bad experience but it really wasn't
anyway they made changes and as a result
and it's in this report in June of Chrome user experience
they've noticed a small percentage of improvements across the web
and it could be very well that it's because of these particular
issues not being counted anymore as bad
long winded but it is interesting because you know it
it is something that we've Learned about recently
that Google has confirmed through their leak
that they're using the Chrome browser for this kind of information
and now we see that it actually has benefits
once they determine the mistake they made
they ever do and they did in this case
so anyways that'll be interesting to see
for sites that use various pop-ups and things anyways
what
will happen with their results and traffic and things in the coming
days weeks whatever the case may be
I think it'll be interesting
like if you're using any of these systems that were harmful
but shouldn't be you should see a bit of a boost
so it could be cool
agreed well we'll see what happens another testing
there's something about a little testing
here is Google is testing a back to AI overview button
now this button is appearing on search results only in some situation
situations it was spotted in the wild as we like to say
it's not something that's been rolled out everywhere
but when you are loading up search engine result page right now
and I get I'm saying right now because it changes all the time
you may often see an AI overview an overview of the search
you're looking for an answer
what essentially Google providing an answer is really what it is
but an overview of a response to your query
and this is generated using Gemini
their AI system
now if you pass pass that and go right back down to the normal
ranking results that you're used to and scroll down the page
a button will follow you in the top right
I think it was of your page or nearby yeah
saying overview and you can go right back to it
that's and I guess it's their way of checking
how many people might find it more useful
after they've gone down the page
interesting again
it's them trying to test and get some value out of all this effort
they're putting into AI I think
I don't know if I like it
yeah me neither
it's it just reminds me of all the old school
back to top buttons that people don't really use anymore
I see them every now and then
but I don't know I love it on a webpage
I really love it on a webpage
especially on mobile yeah
there's nothing worse yeah
scroll from flicking flicking
flicking trying to get back to the top again
it's nice to have that one follow you
and you just press it and you're back to the top
I think part of the reason I don't like it is because it's like
Google telling me what to do
no go back to this AI overview
it's really good come check it out again
like no
I've seen it I've moved on
we're we're over Google
I'm I'm over it like
and they just want you to go back
like what's next
a floating button that's a oh
go back to the ads this will take you back to the ads
you know or like floating ads floating
oh don't even
I'm I'm
I'm deleting
Chrome and I'm never using Google again
if they start having floating ads
they're yeah
do it now that would be the worst
you've just started something it's definitely happening now
yeah well
they do listen yeah
oh anyway
in other testing news
one of my one of my favorite people I'd say in the in the
SEO industry Kevin Indig wrote an interesting article
about his testing of domains and what his testing has revealed
the title is what 5
4,538 domains tell us about cctld rankings in the US
these are country code top level domains
this has no impact right off the bat
you can go this is no impact on a on a on my practice
why would I even care about this
I think you'll understand once we get into this a little more
you'll hear a few tidbits
and it might correct some faulty assumptions you have about domains
and might fortify a few that you have as well
because there are other
facts and tests that he did within this article
the reason he did it was back I think it was in 2021
The Times of India and a newspaper
quadrupled its organic growth in the US in just 12 months
and since then
many have said that they've seen more international domains
which are country code top level domains cctlds
ranking in the US they've seen more of them and the question is
is this a trend that's the primary question in this article
but there are gonna be more results anyway out of 4,538 domains
he found that only 52 were from the UK
Canada and India as a result
he can fairly reasonably say that the times of India was an outlier
it's not something that is happening on a regular basis
for some reason it just caught Google's eye and
and really improved things
now we'll get into some of the stuff that I think it's
could really stand out for you
and it's just interesting
he next checked top level domains across 7,678 results
to see if any had more impact on rankings
he didn't find anything conclusive
so what he's looking at are all the different types dot nets
dot k dot co dot UK dot edu
dot org did any of these have more impacts on rankings
and this is something I get asked a lot
even by practitioners you know do I have to get a dot com
can I go for a dot CA does a dot net is dot net okay
well
there really is no big difference
and it does have different impacts on different types of marketing
but when you're coming to talking about your practice
it doesn't have too much of an issue
unless you're getting a dot CA and you're not in Canada
that wouldn't be a good idea yeah
for a dot us and you're in Canada it just wouldn't make any sense
okay so here's here's just a few things I'll just rattle them off
dot net
top level domains
have a lower chance of showing up in the top 2 positions
dot us didn't show up in top positions at all
now Kevin does note that a US domain he knows performs really well
so it's this is just a taste of what he's found right
and you never know how accurate it is because he only
he didn't check millions of domains
he checked seven yeah
seventy 6 hundred right
.gov has the best chance to rank at the top
no one's surprised about that cause government
governmental organizations tend to have great rankings
dot UK has a lower chance of ranking at the top compared to dot coms
dot co has a lower chance of raking at the top than a dot com
dot Edu
or dot edu doesn't perform as well in position 1 compared to dot gov
that's kind of interesting
I would think that that does depend on the search
I think a larger sample size might show EDU performing much higher
yeah again it's about the search right
I mean if you're doing a government
you're looking at particular law or something
I don't think it would show up as quickly
who knows
he did say that in this could be skewed
the dot org has a higher chance of ranking at the top than dot com
but he believes that might be influenced by Wikipedia
dot org which happens to appear in every darn ranking it seems yeah
every darn search
he mentioned the dot com top level domains rank 71.8% in the top 5
but are registered only 36% of the time
as often as compared to other top level domains
he means registered as in people buy dot coms
only 36% of the times compared to other top level domains
all of these answers are not answers
all of these stats really mean nothing in a vacuum
there's so many other reasons these could be rankings
why these particular stats could be useful
but this is a step in the direction that many
SEO's need to take when we're doing research
we don't get an iron yes or no
but we get more data that we can apply to our thoughts and processes
when we're putting together your plan for a practice
it's just it's just so important that we do research like this
which is why I was really appreciative that he shared this
it wasn't a lot of concrete stuff here but it was again useful
these are the kind of things that we
don't have time to test ourselves
and he shared what he did
which is great this could be an example too of where
an example of what research you might want to do
before buying a domain
you might want to you do searches for all of your
your local San Francisco dentist
San Francisco dental office all that kind of stuff
and do your own mini version of this
you
you won't probably have access to all the tools that he uses
that make life easier but you know
if you do a manual check for a handful of searches
and look at what's ranking and
and what top level domains are they using
probably .com it might be .us or maybe .ca
if you're in Canada in the dental world
you're probably not gonna see dot net or dot org
but maybe but yeah
take a look at at what your competitions are
if everybody's a dot com probably wanna stick with it although
you know I think that's just me trying to be extra careful
not that it necessarily makes a big difference
but it's like
if you go with the dot net and then you don't perform well
are you always gonna be wondering should I have gone with the dot com
it's gonna be in the back of your head
no I guess so
I mean it all depends upon just how much you're investing in the job
in the site if it's excellent
excellent excellent
doesn't matter what top level domain you have fair it's gonna do well
one of the things that you
you when you mentioned that about picking up domains
I brought up an interesting thing I saw today
ah his last name is escaping me anyway
a colleague of ours
he specializes in domains and and and one of the things that he he
he reminded everyone of
and I thought this is a great share was that before you buy a domain
make certain that you check the backlinks on it
it may look like the most amazing domainer like Omg
how is this not available
how is this not taken well
what could have happened is it was taken by someone big
they shut down got rid of it whatever
then immediately a spammer took it over
milked all of the authority that had been created on that domain
which meant there was a lot of traffic still going to it
and they all of a sudden
they redirected it to whatever garbage they were selling
and then they were also creating links to it
and just trying to make it into something
but then they burned it they essentially burned it down
it's useless in fact
it's got a bad reputation well
you can find that out by doing a backlink little backlink research
we can do it for you if you'd like
but essentially
it'll tell you what websites are pointing at it and what keywords are
they're using when they link to it
and if it looks like garbage
it is garbage don't touch it with a 10 foot pole it's just gonna
it's
it's like instead of starting a race in the the the starting line
you're you're two miles back that's what the kind of
disadvantage it could be if
if not just 10 miles back depending on how badly they burned it
yeah
so great point I'm glad you wrote it up
cause this is something that I shared again on social media
thinking you guys have to see this
it is something that a lot of us don't even consider
well we do
but a lot of people don't even consider
when they're looking at domains
history is very important
so don't just go and buy those domains that sound great
if you don't do your homework first
I don't think Google would act on this
because the nbers probably aren't high enough
but wouldn't it be cool if you could you buy your domain register and
and and verify in Google Search Console
log in and have a like a reset option and say
you know what I just bought this
I'm brand new please delete everything in your history about it
because that's somebody else
that's a different business
like just reset the history of a domain and then
you know it would allow these old
burnt up domains to be used for something useful
totally agree and I'm sure there's ways they could make it spam proof
I mean make you show your business information and and
and just to make it
make certain that you're not another spammer taking over
and you wanna have a clean slate or a hacker that's trying
to kill their competition
so you definitely
have to have a good verification process to pull that off
but yeah and I you know
they already ask for a lot of this information
now when you're setting up your practice on Google
my business or Google Business Profiles
they're starting to ask for a proof of your business license
where you're located a video of where you're located
all these different things to be sure that you're not fly by night
so it is important that
alright it's important they're doing that
and it's also something they're gonna be
they're getting more familiar with
so why not apply that to domains that should just be reset
I think it's a great idea
let's put it out there
do it Google do it
yes
alright pardon me
do you want to take this next one
yeah so this is kind of cool
I haven't seen this in the wild in real life but
Google looks like they may be rolling out 3D and AR
augmented reality images more widely in search
which is super cool so the idea is that
I'm trying to think of how this applies to a dental practice
I guess you would have various merchandise in certain situations
but it's really focused on shopping website websites
e commerce
would allow you to take a 3D model
of your product that you're selling
and that 3D model can appear in the actual organic search
shopping results so someone could sit there they do a search
your image pull pulls up for your toothbrush
I don't know and you can click on it
and drag it around and look at it from different angles
and just like you can on a
in all kinds of platforms
but to have that in actual search would be super cool
it would and yeah and it looks like they're testing that so yeah
and and they they had actually launched a program a while ago
but they shut it down and
part of what was interesting here is that this
client had fulfilled all the necessary
upgrades to their system so that they could use their new 3D
images they had created
but they hadn't actually become a part of the adopter
Early Adopter Pro
program at Google or entered into a pilot which you could do
which are now defunct those are no longer available
and yet because they went through and did this right
Google's now
giving them the benefit of this and starting to show these models
which
you know coming out of left field certainly a good thing for these
these e commerce companies but
it's just wild how things happen so much later and without any
no notice or warning or anything
how you know in terms of what this could mean for a practice
I think it would be really interesting
if and this happens when a featured image for an article
or a featured image for a page appears within Google search
and we're starting to see that more and more
it could have a augmented reality
or a 3D image of
maybe your latest scanning machine that you're talking about
in an article
maybe
I don't know examples of
having an implant installed
just a you know
a video a quick
a short of that an animation
it's it's who knows how this is gonna go or you could maybe
sorry so you could even have like the AR video of the exam room
pop up with a listing or something
which would be kind of cool
yeah and with these AR
you can drag and move things around with your mouse in the
inside that little box for the images yeah
it's yeah
it's it's coming and it's
I think a brilliant move
it's very easy to do this stuff on your mobile phone
which is key
a lot of people are going mobile right
I'm 90 I mean
it's like above 80% of people are searching the web on mobile
and if it works in mobile and it's got adoption
you're you're gonna expect that to roll out in different places
including featured images and stuff
I I fully expect it
this is another piece here
and this is a really quite interesting
and it's going to have some effect on the dental marketplace
we're just not sure exactly how yet because this is very new
but Google is testing AI organized local search results
so when you go and do a search right now and let's say
dental dentist Dallas
you're gonna get a bunch of information about the different dentists
available
typically in a local pack along
which is like a box
which has the map and different places that are nearby you
and also some classic or standard organic rankings on the page
those are the ones we've seen since 1997
the very basics with this new system
the example used is a bit different
it was for restaurants a lean and
this is a specific area of the United States I wasn't familiar with
but I understand it's pretty small but either way
Google's
system actually created a listing that had multiple ways to search or
or or see results what that most of them are horizontal
so you could scroll sideways
and you get an idea of the different restaurants
you get another one
where you'd scroll through and see different menu items
and then they had normal ones that were
vertical that talked about the different locations
and they had maps that kind of swept in to a box
that were very interactive
and because they swept in
they didn't just they weren't just there as you scrolled up
they were more alluring they certainly caught the eye
this is entirely driven
by or AI and it's kind of fascinating to see this being played out
it's a test it's another one of these seen in the wild things
but when it comes to dental practices
what are they going to do with that
are they going to
have different horizontal bars for different types of dental needs
implants cleaning
emergency services I mean
there's so many different ways they could do this
and we have no idea yet how AI is gonna do that
and Google has said that they're gonna be rolling out AI
organized search results fairly soon
it's coming out in the near future
and it has been quote unquote warned that that's coming
what I thought was kind of funny is Barry Schwartz
who wrote this article on SE Round table
said and showed that back in 2,007
they were doing this kind of things
where they were trying to group together information
just to test it and then they did it twice in 2020
but oh my god in 2007 it couldn't look more worse couldn't look worse
it was all text back then and yeah
I can see why it flubbed but it's a good example of how you know
you try things before when you couldn't do it
but now you have the
it's like watching old movies with animation are you know
they didn't have CGI
and now you watch movies now and they can do movies
they would never have been able to do back then
with any kind of quality yeah
anyway things are improving
and hopefully this is gonna be a good thing for everyone
but you just never know yeah
all we do know is that
Google is going to stick to whatever makes them more money
and yeah we just hope that that is in keeping with making our clients
practices more money
anyway it's always moving the SEO universe
and we're here to share that with you
and we're very looking forward to sharing a lot more
well on behalf of myself
Ross Dunn co founder of First Dentist thank you for joining us today
if you have any questions you'd like to answer
either on the podcast or free or on more private consulting basis
please email info@first.dentist
that's info@first.dentist
thank you for listening and remember to tune into our next episode
we'll be where we'll be sharing more SEO 101
tips and news on Dental SEO