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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. 1 by First Dentist
my name is Ross Dunn
I am the director of SEO and co founder of First Dentist
on most most future episodes
I'll be joined by my good friend and colleague Scott Van Achte
who's a 20+ veteran of SEO however
today I'm going to be soloing it
now let's do a quick intro on me
who the heck am I well
I started a different digital marketing company back in 1997
called StepForth Web Marketing
that company is still going strong and 27 years later
I can say I've worked with
countless companies but what's been most
most interesting is the wide variety
and sizes and levels of success that I've worked with
from Time Inc New York
where I taught Sports Illustrated and people magazine
how to do SEO in house
to the smallest m and pop in my back backyard practically
you know I
found
that working with the smaller businesses was my deepest pleasure
I really enjoyed making a fundamental difference to their companies
bottom lines it's hard to do that with the big Fortune 500s
even if the the pay is slightly better and it's it's
it is exciting it's just not the same
and really what
what do you have to do
if you have to work for 27 years doing something
you gotta love it
and I do love working with smaller businesses and dentists
so
I also took over the podcast SEO 101 on WMR.FM
I did that back in 2008
and since then it's had over 3 million well over 3 million downloads
and it's been liked by the likes of John Mueller at at Google
so
and also it's won a lot of awards from or at least top 10 list
we don't really have awards for for the sort of thing
but it's been listed as a top podcast in SEO worldwide for many
many years and we're really proud of it and enjoy doing the episodes
anyway fortunately
that notoriety that we built brought Michael Lambe
my co founder to me and he and I started working together
two separate businesses working together
I was a vendor and
he really just wanted to see whether or not what he was hearing about
StepForth was true
and we worked together and it it really worked out well
we knew we had a good thing together
and decided to create First Dentist Marketing
and that's where we are now
well 2016 is when we created it
but since then we've built a great
client list with success to match
we're very very proud of it and
felt it was time for a podcast
it seemed this industry is lacking
a great 101 podcast for dentists and their admins and
and whoever else they have on on staff
and we just wanted to make sure that we could offer something
that was truly a value and would be a great start for everyone
without further ado let's begin
a quick note on some jargon for today's show
I'm gonna try and keep this minimal
but there are some there's some jargon and acronyms that I do use
first of all it's SERPS
S-E-R-P-S
these are search engine result pages
I'll try and not use the acronym but occasionally it comes out
this is the result you see after you've done a search on a search
search engine it's that simple
just keep things a little simpler when we're trying to describe stuff
search engine algorithms
these are essentially many complicated equations
used to evaluate websites that are
to put it very simply
layered upon each other to create the search engine results we see
so these algorithms just get layered upon
on each other and upon each other
upon each other all different types of filters
and that ends up being the result we see
indexing so this isn't a perfect explanation
but it's it's really all you need to know
it's essentially the act of going to your website
this is a search engine it's sending a bot
an automated system
to grab the information on your site so that it can look at it
this
it's actually more of a crawling system and then it indexes but again
I don't want to get too much into the weeds here
it is taking that information
and only certain amount of it may be taken
it all depends upon how much Google trusts your website
and just how big it is if there's any problems with it
etcetera etcetera it is I could talk all day about it
it is a lot to talk about but that's the bare minimum of it schema
this is a real one that gets people confused all the time
so it's a code in the form of structured data
I'm quoting here from a great result I saw online
a code in the form of structured data
that communicates the meaning of your page elements
and how users should see it to the searching tool
and in a language the search engine can understand
schema is hidden behind web pages
you don't see it visually when you're visiting a website
but it does help a search engine understand what it is seeing
if there's a zip code on the page
a postal code
it's gonna explain this is a zip code or this is a postal code
that's the simplest example
there are many different types of information that it can
explain to the search engine
so it doesn't have to guess
it's very useful and a lot of it is what assists AI in today's world
so very important stuff
jumping right in there was a huge Google search document leak
so essentially Google's very quiet about what it does to
evaluate websites and how they determine who should rank and where
for good reason there's been spammers
over the years who have taken advantage of Google
to push everyone out and move ahead
these this is a in our industry called the black hat world of SEO
we are strictly a white hat agency
we don't wanna do anything that's gonna keep us
awake at night thinking that we might have hurt or harm our
our clients website rankings
we wanna ensure we're doing everything
as much by the book as possible to ensure that
your website
or our client websites perform well and can stand the test of time
when the rankings happen so we build them up and they're gonna stick
so
because Google has to make these changes to always
counteract these black hats
they don't like to share their secret sauce and for a good reason yeah
it makes good sense
however over the years they've
well let's just say outright said lies
it might be a bit strong but I don't know based on this leak
it's hard to say that it does look like they were just
trying to confuse us and not actually answer our questions
again if we're hitting too
something too hard heavily on the mark that they don't want to share
I guess they have to
alright that's enough of giving Google the benefit of the doubt
let's jump right in so this leak
very possibly we don't have evidence
we don't work at Google
we can't compare what's actually there and what we know
so anyway it
it it seems to reveal the inner workings of their ranking algorithm
so this is really exciting
our whole industry went a little bit bonkers over this
and there's still lots of fallout over it
Google has had very various responses we'll get into
but let's just jump right into this
the first response Google had is
we would caution and this is a quote
against making inaccurate assumptions about search
based on out of context outdated or incomplete information
we've shared extensive information about how search works
and the types of factors that our systems weigh
while also working to
protect the integrity of our results from manipulation unquote
what else are they gonna say
even if this was dead on they'd have to say something like this
cause it just seeds a little bit of doubt right
anyway it appears that this leak is accurate as of March 2024
that is really recent
and really good news for everyone who's excited about this
the document that was released is very verbose
and not for the faint of heart
it includes over 14,000 ranking attributes across 2,596 modules
you get them like almost sections of a report
it is enormous
so
what we've been able to gather from it
is based on our experience and our understanding of how SEO works and
which is extensive I mean
hell myself I've been doing SEO for 27 years
I've grown up with Google essentially
and and other search engines which I miss
cause Google just took over
so you know we can glean a lot from this information
but there's always gonna be a bit of uncertainty
so the person who kind of released all this or made the biggest
noise about this and I believe it was
cause it was leaked to him through someone else is
Mike King from iPullRank
now
some of the shortest takeaways here is that Google does
use clicks for rankings so there's a long time where we were like
come on they have to this just makes good sense
so if a person's clicking on a link or a result within search results
and they're going to your website or another person's website
Google should be taking into account that they do
that just seems like a no brainer right
and also
when they go there
and they come right back because they didn't like what they found
and they continue searching
that should be a good indicator for Google to work from
knowing that maybe that search result isn't great
maybe that should be devalued and if that happens on a regular basis
most certainly that should be considered
since Google is all about providing the best
search result for its users
that's huge
just logical that they would do that but they denied it all the time
so this actually says they do hello
love it love seeing information like this
Google does have a sandbox for new websites and what does this mean
well if you have a brand new website you put it out there
you could be a fly by night business
as complete scammer or authentic business
that has an incredible
incredible amount of potential that should rank well
but the point is Google doesn't know
so what we call as a sandbox is this area where you're put into where
while it tries to determine how well and where you should rank
so that means that when you start a new website
it's going to take a while to start showing up in search results
the sandbox is a place where you're going to be kept
until Google trusts you or knows where you should rank
sometimes you'll get a ranking right away as your site launches
but then you'll plum it very quickly as Google goes okay
wait wait wait I like what you got here
but I'm not sure who you are and whether or not I should trust you
Google does use Chrome data in its algorithms hello
this is huge again something they denied
Chrome is a very popular search browser
it's I think it's the most popular search browser in the world well
Google owns it
it's their system so if a person is spending more time on a page
if a person clicks somewhere
there's information that Google can gather from that
you'd think that would really help their algorithms well
they denied it and for a privacy centric perspective
I think it's kind of interesting
and I don't know how that's gonna backfire on them
that this could be something they're using
again this says it does but we can only be so certain
the fact that they are using it
according to what we've seen here is very revealing
and again they denied it all the time link velocity
here's some real gobbledegook but the concept is very simple pardon me
if you have a website and you've been building a lot of links to it
that means you've been asking people to link to you
maybe you've created some great content
and people are linking to your website saying
this is the content to read
about this dental surgery or this new machine you've gotten this
this is amazing or this this great case study
or testimonial etc etc could be a number of things
but people are linking to you because of that content and it
you get thousands of links out of nowhere and Google hasn't even
you know they've seen you get maybe one link a month
people are linking to your site and hey
these are great guys go to them great great practice
I love them but all of a sudden you get 1,000 a month
Google's gonna go whoa
what's happening here they need to find out
that there is a legitimate reason for those links
if they find that there isn't
and that's called link velocities the velocities went up too quickly
they're gonna start considering whether or not
you are doing something spammy
and whether or not those links should be devalued
and completely ignored
you don't want that so if you are doing any kind of press
and you authentically get something
maybe the Wall Street Journal talks about you no problem
you're gonna get the benefit of that
cause Google will be able to see that quite simply however
if you are
are doing this kind of work and your links aren't very authentic
you're pretty much wasting your time
you can do link building against it's against Google's guidelines
but you can do it it's just that you would never wanna do it quickly
you would wanna do it very slowly and very carefully
and it would then have more benefit
so that's link velocity so they do consider it in their algorithms
which is again something that we never get confirmed
disavow this is something that happened a long time ago
when you had a website that
had done link building in the past and you did anything spammy
let's say you paid someone
you might have seen those emails where pay
$50 and get 1,000 links to your website
it's gonna help your rankings blah
blah blah
because it proves
boosts your authority and tells Google that you are the boss
you should be getting the rankings well
those never work I mean they haven't worked for decades
so those people are still selling them
because there's still people who will bite
about 5 years ago or at least
Google used to penalize websites for doing that
now they just disregard them or so they say so
you would have to submit a disavow report
if you found a whole bunch of this garbage
and you wanted to try and get back into Google's crisis
you would say here are all the links I have
these are the ones that should be discounted
I do not have anything to do with these
please do not consider them against me
and there was an often
a chance for people to get back into Google's graces by doing that
well Google doesn't look at that anymore
it was essentially a separate training
set that they used to try and evaluate things
I I'm not gonna go down that rabbit hole
it is not super important
but it is good to know that disavow is really
truly not useful at all anymore
they've they've as much said that recently
but it took a while first of all
anchor mismatch
so if a person is linking to you from what's
to your practice from say a hair salon
and that link says
here's a great
mechanic in town and it links to your dental website
yeah that's not gonna work so that's the anchor
that text is the anchor
and anchor text has to match what they're linking to
makes easy it's so simple right
it makes good sense here's a great dentist you should use
and if that links to your website
there you go that's gonna help
now the relevance of the page does matter too to a degree
you're gonna get far more value from that link
if it comes from a dental organization or something along those lines
but there's nothing
there's no harm in getting a link from whatever the hair salon
if they're saying this is a great dentist
love them had a great experience check them out
SERP demotion okay so
if Google has any idea that a particular ranking
we sort of discussed this earlier
isn't getting you know
it's bouncing people are going to the webpage from the link
and then they're coming right back to Google and searching again there
is a devotion
there's evidence that there is a
devotion based on the dissatisfaction of those people again
makes good sense
now if another one is a nav demotion so navigation
so the experience of navigating your website
if there's evidence that that isn't great
Google looks at that in many ways
not just in how people actually interact with it
but how it interacts with it and what sort of
layers of and issues it notices that know that
and that
these are issues that Google knows have been issues in the past
in poor navigation that's going to weigh against you as well
this may or may not matter
but exact match demotion so if you got a domain saying best dentist
New York dot com and your business
wasn't that or let's say was best dentist New York Ltd
whatever it is
what they're saying is is that by getting that domain
it's not gonna help you with rankings it used to
it used to help a great deal if you had the keywords in the domain
and it was a real easy win
that's no longer the case
now
I shouldn't say this cause I think those domains
and those business names look absolutely awful and cheap
but if you do go that route
there is still a benefit and that is a people linked to you
you know they say hey check out this dental practice
they're called the best dental practice in New York
and they link to your site well
that's pretty cool too that's good text
and that's a good anchor that's gonna
you know probably help you with ranking so there are advantages to it
whether or not you wanna
frankly my opinion
cheapening your brand by doing that is totally up to you
in very competitive environments maybe it makes sense
product review demonstrations
so if you were doing any kind of product reviews for your business
you would want to ensure that you're very careful that
that you've authentically used those products
so if you're a dentist and you're reviewing toothbrushes
no problem that's probably gonna be just fine
if your site is significantly
a significant portion of your site is about product reviews
product reviews you might be
feeling a bit of a pinch right now in terms of search rankings
because Google is well
frankly
taking a dim view of product sites
unless they're confident
the person who wrote the content has tested those products themselves
and are not just regurgitating content from another website
which is probably 90% of the content online
are these people who are just farming that
that other person's experience and duplicating it
so they want to be sure that you've got that
you know
the author that wrote that page is the actual dentist or someone
or a hygienist and they have the qualifications to count for that
that's something I can
talk to you more about if you're more interested in how to do that
it requires some a proper bio page with schema
markup
and a whole bunch of things to ensure that all the dots match up
and the checklists
are accurate for Google
Indexing
ideally links should come from fresh or top tier pages on your site so
if you want a page to rank or to get how do I put this
if you want a page on your website to
be indexed or crawled regularly
and have a better chance of being in Google's index
the one that they show on search results
there is a better a greater benefit to having it linked to from
your homepage to put it the most simply
or other top tier pages on your site
places that are common entry pages on your website
so if you create a great article or a great product review
and you really want Google to take it seriously
and you want to be cornerstone content on your website
this is a kind of content that
will be another entry page on your site that
you know will draw a lot of interest
you should link to it from those pages
that doesn't mean you just go and link to every page on your site
from those pages that's a bad idea
that kind of thing just over saturates the site and yeah
it's it's another discussion just don't do it
be very sparing with where those links are
I'm not saying your navigation can't be very comprehensive
but there is science to that too
just yeah again
I think we should have another episode just talking about navigation
there's so much to talk about next font size and weight
how about this this is a shocker
so the size of your font and whether or not is bold
actually has a bearing on ranking
now it is tiny I can guarantee it
it is not something that's gonna make a big difference in rankings
now where every little factor adds up and makes a difference
this is good to know I mean
if you're if all else is created equal against a competitor
and you just happen to use better weights and balances
and headings and font sizes and stuff
you may do better just because of that
so it's always good to know this information
document truncation
so if you have a really long piece of content on your site
put your best content forward
don't leave it to the end of the page
put it forward doesn't mean it has to be the first thing to read
but maybe this the third second
third paragraph that way if the page is too long
Google may truncate how much they're looking at and you'll miss out
page title match so how if your title of your page
that's the title you see
in the browser at the top on your if you're using Chrome
it's in the tab you'll see what the name of the pages
and it's also the title that you see within search engine results
if that matches the title on the page
and the rest of the content on the page
that is still going to be weighed positively to a query
so a person does a search for that exact same search
sorry the exact same title
you're going to do better and you'll have a better chance of doing
doing well in search results
dates dates are very important it's very important that you're
if you have a content that was written on a specific date
this is let's say blogs or articles
and there is a difference
you need to ensure that there is a date on the page
Google is very fussy about ensuring that they're showing
fresh content if they have any doubt
they're not gonna show it
they wanna know that what they're showing is fresh
it doesn't mean that the other content can't appear
but fresh content is going to win it just
what's it the
the old term
freshness deserves visibility or something along those lines
I can't remember the old saying in our industry but
that's the concept okay so ensure that you do include the date
I hate pages that don't have dates
and perhaps give a tutorial or a product review
how old is this stuff there's no way to know
let's see here
trying to decide if these are worthwhile okay
yeah here's one
video sites they're treated differently
so if more than 50% of your pages on
on the site have videos
it will be using different algorithms to evaluate how it should rank
this isn't very common in dental practices
but I'm sure there are examples where this is the case
so do keep in mind that videos are a fantastic thing to have
I cannot recommend them enough
but if over 50% of your pages are using them
you better really discuss it with your SEO and
see how that's going to impact the overall success of the site
so some quick takeaways here
page title length can be as long as you want and it
but it also should be relevant to
I mean you know should
should be relevant to the page obviously
but it also is best if it's if
if there is an exact match to common searches online
use few fewer authors on more content
this is some additional
I should know this is some additional takeaways from Michael King
yeah okay
so use fewer authors so if
you have all of your team writing
it's not a bad thing it's very
very uncommon in the dental field
cause most of the time
it's just two or one person that's writing for the blog
just make sure that person has a lot of subject matter expertise
and can show their credentials
that's very important and those credentials need to be on a bio page
as I mentioned before
focus on links from sites with traffic
if you're gonna get links from sites
you know make sure that that link is relevant
first of all
it's coming from a site that has some traffic and is relevant okay
so if again
if if you are well I guess the hair stylist is an example
that's not a very relevant link a best
most relevant link would be coming from the dental association
so ideally
you would get a link from there
and hopefully that site also has some traffic
we're talking about ideals here
the hair again the hairstyle is not a bad idea if it's saying
this is a great dentist nearby
in fact that's a great local link which I would never discount
when you're writing content from your site
default to originality
try not to regurgitate whatever else is everyone else has written
if you are going to take a
take on a topic that everyone else has written
be original and how you tackle it
originality is a part of Google's algorithms
it's not great necessarily at choosing originality yet
but this is all part of AI
they are working on it and it's really important to them
so keep that in mind if you want to buy an old domain
so say you know
a practice nearby has shut down and you want to buy their domain
not a bad idea
often times they just let them expire
which is foolish because those domains often have authority
they over time Google's begun to trust them and those pages
you know there's some real benefit to owning a domain there
owning that domain and having it forward to your website
if it's just going to sit there idle
just be careful because the history of that domain may not be good
may not be good
maybe they did some very crazy stupid things with their links
maybe they did some spams and black hat tactics
you need someone to look at their history
and that can be done
and determine whether or not it's worthwhile doing
I would say in most cases it is most cases it is worthwhile doing
it all depends on the market and what they've been doing in the past
ultimately make gold standard content
again we talked about originality but it's not just that do your best
create content even if you're only creating one article a month
Content's important I'm sorry
it is really important a lot of dentists don't do much there
it is very important that dentists write
on their site and add value to it
it's too easy to be just another dentist with the same content
differentiate yourself with excellence
so make that gold standard content
and add different types of media to it
if you get interviewed on a podcast or the news or whatever it may be
get a snippet of that audio and put it in there so people can play it
if there's video embed the video
if you want to create your own video
maybe putting in a few words
or smarizing something that's on the page
go for it it doesn't have to be fancy
you can just do it with your phone
in fact sometimes that looks far more authentic and
and appealing to people
cause they don't feel like they're being sold something
it just looks wow this person really cares
they're just taking a moment out of their day to provide this content
there is another issue entirely separate that you should be aware of
and this is something that we're going to be hyper vigilant about
for our clients
your Google business profile
as you know is very important to your practice
this is where you're saying to Google
I'm a local business this is where I'm located
these are my reviews these are my photos
here are some Google posts about some of the specials
our new treatments we have or upcoming charity events
etcetera etcetera etcetera
it is your hours I mean
it just it's everything it's it is like a
absolutely powerful amazing brochure that Google allows you to have
if a person moves the pin so they go to your if an outside person
anyone that's the frightening part
looks at your listing on Google Business Profile and they go okay
no actually they're located here
and they move your pin that shows on the map
you can lose all of your rankings
just pause there for a sec
how insane is that
I I just can't comprehend how big an issue that is
and it's happening all of the time
I'm dealing with literally clients in tears
and until recently
I think just this week
there's been no way to prevent this from happening
and I haven't actually seen the technology yet
but a colleague of mine has built something and I'm looking into it
but the only way to fix this is to somehow get Google's attention
and yet they're just doing these fixes one at a time
if you can get their attention
they still haven't fixed this hole
this issue and it's been around for a couple months now
I'm just baffled
this is a perfect example of Google not caring about businesses
it's infuriating so yeah
just to be clear here so if someone moves the pin for your business
and puts you in the middle of a lake somewhere
I can do it and Google will accept it it's
anywho
I I have a client who just went through this
and I'm about to get another one
and
someone went and took all of the competitors
and put them all in the same
building and Google there's a another exploit that that can
I don't want to share any more bad ideas anyways
that's bad and it destroyed all of their rankings
and the competitor can't exactly prove it was them
but they're the only one now showing
is probably doing business like gangbusters right now
it's terrifying
now if you try to move that back
if you go into your own listing and try to move it back
take that pin and go back to your own place
there are examples of Google suspending your account
it just triples the insanity here
I I just I
I I can't conceive of how much worse this could be
and how appalling it is so what do you do
notify me I guess I will do my best to help you if you
if you run into the situation
there are others like me as well
look for searches on how to fix
I'm not sure what the term is right now
I'm calling it the pin hack
Google Business Profile pin hack
and we'll do our best to help you
you know
I'm just charging hourly to do this just to help people not
I'm certainly don't want to take advantage of anyone
it's
it's got to be brutal to see how much business you can lose
especially businesses that
rely entirely on their Google Business profile
so it's madness Google's 100% to blame
I don't care
if it's outside people taking advantage of Google's exploit
but the fact that they haven't plugged it yet is unforgivable
that's all I can say about that unforgivable
okay
we'll get a little more into AI and stuff on another episode
but that was a lot for you to digest