How to Leverage the Google Algorithm and Attract New Dental Patients
Focus on Your Google Business Page
The Google business page remains one of the most underutilized areas of dental marketing. While dentists are busy posting to social media and designing the perfect website, their Google business pages contain only the essentials like contact information, a few pictures, and hours of operation. Unfortunately, this is really a missed opportunity because the Google business page is tied closely to the Google algorithm, which determines the ranking and placement of dental practices in your area. In short, if the Google algorithm understands your practice to be active and engaged, it will place your listing, ads, pictures, videos—and ultimately your brand—in a premier position.
Images and Videos Are King Online
Whenever you have an opportunity to upload pictures and video, take it. In this case, Google is offering your dental practice a free platform to share your dental practice brand in the most popular and engaging medium. All the big tech platforms are vying for more traffic, and one of the biggest and most lucrative traffic streams is social media. Google has always wanted to create a more interactive and immediate social media experience, so they launched Google+, which was eventually closed down due to low engagement. But the business side has continued to expand, encouraging owners to view their business listing more like social media.
Engage with the Google Algorithm
Successful SEO comes down to one thing: give algorithms what they want. It’s really that simple. Whether you are trying to grow your Instagram account or YouTube channel, the computer programs (or algorithms) that control those platforms make all the decisions, so it helps to know what they want. In short, they want engagement in all forms—routine posting, likes, shares, watch time, comments, etc. The more time your brand interacts with the algorithm, the better. Think of it like a relationship. The more time you spend with an algorithm, the more it trusts your brand and wants to promote it and highlight it.
When it comes to your Google business page, your dental practice has the option of sharing updates. These can be service specials like whitening and implants, but they can also be social posts about staff events and dental health guidelines. This posting option is Google’s attempt to capitalize on all the social media traffic that’s routinely monetized with ads. So you say that your dental practice is already posting to Facebook and Instagram (maybe Twitter, Snapchat, and TikTok)? Do you really need to share on Google too? There aren’t that many people engaging with social posts on Google. That may be true, but the most important viewer is paying attention to your posts: the Google algorithm; and this program will reward users with better placement and more organic reach, which translates into more opportunities and more new patients.
Dentists Rank High in Google with These Techniques
What Really Matters to Google Google’s Mission From the beginning, Google has maintained one objective: to develop a search engine that provides the most valuable content to its users. In order to sift through the growing mountain of information on the Internet, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin designed an
Engage, Engage, Engage
The best way to send positive signals to an algorithm is to engage. Of course, it’s great if others engage with your online content, but it’s equally important to engage yourself. What does this mean for your Google business page? Well, it means logging in often and clicking around, checking statistics, and keeping your hours of operation current. It means uploading and changing pictures. It means looking at other accounts and engaging, leaving comments, and sharing. Anything that demonstrates to the algorithm that you’re routinely active is a good thing.
Maybe the easiest way to understand algorithms is to consider how we follow other accounts on social media. In addition to judging content, most of us also look at engagement. We may truly enjoy the content on a specific account, but we hesitate and often decline to follow if we notice nothing new in over a year. On the other hand, we eagerly pursue accounts that comment, like, and post regularly.
