Today on the DentalTown forums someone was complaining that their well known dental website company (who shall remain nameless, but shame on you) was balking at their request to transfer their domain name to their new dental host. After that post, several more people chimed in about other dental website companies who again balked when they tried to switch services.
Because of this we always recommend that dentists simply purchase domain names themeselves. Imagine if you're dental website company owned your phone number and could turn it off (or give it to a competitor!!!) at a moments whim. You don't want anyone else to have that sort of leverage over your business. I've heard even worse stories about dentists being forced to pay upwards of $10,000 just to get control of a domain name they thought they already owned. So please, take the time to do it yourself. It costs ~ $10 a year to own a domain name, and it may save you a mountain of misery down the road.
For a limited time, Google is offering free advertising on their newly rebranded Google Places. Dentists should really check this out: http://www.google.com/help/tags/
Basically it puts a little yellow "tag" next to your entry, helping it stand out next to the others. Its free so you have nothing to lose!
Dr. Jordan Stirneman, a bellaire dentist chose optimize his dental website for search engines. We had pretty great results right away, but today they are even better!
Yahoo
Sorry everyone, but we've gotten a lot of spam, so we're turning comment moderation back on. We'll work on adding some spam protect in the future perhaps.
It's alive!
We've rolled out our previously mentioned SEO updates, which are now
live on all of your websites. The big changes are:
1) The "About
us" section no longer will go directly to the dentist bio if there is
only one Dentist. We thought this would be helpful, but it ended up
creating way too much confusion, and after several complaints, we're
waiving the white flag and caving in to our users. You guys we're
right, and now it's fixed.
2) All URLS are now human-readable
so instead of:
http://bellairefamilydentistry.com/index.cfm?event=dentist.view&dentistID=54
you now get:
http://www.bellairefamilydentistry.com/Bellaire-Dentist-Dr-Jordan-Stirneman-DDS-52
This
will give everyone a slight bump in SEO, and more importantly, improve
click-thru rates for users looking for a dentist via search
engines. Which of those links would you rather click on?
Free Whitepaper: How to get Free call tracking & more
from your website with Google Voice
We've also attached our guide
to Google Voice. We've been testing this out for a little more then a
week on one client. They got at least 9 calls via their website.
What is Google Voice?
Google voice is a free service from Google that gives you an additional phone number you can use to make and receive calls, for free!
Why would a Dentist need this?
There are a lot of reasons, but most compelling are:
- You can track calls made to your website or via a billboard or radio advertisement
- You can automatically transcribe voicemails into text and have them emailed to you or txt messaged to your phone.
- You can have your Google Voice number ring your office and your cell phone (and/or your receptionists cell phone) simultaneously. So if you need to step out of the office for a minute, but you’re waiting for an important call – no problem!
- You can “listen in” while people are leaving a message, allowing you to see if the off-hours call you’re getting is really an emergency or can wait until tomorrow
- Did I mention it is 100% free?
Google
voice is free for everyone to use, but if you'd like us to set it up
for you, we have a limited sale for a $49 one time fee.
You can view the whitepaper here
Thanks again, and we always appreciate your feedback.
What is Google Voice?
Google voice is a free service from Google that gives you an additional phone number you can use to make and receive calls, for free!
Why would a Dentist need this?
There are a lot of reasons, but most compelling are:
- You can track calls made to your website or via a billboard or radio advertisement
- You can automatically transcribe voicemails into text and have them emailed to you or txt messaged to your phone.
- You can have your Google Voice number ring your office and your cell phone (and/or your receptionists cell phone) simultaneously. So if you need to step out of the office for a minute, but you’re waiting for an important call – no problem!
- You can “listen in” while people are leaving a message, allowing you to see if the off-hours call you’re getting is really an emergency or can wait until tomorrow
- Did I mention it is 100% free?