Arlene Shaffer is a New York realtor with the gift of gab. From home inspections with clients to waiting on line at the grocery store, Arlene likes to talk. Her dentist, Dr. Bertman has tried unsuccessfully for years to stop the gab. The best he could do was garble it. Dr. Bertman had come to expect her ending each session with her credo, “It’s all about location, dear”.
After putting Arlene’s porcelain veneers in, and fighting his urge to wire her jaws shut, Dr. Bertman finally took a moment to ask Arlene why she ends every meeting with her seemingly trite credo about real estate. To his surprise Arlene responded, “Who said I was talking about real estate?”
It was at that moment when a light bulb went off in Dr. Bertman’s head, as bright as the veneers he just put in. He remembered the conversation they were having the first time Arlene said, “It’s all about location, dear.” They were discussing Dr. Bertman’s desire to grow his practice. Despite her assurance that his office location was perfect, Arlene had said, “if you want to grow your practice, it’s all about location, dear.”
To grow his practice Dr. Bertman did not have to change the location of his office. He had to change the location of something else. In his case, like many others, to grow his practice he had to change the location of his website.
Like many dentists and cosmetic dentists, Dr. Bertman invested in a very well-designed website. Visitors to his site are always impressed by the site’s design, content and photographs of smiling staff and patients. Also like many other dentists, Dr. Bertman, did not focus on marketing his website. Specifically, he never considered the position of his website in web searches.
There are over 100,000 monthly web searches on Google and Yahoo for dentists in New York as researched in Clear Aligner Nassau County, the most searched for dental term in New York is “New York cosmetic dentist”. Though this may seem like good news for Dr. Bertman, the fact is his website does not appear in the search results for this term or any other term. His beautiful site goes unseen. This phenomenon is true for thousands of dentists in cities large and small.
Google, Yahoo, and MSN like all search engines determine which websites appear in search results and the order they appear in by applying a complex mathematical formula. The higher a website scores in the formula, as compared to the billions of other webs pages online, the higher it will rank in the search results.
Before going any further it is important to distinguish between “natural” or “organic” results and sponsored results. Though at your local grocery store “organic” may equate to costing more, in search engines organic means they cost nothing. Organic or natural results are the heart and soul of search engines. They appear in the center of the search results pages and are determined solely by how websites score in their mathematical formulas.
In Google, the Sponsored listings are highlighted in beige at the top of the listings, and appear to the right of the natural listings.
In Yahoo, the Sponsored listings are highlighted in blue at the top of the listings, and appear to the right of the natural listings.
Whereas organic results are the heart and soul of search engines, sponsored results are the bread winners. Sponsored links, made up primarily of pay-per-click ads, are placed at the top, bottom and either side of the natural search results depending on the search engine. The sites that appear in these sponsored link sections are determined by an auction system meaning whoever is willing to pay the most will appear on those search results pages. It also means that you pay anywhere from $1.00 – $10.00 for each person that clicks on that link. In the natural or organic listings you do not pay these fees each time someone clicks on your website.
Dr. Bertman who happens to hate math is at first delighted by the prospect of being able to have his site appear in search results through sponsored ads. The thought of his site competing in a mathematical contest is about as appealing to him as the sounds of dental drills are to most patients. Just before he started to research sponsored ad placement he remembered something very important. Whenever he searches for things online he always ignores the sponsored listings and first looks at the natural or organic listings. It is only if he does not find what he was looking for on the first two pages of the search results that he looks at the sponsored listings. He, like millions of others, believes that the natural listings will somehow be “better” than the sponsored listings for whatever he happens to be searching for.
Consumers equate quality with search rankings. The higher a website appears in the search results the greater the consumer’s confidence is. That means when searching online for a cosmetic dentist a consumer will be more confident in dentists who have their website appearing on page 1 of Google, Yahoo and the other major search engines.
Research reported by AmericaOnline(TM) has shown that a website currently on page 2 of Google will experience a 1,400% increase in traffic when it moves from page 2 of Google to #1 in Google. Websites that are not presently on page 2 of Google will see an even greater increase in traffic. Multiply this result by numerous search terms and you can easily see why a dentist’s best friend is a search engine marketer.
Search engine marketing goes beyond your website’s placement in traditional search results. For the general or cosmetic dentist it also means having your website appear when consumers are doing image searches, video searches and news searches.
In Google, above the Google icon are links to see Image results, news results and video results of searches.