Growing your dental practice in the digital age requires you to optimize it for local audiences. If you can dominate Google Maps for dental searches, you’ll gain trust and credibility from nearby potential patients and will win the local SEO game.
Optimizing your dental brand for Google Maps requires you to follow various techniques for an extended duration. Also, it requires regular maintenance so that you don’t lose your progress after a few months.
If you’re confused about how to rank your dental brand prominently on Google Maps, then this blog is for you! Here, we’ve discussed some actionable strategies that you can implement to rank your clinic on top of local search results.
Highlights
- Relevance, proximity, and prominence are the key ranking factors in Google Maps.
- Verifying Google Business Profile, uploading high-quality pictures, and publishing Google posts, are some of the major techniques to optimize for Google Maps.
- Google Maps 3-Pack displays the three best results for local brands in search results.
- Name, Address, and Phone Number (NAP) consistency is crucial to building trust with both Google and potential patients.
- Responding to both positive and negative reviews demonstrates strong patient care.
Why Optimize Your Dental Brand for Google Maps?
Enhancing its presence in Google Maps is a crucial part of your dental clinic’s search engine optimization. A well-optimized brand on this platform will help you outrank the competitors and grow your business.
More than a billion users worldwide rely on Google Maps for various purposes. If you optimize your dental brand for this platform, your potential patients can reach out to you easily.
A well-optimized listing in Google Maps makes it easier for Google to validate your dental practice. Also, you’ll build strong credibility in the market with positive reviews from past patients in your profile.
What Are The Crucial Google Maps Ranking Factors?
Before you optimize your dental brand for Google Maps, you need to understand what determines the ranking factors. These factors are the same as that of local SEO. Here are the three factors that influence your local rank:
- Relevance: Your dental clinic will only appear on the potential patients’s screen if they insert a relevant keyword. So, your dental services must match with the search query to appear on local search results.
- Distance: When a potential patient searches for a nearby dentist, they want to see results that are in proximity to their location. If your dental clinic is quite far from the searcher, it might not rank at the top result.
- Prominence: Google prefers businesses that are well-known and well-liked. It determines the prominence of your dental clinic based on your monthly website visits, number of positive reviews, and more.
10 Best Methods to Dominate Google Maps for Dental Services
To grow your dental clinic within your local area, you have to dominate its presence in Google Maps. Here are the ten proven techniques with which you can stay on top of the competition on this platform:
1. Create and Verify Your Google Business Profile
The first step to optimize your dental brand for Google Maps is to create a Google Business Profile. For that, you need to provide all the required information about your clinic. Some of them include name, address, contact number, and service hours.
You have to complete the verification process to claim your dental clinic. Google may take up to a week to verify your brand. After that, you can optimize your Google Business Profile to outrank your competitors.
Select the accurate category for your dental brand in the Google Business Profile. Also, list all your dental services on your profile. Potential customers are 2.7 times more likely to build trust with a business if it has a complete profile in Google Search and Maps.
2. Use High-Quality Photos and Videos
Google Business Profile lets you upload photographs of your dental business. You can assign categories for your photos, such as logo, cover photo, and business photos. The format should be either JPG or PNG and should be between 10 KB and 5 MB.
Google recommends the resolution of the photo should be 720 pixels tall and 720 pixels wide. However, the minimum resolution that it accepts is 250p X 250p.
You’re also free to upload a promotional video, an interior video of the clinic, or any other video files. Its duration should not exceed 30 seconds and file size should be 75 MB or less. Also, the resolution must be 720 pixels or higher.
3. Publish Regular Google Posts
Google appreciates when you publish regular posts about your dental clinic in GBP. Some of the post types include announcements, event details, dental services, general information about the clinic, and other offers.
Make sure you don’t include phone numbers on your posts. Also, you have to set a certain date range for these posts. Otherwise, Google will archive them after six months.
With these posts, you can communicate directly with your local potential patient. When they browse your profile on Google Maps, they’ll get all the required information about your clinic. This helps them decide to book an appointment quickly.
4. Encourage and Manage Google Reviews
Having a significant number of positive reviews from your past patients in your profile is crucial for building credibility. Both Google and your potential patients will grow trust in your dental brand with such reviews.
You have to encourage your happy patients to give honest feedback on your Google Business Profile. After they give their review, it’s your job to respond politely and professionally.
Always thank your past patients for providing the review. Also, try to build a personal touch by using their first name in the reply. They’ll believe that you value their feedback and will want to visit your clinic again.
5. Utilize Local Business Schema
Schema markup are a set of structured codes that you can insert on your website. Some of the information that you can insert in the local schema are your clinic name, type, price, location, logo, hours, etc.
Local schema markup helps Google understand the nature of your dental brand and its services accurately. As a result, your clinic might display prominently on Google Maps listings.
Here is the Local Schema Template:
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Dentist",
"name": "",
"image": "",
"@id": "",
"url": "",
"telephone": "",
"address": {
"@type": "PostalAddress",
"streetAddress": "",
"addressLocality": "",
"postalCode": "",
"addressCountry": ""
}
}
</script>
6. Leverage Local Backlinks and Citations
Google will use various techniques to validate your dental clinic before displaying it on Google Maps. One of these includes citations and backlinks from local directories and external websites relevant to dentistry.
Start by creating your clinic’s profile in local directories such as Yelp and YellowPages. Apart from these, you can search for some dentist-specific sites where you can create your clinic’s profile.
Similarly, you have to put effort into gathering backlinks from other high-quality relevant websites. Some of the approaches for this purpose include guest blogging, publishing information content, email outreach, and so on.
7. Start Using Local Keywords
Another important approach to optimize your dental clinic for Google Maps is to use local keywords. You can insert them on your website and Google Business Profile. Here are some examples of local keywords for dentistry:
- “Cosmetic teeth bonding near me”
- “Best dental clinics in Philadelphia”
- “Emergency dentists in Austin”
On your website, you can insert these long-tail, local keywords in different areas. Some of them include homepages, service pages, blog posts, meta descriptions, etc.
Whereas, for Google Business Profile, you can use these keywords on Google posts, business descriptions, and other areas. This technique will help your profile rank within the top 3 local search results.
8. Embed Google Maps to Your Website
Google will get more reasons to validate your dental brand if you embed your Google Maps pin on your clinic’s website. It builds a strong connection between the website and your Google Business Profile.
With this technique, you grow trust and provide a better user experience to your potential patients. This is because you’re helping them locate your clinic without needing them to search for it manually on the map.
Since your website visitors interact with Google Maps, it gives a better ranking signal to Google. It’ll further enhance your chances of showing your clinic’s profile on top of search results in Google Maps.
9. Optimize the Website for Mobile-Friendliness
A large number of local searches are happening on mobile devices. Google Maps has more than 10 billion downloads in Google Play Store. Your nearby potential patient might be searching for dentists on this platform and could view your profile.
They might visit your website after browsing your profile for a while. But, if the site doesn’t load properly on their smartphones, they’ll bounce away from your site. As a result, Google will not display your profile to other searchers.
So, you have to make sure your dental website displays properly on all devices. Some of the techniques to optimize for mobile-friendliness include enhancing website load speed, minimizing the use of pop-ups, using mobile-friendly fonts, etc.
10. Advertise Your Clinic on Google Maps
In addition to other strategies mentioned above, you can opt for Google ads to further enhance your clinic’s reach. If you apply both organic and paid promotion tactics, your clinic will get a strong competitive edge in Google Maps.
Local search ads let you optimize for local keywords in the campaign. It also provides a location-targeting feature where you can set a certain location where you want your ads to appear.
With this ad tactic, you can display the Call-to-Action (CTA) button directly on Google Maps. Thus, it encourages your potential patient to engage with your Google Business Profile and website.
What is Google Maps 3-Pack?
Google Maps 3-pack refers to the local search results that include the three most relevant and prominent businesses. On the left side, it shows their Google Business Profiles whereas on the right side, you can see their pin points on Google Maps.
This 3-pack result displays the most crucial information of each of those three businesses. Some of them include location, service hours, star ratings, and category. Also, it makes it easier to visit their website or get a direction to reach their location.
Your aim should be to display your clinic’s profile whenever a potential patient searches for dental services in your area. This will be proof that your strategy to dominate the dental competition in Google Maps is successful.
What is NAP Consistency, and Why is it Important?
NAP consistency is when you have a uniform name, address, and phone number (NAP) of your business on all online platforms. For instance, if a Google Business Profile has a certain phone number, make sure you provide the same number on your website.
In addition to the website and GBP, you have to ensure a consistent NAP on all local directories and social media channels. It prevents any confusion arising in your potential patient’s mind during their research phase.
Google builds trust and reliability towards your dental clinic when it sees consistent NAP across all platforms. This leads to a higher chance of your brand outranking the competitors in local searches.
How Often Should You Update Your Google Business Profile?
Google Business Profile requires regular updates so that your potential patients will see the most up-to-date information. For instance, you have to update your name, address, contact details, services, and hours whenever required.
Apart from that, certain components of GBP require frequent updates, such as Google posts, reviews, and Q&As. You have to publish promotions, events, offers, or other posts at least once or twice a week.
Besides, your past patients might provide reviews or have asked questions in the Q&A section. You have to check them and reply to their opinions, feedback, or appreciation every week.
What is The Best Way to Handle Negative Reviews on GBP?
Your dental clinic’s Google Business Profile might receive all kinds of reviews from past patients. In case of negative reviews from them, you have to respond to them quickly so that you can get to the root cause quickly.
If the review is fake or violates Google’s review policies, you have to report it to Google immediately. However, if it’s genuine then you have to reply to the patient professionally and take the conversation offline.
After you figure out the root cause of the issue, please assure them that you’re going to take their feedback seriously. Learning from the feedback will help you enhance your dental service for future patients.
Handling negative reviews is a part of reputation management. Both Google and your potential patients will appreciate when you respond to both positive and negative reviews.
What Common Mistakes Should a Dentist Avoid During Google Maps Optimization?
Optimizing your dental brand for Google Maps is a demanding process with plenty of components to focus on. You might end up making a few mistakes that may hamper your progress.
So, here is a list of common mistakes dentists make that you have to avoid:
- Incorrect or missing location markers on Google Maps
- Failing to regularly monitor the analytics and revise the optimization strategy
- Ignoring the Question and Answers (Q&A) section on Google Business Profile
- Failing to analyze competitors’ Google Maps optimization strategy
- Not optimizing your Google Business Profile for voice search
Conclusion
Lastly, we suggest that you follow each of the strategies mentioned above to dominate your dental practice for Google Maps. If you’re able to outrank your competitors for local searches, you’ll receive tremendous benefits in the long run.
Since these optimization tactics are not a one-time task, you have to evolve with Google’s changing algorithm. Thus, we’re dedicated to providing you with the latest trends and updates in SEO. Stay tuned for our future blog posts!
