Using Google Maps to Locate High-Value Dental Patients
Consider your own habits when searching for a local business. How often do you find what you’re looking for on the Google Maps? Or how often do you use the Google Maps app on your phone to find a local business?
Ranking well on Google Maps is the most effective online marketing method for a dentist to be found by local patients. Cutting-edge dental marketing companies are focused on helping their dental clients optimize for Google Maps.
How To Rank High on Google Maps for High-Value Patients
Dental practices hoping to attract new patients for high-value cases like dental implants, sleep devices, cosmetic surgeries, and smile makeovers should be aware of their current ranking on Google Maps for those search phrases. Once you understand how you currently rank, you can begin to implement a strategy for improvement.
What is a Google Business Profile (GBP)?
A common misunderstanding is that the information about your practice on the Google Maps comes from your website. It actually comes from your Google Business Profile, which is your business listing in the Google Business database.
Most small business owners are unaware that you can perform dental SEO to optimize your GBP, enabling it to rank higher on Google Maps. Your ranking depends on three optimization aspects: Prominence, Distance, and Relevance.
What is Prominence in Google Maps Optimization?
Prominence relates to how recognized you are within your community. Prominence is the most challenging of the three optimization aspects because Google measures prominence through inbound links. Getting an inbound link is a challenge in and of itself.
An example of a great inbound link would be for a colleague in your town to write an article about your practice and post the article to their website. Links to your website from the post act like votes of confidence. More votes = higher rankings.
What is Distance in Google Maps Optimization?
Google Maps is a location-based result. The location of your practice and the location where the person is searching influences the search results. Your practice may be ranking on the front page of Google a mile north of your practice, but it may not be ranking a mile south of your practice.
Location-based results are complicated, and the best way to understand them is to run a Google Maps Grid Report, which shows how high you're ranking on the Google map when people search from areas around your location.
Below is an example of a Google Maps Grid Report. The number on the colored dots is where the practice ranks when someone searches from that location. If the colored dot has a 1, 2, or 3, then the practice would be on the first page of Google Maps.
A more in-depth video explanation of how Google Maps results work can be found here.
What is the Relevance of Google Maps Optimization?
Relevance is a correlation between the patient's search phrase and the information in your GBP.
For instance, a potential patient searches for the "best dental implant dentist." You provide dental implants, but your GBP categories do not list you as a dental implant provider' which creates a problem in ranking for dental implant phrases. The good news is that it's a simple process to update your categories, which I'll discuss below.
How to Optimize for Dental Implants, Cosmetic Procedures, Smile Makeovers, and High-Value Services
Determine Your Ranking
First, figure out how well you're ranking. If you send a request using this form, we'll run the grid reports for the keywords you'd like. I recommend that you have us run them on 'dental implants,' 'cosmetic dentist,' 'smile makeovers,' or any other keywords you're interested in.
Locate Your GBP Profile
I created a video explaining how to find your GBP profile.
Update Your Primary and Secondary Category
You can have one Primary Category and multiple additional categories. My recommendation is to have no more than 3 in total.
Categories are set by Google. You have to choose them from their list of dental categories. Here is the list of all the categories.
If you are a general dentist, your primary category should be "dentist," NOT "dental clinic." If you're an orthodontist, periodontist, prosthodontist, pediatric dentist, etc., you should make your primary category the same as your specialty.
The only situation that I’ve come across where you might want to break this rule is if you're a general dentist, but you only want cosmetic patients. In that case, you could make your primary category "Cosmetic dentist" and your secondary category "dentist." By doing so, you'll rank better for cosmetic terms and less for dental terms.
The caveat is this, "dentist" gets ten times more search volume than cosmetic dentist, and many people searching for a cosmetic procedure may be using cosmetic search phrases. How many times do you think someone looking for veneers searches for "best dentist near me?"
GO THE EXTRA MILE WITH YOUR OPTIMIZATION: For those who want to take the optimization further, watch this dental SEO training video that covers the top 10 steps for Google Maps optimization.
Google Maps Optimization Conclusion
Optimizing Google Maps should be a primary task for any dental marketing manager. It's not difficult, but it does take time. If done correctly and you begin ranking at the top of the search, the increase in new patient calls can be significant.
Please take advantage of some of the free resources we've created to help you get started optimizing and attracting new high-value patients.
About the Author
Adrian Lefler is a dental marketing expert and the CEO of My Social Practice. He lives in Draper, Utah, with four super snarky kids, a professional spouse chef, one awesome dog, and one dumb dog.
