Prerequisites

There are some assumptions we’ve got to make here.  The dentist should already have:

• An office
• Existing patients
• A website

Step One – Find A Keyword Niche

Currently the search term ‘dentist st louis‘ comes up with just 860,000 results.  While this may seem like a lot, in reality it’s not.  Any result under a million is worth looking in to, and possibly ranking for.  According to the Google Keyword Tool, 4,400 people searched this phrase last month.

Switching the phrase around to ‘st louis dentist‘ results in 1.1 Million results.  Slightly more competition for nearly the same phrase. But check this out – this phrase gets twice as many (9,900) average searches a month!

And thirdly, the phrase ‘dentist saint louis‘ yields an incredible 2.7 Million results, yet only shows around 12,100 per month.  Which is a better deal?

I’m going with number two.  A number one result on Google for ‘st louis dentist’ would be a nice place for any local dentist.  Who wouldn’t want 9,900 potential new clients a month?

Step Two – Analyze the Competition

Now I need to do is see who’s currently ranking, how ‘valuable’ their website is, and how difficult it is going to be to overtake their #1 position.  (I should mention here that #1 position is optimal, but not always attainable. But being on page one definitely is)

There’s some good news here – a search for ‘st louis dentist’ shows me that the first two results are not very relevant. One is a site called Doctor Oogle, a directory-type site, and the second is another listing site of dentists in saint louis county.  Still no actual dentist website.  In fact, you have to scroll two-thirds of the way down the page before you find an actual dentist site -not counting the locally optimized results which we’ll talk about in step five.

At time of this writing it’s Dr. Derek Vadnal in Bridgeton.  His site is a template from ProSites, his call to action is sad, and the entire ‘above the fold’ area of his website is used very inadequately.  He scores a sad 55/100 on website grader. He could easily be overtaken. (Sorry Doctor Vadnal, I hope you aren’t reading this! – Or maybe I hope you are!)

Step Three -Audit My Website

Is my website up to date? What was the purpose of my having this site built in the first place?

1. Because I heard from my customers that I needed one
2. Because my competitors have one
3. Because I needed a way to generate targeted leads (ie new customers)

In most cases it’s not number three, although it should be.  But no matter which it is, we need to dig deeper.  A website SEO audit is a great place to start.  This ten-thousand-foot view of your site will reveal your strengths and weaknesses.  I’d then follow that up with a report from Website Grader. Between these two reports I should know whether or not I need to rebuild my site or just fix a few things and press on.  If a rebuild is recommended, this will need to be completed before going to step four.

While we’re speaking about your website, what is your URL (domain name)? Are there opportunities for you to get something that’s more memorable? Is yours easy to remember? Easy to say, like over a phone, without having to spell it out?

Guess what – dentist-saint-louis.com is available.  But probably not for long.

Step Four – OnPage Changes

There are some quick changes I’d do to my website.  On the home page I’d make sure my title was ‘St Louis Dentist John Doe’.  Not the name of your business, not the name of the dentist, but the number one keyword/keyphrase I want to rank for.

I’d also make sure that my Heading Tag 1 (H1) is very similar.  maybe just ‘St Louis Dentist’ or even ‘Saint Louis Dentist’.

Next, I’d make sure my website’s contact form was very easy to find, that it is short and sweet.  I’d also make sure that my phone number (using call tracking) was at the top of every page on the site and that I either have a 314 and 618 number or a 314 and toll-free number.  There are plenty of people out there that still don’t have long distance.

Next, I’d have my picture and a picture of each of my staff members.  Maybe even their own page.

It goes without saying that I’d have a blog.  If it were my office, and I had a staff, I’d have each one of the staff write at least one post a month.  If I have 4 staff members, that’s one a week plus what I write.  The blog would answer questions about everything related to my business – How do I brush correctly? Can I get cavities from sugar free gum? Do toothpicks really help? What if I don’t floss? etc etc.  Easy stuff to answer.  Answer it and become the expert.

Most importantly, make sure every page has a clear call to action.  Get a free report, first visit is $50 off, multiple family member discounts, whatever it is – make sure it gets your website visitors to give you some sort of contact information.  This is imperative.

Step Five – Getting Local

There’s no doubt that Google is getting more and more local, serving up results that include dentists right in your area, a map with pinpoints and even click-to-call options.  So you’ve gotta be there.

Filling out your profile on Google Places, Yahoo Local and similar sites is imperative.  (If you can’t do this, or don’t have the time to tackle them all, give me a shout. I know a guy who is awesome at local placement).

You have no choice on this one. You’ve gotta do it.

Step Six – Getting Social

Here’s where it gets fun.  I’m not just talking about signing up for twitter – I’m talking about building an online reputation as the dentist of choice for St. Louis folks.  Here are some ideas:

• Read Trust Agents, then sign up and actively use a twitter account.
• Create a Facebook page that tells people about your practice. Have giveaways that are only for your fans.
• Encourage your patients to share their X-rays on Facebook, flickr, twitter, whatever, however
• Encourage patients to write a review of their visit on Yelp, Mixx, Yahoo Local, etc
• Do a monthly newsletter that sells nothing but teaches everything. Use blog post teasers from the past month to get readers back to your site.
• Have a tooth fairy program – online or offline. Encourage kids to bring in their baby teeth for some sort of exchange. Use it as a teachable moment for good hygiene.  Maybe a new toothbrush or something.
• Don’t be the anti-candy guy. Be the better-alternative-to-candy guy or the candy-is-ok-in-small-amounts guy. Promote chocolate chip granola bars, oatmeal with fruit, smoothies, etc.
• Blog about funny things that happen in the office. Become likeable – not just another dentist.
• Partner with Foursquare to encourage check ins.
• Blog about pets and their teeth. Dog and cat lovers will be impressed.

Step Seven – Target Local Keyphrases

Here’s where it all ties together.  Starting an SEO campaign around the keywords you found in step two.  Consistent link building paired with blogging will assure that your site will climb the rankings on Google, Bing and Yahoo!.

Since we’re in St. Louis, you’ve got a few different ‘versions’ of keywords that you can target – ie STL, St Louis, Saint Louis.  These will all produce slightly different results in the search engines, so target them all.  Don’t forget zip codes and larger ‘towns’ that people type in often such as St Charles, South County, Florissant, Wildwood, etc.  Obviously not all of them may be your target audience, but if they are don’t forget to build links with those words in them.

If you haven’t already, fix all of your errors that came up in your SEO audit, or if you had a new site built, consider running another audit on the new site. If you use Firefox, check out the plugin called SEO Doctor. Make sure all of your pages are near or at 100%.

Start creating pages (or blog posts) around frequently asked questions.  Then build links to those pages through your Facebook fan page, twitter account, etc.  Become the expert for all things dentist in Saint Louis.

Summary

If I were a dentist, I’d be all over the online space.  There is no clear leader when it comes to searching for a dentist in St Louis, and sooner or later someone will step up and become that authority.

So you have a website but you’re not seeing the business roll in like you keep hearing that it should. There could be a number of reasons for that but today we’re simply going to focus on being found by your prospective clients. This part of the equation is simple enough… If they go to Google, Bing, or Yahoo and your website doesn’t come up in the first page of the results, you’re not going to get their business.

Your website is not a farm in the middle of nowhere and the Internet is not the “Field of Dreams”. You need build it, and apply the principles of SEO, before they will come.

With that being said, please allow me to ask you a few questions. Write down the answers on a piece of paper. We’ll be wrapping everything up at the end.

What is your website address?

That is the thing that looks like http://www.localbusiness.com. If there is an @ symbol in it, it’s an email address and not what you’re looking for.

What is your business?

What do you make, sell or provide? Do you sell cow bells to rock drummers? Do you sell shoes to old ladies? You know your business so you know what you do.  Write down 20 things that you sell and who you sell them to. Order them by either how profitable they are or which are the most popular.

How do people describe the products or services you provide?

Do they call them comfort shoes or orthopedic shoes? I don’t give a damn what the real name or technical term is. You aren’t selling your products to professionals in your own industry, you’re selling to the general public and you have to sell to them on their level so start by using the same terms that they use. Write down 20 terms that you hear people use to describe your products and services.

What city or cities do you do business in?

Do you work in St Louis, Los Angeles or somewhere in between? Write down the names of all the areas that your clients come from. If you are a mobile service, write down the areas that you are willing to travel to.

What other businesses in your list of cities have websites?

Do your friends have business websites? Do your kids have their own blogs? Write down any website owner that you can think of that you’re friendly with or if they’re in a similar industry. That will help a bit down the road.

What professional or civic organizations do you belong to?

Again, write them down, each and every one of them. If you don’t belong to any, you’d better join some. We’ll talk about that shortly.

How many links are there coming into your website?

If you’re asking what a link is, don’t worry. Many business owners don’t know and very few know how many links they have coming into their site. So let’s get educated. A link is the picture or text on a web page that you click on to move to another page. You need as many of those links as you can get. They should be coming from other websites and linking to yours. In case you’re wondering why you need links, links are power and currency in the popularity contest that is the Internet. The more incoming links you have, the more important Google thinks you are, therefore the higher they are going to rank you. If you have no links, you’re just like the fat kid in gym class. Got it?

Now that we have the major questions out of the way, let’s put it all together.

1.      Your website address is the address that they need to link to you. Memorize it!

2.      Now look at the list of items that you sell. Pick the 3 most important ones and number them. These are what people search for and what makes you the most money.

3.      Look over the words that people use to describe your products or services and see which ones describe your top 3 items. These are your keywords and you tell people that these are the words that you want them to link to you with. Some people will do it. Others won’t. Don’t worry if they don’t. It’s just an added feather in your cap if they do.

4.      Now for the city or cities that you work in. Those are alternate keywords or additions to your previous list of keywords.

5.      Look at your list of friendly website owners and tell yourself “I am going to call 5 of these people per day and ask them for links from their website to mine”. Then act upon it! Give these people your website address and the keywords that you want them to link to you with.

6.      Find out who the webmasters are for your professional and civic organizations and ask if they will give you a link on their “Members” page.

7.      Keep track of everyone that you ask for a link. You’ll want to check back every month or 2, just to be certain that your links are still there. Some people may want a link back to their site and that is okay. It is better if you get a 1-way link but a reciprocal link is better than none.

With these 7 steps, you are ready to hit the ground running and building links from local businesses. Remember, the Internet is a popularity contest and you want to win it, but you have to do it honestly without buying links. The search engines are smart enough to know when you bought the Prom King/Queen election and they will smack your site back down below where it was before.

Tim Biden is a Los Angeles SEO Professional and the owner of Village Ads. You can follow his nonsensical ramblings on twitter: @villageadsseo.

But what’s worse than a monkey running around your back yard? A business owner that is letting monkeys market his business.

Don’t let some monkey run your marketing campaign, telling you that you need to be on the radio, on billboards or even on the side of the Metro.  Where you need to be is on page one of Google for your main search term.

And there’s only one guy in Saint Louis that can do that – me.

I’m the number one SEO in Saint Louis (Search Engine Optimization) guy for a reason – because I get your business to the top of Google, Yahoo!, Bing and many other search engines.

Don’t waste any more money on untargeted shotgun marketing schemes.  Get that monkey out of your neighborhood and hire someone that can get you targeted traffic that’s ready to buy.

These sub-results take you to SERP pages for that particular search.  So a click on the Maytag link would take you to results for the term Maytag.

From an SEO standpoint, this is a terrific addition.  Companies who are having a bit of difficulty (or lack of finances) to rank for huge terms now have a ‘second shot’ at ranking for them through these sub-results.

And with personalized search, these sub-results can really help out the local vendor who was smart enough to add their business to Google Places.  They’re now “showing up on page two” for a major term.

Sure, it’s a roundabout way to get there, but I’m going to go ahead and say they’ll see more organic traffic from this change.  What do you think?

But by all means, take the time to do it right. You don’t want to look like an idiot because you ran through it so quickly. And it’s not something you can pay your twelve year old son Jimmy to do, neither. You don’t have to pay some business $299 to do it, either.  That’s just crazy.  Take the time on a Sunday night to get it right.  It’ll be worth it.

List Your Business Correctly

The first step to getting your business on Google Maps is to visit the Local Business Center (LBC) section on Google.  If you don’t have a Google account, you’ll need to sign up for one.  Once that’s out of the way, you’ll need to claim or add your business.  Chances are, they already know about your business, but have incorrect and very limited information about it.

Take the time to fill this out in detail, particularly the section labeled Description: This is a great place to put in some keywords about your business, list the things you sell or services you offer.  Don’t forget to add your website.

Pick the Right Categories

Last, enter as many valid categories for your business as they’ll let you.  All five, if they all fit.  but don’t just add categories because they’re there.

See that third listing? Hair of the Dog is a bar.  They don’t have pool supplies.  They don’t have a pool.  They have beer.  Unfortunately, they don’t have a beer pool, although that’d be pretty damn awesome if they did.

After listing your site, you’ll need to verify the information that you just entered.  In the past, Google always sent a postcard to the business address with a pin number for verification.  They also called the phone number and asked you for a pin number.  From what I understand, the postcard is no longer offered, or is only offered if other methods fail.  However they offer to verify your listing, make sure you follow through and verify your site!

For Yahoo, use http://listings.local.yahoo.com/csubmit/index.php

For Bing, use https://ssl.bing.com/listings/ListingCenter.aspx

Late last week Google announced a new feature for their mobile search where you can find businesses near you.  This little feature, which rolled out to all iPhone and Droid users can have a huge impact on your local foot traffic.

In order to be listed in what we call the 7 pack, you’ve got to have your businesses listed in the Google Local Business Listings (LBL).  Even if your business doesn’t have a website, you can still list it in there.

There are two main impacts by this simple change:

• Those businesses that are listed in the LBL are going to see an increase in walk-in traffic.  Over time as the service is rolled out to more and more smartphones, it will only increase this walk-in traffic.  Since smartphones continue to get cheaper, more and more people are going to have them.  It won’t be long before most cell phones are smart/data run.
• Not being listed in the LBL is only going to continue to hurt businesses that won’t get with the times.  It’s like ignoring the Yellow Pages 50 years ago.  It’s like saying the television fad will quietly pass.

Now, don’t forget that Google is already showing local/map results for generic queries.  That’s something they rolled out way back around March of 2009.  So it goes without saying that having a strong SEO presence in the search engines is becoming more and more mandatory.  Having your site verified in Google Webmaster tools is no longer an option.

Read other posts on Google Maps and local marketing

Oh – and once you’re listed, don’t forget to keep an eye on your listing.