You can read Mr. Schmidt’s entire testimony by Googling (gotta love the Google verb) “Eric Schmidt’s Congressional Testimony.”

Some Killer SEO Math

Let’s have some fun with numbers shall we?

If Google makes 516 changes per year, that roughly equals 1.41 algorithm shifts per DAY (this is confirmed). Now, if all 13,000+ of the proposed changes were actually put into effect by Google, then the ranking algorithm would change approximately 36.47 times per day!

If you are currently working with or will be working with an SEO company in the future to help boost your website(s), then it is important to understand this. After all, this is why search engine rankings often fluctuate regularly (especially when trying to rank a new website for competitive keyword phrases).

The Long-Term Impact of Continuing Algorithm Shifts

A lot of dental marketing companies that claim SEO as one of their core-competencies search day in and day out for “band-aid” fixes that will temporarily increase a website’s search engine rankings.

The problem with this approach is that it does not take into account the overall goal of SEO: To grow your business using the Internet, both in the present and over the long haul.

While SEO can start to show results within 3 months of starting a campaign, it is not an overnight solution. In life and business, what effective solutions are easy?

To generate more leads from your online marketing, consistent and ethical SEO practices must be executed over the long haul to ensure that your Internet lead generation campaigns are being protected, both now and into the future.

At Killer Shark Marketing, we know that your website(s) is a valuable business asset, and we treat it as such. We pride ourselves on using 100% white hat SEO methods in order to increase your overall visibility in the search engines, and produce more leads for your business. If you want to hire true dental SEO experts that can really make a difference in the profit column, contact me today by filling out the form below.

You see, the sexy terminology right now in the SEO community is “keywords,” which are supposed to be those holy grail phrases that can launch your business into the stratosphere as soon as you hit page one! While that all sounds great in theory, it doesn’t tell the whole story.

As a dentist or medical professional, it is much more important that you learn to identify patterns and search trends as opposed to basing the entire success of your SEO campaign around a small set of keyword phrases.

Now, please don’t get me wrong, it is important to have a keyword strategy and words that you want to rank for. Improving your search engine rankings for specific, targeted, and high ROI phrases will drive more qualified traffic & leads to your dental practice.

However, be very careful that you do not base your entire campaign around a few keyword phrases, as this can quickly lead to frustration and failure. Here I’m going to share with you 3 reasons why targeting consumer behavior patterns is a much more efficient & effective way, both in the long-term and the short-term, for executing an SEO campaign.

1. More total traffic available

Have you ever heard of people who want to “burn fat,” so when they exercise they do so at the slowest pace possible, claiming they are burning a larger percentage of fat calories than someone who works out at a more aggressive pace, such as jogging long distances or interval training?

It’s true; you typically burn a larger percentage of fat calories at a lower intensity, but these people forget one very important concept: you burn less total calories at a slow pace.

What does this have to do with SEO you ask? The people optimizing for a small cluster of keywords may achieve top rankings for a few keywords, and on the surface seem most efficient, but the more aggressive you are, the more total impact you make on your SEO campaign. Target keyword modifiers and long-tail variations for true success.

You don’t see very many fit individuals whose only exercise consists of leisure walks around the block…just like you don’t see many of the best SEO companies only targeting small segments of keywords. From a total exposure & lead generation perspective (which is the goal after all), it doesn’t make sense.

The more aggressive your blogging & content-creating strategy is (combined with a solid, ethical link-building strategy) the more total impact you can have on your target market, which means more exposure for your business in the search engines. When you target consumer behavior patterns as opposed to a limited keyword portfolio, your SEO will have a much bigger impact.

2. Rankings are not the only goal

Rankings are the benchmark many use to evaluate the success of an SEO campaign. While rankings are certainly very important, they do not tell the whole truth. The fact of the matter is that when people are searching online, they will typically check out 3, 4, or even more of the top 10 Google results.

What does this mean for your SEO efforts? It means that you need to pay a little more attention to the “O,” or “optimization.” Real SEO is about optimizing not just your rankings, but making sure your site is the most attractive solution for consumers in the search results.

Would you rather rank #1 and not convert, or rank #3 and have a killer page that converts well? From a marketing perspective, the choice is simple. I like to think of positions 1-5 in Google as being the “playoffs” of SEO. All you need to do is get there, and if you really are the best, you are going to win (which means your business gets the most targeted leads).

Your ideal customer doesn’t care if you are #1; they likely don’t know that SEO even exists. They just want you to be “findable,” and then your website will do the selling. Targeting consumer as opposed to specific phrases allows you to cast a much larger net for the long-tail keyword phrases that over 70% of searchers are using to find your business. The only logical SEO approach for maximum effectiveness is a strength in numbers approach.

3. Content is king and always will be

This is a simple, painfully obvious secret that the best dental SEO professionals understand. In the long run, quality content is always going to beat any type of unnatural link-building that some of your competitors may be participating in.

The search engines reward websites that produce high-quality, unique content on a consistent basis. You can build links until the cows come home, but if all you are doing is building links and you do not have a conversion-optimized website & quality content in place, you’re pulling the cart before the horse, and it won’t pull itself for very long.

Another thing many dentists don’t realize is that, as your site increases in size (via more SEO optimized pages & blog posts) it carries authority, meaning that you will start rankings for hundreds, or even thousands of long-tail keywords that you would not have a shot at without consistent blogging & content creating efforts.

Don’t let anyone tell you that you can rank a website long-term without quality content; it simply cannot happen with the new Google, and rest-assured, Google is cracking down on websites that are trying to game their system. Again, think from a consumer perspective: are they going to stick around just because you rank #1? No they are not (remember, they don’t know SEO and don’t care).

You are not going to get leads based on search engine rankings alone. Your content must convert those rankings into real, tangible results (leads!).

Get started

Start blogging and focusing on content syndication as opposed to chasing after the same small cluster of keywords that all your competitors are going after! You’ll be laughing all the way to the bank once you become the one dentist in your market that really gets the true value & purpose of SEO, which will equal more patients.

Dental SEO keywords are the outline for a successful campaign, but they shouldn’t be viewed as the entire objective and purpose of proper SEO.

Now, marry the blogging concept we have discussed with effective link-building, and watch the leads start rolling in!

#1: Common Sense

A lot of SEO professionals are so analytical that they fail to remember one important aspect of any Internet marketing campaign…common sense. When you are constructing your keyword portfolio, you can get a great head start simply by envisioning your ideal prospect, and what they are likely to type into Google and other major search engines to find your practice.

While this isn’t exactly the analytical “science” that is often associated with SEO, it is a form of social science in the sense that putting yourself into your ideal prospect’s state of mind will help you better identify them, and design an SEO campaign designed to bring them to your dental practice.

#2: Google Insights

While I’m a big advocate of not relying solely on tools for SEO (as this leads to a purely analytical approach…and SEO is just as much an art as it is a science), Google Insights is a great tool that you can use in order to get an idea of whether or not your identified keywords are being searched for.

You can set a variety of parameters that can be very beneficial for your SEO campaign. This tool also enables you to see what searches are trending upward so that you can target new keyword phrases before everyone else starts doing it!

#3: Traffic logs

If you have Google Analytics or any other reliable website traffic tracking software, then you should be able to see which keywords are sending traffic for your dental SEO campaign. You can also monitor more in-depth statistics, such as time spent on site, and even top landing pages.

When looking through analytics, you may find a few golden nuggets that are sending you a small trickle of traffic every month, yet are not ranking that well. Let’s say you have a very targeted, super-qualified term that is sending 5 visitors per month to your website. When you check your rankings (note: you must log out of your Google account to accurately check your search engine rankings) you see that you are in the middle of page 2 for that term.

Now, imagine if you took that term just from the middle of page 2 to the middle of page 1…you would probably quadruple your traffic for that laser-targeted term, and have potentially generated 15 new leads simply by performing in-depth keyword analysis on data that you already have!

These are all very cool ways to get more from your dental SEO keywords. If you want to work with a proven company that can generate more leads via SEO for your dental practice, then contact me today. I would be happy to put you in touch with several references who can verify just how much we can help your dental practice get more new patients.

However, many have misguided perceptions & expectations about dental SEO, which can sometimes lead to frustration during a campaign, especially in the early stages. Here, we are going to cover 6 specific points that will change the way you look at SEO, and help you set realistic expectations for your SEO campaign.

SEO Expectation #1: It Isn’t Just About Rankings: Set Real Business Objectives

Ranking in the top 5 for “city name” dentist is nice, but that is not going to get you an avalanche of patients. A lot of those people are price shopping, reading reviews, and are not yet at the buying stage of the process.

This is fine, but there are better words to target if you want to attract buyers who are looking for procedures that will make your dental practice more money (dental implants, sedation dentistry, porcelain veneers, Invisalign®, etc. just to name a few).

Also, people search in a variety of ways, and in fact on ANY given day Google states 20% of their searches have never been seen before. When you think about it, that is a mind-boggling statistic. That just goes to show you that everyone thinks differently & therefore searches differently.

There is nothing wrong with targeting specific keywords, but you should also be using an aggressive blogging strategy that enables you to rank for the long-tail keywords that send the most qualified and “credit card in hand” traffic.

Your business objective & expectations with SEO should not be higher rankings; it should be more leads. It’s “search engine optimization” and not “ranking manipulation” for a reason; you are using the search engines to optimize your business for more visibility across the board in your target market.

Don’t get hung-up on a select few keyword phrases; instead focus on the overall visibility of your SEO campaign.

SEO Expectation #2: The More Keywords to Go After, the More Time & Money Goes Into a Campaign

You can see from my first point that going after a variety of keyword phrases via high-quality link building & aggressive blogging is the way to go, however this also means that more time & resources must go into running an SEO campaign.

Your SEO campaign should not be something that you do “on the side,” but rather should constitute a specific portion of your overall marketing budget. You likely already have the marketing dollars to spend on SEO, so why not allocate those funds to somewhere that can make an impact both in the short-term (a few months) and the long-term (for years to come).

By going after more keyword phrases, you are branding yourself in your local market, showing up in a broader variety of searches, and establishing trust & credibility with your future clientele.

It’s always fun when someone calls one of our clients and says “we called you because your website(s) was awesome and we found your business all over the web!”

SEO Expectation #3: SEO is Very Competitive

The days of writing a page or a post, and ranking immediately are pretty much over, even in smaller markets. Back several years ago, very few people were actively doing “real SEO” and as a result it was not too difficult to rank for many terms. However, many dentists now realize that SEO is one of the most cost-effective methods that can provide a very attractive ROI, which has caused an increase in competition.

This means that in order to get results from your SEO campaign, you need to work with a dental SEO firm that understands the true objective of SEO, which is more leads. Rankings are great and higher rankings should be a priority, however they are not the most important part of an SEO campaign.

With so many Google searches being unique in nature, it is important to pay close attention to long-tail keywords, because typically you can rank easier, and they send more qualified leads than generic terms. Analyzing the commercial intent of a keyword is more important than search volume, as the Google Keyword Tool and other software used to measure keyword data are often inaccurate.

SEO Expectation #4: Don’t Fall for SEO Companies that Don’t Keep it Real

There are many SEO companies out there that charge a low fee, and just tell you what you want to hear. This is unfortunate, but many consultants or SEO salesmen will do whatever is necessary to get the check. Six months later they are nowhere to be found, and all of your emails & phone calls go unanswered.

It is one thing for an SEO consultant to be confident in the abilities of his SEO team (and he or she should be), but rankings should never be guaranteed because no one has control over the algorithm Google uses to rank websites.

SEO Expectation #5: SEO is a Long-term Investment

If you have the attitude that you are going to “dabble in SEO” and see what it is all about, then you should save your money and donate it to charity. SEO is a long-term investment with results starting to manifest themselves usually around 3 months from the beginning of the SEO campaign.

If you are thinking that SEO is going to compare with PPC or Yellow Pages advertising, think again. First of all, SEO takes time and you cannot “bid” your way to the top of the search engines.

Also, 80% of searchers now click on organic search results (which are SEO driven) as opposed to only 20% for PPC ads (the ads in the right sidebar on Google). This makes SEO a far better marketing channel for your dental practice.

Also, we’ve heard the questions before: “When should SEO stop?” Or “How long do I have to pay for SEO?” The answer to these questions is simple: Stop when you don’t care about getting leads anymore. If you stop doing SEO then you will lose rankings across the board; this will result in a drop in leads & also hurt your branding within your local market.

In all likelihood this will increase the bounce rate & lower your time spent on site statistics, which are both metrics that Google uses to evaluate website performance. If your site is not performing, then it will eventually drop off the face of the earth. As you can see, stopping or suspending your SEO campaign is a slippery slope that could have massive consequences. I wouldn’t recommend it!

SEO Expectation #6: Tracking Real Progress is Essential

While Google Analytics is a great tool to use to measure website performance, it is not the end-all-be-all tracking solution for your SEO campaign. Again, if leads are the primary objective (which is the case for most dental SEO campaigns) then you should be tracking both your email leads and phone calls.

There are many call-tracking services available for a low monthly fee that can give you an accurate depiction of just what SEO is doing for your business. In fact, many services allow you to play back the calls so that you can make sure your team is closing leads.

Remember, it is your SEO company’s job to send leads to your practice, but your team must be able to close them and should be trained accordingly.

Dr. Mary Viechnicki-Potter: Your Allentown, PA Cosmetic Dentist

Dr. Viechnicki-Potter is an Allentown dentist who offers the following cosmetic and general dentistry procedures. These include:

• In-office whitening
• Cleaning and prevention
• Porcelain restoration
• Invisalign®
• T-Scan technology

In addition, Dr. Viechnicki-Potter has impressive credentials. Her many credentials include:

• A Doctorate of Dental Medicine from Temple University School of Dentistry
• A membership in the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry
• Hundreds of hours of post-graduate training at the esteemed PAC-Live: University of Pacific Continuum on Aesthetic Dentistry
• Being a national instructor with the Hornbrook Group

Dr. Viechnicki-Potter also does her very best to give back to the community. She was recently involved in the program “A Chance to Heal,” which addresses eating disorders.

If you’re looking for an Allentown, PA dentist, Dr. Mary Viechnicki-Potter may very well be the dentist for you. If you’re looking for some of the highest quality porcelain veneers Allentown, PA has to offer, or if you’re looking for a provider of dental implants Allentown can trust, consider Dr. Mary Viechnicki-Potter.

If you’re in need of any of these dental services, Dr. Viechnicki-Potter would love to help you. Call her today for a complimentary consultation about any of these procedures at 610-435-4838.

I know that your time is valuable, so I’ll break this down into 3 easy to understand, yet essential points:

• All SEO companies are not created equal

• SEO in itself is uniquely defined by each company

• Many companies providing “SEO services” focus on the wrong objectives

I’m going to break each of these down individually, so that you can understand why SEO pricing varies so much, and that when it comes to SEO, you generally “get what you pay for.”

1. All SEO Companies are Not Created Equal

The category of “SEO” is a lot like the category of “houses.” Asking the question, “How much should SEO cost” is like asking how much a house should cost.

What determines the cost of a house? The cost of a house is determined by how much value you will receive in return for your investment. SEO is the same; your costs are derived by how much value you will receive from your SEO campaign.

It is very difficult to price-shop SEO services because just about every SEO company will do things a little different, meaning that you are not comparing apples to apples. The best way to evaluate which SEO company is right for you is not how much they are charging, how much traffic they promise, or other factors like that.

The right SEO company for you is the one that takes time to answer your questions, explains how they are going to grow your business, and communicates with you what they are doing, as well as the results that have been achieved.

Would you rather spend $500/month to make $2,000/month, or would you rather spend $3,000/month and add an additional $20,000+ per month to your bottom line? One model increases your revenues $1,500 and the other increases your monthly revenues by $17,000…I think the winner is clear!

SEO is often a paradox…the cheapest SEO on paper can be the most expensive long-term!

2. SEO is Different…Depending on Who You Ask

To a large extent, how a company defines SEO determines how much they charge. Some companies that call themselves “SEOs” are really nothing more than “short-term rank manipulators.” These types of SEOs typically charge a relatively small fee, and then outsource your SEO to a company in India that builds thousands of spam backlinks.

95% of the links won’t even get indexed by Google, and the ones that do, may provide a temporary increase in the search engines, but this is often short-lived. In addition, these types of SEOs often target only 3-5 keywords. Google recently stated that 54% of their search queries are 3 words or more, and that 70% of searches show “no volume” in popular keyword tools used by some SEO companies.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that leaving 70% of your potential website traffic on the table is not the best way to execute an SEO campaign…yet this is exactly what you will typically get when you pay for cheap SEO.

On the other hand, the best dental SEO companies command a higher fee because their focus is on growing your business, both in the short-term & the long-term. For instance, at my company (Killer Shark Marketing) we typically send clients traffic for hundreds, even thousands of keyword variations, which means we put you in the position to acquire new patients that the cheaper dental SEO firms miss.

We also stay up to date with the latest SEO trends, ensuring that your web marketing campaign is in great hands. SEO is about far more than just ranking for 3-5 keywords and being done with it. If you want to see a measurable difference and get more new dental patients from search engine optimization, then you need to work with someone who takes a “saturation” approach to SEO.

Getting in front of more potential patients with a conversion-optimized website means an increased rate of new patient acquisition…simple as that!

3. Many SEO Companies Focus on the Wrong Objectives

Let’s make a clear distinction when it comes to SEO: local organic SEO & national SEO campaigns are two very different animals, and must be treated as such.

National SEO campaigns may have products on-site, and therefore focus on metrics known as “goals” or “conversions” within Google Analytics. However, with a local campaign, there are more effective metrics to track, especially for dentists since products are typically not sold on the site (and if they are, they are low-ticket items…not the terms you need to optimize for in order to ensure a high ROI campaign).

So what should you track if you are a dentist? In one word: LEADS. Killer web design (pun intended) and SEO are just tools used to generate more leads for your dental practice. However, you must also be very careful that you do not confuse the natural ebb & flow of business with your SEO company’s performance.

Statistics rule 101: correlation does not imply causation.

You are much more likely to see success with your SEO campaign if you & your SEO team are on the same page. This means setting realistic expectations, and making sure that each party helps the other out.

Your SEO company should be uncovering new ways to attack your market & increase the value of SEO for your business. On the other hand, dentists also know of many niche terms that could potentially bring in high-quality leads, and these terms should be sent to your SEO company for evaluation.

The bottom line is that focusing on the right objectives is crucial. Traffic might be down 5%, but what if bounce rate is lower (good thing) and time spent on site has increased (another good thing)? Both of those are important conversion metrics, and Google (based on their search rankings algorithm) will reward sites that give the searcher/consumer a positive user experience.

If you want to work with a dental SEO agency that will put you on the path to more business via the web, then contact us today; we would love to discuss your needs.

1. Leverage the Web

You have a website & a few decent Google rankings…that is good enough right? Wrong!

Many dentists think they are doing Internet marketing the right way, but after working with clients all over the country (including multi-million dollar practices in some of the largest U.S. cities) I can tell you that less than 1% of dentists are branding & marketing their business effectively on the web.

2. Why Use the Internet to Generate Cosmetic Dentistry Leads?

If you are a cosmetic dentist looking for new patients, there is no quicker and easier way to get there than the Internet. Studies have shown that television, radio, and direct mail simply do not provide the ROI that a proper SEO campaign does. Notice I said proper…If you’re paying $1,000/month or less for monthly SEO, you might as well keep your money and donate it to your favorite charity.

To give a comparison, paying a few hundred bucks per month for SEO is equivalent to charging $100 for a beautiful porcelain veneer…it just flat out doesn’t make financial sense. A real dental SEO company MUST charge more than this, just like you MUST charge more than a few hundred bucks for veneers!

Your website & online reputation is a very important extension of your business, and if you are neglecting to allocate the appropriate marketing dollars toward SEO and conversion-optimized web design, then you are leaving a lot of business on the table.

3. Your Website

Does your website reflect just how great your practice really is? If it doesn’t, then chances are you are not getting the quality or quantity of leads that you should be.

When it comes to a conversion-optimized website, there are 4 necessities:

• Professional pictures/videos (before & after photos of patients, video testimonials, etc.)

• Color scheme that matches your practice

• Calls to action (in the header, inner pages, blog posts, etc.) must all be optimized according to our tested conversion principles

• Great content (on the web, content really is king!)

My web marketing company (Killer Shark Marketing) pours over both your current site and new proposed design with a fine-tooth comb to ensure that everything is in place, so that your website can get the maximum amount of quality leads possible!

4. Monthly SEO

This still perplexes many dentists, and understandably so. Virtually all of our clients had been burned by several SEO companies before they started working with us, which is due to the fact that most SEO companies don’t really understand how to market a cosmetic dentist on the Internet…it is a much different vertical, and takes a uniquely talented team to do it effectively.

There is a reason it is called “search engine optimization” and not “Google rankings improvement.” SEO is about much more than just rankings. Getting to page 1 for 5 keywords likely won’t make a big impact on your bottom line, however, getting to page one for hundreds, even thousands of keyword combinations related to your main services will!

At Killer Shark, this is what we do: We put your dental practice in front of thousands, even millions of people (in some markets) who are using an infinite number of keyword combinations to research the products and services you offer (each person thinks & researches differently). There is a certain “feel” to SEO, as opposed to a purely mechanical approach.

Once they get to your website, conversion optimization takes over, which is why we are able to generate so many leads for all of our cosmetic dental clients.

The truth is that many SEO service providers for dentists fail to realize just how much work MUST go into a successful dental SEO campaign; it isn’t nearly as easy as “rank for 5 keywords and your business will boom.” This is the promise made by many, but quite simply it is a logical fallacy (you need to rank for hundreds of keyword variations in order to see the ROI you want with SEO).

Without question, conversion-optimized web design & proper SEO go hand-in-hand to create the most effective way (by far) to generate quality, high ROI leads for your dental practice, which is one reason I focused on building a business exclusively around this model!

Ethical vs. Non-Ethical Dental SEO

Here, I’m going to show you how to spot a non-ethical dental SEO company, as well as how to ensure you work with an ethical company with proven results.

1. Lack of knowledge.

Many wouldn’t call this unethical, but in my mind, if you are servicing SEO clients & they are counting on your expertise, then not being a true expert is unethical. Is taking money for services you cannot adequately provide unethical? Yes.

There are many SEO providers who simply do not know dentistry, do not know conversion principles, and do not know how to, not only rank websites, but continue to expand keyword portfolios & monitor KPIs (key performance indicators) to make sure that your SEO campaign is performing at its maximum potential.

A true SEO expert will tell you upfront that, in order to see success from SEO, you must rank for a lot of keywords (yes, even the ones that don’t show up in the Google keyword tool), and that rankings are not going to come overnight (more on this in a minute). An ethical SEO company will always be looking for ways to improve your campaign, which includes monitoring your rankings, as well as KPIs.

2. Lack of communication.

There is no excuse for this one. We have had many dentists come to Killer Shark Marketing and tell us that it often took weeks, even months to get an answer from their SEO company on the most basic questions! This is simply inexcusable.

When it comes to SEO, one of the pillars of success is open communication between a dentist & their SEO provider. You should be able to ask your web marketing company a question, and get an answer within 24 hours.

3. Dishonesty & wildly mismanaged expectations.

I touched on this in point one with regards to overnight rankings. It is very important that goals & expectations are clearly defined between a dental office & their SEO company. Unethical SEO companies will do anything just to get you to write a check, and this often includes promising unrealistic outcomes for your SEO campaign.

Quality SEO takes time, as true SEO experts know the importance of creating quality content, backlinks, performing in depth site-structure analysis, and over 200 other factors that go into ensuring that your SEO campaign is set up for longevity.

4. Lack of references.

A lack of references does not always mean that a company is unethical, however, many “one man SEO shows” don’t actually have real clients! These people may know what they are doing and provide a great job for you, however, when you hire a provider like this, the odds are not in your favor.

If you want your dental practice to truly grow, then you need to work with an ethical SEO company that has delivered outstanding results for SEVERAL clients.

If you are looking to work with a dental SEO consultant or company, email us; we will be happy to put you in touch with several dentists around the U.S. who are very happy with what Killer Shark Marketing has done for their dental practice!