The major search engines we all know and love are Google, Yahoo, and for fun I’ll include MSN. If you pay close attention to the search results page you’ll notice at the top there are additional result options. These options include: Video, Images, Local/ Map, Shopping. These options offer search exposure for your dental practice. What this means is that you have an opportunity to get top placement in each of these categories for your search terms.

For example if a user types in “Columbus Ohio Dentist” on Google, first they will see the sponsored and organic results. Clicking on images will show them actual photos and images of “Columbus Ohio Dentist”. If you have videos on YouTube your videos have an opportunity to rank on these result pages.

If you want to take advantage of your comprehensive search results, you have to make sure that you properly optimize all of your content. Every image on your website needs to include “alt” and “title” tags. If you are uploading videos you want to make sure that you include your keywords in the title of the video. As a result you will noticed that you can not only dominate webpage results but images and video.

I will briefly go over the other two options; which include Map/ Local and Shopping. If you have not already included your practice on Yahoo and Google Local please do so at this time. It’s 100%  Free. Submitting your practice to these local services will place you in the Maps and Local result pages.

Yahoo and Google have shopping portals you can submit products to. So if you have products for sale and you have them listed in these databases your products will be listed in shopping results.

Take a look at your comprehensive search results. Can you find your assets on any of the other search result pages? If not, you are missing out on valuable search engine traffic.

If you have any questions you can ask them here in the comments section.

Google Local Business
If you are not listed in Google’s local business listings you can sign up here. It takes a few minutes to sign up and create your Google account. Once your listed your practice will appear in relevant search results for cosmetic dentist in your area.

More Local Content
How will anyone or any search engine for that matter know that you’re local if you don’t talk about it. On your website or blog start talking about what’s going on in your city. If you have to create a buzz, heard of something new or bizarre, blog about it or write an article commenting on it. Content is always king, and the more of it the better. Just keep in mind that with local advertising you want to keep your city and state keywords in your titles and include them a few times in your text.

Meet Your Neighbors
Search for local websites that compliment your practice.   These could be blogs, local directories  or business.  If it’s a blog, post a comment, anytime you comment on a blog it will include a link back to your site.  Don’t become a spammer, make sure that the content you contribute is helpful. Exchanging links with other businesses in your city is also a great way to share traffic. The point is, the more links you have to your site, the more relevant your site becomes for local traffic.

If You Are Not Blogging Start!
Many of the tips in the post relates to blogging.  Having a blog is very important because search engines love blogs! It’s really that simple. If you have a website or not setting up a blog can be done very easily, try Blogger. Blogger is free and very easy to use.

Foxy Dental offers a very complete blogging package. We can design a custom blog to match your current website or start from scratch. Learn More Here

If these tips have been helpful post a comment. Feel free to share your local marketing tips.