Dental Websites, Google, Dental S.E.O.
What is a Citation?
As a dental practice, having a strong online presence is crucial for attracting new patients and growing your business. One important aspect of this is having accurate and consistent citations across the web. But what exactly is a citation and why is it important? A citation is a reference to your business, including your name, address, and phone number (often referred to as NAP). These citations can be found on a variety of websites such as Google My Business, Yelp, Yellow Pages, and Apple Maps. These citations play a crucial role in local search results, and the more citations you have, the more relevant you become. However, it's not just about having a lot of citations, it's also about having accurate and consistent information. It's common for citations to be out of sync, with your business being listed as "Happy Smiles" on one site and "Dr. Smith's office" on another. This can lead to confusion for Google and can result in penalties for bad information. So how do you ensure that your citations are accurate and consistent? One way is to manually change them one by one, but this can be a daunting and arduous task. A better option is to use a site like Bright Local to help you not only organize your citation data, but also find other sites to put your citation information on. In conclusion, citations are an important aspect of local search results and should be taken seriously. By ensuring that your citations are accurate and consistent, you can improve your online presence and attract new patients. If you need help with citations, don't hesitate to reach out for more information and guidance. With the right tools and a little bit of effort, you can put your dental practice on the path to real growth.
It's also worth noting that citations can have an impact on your overall SEO strategy. Search engines use citations as a signal of the authenticity and relevance of your business. By having accurate and consistent citations, you are providing search engines with the information they need to understand your business and its location, which can help you rank higher in local search results.
Additionally, having a large number of high-quality citations can also help to boost your business' visibility and credibility. Consumers are more likely to trust and choose a business that has a large number of positive reviews and citations. There are a variety of ways to acquire citations for your dental practice. Some of the most popular ways include:
- Submitting your business information to online directories such as Yelp, Yellow Pages, and Google My Business
- Encouraging happy patients to leave reviews on sites like Google and Yelp
- Asking other local businesses to link to your website
It's also important to monitor your citations to ensure that they are up-to-date and accurate. This can be done by using tools like Bright Local or manually checking your citations on a regular basis.
In conclusion, citations are an important part of any dental practice's online presence and SEO strategy. By ensuring that your citations are accurate and consistent, having a large number of high-quality citations, and monitoring them regularly, dental practices can improve their visibility and credibility, ultimately leading to more patients and growth.
Video Transcript
What is a citation and why is it important? How do they help and where can you find the best deal slash product? I'll show you what I use. So the definition of a citation is a quotation form or reference to a book, paper or author, especially in scholarly work. Now, a web citation is a reference to your business, but it's a little different because it's viewed in a particular order. In the web world, we call it a nap, which stands for name, address, and phone [00:00:30] number. Citations are a critical part of showing up in local search results. You can have a citation on hundreds of websites out there that hold this type of information. For example, your Google My Business page, Yelp, yellow Pages, apple Maps, et cetera. These citations are graded by how in sync they are. It's very common in dentistry for these to be way outta sync in one place.
Your business is called Happy Smiles, and on another site it's listed as Dr. Smith's office. This happens all the time when these citations are out of sync. Google can't tell if it's the same practice or not, and it looks pretty sloppy and disorganized, so they penalize you for bad information. It's your job to make sure that all the citation sites out there have the correct information. It's a daunting and arduous task to change these manually one by one. I like to use a site called Bright Local to help me not only organize this data, but also go out and find other sites that can also put my citation information on. The more citations I have, the more relevant I become in local search results. If you have any questions or you need help with citations, I would be happy to give you some advice. Please visit calendly.com/ Joshua Summers to schedule a time to meet with me on how you can improve your online results. I'm looking forward to assisting you with local citations and putting you on a path to real practice growth.