Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is a free tool that allows small business owners like dentists to promote their business information on Google Search and Maps. When customers search for your business on Google, they’ll be able to see your practice name, address, phone number, hours of operation, website, and reviews. In this article we are going to share some helpful tips for generating free local traffic for dentists using your Google Business Profile.
Setting up Google Business Profile for dentists
The first step is to create a Google account. If you already have a Gmail account, then you can use that. Otherwise, you’ll need to create a new Google account. Once you have a Google account, go to the Google Business Profile page and click “Start now.”
If a Google Business Profile already exists for your dental practice, you need to be granted ownership of the profile. If you bought the practice, the previous owner should be able to grant you access.
In rare instances, nobody will own the profile or you will not be able to get access from the admin. That isn’t a problem. You can still request ownership of an existing profile.
First, find your business profile by Googling the exact name of the business listing. Clicking where it says “Own this business?” will take you through a series of steps to claim ownership of the profile.
Completing your Google Business Profile
Once you have control over the listing for your dental practice, you will need to make sure the business profile is completed.
Start by going to the “Info” tab on the left side of the page. Here you want to fill out the various fields as accurately and completely as possible. Do your best to follow Google’s Terms of Service, or you may run into trouble later on.
- Business name: Google specifically states to “Enter your business name as it appears to customers in the real world.”
- Services: Start with the most relevant terms for your dental practice and add any others you may need. It might state: “Dentist, Emergency dentist, dental care, dental hygiene, etc.” Keep adding any terms that would apply to your dental office.
- Address: Make sure that the address as it is listed on your Google Business Profile matches exactly as it reads on your website and other places around the web (such as listings on Yelp and other places).
- Service areas: List all of the cities, neighborhoods, and places near your dental practice where patients are likely to be from.
- Business description: Add a short, relevant description of your dental practice. It currently allows 750 characters. A quality AI writing tool such as Jasper can be helpful for this sort of thing.
Four helpful tips for generating free local traffic for dentists
The above information is just scratching the surface for your Google Business Profile. Now that you have laid the groundwork and done the basics for your listing, you can take it to the next level.
Here are four helpful tips for generating free local traffic for dentists.
Questions & answers
If you Google the exact name of your dental office, you will be able to see questions and answers for your business.
Be sure to answer any questions people may have asked about your dental practice.
If you want to boost it even more, you can do this to help your business show up more often in searches:
- Look at other dental offices business listings and see what kind of questions people are asking them.
- Use another account to ask your office the same sort of questions.
- Use your Google Business Profile to answer the questions on your profile.
Don’t be spammy or try to use tons of keywords or anything. Just use commonly asked questions and give helpful answers.
Posting on Google Business Profile
We recommend that you post on your GBP at least once per week, but if you can post more often than that, great!
Share information about:
- Promotions in the office
- Services offered
- Specials
- Amenities
- Insurance information
- Dental hygiene tips
- New staff members
- Staff member birthdays
- Holiday celebrations in your dental office
- Dentist certifications and continuing education
- New or special technology in the office
- How you are helping/supporting the community
- Anything else you want to let people know about your dental practice
Here’s an example of a dental practice that is doing it right. They are posting often, and they have recent posts. This can be seen on their Google Business listing when you Google the name of their office.
Photos
Upload photos of your dental practice to your Google Business Profile. Frankly, you should be doing this several times per week, if not daily.
If you are worried about being HIPAA compliant, be sure to get written permission from patients. However, it doesn’t have to feature patients in the pictures at all. Focusing on the staff and dental office should suffice.
The more pictures you add the better. If you haven’t added any for a while, don’t be afraid to upload a whole bunch of them onto the profile at once.
Pictures attract eyes and people are more likely to stay on your profile for longer when you add more.
Reviews
This is incredibly important – have as many satisfied patients write reviews as possible. I don’t recommend bribing customers as that violates Google’s terms of service.
However, bribery won’t be necessary with satisfied patients – they will help you with this!
So, just ask them to do it, especially if you know they have had a good experience with your dental office.
I’ve created a helpful guide on this in the past – How dentists can get more Google reviews.
Summary – Free local traffic for dentists
If you follow these four simple tips about generating free local traffic for dentists, you will almost certainly see a bump in traffic from potential patients in your area.
Google Business Profile is an incredibly powerful tool and it’s free to use. So, there’s really no excuse not to be using it to your advantage.
If you need help setting up or optimizing your Google Business Profile, we can help you by showing you what your profile needs. Simply let us know you need help.