Back in April, Google officially re-branded Google Local Search as Google Places.

Why the rebrand? There are a couple of motivations as I see it: A) Google wants to dominate the local search wars, and B) Google is attempting to position their local search service to take advantage of ad revenue.

Regardless of their motivations for the name change, you need to take advantage of a number of really cool features Google introduced with Google Places.

Google Places: New Features

1) Service areas: Most dental practices won’t be interested in this feature, but if you travel to your customers for any reason, you can now list your service areas.

2) Simple Advertising: For just $25 per month, you can highlight your listing on Google.com and Google Maps with what they’re calling “Tags”. Tags are essentially yellow markers that allow you to promote important aspects of your businesses. Keep in mind that tags will not help your business listing to appear higher in the search results. However, tags do allow you to list more information about your business than those businesses who did not purchase tags.

3) Business photo shoots – In addition to uploading photos of your business, you can now sign up to have Google create a virtual photoshoot of the interior of your business. Oh, and the best part is that they’ll do this for free. This sort of transparency speaks volumes to customers – so if you live in the following cities – I’d sign up ASAP:

Atlanta, GA
Boston, MA
Chicago
Denver, CO
Detroit, MI
Houston, TX
Indianapolis, IN
Jersey City, NJ – Hoboken, NJ
Kansas City, KS
Las Vegas, NV
Los Angeles
Miami, FL
Minneapolis, MN
Nashville, TN
New York
Philadelphia
Pittsburgh, PA
Portland, OR
San Antonio, TX
San Diego, CA
San Francisco, CA
San Jose, CA
Seattle, WA
St. Louis, MO
Washington D.C.

If you live in one of these cities and would like to sign up for a free photo shoot you can Sign up here.

4) Customized QR (two-dimensional) barcodes – From the Google Places dashboard, you now have the opportunity to download a QR code that’s unique to your business. QR codes can be placed on business cards or other marketing materials, and customers can scan them with certain smartphones to be taken directly to the mobile version of the Place Page for your business.

5) Favorite Places – Google is mailing window decals to 50,000 businesses around the US. These decals include a QR code that can be scanned with a smartphone to directly view the mobile Place Page for the business to learn more about their great offerings.

6) Real-time Updates – You might want to promote a sale, a special event happening today or anything else that you want customers to know right now, and this feature lets you communicate that directly to your customers. You can also provide extra incentive by adding coupons, including ones specially formatted for mobile phones.

7) Analytics – To keep track of how your business listing is performing on Google, they’re now offering a personalized dashboard within Google Places that will show you how many times people have found your business on Google, what keywords they used to find it and even what areas people traveled from to visit your business. With the dashboard, you can see how your use of any of these new features affects interest in your business and make more informed decisions about how to be found on Google and interact with your customers.

Google Places: Official Video

Final Thoughts

If you run a dental practice, then you need to take advantage of Google Place’s powerful new features. Not only does your business stand to benefit from higher visibility in Google, but you may just see an increase in the number of patients coming through your doors as well.

Get Listed in Google Places Now (Free)

Stay Tuned

This is just the first post in a series of posts we’ll be dedicating to Google Places. In upcoming posts, we’ll break down the new features and provide some tips (that your competitors aren’t using) for maximizing your visibility in Google.

Your Thoughts

Have you already listed your business in Google Places? Have you seen an increase in the number of new patients walking through your doors as a result? Share your experiences in a comment below.

The following is a guest post by Jim Stratton. If you are interested in guest posting for Dental Heroes, please sign up here.

Welcome to 2010. Direct Mail, Newspaper Ads, and other traditional forms of advertising are continually becoming less effective. Gone are the ways of the past – consumers now have unlimited content available to them right at their fingertips, online.

A recent study found that 70% of internet users now search for local businesses online. So what are you doing to cash in on this rapidly increasing trend? Here is a quick guide on how to blow away your competition with local search, and tap into this all-important revenue stream.

You Need a Converting Website

The key to any powerful internet marketing campaign is having a website that turns online visitors into paying customers. The biggest trap most practice owners’ fall into is having a website that is nothing more than a digital practice brochure. It may be pretty to look at – have lots of content – but it fails to deliver a steady stream of high quality patients.

The only purpose of your website should be to get your visitor to schedule an appointment or request more information. One of the most effective methods for this is including a compelling, valuable offer that visitors can sign up for right on the spot – perhaps a “Free Consultation” or “Complimentary Exam”. Here is a great article with tips on how to create and promote a powerful offer: Lead Conversion

Making PPC Marketing Work

Pay-Per-Click marketing is a tricky area for many dental practices – some have tried and failed, others have just heard too many bad things, and many more simply have never heard of it or don’t know enough about it. What almost all of these practices have in common is that they are not aware they could be killing their online competition, instead of missing out on this golden opportunity.

For all of the internet users that now search for local business online, over 70% prefer using Google. If there is one search engine that you need to master when it comes to PPC, this is the one. If you do a search on Google for ‘(Your City) Dentist’, on the results page you will see a group of ‘Sponsored Links’ in yellow at the top, and another group of ‘Sponsored Links’ along the right. These links are PPC ads, and represent some of the first listings consumers find when searching for a new dentist online.

In order to run PPC ads for your practice on Google, you first need to make a Google AdWords account: Google Adwords

When first getting started, it is important to:

• Determine radius you want to geographically target (campaign settings)
• Identify relevant keywords to your practice (i.e. ‘Chicago Dentist’, or ‘Chicago Teeth Whitening’)
• Create well-organized structure with groupings for your keywords
• Create ads that tie in theme of their ad group’s keywords
• Install conversion tracking to track performance

This article has some more specific info for getting started and AdWords tips: Insanely Effective Adwords in Three Easy Steps

Tracking the performance of your AdWords account (with conversion tracking) is absolutely critical to being successful, and is where many practices fail to turn PPC into a profitable marketing channel. With conversion tracking, you have the ability to determine specific areas (goals) of your website that have a “perceived value” to your practice each time they are reached.

These values are so critical because they tie directly into the financial math of customer acquisition for your practice. For example – if you know your average patient is worth approximately $1,500 in lifetime value, and one of every five people that request a free consultation become a paying patient, then you can start to realize the value of these incoming online leads ($1,500 / 5 = $300). Now obviously there are a multitude of other factors that affect profitability (supplies, overhead expenses, etc.), but the key is to try to grasp the understanding of how much you can spend to profitably bring in a new patient. Armed with this information, you can optimize your PPC account to maximize profitability by slowing down or pausing parts of your account that are not working well, and spending more on areas of your account that have a great ROI and could use more volume.

Tying in Google Local Business Listings

The final step to dominating Google Local Search for your area is having a well-ranked Local Business Listing. These are the listings that show up on the results page for the same search as before (‘Your Area’ Dentist), next to the map with the pushpins in it. These listings are 100% free to create, and more importantly 100% free for clicks received. If you do not already have one for your practice, you can create it here: Google Local.

Just having a map listing is one thing, but the truly effective ones are those that rank well for the relevant terms in your area. There are quite a few factors that go into the ranking of these listings. Here are some great resources for the known factors, which can help you get to the top for all relevant listings:

Improve Google local listings through local SEO

Local search ranking factors

Final Thoughts

Dental practices are not immune to customer attrition. As with any localized business, people eventually move out of their area and can no longer be your patients. For some this is a harsh truth – but for others it presents an amazing opportunity, because there is also an ongoing flow of new potential patients moving into the area. By dominating Google local search now, you can move ahead your competition in the race to acquire these new patients, and cash in on the goldmine.

It’s no secret that the internet represents a great opportunity for dentists to capture new patients. As internet usage continues to increase, this opportunity will become even more lucrative. However, most dentists are unaware of how to properly position their website to capture these new patients.

Don’t Employ the “Wait & See” Approach

Most dentists take the “wait-and-see” approach. That is, they develop a website, publish it to the web, and wait…and wait…and wait for new patients to line up outside their doors. Sadly, new patients never come. Why? Because your website is nowhere to be found in the search engine results pages (SERPS).

Thankfully, there are many techniques that you can employ to increase your position in the SERPS, and be found by patients seeking a new dentist.

Local Business Directories Are Effective

One highly effective technique for generating traffic, and the focus of this post, is submitting your dental practice website to local business directories. Submitting your site to local business directories requires very little time, but has significant upside potential.

Why? Because many of the local business directories that I’ve listed below appear on the first page of the SERPS for local searches.

Here’s Proof

To see what I mean, give this a try: go to Google.com. Once there, search using the following query: “saint louis dentists”(minus quotes). You’ll notice on the first page of the SERPS that several business directories came up, such as: Google local business, Superpages and Citysearch. You can see how a listing in any of these directories would improve your visibility with potential new patients.

I compiled a list below of my 10 favorite FREE local business directories that you should submit your site to in order to increase your online visibility and capture new patients. Without further ado, here’s the list…

Top 3

1. Google Local Business Center

Listing your website in the Google Local Business Center is a must. Your local business listing can include: your business address, website url, maps, location photos, business description, directions, business categories, etc. Your local search listing appears before regular(organic) search listings in the SERPS.

2. Yahoo Local

Submitting your site to Yahoo Local is also very important. Your listing options with Yahoo Local are similar to those in the Google Local Business Center. You shouldn’t expect as much traffic from Yahoo Local as with the Google Local Business Center, but it can be substantial nonetheless.

3. Bing Local Listing Center

Rounding out my top 3 recommendations is the Bing Local Listing Center. Although the Bing Local Listing Center is still in its infancy, people are already receiving significant traffic from it.

Also Recommended

4. Superpages.com

5. YellowPages.com

6. YellowBook.com

7. Yelp

8. Localeze

9. Local.com

10. Hotfrog.com

Stay tuned for future posts highlighting additional powerful tips for positioning your website in the search engines to capture new patients.

Add to the List

Have you found a great free business directory that’s not in my list? Please leave it in a comment below for everyone’s benefit