Tips for the Young Dentist
Tips for the Young Dentist
Suggestions for connecting with your patients, disarming them, building trust and goodwill that will last! I will also include business and treatment planning tips I've picked up along the way.
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kylehornby
kylehornby

The Power of Online Citation Cleanup

8/22/2019 6:35:30 AM   |   Comments: 0   |   Views: 52
I haven't made a post for a while and wanted to provide a quick note about the power of cleaning up your online directory listings or citations.  I always like to base my content on personal experience because fellow dentists often want to know: "Did that work for you?".

About a week ago, I signed on with a reputation management & patient communication company to use their platform and better my online search rankings.  One of the smaller courtesy services they offer includes building citations or adding your business name to local and global directories.  If these entries for your business are built/accrued with consistent name, address, and phone number (or "NAP") information through online business directories, Google rewards you with higher search rankings.  Conversely, if you have duplicate listings within a directory, inaccurate NAP information across multiple directories, or still have listings for previous practitioners/owners containing your NAP information, Google will penalize your website...and your search ranking falls.

There are a multitude of online service providers whose help you can enlist to ensure your dental practice is listed in as many relevant directories as possible, with consistent NAP information, and they can also adjust inaccurate entries while removing harmful duplicate entries.  Interestingly, these directories are populated with information directly from business owners but also receive information from other directory providers.  This means that your listings can change over time even though you have not added any new information.  So, it is important to build listings while sanitizing existing listings but it is also critical to monitor your listings/citations moving forward.

One good way to locate service providers that can help you with this task is to type into Google "online citation cleanup" or "NAP directory check" and peruse the results.  Many of the best providers will also share information and resources to help you understand why citation management and NAP consistency is valuable to improving your Google ranking.

Within 2 days of adding new citations and cleaning up or standardizing information on existing directory entries, my Google search ranking increased dramatically.  While this is only a piece of the entire puzzle, and many other factors contribute to dictating where you fall in search results, NAP standardization and citation building is tremendously valuable to your business.

Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions.  Enjoy the summer!

Kyle Hornby, DDS
Enamel Republic Family Dentistry
77 Water Street North
Kitchener, Ontario
CANADA


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