3 dental marketing services you should reconsider paying for.

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Hey, let’s take a look at three common services that people offer dental offices that you should kind of be wary of. And the first is going to be review removals. So, a lot of people approach dental offices saying, “Hey, you got you have this like three star or two star, one star review. Um, we can help you remove it.” And how it works is they ask the dental office to pay them and they will do the hard work of removing the review through some proprietary method that you know the dental office isn’t

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savvy to. And what really is the case is that re removing reviews is impossible except if they violate that platform’s terms of services. So, if you have Google or Yelp, the two main review platforms, there’s going to be certain types of re reviews that are going to violate their terms of service. So, these are going to be things like um making threats, using profanity, um obviously a disgruntled employee, um things like that. You can review their terms of services. they have a couple of

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uh things, couple of categories that if that review falls into there, then it’s going to be uh be able to be removed. Now, the trouble is reviews that seem genuine to an overseas worker uh who’s getting paid minimum wage to review these reviews. If it seems genuine, they’re not going to uh remove that review. They’re not going to go through the investigation to figure out whether that review was true or not. If it’s within terms of service, it’s going to be almost impossible for you to get that

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review removed. So before hiring an agency to help you remove reviews, first consider, is it a clear violation? Is it a clear violation of terms and services? Because if not, then you’re going to be paying someone to basically be doing nothing for you. All right, so let’s move on to the second thing, which is going to be website maintenance. And this is something I’m passionate about because I started off with website maintenance or I started off with building websites and we’ve never

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charged website maintenance. We had one client tell me like, “Hey, you need to charge uh maintenance.” And I said, “Okay, I’ll charge you like 50 bucks a month.” But um my other clients I I don’t charge. Um, and the reason is that it’s very simple to automate and it’s it’s basically a solved problem that people that other uh providers charge dental offices to provide. Um, I’ve seen people charge as much as like $350 a month for maintenance, which is not you didn’t have to spend that. Like

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you could have bought yourself a nice dinner instead every uh month. and what it how it works, how maintenance works is typically depending on the website, where it’s hosted, what it’s built with, then you’re going to have options to just have it auto update. Like WordPress is a very common one. It’s one that I use. You go into the plugins, you enable auto updates, and it will automatically update every time. And very rarely will anything break. And if it does on the next update, uh, it’ll be fixed because

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as long as you’re not using some obscure plugin or platform, then they will do a good job at making sure everything’s up and running properly because if they weren’t doing that good job, then people wouldn’t be using their platform. So, in modern days, website maintenance is largely unnecessary for you to pay for. Um, I can see why you would want to pay if you do constant updates if you always have changing staff. Uh, in that case, I would recommend you look at what are the elements that have to be continuously

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changed on the website and can you do it somewhere else. Maybe you can use social media as a way to show off the staff. Maybe you can use social media as a way to show off um revolving promotions. And if it’s on your website, uh you can leverage emails or things like this. like you don’t you don’t necessarily have to pay these exorbitant fees for maintenance is what I’m saying. Uh, of course, if you do regular content and you want to do on your website, then that’s a different case. All right, and

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the final one’s going to be SEO. Um, this is another one that hits close to home because I used to provide SEO and this was kind of the go-to way for a long time for a lot of dental offices. Um, but largely it’s become ineffective. And there’s two types of SEO. There is traditional SEO, SEO how we knew it and and the common knowledge of what SEO is, which is ranking for the top three spots for a valuable keyword on search engines like Google and Yahoo um or even Bing as they say. And then there is local SEO,

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which is the newer version that Google introduced in 2018 when they phased out uh traditional SEO. they introduced local SEO which is the introduction of Google maps um Google my business profiles, Google business profiles um all those stuff. So traditional SEO if you put in investments into ranking higher for keywords it’s going to help but it’s going to be very marginal. The results that you get the benefits that you actually get from those investments have largely been phased out because

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Google introduced local SEO. So, if you do a search for a local service business, you’re going to see the Google map packs um the Google business profiles at at Google places show up way above the traditional SEO results which are now at the bottom. And what we’re seeing is that around 80 to 90% of all the people who are searching are relying on the Google places, the Google My Business area to make decisions. And so anyone who’s playing the SEO game, sure you’re going to get results, but it’s

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going to be like you’re investing to fight for these scraps that are left over from local SEO. So the better approach is going to be to actually invest in local SEO. But now here’s also the issue. Um I think there’s very high diminishing returns when it comes to optimizing the Google business profile. And a lot of people go into contracts or terms where they have someone who is optimizing continuously optimizing their Google business profile. Um but and and the main thing they do is maybe help

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with review generation and help with um Google Google business profile posting. But these have significant diminishing returns. If you’re looking at reviews after a certain point, after maybe around two or 300 reviews, you’re you’re not going to get any more awareness. Google’s not going to um show you to further and further locations, people searching for further locations because there’s other offices who also have good reviews who are closer to that person and proximity is a very big indicator

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that people consider. So as a result, Google wants you to pay and play the game of advertisings if you want to spread your reach using Google business profile. So, what I’m saying is like after a certain number of reviews, you’re going to uh not benefit from more awareness. And also, after a certain number of reviews, you’re not going to build you’re not necessarily going to build more trust. It’s going to be diminishing returns on the amount of trust you build. You could have 200

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reviews or 300 reviews versus someone who has 500 reviews. Sure, it’s more reviews, but now people understand the concept of review inflation. We understand that businesses are going out of their way to unfairly incentivize uh fivestar reviews. And I’m sure you’ve experienced this where you go to a restaurant and they will give you a free drink if you leave them a fivestar um review on Yelp and show them or something. And so people understand that this is happening. And so when they see

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an office with um something like a thousand or 2,000 reviews, they start to wonder, okay, what exactly is going on there? And rather than building more trust um you actually start enter the territory of raising a red flag which is paradoxical but um it’s becoming true. Um what people understand that people aren’t too excited to go out and leave reviews. There must be some sort of incentive going on. Um so this is just something to keep in mind. And then back to uh Google business profiles local

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SEO. Another thing people will offer you is to post for you. Um, posts, Google posts have significantly diminishing returns as well. Um, the more posts you make isn’t going to Google’s not going to be like, “Oh, wow. This guy has a lot of posts. Let’s put him to the top.” Um, it’s it’s not a way of winning local SEO. There is no real method of winning local SEO besides just getting a good number of reviews somewhere in the two to 300 range and you’re really all set

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to go. So, after you meet those um baselines, there’s really nothing left for you to do as far as touching Google business reviews. Just keep consistently generating reviews. Um don’t go overboard and trying to incentivize and things like this. But, um as far as uh local SEO, your your job there is pretty much done. So, uh hope that’s helpful. sort of three things that people offer dental offices and really push them to do that I see is not working as well. Um SEO, uh review removals, and what was the third one? Um

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web maintenance. All right, hope that was helpful. Thanks.